50k you finish the song.

Free yourself from the plastic crack by utilizing the simple solution called "3D printer go BRRRRR"

40k's equivalent of the Bene Gesserit are specifically the Orders Famulous. They're a sub-order of the Adepta Sororitas responsible for advising, arranging marriages between, and keeping the peace within and between Imperial noble families. Because 40k is even less subtle in its "inspirations" than you gave it credit for.

If any intellectual property that GW has "taken inspiration" from suddenly said *"MINE"* it would be quite hilarious.

Games Workshop being a terrible company is just another Tuesdays news. Sometimes it's also Mondays and Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and.....

No, the Navigators in Dune do not fold space. They are able to see the safe path through folded space. The Holtzman Engines in the Guild Heighliners fold space. Any goofball can fire up the engines, but only a Guild Navigator can see the safe path.

To give an idea of how deranged GW can be about their IP? They tried to sue to Royal Marines to make them change their name, claiming ownership of the word MARINE.

I always wanted a astra militarum krieg army, but it was too expensive. Now I will 3d print one.

Forgot GW lifting from 2000Ad comics too, pan over to scene *Judge Dredd arresting Arbites for plagiarism, and Torquemada sneezing*

no sacred cow is too sacred to be shit upon by the dockmaster

Outside dune we have Chaos, stolen from Elric and the eternal champion saga from Moorcock Hive worlds, tech priests arguably the imperium itself The foundation by Issac Asimov Dark elves/dark Eldar. Melnibonia from Elric Space marines. Mobile infantry from starship troopers

Coming up with catchy titles isn't as easy as people think.

A Geller field is a piece of tech that creates a kind of forcefield around a ship to hide/prevent the creatures in the warp from finding or boarding said ship. Navigators use their psychic powers to help navigate through the warp. In short if one or both breakdown/screwup say goodbye to your sanity and most likely your life 8(

Games Workshop is about to be compressed to a cube.

Their crusade against fan animators was devious! Literally free advisement! Never forget

In regards to the Eldar and the name change, as I recall that happened after GW had gone on a lawsuit frenzy; not only suing 3rd party companies making compatible stuff for the games, but suing anyone using any terminology they remotely thought should belong to them. For example they sued a woman for writing a book called "Spots the Space Marine" even though the first use of the term space marine goes back to the 1930s or so, and despite the fact that her book had nothing to do with their IP. Some of the lawsuits they won, but others they lost (such as it being OK for 3rd party companies to make miniatures for units that GW had not produced miniatures for). Instead of doing the logical thing and making those missing miniatures, they instead removed them from the rules completely and they also started changing the names of races/factions around to their current fake Latin versions. They started on their path to destroy the old world (Warhammer fantasy setting; basically a copy of medieval Earth) which they hilariously bungled (twice!) before eventually creating the Age of Sigmar setting for their fantasy line (which is still highly derivative, but at least some of the model lines had some effort put into them to make them look unique). Warhammer Fantasy came first and Warhammer 40k was one of the guys saying "Hey! What if we took all of these factions, but put them in space instead?"

Let's not forget that the tyranids was them going "ooh! Alien was a cool movie!". But that's fairly obvious and well known. One that's a little less well known these days is that the whole thing with the chaos lords was pulled from Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series, primarily the Elric of Melnibone subset. The primary symbol of chaos as a whole, the eight pointed star or eight rayed arrow or whatever you want to call it? Directly lifted. While the Chaos Lords don't have perfect analogues, a few are more direct than others - Xiombarg, who's gender identity is somewhat flexible, or Duke Teer and his obsession with blood. Weapons that are truly demons? The infamous Stormbringer, and others. They make some minimal effort to file off serial numbers stuff these days, but back in the day the only original element they added to /anything/ was to find the edgelordiest possible interpretation for something they made no other effort to change. (Which tended to work better in the context of dry british satire and not so much with americans-who-take-everything-literally.... and even less so with the very specific subset of fans who are a bit /too/ into the empire of man, if you get my drift) But yes, their worlds can be pretty neat. Parts of it are great. The company? A phenomenal bag of dicks who's entire history is just finding new ways to be dicks.

