Robert Rath is becoming a personal favorite Black Library author. His Assassinorum novel is also very good ( not as much fun as Grumpy Old Necrons ) and the Bleedout novella is some of the best of Warhammer Crime.
15 Hours. Fresh faced guardsman gets sent to the wrong planet.
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE JUST A PRANK, BRO!
If you're interested in Orks, I can suggested The Prophet of the Waagh, Kunnin' but Brutal and Warboss.
That and also all of Peter Fehervari's other stuff. He's a good writer and I like how he handles Chaos.
It was ok, primarily about orkz fighting (as expected) with some drukhari and grot chapters sprinkled in between to break things up a bit. Ork dialogue was the highlight even if some of the humor falls flat (there's a meme reference in there that the author should be ashamed of, obviously reddit found it hilarious).
Start with the first four heresy books and go from there, don't be too concerned thinking you have to read the entire heresy series as there's a significant dip in quality right after Fulgrim (easily my favorite).
Additionally, there's a few flow charts, but this is one of the more comprehensible ones. If someone reads the first few HH books and actually decides they're interested in a couple of particular legions or story arcs, rather than having to read through 50 fucking books to find the 4 you might be interested in
Makes me think you could do a hell of a novel about "Da Wagggh o' Da Dakka" not long after the Farsight Enclaves were founded where a Warboss decided he'd show those blue gitz who were da real dakka mastaz. The book would mostly be about the Warboss and Farsight, how each of them view the other and their forces and the opposition. Naturally the book ends with Farsight realizing the Orks are deliberately avoiding melee out of some sort of sense of bizarre pride on their ability to out-shoot the Tau, and so he decides to flip the table and challenge the Warboss to a one-on-one fight over who is the better melee fighter... and then after a kickass fight scene between Crisis suit and Mega-Armored Warboss where O'Shovah demonstrates that its lack of desire and not lack of skill that makes Tau suck at melee, he ends it by blasting the Warboss when the Warboss isn't looking, either personally or via some Pathfinders, thus cementing the Tau as the shootiest gitz of them all, perhaps followed up with some personal remarks towards the Orks about Farsight being more kunningly brutal than them on top of shootier.
Well, I haven't read many 40K books, but I enjoyed this one:
I can imagine a natural follow up to that is Farsight now has an entire Waggh that follows him and his cronies around because "hes da shootiest git". Farsight using Orkz as a supplement to his rebel forces would make a really interesting series of novels, assuming tau ever actually got novels that explored anything about their faction.
Unironically if you want to just dip your toes into painting then get one of those plastic sets from walmart. You know the ones, army men, animals, whatever you like. That with some craft paints like applebarrel is an extremely cheap alternative to dropping 60$+ minimum on just plastic. You could also go to a warhammer store if available and paint a space marine there for free, as well they hand out a free mini every month.
Imagine my surprise when I see there's one in the big city 30 min away. May go there tomorrow tysm I wouldn't have even thought of that. I've been playing fantasy TW and mechanicus a lot recently and she's got her own run of rogue trader so thank you for the outing idea, friend.
The free mini of the month for July is a world eaters goremonger btw.
Is this what they will give me to paint with in-store or separately?
That's what they just give you for showing up at the beginning of the month. As for the model you can paint in store, it might be the model of the month, I've got no idea. Regardless, it's a free model if you happen to come up with a reason to be driving past a GW store.
Books
The practice/free mini is either a Stormcast or a Primaris marine.