A friendly guide to Warhammer 40K

Warhammer 40,000, or 40k as it is also known amongst its players, is a tabletop wargame played with numerous 6-sided dice. Games usually take about a couple of hours to play through, (for most “average” sized games of 1,500 points per side) and consists of two or more players moving, shooting and attacking with their respective armies.

Bigger games take longer and it is common for games of 4,000 points to take an entire evening - The game itself is played in turns, with each player taking their turn before their opponent does, and each turn is broken up into numerous phases. These phases are movement, shooting and assault.

The Movement Phase, is when the majority of the actual movement of each army is done. Most models can move 6”, whilst some models equipped with bikes or “jump” packs can move up to 12”. Vehicles generally move 12” unless they are considered “fast” in which case, they can move up to 18” (or 24” along a road).

The Shooting Phase happens next, and this is when all the action happens. Nearly all models in an army come with some sort of ranged weapon, whether it be a small laspistol (a laser pistol) to tank-hunting lascannons. Movement (in the Movement phase) does affect a unit’s shooting ability though, because models armed with heavy weapons can only fire them if they have remained stationary that turn.

Shooting is done at the unit level, which means that when rolling to hit the enemy, you’d fire all the weapons in that squad, before moving onto the next and is resolved as follows:

Pick a unit that you think can fire and then measure to see if the enemy is in range. If they are, then roll a 6-sided dice for each shot fired, (different guns have different rates of fire) and depending upon the Basilisk Skill (or BS) of the attacker, it will hit on a given number or above. For example, an Imperial Guardsman (a basic human grunt) has a BS of 3, so he’ll hit on a 4+.

Once you have picked out all the dice that have ‘hit’, then roll “To Wound.” You pick up the dice that successfully Hit, and re-roll to see if you cause enough damage to incapacitate the enemy somehow. For ranged attacks, this involves comparing the strength of the weapon firing and the toughness of the target(s) and rolling over a given score. Most of the time, this is usually a 4 or more. You discard any dice that fail to Wound and then the opponent gets his chance to save his troops by passing an Armour save for each wound suffered. If he gets an armour save (some weapons are powerful enough to simply ignore certain levels of armour), then the opponent re-rolls the successful To Wound rolls. Any dice that roll over the model’s Armour Save value are simply ignored – stopped completely by the armour. Any attacks that ignore armour or Wounds that failed their armour save, generally cause causalities on the target unit. If the enemy unit suffers enough causalities in a given turn, they may also have to test to see if they run away.

The last phase in the turn is the Assault phase. This is where the enemy units get into combat with the enemy by launching assaults. Units that are close enough to charge may do so at the player’s discretion and if they decide to do so, usually involves moving the models a second time into “base-to-base” contact so that the models are physically touching. Assault is resolved in a fairly similar way to shooting, with rolls made to see if you Hit, Wound and then saves are taken.

However, 40k isn’t just a game because Games Workshop have spent a lot of resources fleshing out their fictional universe that Warhammer 40,000 is set within, and their in-depth history is expanded through nearly every publication they release for the game, whether it be an army “codex” (which details what units make up an army, as well as the background for that particular faction or race), rulebook or expansion.

The major factions within the 40k universe are:

The Space Marines who are genetically engineered humans who wear powered suits of armour. They are humanities greatest warriors, and are generally outnumbered many to one.

Imperial Guard is the teeming masses of regular humans. They win their battles through massed ranks of tanks and infantry.

Tau are a young, dynamic race of blue-skinned aliens who fight their wars from afar.

Necrons are an ancient alien race who is essentially mindless automatons, with only a few retaining any sense of personality.

Craftworld Eldar are an alien race who once ruled the stars. Something terrible happened millennia ago known as the Fall, and their empire was reduced to ashes. The surviving Craftworld Eldar only escaped destruction by leaving their home worlds, on massive living-worlds known as Craftworlds.

Dark Eldar are another faction of Eldar who escaped the Fall - by virtue of being in another realm entirely where they continue to thrive.

The Tyranids are an alien race bent on the consumption of every living thing. Think "Alien" and you get the general premise.

Orks are greenskinned aliens who thrive on combat (they actually get tougher and stronger because of war!). What they lack for in intelligence, they make up for in numbers and brute strength.

The Chaos Space Marines are those that have turned their back on the Imperium and generally serve one or more of the Chaos Gods, with each one epitomising one facet of existence. The blood god, Khorne, for example epitomises war, slaughter and bloodshed, whilst Nurgle is the father of contagion.

The above is a brief overview of the Warhammer system provided by our very own Farseer Tyross, if you have any questions then feel free to comment and I will do my up most to answer them, on our new  shiny monthly Games workshop show, starting on Sunday 6th November only at G3 Radio.

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