Warhammer a Fantasy table top miniature wargame was first published in 1983. In 1987 Games Workshop was very open about the fact the Warhammer 40,000 setting was a parody and homage to almost all epic Sci-fi comics, novels, tv and movies that came before. The 1st warhammer 40,000 rulebook was full of puns, jokes, and references to other IP. It was designed to be compatible with Warhammer Fantasy Battle and their roleplaying game they had at the time. Players were expected and encouraged to make their own models and lore. Unfortunately in the 1990s share holders put business men in charge, the company lost its sense of humor, and started trying to copyright claim IPs they had already borrowed from.

The Imperial Guard (Astra Mili what?) is just one of like a dozen factions in the setting. It has: Catachan Jungle Fighters - Inspired by US forces in Vietnam, and 80's action films. Cadians - Inspired by Canadian Shock Troopers in the Great War (World War I). Mordians - Inspired by the Prussian army in the 1800 to the Great War. Valhallans - Inspired by World War II Soviet army. Death Corps of Krieg - Inspired by German, French, and British trench warfare troops in the Great War. Pretorians - Inspired by the British forces at the Battle of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift during the Invasion of Zululand. Atilians - Inspired by Mongolian cavalry. Vostoyans - Inspired by the White Army from the Russian Civil War. Tallarns - Inspired by Lawrence of Arabia (WW I), and the SAS in North Africa (WW II). And this isn't even all of them, it is just the most famous that I could remember without opening a book. For example, the Space Marines are said to have 1.000 know sub-factions, and even though only about 100 of them at most have official backstory, most of them have clear real-life inspiration. Like how the Raven Guard is inspired by Matthias Corvinus King of Hungary and Croatia and his Black Army. Or how The Lion, and his Ravenwing of the Dark Angels is inspired by King Jan Sobieski and his Polish Winged Hussars (they LITERALLY have the polish flag upside down on some of the models!) I could go on and on, but I won't ... but the point is I could! Very little in Warhammer 40,000 is "original".

Have a near 1:1 Navigator to Navigator reference including rampant mutation, but you go with Psykers instead, also the Order Famulous is far closer to what the Bene Gesserit are than the Sisters of Silence.

My favorite was when, in 2013, GW tried to sue somebody for "violating GW's copyright" when they described a character as a "Space Marine. Games Workshop? More like Patent Troll Workshop.

Good news the Space Marines are here! Bad news the Space Marine are here.

Warhammer (the fantasy table top wargame) came out in 1983, and Warhammer 40K came out in 1987.

I am a T'au I'm mining a hole miney miney hole

Everything in 40k is stolen from other, better, franchises. They just added low-effort memes and pretended they were original.

In the early 90’s, the Eldar were *literally* called “Space Elves”. It didn’t last long but there was a time when there were both “Space Elves” *and* “Space Orks”.

The Riders of Rohan are probably closer to the Desert Raiders of Talarn - specifically the Rough Riders. And I have to throw in the Arbites/Judge Dredd connection.

There used to be Dwarves in 40k they where called Squats. I miss them they where fun guys to go drinking with.

Originally the first models for WH40K were orcs with AK47s, and space marine armour was not dissimilar to full plate. Squats were originally Humans who grew up on high gravity worlds, etc. In Epic they had their own army with armoured Land Trains!

In the Dune books the guild navigators don't fold space. That was change made in the David Lynch Dune movie. In the books the navigators needed the spice and the precognition it grants human males to navigate the galaxy when their ships use FTL drives to travel. The navigators need to be able to see the future in order to evade hazards that they would have no advanced warning of due to the "running blind" effect you have when you are traveling faster than light. Hitting a small rock at FTL speeds would be like taking a 40megaton nuke to the face. In Warhammer 40k the navigators have the ability to see into the Warp, and specifically the beacon of the astronomicon generated by thr Emperor on his goldenThrone, and use it to pilot ships through the warp. The geller fields are generated by a machine that uses organic components (artificial organs that use human blood as a power source and coolent). The navigator only plots the course through the warp, the geller fields protect the ship by wrapping it in an artificial "soul" that keeps the warp out of thr ship. Old school Warhammer wasn't directly based on Tolkiens works but on Dungeons and Dragons game, and D&D borrowed heavily from Tolkien amongst others like Michael Moorcock and HP Lovecraft. Games Workshop just wanted a setting for their tabletop war game and D&D was incredibly popular at the time so they chose to copy from what the fans already knew.

