Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000 is a tabletop miniatures wargame published by Games Workshop, first released in 1987 as Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. Rick Priestley wrote the original rules, which presented the game as a far-future science-fiction setting combining military conflict, gothic imagery, and deliberately exaggerated satire. Its central premise is that humanity survives in the 41st Millennium under the rule of the Imperium of Man, a vast authoritarian empire threatened by aliens, daemons, and internal rebellion.

The setting’s most important historical event is the Horus Heresy. Horus, the Emperor’s favored Primarch and Warmaster, turns against his father after falling to Chaos. The resulting civil war culminates in the Siege of Terra, where Horus fights the Emperor aboard his flagship. The Emperor defeats Horus but is mortally wounded, and his body is installed on the Golden Throne. The Imperium subsequently worships him as a god while maintaining the machinery of a decaying interstellar state.

Players build armies from miniature models representing factions such as Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Orks, Aeldari, Necrons, Tyranids, and Chaos forces. Miniatures are assembled, painted, measured across the battlefield, and used in missions governed by army rules, dice, line-of-sight, weapon statistics, and objectives. Space Marines, genetically engineered warriors descended from the Emperor’s Primarchs, are among the game’s best-known forces, while the Tyranids are a hive-minded alien species that consumes biological life. The Necrons are ancient robotic beings awakening from planetary tombs, and Orks are warlike greenskins whose crude technology is powered partly by collective belief.

The game has received multiple major editions. Second Edition appeared in 1993, Third Edition in 1998, and Ninth Edition in 2020. Tenth Edition launched in June 2023 with redesigned core rules, index army documents, and a starter set called Leviathan, which paired Space Marines against Tyranids. Each edition changes unit rules and mission design while retaining the basic concept of maneuvering painted forces through alternating turns.

Warhammer 40,000 also developed an extensive publishing history. Games Workshop’s Black Library imprint expanded its fiction through novels and anthologies, including Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series and the Horus Heresy novel series. Although the game has a defined canon, its battles are not a single campaign with one winner: players create their own conflicts within a universe whose recurring theme is that humanity endures, but never truly escapes, perpetual war.