Warhammer 40,000 is an expanive, hobby centric tabletop miniature game created by british games company, Games Workshop. Set in the 41'st millenium, Warhammer 40,000 centers around the Imperium of Man, a big brother esque facist dystopia, constantly at war with the woshipers of dark gods, alien speciaes, and itself. Countless souls perish in wars brought about by needless hatred and greed, as the universe slowly is besieched by eldrich forcess, with no 'good' faction to speak of. As Games Workshop themselves states in all of their books about the setting...
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
So of course this is the perfect setting to have little pacstic figures of these starving soldiers fight for our amusement. In addition to an expansive collection of lore, from books to video games to a show set to soon debut on Amazon, Games Workshop's main wing of the Warhammer property is the buildable miniatures and the tabletop game you play with them. Currently Warhammer 40,000 is on it's 10th sequential edition of the rules, which has detecated itself to streamlining the rules for new players.
Players build and paint models from thir army of choice, each of which has a given points total, and then use them to form an army of a predetermined points total, typically 2000 points.
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Two opposing players will set up a board via various predetermined layouts, then deploy units
one at a time.
After deploying, players roll off to see who goes first and alternate taking
turns from there.
During their turn each player goes through 5 distinct phases before
ending their turn.
One battle round consists of both players taking a full turn, after 5 of these battle rounds, the game ends and the player with the most victory points wins the game.
Warhammer 40,000 has 22 fully supported armies to choose from as of now, each with their own backstory, named
characters, gameplay and models to enjoy.
Here is a very small selection of some of the armies in the game, boiled down to their basic concepts.
| Army | Lore | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Space Marines | Genetically augmented humans created as a rapid strike force. | Jack of all trades, reliable damage and durability in any aspect of combat. | Masters of none, other armies can outpace them if they lean too hard into one skill. |
| Astra Militarum | Uninhanced human militia of the Imperium. | Lots of expendable infantry and vehicles, long range shooting and artilary. | Units don't hit as hard as other armies, and have few options if your opponent reaches melee range. |
| Aeldari | Space Elves struggling to keep their dead empire together. | Everything strikes fast and hits very hard, especially in shooting. | Very weak defense, poor positioning can lose you the game. |
| Death Guard | Space Marines corrupted by Nurge, the god of for and death. | Almost unmatched defense and artilary fire. | Very slow, low unit count means every lost model can hurt your gameplan. |
Warhammer events and groups are often supported by the local game stores that stock the miniatures. So if you wish to start playing, these gaming shops are a great place to both learn the game and buy miniatures, as many of them sell Games Workshop products for slightly less then MSRP.
As for online resources. Games Workshop's Warhammer website both acts as a store page to buy models and as a resource guide for basic details like lore and core rules downloads. However, Games Workshop has many of their game's army rules locked behind expensve books, so thrid party resources like Wahapedia are commonly used by fans to view the official rules, and experiment with new armies for free. In addition, many people unintrested in official tournaments use 3D print sharing websites like Thingaverse to find proxies for their models instead of buying the expensive official ones. Free addons for the PC game Tabletop Simulator also allow you to play Warhammer digitally as well. Links to all these resources are bellow.
Warhammer's official sotrepage here.There's a lot of realsons I fell down the rabbit hole of Warhammer, from building miniatures to the strategic element of the game. But above all else the thing I love the most about it is the social dynamic it fosters. As stated before, local game stores typically host tabletop tournaments, and have tables to play on even when they don't have events. This encourages small groups of players to come together and play at regular intervals, which is how I got in through my friend circle. After some mutual friends got her back into the hobby after a long time away, my girlfriend got some minis and encouraged me to give it a try, and I should've hated it. She gave me one of her armies, kicked my butt before I could do a single thing, and then convinced me to spend $60 on a unit that was so unplayably bad that it took 3 years of buffs to be even remotely decent. But I loved it, because Warhammer is a way to spend time with friends, chat while playing, and maybe make stories about what happens in your games. I've played Monopoly hundreds of times with my family, don't remember any of them. However, I'll anways remember how I dubbed one of my Space Marines "Sploody McSploderton" after his entire unit got wiped off the board and he immediately turned the gane around by singlehandedly downing the leader of the orc warband with a near perfect role for his grenades ability.