Considering the Imperium’s stance on AI it really doesn’t surprise me people are angry with you covering 40k.

Just for the record Dockmaster Warhammer Fantasy came first and is 100% derivative of LOTR... When it isn't also ripping off King Arthur grail stories, The Golden Compass, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 40k itself initially started off as a joke supplement for Warhammer Fantasy, then became it's own thing with the Rogue Trader RPG which still had a bunch of derivative in jokes like "Inquisitor Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau" and the like. After that it evolved into the "grimdark" tabletop game everyone knows and hates/loves/mostly hates. Even then the in jokes never quite went away like one of the primarchs being literally Batman except he kills, noise marines with speakers and literal axe guitars, as well as the "Lion" El Johnson primarch based on an 18th century poet that people referred to as a dark angel due to his poems subject matter.

"They're dicks" Amen, hits like button. Another originality bypass from 1st ed WH40k is the oniginal Genestealers. In the original rules their attack would immobilise their victim and lay an egg in their chest. After a random number of turns a little genestealer whould hatch and tear their way out of the victim. Yes, in the WH40k Rogue Trader rulebook GW blatantly rip off Alien. To paraphrase Michael Moorcock "Yes they copied my stories but they copy everything." Also WH Fantasy came first. EDIT: Also Also . One of the boxed sets for the Squats was literally labeled Space Dwarfs.

Neat vid though you did miss out the elephant in the room - Michael Moorkock's Eternal Champion books of which GW/Citidel Miniatures made a box set of pewter models with a Corum, (elf), two Elrics (dark elf/drukhari) and various others. Orks don't bother with Geller Fields because demonic incursions are considered 'in-flight entertainment', and the Tyranids are ripped off from ALIEN (the genestealers anyway).

GW doesn’t change names of this or that to differentiate themselves. They do it to trademark, own, and control their IP with an iron fist. They didn’t like losing their lawsuits over words like space marine by other authors. So now everything is getting weird names.

GamesWorkshop: "Somehow, there have always been female Custodians."

Anyone remember when GW tried to sue an author for using "space marine" only for that to get slapped down? Pepperidge farms remembers

GW is essentially the next a-hole that's trying their best to even outdo Disney in terms of who's the biggest a-hole. But it would be nice to see you compress IoM, Eldar and other factions ships into a cube.

Good one. I do not 'play' 40K, but I have followed the lore for a while. Nice analysis.

I think that a lot of people like myself like Warhammer 40K for just the lore, and how cartoonishly caricaturist that the people in the setting can be (e.i. overzealous, xenophobic, judgemental, and uncompromising). Also makes Crossovers fun to entertain. The Rebellion/New Republic would likely just attempt to avoid the problems of the Warp, unless they had no alternative (which traveling through Hyperspace might or might not entail). Q would visit the Daemons for entertainment, much to the displeasure of everyone else, while the Federation: "It has taken much trial and error using probes, but we have modified the navigational deflector to emit a constant graviton field, thereby removing any demons from the vessel's path. Also, in the unlikely event that we any demons should be able to keep space at the cruising warp factor of 8, we have changed the frequency of the phaser emitters to a setting that should be effective against hostile entities of pure energy. If that should prove insufficient, we have manufactured modified Photon Torpedoes that should react most effectively against their psychic-energy forms." Imperium: "ABOMIDABLE MACHINE, USING UNHOLY TECHNOLOGY!!!1!

Ah, lets not forget the mix of the Sardukar with Starship Troopers to get the full space marines. We get to look at Judge Dread for the Adeptus Arbites. A Canticle for Leibowitz mixed with Foundation with a hint of Dune (the Spacing Guilds) gives us the Adeptus Mechanicus. GW is a terrible mess that milks the fun out of community.

