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I was wondering if anyone here has had experience with either one of these games and if they could tell me which one might be better to get into.

I am looking closely into 40k, but I am still unsure what to get into.

The fluff in 40k is really great. Way more in depth than Warmachine's. This really leads to a personalized army with original characters and unique aspects.

However, the gameplay in Warmachine is more intuitive, and quirkier. The fluff is not as deep, and you are forced to use named pre-established warcaster in your army.

Overall Warmachine is a cheaper hobby, and easier/faster to get together a tabletop ready army. Since you'll be fielding only a handful of models in a small game. 40k requires many more models for a small game, which means more assembly time, more painting time, and more money. Warmachine also scales much better at smaller games, where 40k really needs a 1500pt army to feel 'balanced'.

I guess it really depends on what you're looking to get out of the hobby.

Unless you're dead set on 40k or Warmachine (both are great games!), check out Infinity. It is currently my wargame of choice. It has small armies (usually 10 models), interesting fluff, incredible models, and a great engaging set of rules. The rules are very tactical and shooting based. If your model moves into line of sight of one of mine, I get to take a shot at you (Much more realistic than units teleporting around the board...)

If you want to avoid painting,etc there's always plenty of pre-loved stuff for sale on Ebay, but I think you'll find Terrain making to be excellent fun which will make you enjoy developing your painting and modelling skills anyway (if you feel they need development, that is).

40k, which is the only one of the two I play, is great fun but no longer a 'gentlemans game'. Armies are allowed to ally with any old joke as of 6ed which came out, like, 2 days ago, and the 'Apocalypse' expansion means you're unlikely to play a 3000+ point game with the normal rules (Apocalypse rules kill armies faster and in swathes). My point is that it's leaning towards power gaming now so the amount of personal playing style you can bring into your private collection is limited by things you MUST take instead. Therefore, 40k is fun when you play huge, meaningless, multi player deathmatches where it doesn't matter who is collaborating with and against who and the only storyline is to roll buckets of dice. Trying to get essense out of the personalized facet- only on your Facebook army photo album, these days.

Then there's the original point of 40k for me: Modelling. As long as kits are multi-part plastic, or even metal, you can make excellent conversions that will wow even you as the years pass and you grow in skill (and patience). The new Finecast Resin, however, is more difficult to cut up without accidental damage. (Tho the nicest armies come about by patience, again).

40k is addictive, but there's also the issue of wanting to game after all the $$$ and the hours of preparation you invest. Ask other players if you can use their armies to playtest before you choose which system you'll go for.

EDIT: Note that what Jesterhead says about getting to build a personalised 40k army is very true- I'm talking about personal playing style (ie preffered "fighting" style).

Warmachine is "better" because the rules are better written. GW needs to both playtest better/more and hire a technical editor.

Past that, neither is actually better, it's purely down(IMO) to whether you prefer grimdark fantasy in space with battalion level forces or fantasy skirmishes with steampunk elements.

They're both fun(I've played 40K since the early 90's and Warmachine since its retail release in 2003), both have their fanatical super-fanbois that hate the other, but either is actually better than the other as it's very subjective.

As for more personalized, I suggest you guys take a look at the Stormhammer project on the PP boards:

http://privateerpressforums.com/showthr ... ult-on-Sul

It's a fully converted Khador army made to look like it's a Cygnar force while still following the PP Steamroller conversion rules. Comes complete with its own fluff, renamed characters, and more well done conversions than I see in most 40K armies.

We're also going to have to just disagree on the "more in depth" thing with fluff, Jester. I'm very bored of GW's vague "this may or may not be what really happened" style of writing(they even said in White Dwarf that fluff in each Codex is written from that army's point of view, aside from Tyranids, and isn't 100% accurate or true) and devil may care attitude about canon and find the more personal point of view PP uses to be more filled out and interesting.