GW originally had the rights to make a lord of the rings game, when they lost the rights to that they "created" warhammer and then later ported it over to scifi by adopting back story from Dune. Thats why warhammer has all the basic factions from LotR in warhammer and then space orks and space elves in 40K. With the uptake of 3D printing, they changed the name of 40k factions (space marines to astartes, intercessors etc. And Eldar to Aeldari etc.) to make it easier to copyright and go after people 3D printing compatible parts and advertising them as compatible with GW. Theres nothing original about GW's stuff.

Well, the Orks kinda want to fight, so nightmarish demons suddenly appering is mid flight entertainment. For the Orks, for the warp creatures more like walking into very agressive mold.

40k also has an equivalent to dune personal shields, typically concealed within rosettes and saved for the most important normal humans like inquisitors and commissar lords, etc. In the tabletop, they give a 4+ invulnerable save, so about 50-50 odds of blocking any one attack regardless of how dangerous. Youd be shocked how hard it can be to win coinflip odds

Fun fact about the Sisters of Battle/Silence connection with the Bene Gesserit. The Sisters of Battle have a type of orders called the Orders Famulous, which cover the last of the Bene Gesserit's roles from Dune (keeping nobles from reducing their gene pool to a gene drop)

My own story of GW shenanigans, a friend of mine has an Etsy store making wargaming things for 28mm, GW took his store down due to him mentioning that his products worked with 40k, note he was not selling nock off space marines but was making bunkers and other such things. He was able to argue his case but the person he was talking to thought him saying it was "compatible with 28mm models like 40k" was a slam dunk. so yeah I can see why you don't touch their IP with a 10-foot poll despite how many things they took inspiration from.

Yeah, not a fan of how GW did the 'join us or die' thing with the fanimators. The fantasy dorfs are supposed to be dying out, so the space dorfs were originally abhumans. I suspect the new ones were inspired by Deep Rock Galactic. The space orks weren't originally fungi, it wasn't in the Rogue Trader book; they used to say there's no such thing as a salty ork player, because their playstyle was so random. No idea if that's still the case... I believe the title of that LotR prequel is pronounced, silly-mirry-lion.

Games Workshop is the main reason I don't get into actually trying to play War hammer 40k. Plus now they are trying to gaslight fans and if they don't buy into it, pull the ism card. That's just insult to injury with their relationship between their product and those they sell it to.

Warhammer sounds like a friend groups roleplay setting that grew way bigger than it was supposed to

Games Workshop tried to claim they trademarked the term "Space Marine", but fortunatelly failed, cause the term is much older than their game. So they learned their lesson and changed the _Imperial Guard_ to _Astra Miltarum_ ... and now they can sue anyone that even things of using that name.

The Warhammer IP is successful despite the best efforts of Games Workshop - just look at what happened with the fan animations. We'll see how this latest blunder unfolds.

Great video! Love the lore comparison. I had never thought it through this much. One point of clarification on dune lore - guild navigators don't actually fold space, that's what the holtzman drives are for. The navigators are able to find a safe path through interstellar space, ensuring that guild heighliners arrive at their destination and don't end up inside of a sun or a planet.

Butlerian Jihad? "There are 12 models... and they have a plan."

The fitting following to “there’s WH everywhere” would be “mass lawsuits in the air, this isn’t really fair, their prices are a scare”. Plus maybe something about a stupid company trying to “own” the right to power armour, grimdark and 80s metal poster inspired sci fi (despite now producing some of the most generic and soul less slab armour sci-fi gear in existence). Plus a few “what’s this what’s this” sections about seeing a WH model, ripping off the wrapping and their active “inspiration” showing bright and shiny (their original sculpts were repurposed stuff from other people model runs, in a way that would make a Chinese factory owner blush).

I don't think there's a sy-fi universe GW hasn't ripped off!!!

Ah, so a TL;DR of why you don't cover stuff from the GW-related properties is because their production company has a proprietary technology that plays merry h*lls with your compactors when they attempt it, and as a result, you automatically deny their requests to dock.

40K has its own Navigators - also heavily mutated humans necessary for guiding ships through FTL transit.

The Riders of Rohan are not only analogous are not only to space marines, but there's apparently a chapter (Ravenwing?) that's known for riding combat hover cycles everywhere.

So, if the Necrons are barrow-wrights... who's 40K Tom Bombadil?

I feel like you and Arch would have a great time talking about Warhammer 40k and GW.

Warhammer came first, it was a success in the late 70's, under the idea 'what if we ripped off Tolkein and a few other fantasy authors to make a game where everyone sucks.'. Then in the 80's they did a lot of coke and said 'what if we do it again, but in space!' and warhammer 40k was born. And yes, it's pronounced '40-K', not 'forty-thousand'.

The imperium had to make a machine to do what the oRks do naturally, believe really reeeeally hard.

I bet they're so defensive because they are so derivative. They try to hide it behind a wall of copyright strikes and other things. Classic insecure corporation behavior from them there.

Aliens (2nd movie) had space marines and tyranids in 1986. Should be worth a mention.

18:32 no the Tau are not based on Tolkien but instead based on Bungie property Marathon and the faction known as the Pfor. Though the Tau main faction symbol is based on the Marathon symbol seen in both Marathon it's namesake and in Halo.

There's another youtuber who had a great point about the whole current issue. "Generally, the reason a fanbase tends to push back on retcons is because they do not trust the company to do a good job." I'm paraphrasing, and the full video is probably the best take I've seen on the subject, ironic clickbait title and all. But then, Heywoah's focus is Age of Sigmar, the superior game. And the sheer amount of anger some people will feel reading that last sentence tells you everything you could need to know about the kind of stewards GW are. I could comment on The Issue(tm), but honestly much of GW as it relates to 40k comes down to this: "What if the most popular fantasy/ sci-fi / mix of both settings and ideas, but thrown haphazardly together, cranked up until the knob breaks, and with like two or three original concepts all wrapped in the most ludicrously grim and cynical package"? That's *amazing* . That's "shut up and take my money" levels of bonkers fun, and the success of these games that are a niche hobby OF a niche hobby proves it. But their behavior is typical for companies of their ilk. TSR, the original D&D company, was known for a time as "They Sue Regularly". They did, and they died. Hasbro, D&D's current owner, shot itself in the dick so hard at the top of 2023 trying to behave like this that the company is in quiet internal havoc now. GW has gotten by with this behavior on the virtue of being a monopoly. Their IPs are meaningfully popular for the first time ever. They're better-written now, in many ways, than they ever were before. And every other similar company in their current position has behaved the same way, and had it go poorly. It will be interesting, at least, to see where things go from here.

What's this? What's this? Warhammer everywhere! Krigers fanatically running and chainswords reving brrrrt What's this?!

I don't mind that Games Workshop takes inspiration from other people, I mind that they do it and then change just enough that they will then attack anyone who tries to take inspiration from them (Eldar to Aeldari, Imperial Guard to Astra Militarum, Space Marines to Adeptus Astartes). It's a beautiful franchise ran by one of the worst companies

Thankyou dockmaster... I have given my friends a hard time for decades about all the aspects of the game that where "borrowed" from tolken, heinlein, not to mention the aliens franchise, and other sources, but I honestly had not looked at how much of the dune universe is a part of 40k

A friend of mine once said the GW has only one purpose, which is to get their players to buy as much paper (rulebooks) and plastic (models and figurines) from them as possible.

I believe that Warhammer Fantasy came out first, the 1st Edition launched in about '83 and yes, pretty much ripped off every fantasy trope that there was, specifically things like Elves, Dwarves and Orcs. And they had multiple human factions, most notably the Empire and the Bretonnians, basically loosely representing Germany and France respectively I think. The representation of England was a mysterious smaller land known as Albion. Back in the dim and distant days you had other nations mentioned, such as I believe Nipon which was somewhere to the far east and had a very oriental feel to it. Of course horror fantasy was included with the Undead and Vampire Counts which ripped off the whole Dracula thing, and later the Undead split and you had the aforementioned Vampire Counts and also very Egyptian-feeling Tomb Kings. The first edition of 40K, actually called Rouge Trader, was released in '87 and they simply copy and pasted all of its Fantasy races into space with small name changes. Orc became Ork, Dwarf became Squat, Elf = Eldar as you mentioned. Dark Elves were in Fantasy and so Dark Eldar appeared in 40K for I think 3rd Ed? The main human faction from Fantasy was the Empire and that became the Imperium and Sigma morphed into the God-Emperor, though you could possibly argue that the knightly Bretonnians became the Space Marines? Of course Tomb Kings later appeared as the Necrons and also Tryanids appeared and evolved. Tyranids were, if we're being charitable, fairly obviously "inspired by" the xenomorph from Aliens. I had never really thought of Tau as a substitution for dwarves? Maybe... but their strict cast system always reminded me of the Minbari from B5! But yes, the company in later years have become money-grubbing a*****es who rip their customers off with their prices and how they release models and rulebooks and so on. I first got into the hobby back in the days of Rouge Trader and carried on until about 5th when editions started coming out far too frequently and prices started to sky rocket! previously there had been say 5 or 6 years between the release of editions of the main rules, that shrunk to 3 or 4, with only 2 years between 6th and 7th! That's not even getting into things like how they handled the re-release of Necromunda and its rulebooks, or the Imperial Knights!

Been watching since your first episode and I knew I stumbled upon something unique. Glad to see my instincts ( for a Hummie ) were accurate. Congrats on 40K. And yes, I gladly contributed to our tiny Hummies ability to read. Take care and Great Maker Bless from Florida.

40k_Dune Demon kabasa_Axilatl Tanks, Sisters of Battle_Fish Speakers, Blanks and magical jackasses rising maybe one of there kids

Fantasy as a whole has had trouble getting out from under the shadow of Tolkien because he would be the first to admit that his own work was shockingly derivative of that which came before in many ways, pulling from a wide variety of sources, everything from old norse mythology, tales and myths of the fae, Christian theology (it's mostly buried in the Silmarillion), and Shakespeare. There's a couple points where he clearly thought Shakespeare had copped out. "No man of woman born can slay me" and "When Birnham Wood comes to High Dunsinane" immediately come to mind... There are other parallels with Games Workshop, even, in that the Tolkien estate is shockingly litigious, and engaged in Lawfare to claim the rights to "elf" and "dwarf" before, much as GW has tried and failed to claim Space Marine. For the record, Warhammer is the original, 40k was basically "Warhammer IN SPAAAAACE" with a lot of jokes and parody until the grimtards and fanboys got ahold of it and made it SRS BIZNUS. Seriously, they basically ripped off tolkien and everything elsem, tossed in some contemporary, at the time, political jokes (Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka was supposed to be poking fun at Margaret Thatcher, and Orks, despite the skittle hair brigade's whinging about feelings and claiming they are racist, are basically drunk English football hooligans). They named one of their Spehss Mahreenz chapters after a homosexual poem, and another after Ghengis Khan, and they don't wanna talk about the rainbow warriors anymore.

Moorcock also had an undying King Huon of the Dark Empire of Granbretan

They took the whole "forever war of various factions that are all equally bad" from BattleTech. Except BattleTech was never grimdark.

20:57 actually, the necron come from the tomb kings from warhammer fantasy, who are undead Egyptian, has opposed to the necron, who are Egyptian robot skeletons. You should actually watch the total war warhammer trailer for the tomb king, it’s very cool.

also, Horus' Eye symbol looks a lot like Saurons Eye

21:29 There is a dwarf city/forteresse in warhammer fantasy that is called Karak Ikit, if I am not wrong, that is full of goblins, and has nothing to do with karak doom, that is also full of goblins and a demon.

Let us not forget the big one space marines. Yes them they took a generic term that had been used many many times in SF long before there was a Gamers Workshop and trade marked the name. Just so no one else can use it. Again ruined quite a few SF series that the authors had been using the "space marines" words in there books got sued all of a sudden and had to stop in the middle of some great series.

What's this what's this, there's color everywhere, what's this, there's ships all in the air, what's this I don't see a UNSC Infinity wake up commander this isn't fair, what's this?😄

As far as I know Warhammer was based on Tolkien, and Warhammer: 40,000 was originally supposed to be the year 40,000 of the Warhammer world. Not to be confused with Warhammer: End Times which is where the Vermintide games happen and is the Fantasy-Apocalypse one.

Space hulk, the initial incarnation of 40K was sued itself for trying to rip off the movie aliens

The difference between a business and a con job is the care for your customers and community, many large corporations are con jobs.

I feel like a bit more research really would have helped this video work. Like, so many of the point you make are valid and SOO CLOSE to hitting the mark but miss (at least for me) because of either making comparisons which almost and then fail to line up due to lack of knowledge (usually about the setting and the company’s history) or because you reached too far when there’s a really obvious, easy alternative that would make the point so much better. Like, just look at the Astra Militarum and Tyranids and tell me you don’t see Starship Troopers and Aliens ripoffs. Or like, just touch on how GW started out manufacturing minis for White Dwarf (aka D&D) but created WH Fantasy (a blend of Tolkein and Dying Earth fantasy - aka Chaos) to keep selling models when the contract ended, then ported all the ideas over to a sci-fi setting that would eventually become 40k (hence space orks, elves, and dwarves). To their credit, as much as it pains me, GW has genuinely done a lot to make their setting distinct from its MANY sources of inspiration… Oh, and most of the Dune stuff was spot on - I just wish you went further 😂

Okay, everything builds upon what has gone before and G.W did go really weird firing off lawsuits everywhere I think it's just what companies have to do, see what all the crazy that the music industry got up to. It seems that their legal team just went "Threaten everyone or you will lose all your I.P" They went overboard maybe because they had stockholders now and it justly backfired.

It's why D&D has halflings rather than hobbits.

Okay who at the shipyard remembers Battletech and Star Frontiers.

Bonus points: Night Lords (and this is coming from a hardcore Night Lords fan) Vlad Teples in Spaaaacccceee. Seriously, look up Vlad's tactics and methods. It's pretty obvious. You did get the whole gelar field/psyker thing wrong, however. But I've seen that others have already jumped on that.

I think you forgot about the 40 K navigators as well. You know the people in 40 K that use psychic powers to navigate the warp.

I have been using 2d printed representations of models in my tabletop games for ages and only evolved to 3d printed representations recently. Honestly the 2d disks with icons are far more convenient to play with.

Tau are ripped of Japanese anime, they were literally made to take advantage of the weeb market.

Weren’t these universes originally based on the D&D role playing concept? If so that would account for the similarities in the races and factions

Warhammer 40k was not even the first Sci FI table top game with warhammer 40k rouge trader being closer to a RPG and the Traveller RPG while not the oldest RPG is one of if not the first Sci-Fi RPG and traveller since it copied from the same sourcs (and does not hide this fact) it is very close to 40k. If even has mariens in power armour that fight in space.

Hum, while I totally agree that Warhammer 40k has stolen from... well everything everywhere. I do think you go a bit off the rails trying to do a 1:1 comparison between so many elements. Also, correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the whole sardukar thing not that they were raised from kids but rather pulled from the survivors of the hell hole prison planet that house corrino had, which is why the fremen and sardukar were so similar (having both come from hellish environments?). Anyho :) I hope the engagement helps :D

The only thing I'm gonna say in GWs defense here is that at the end of the day, what the game design side of the company and the _legal_ side of the company do are completely different sides of the coin. I'd argue that the main issue they have is that the guys and gals actually making the games don't have anyone that can go over the legal team with a cricket bat and start knockin' some heads around to get them to CTF out. And now they have a completely different arm that doesn't seem to understand any of what the design side does, and is now the voice of the company.

40K came after Fantasy by about 4 years. Which is in my belief the source of the "40,000".

The 8 pointed star and Chaos itself were taken from Michael Moorcock, space marines were not invented my GW despite them trying to trade mark it! And I'm sure there's a lot more GW has stolen.

Warhammer Fantasy came first. It came from a deal that fell through with the owners of D&D.

All of the name-changes are simply for copyright/trademark reasons. Since they stole ... sorry, got inspired by so much, they weren't able to copyright/trademark any of their stuff.