50 Fun Facts About Warhammer 40k

In what year was the first edition of Warhammer 40,000 published?

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader appeared in 1987 as a role-play-flavoured skirmish game; the 'Rogue Trader' subtitle was dropped for the second edition in 1993.

Games Workshop, the maker of Warhammer 40,000, is headquartered in which English city?

Games Workshop has been based in Nottingham since 1997, when all UK operations moved to its Lenton headquarters, the site of the Warhammer World visitor centre.

40k was conceived as the sci-fi counterpart to which earlier Games Workshop game?

Warhammer Fantasy Battle, first published in 1983, was the company's flagship tabletop game; 40k transplanted its rules and its Chaos mythology into a far-future setting.

Which word for a subgenre of speculative fiction derives from the game's tagline?

Grimdark takes its name from the tagline 'In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war', and now labels bleak, violent fantasy such as Joe Abercrombie's novels.

Which Games Workshop division publishes the setting's novels?

Black Library began in 1997 with the short-story magazine Inferno! and moved to full novels in 1999; it publishes the Horus Heresy series among hundreds of titles.

Games Workshop was founded in 1975 by Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson and whom?

John Peake, a schoolfriend of Livingstone and Jackson, made the wooden backgammon and Go boards the firm started with; he left in 1976 as the partners shifted to distributing Dungeons & Dragons.

Games Workshop's newsletter Owl and Weasel was replaced in 1977 by which magazine?

White Dwarf launched in June 1977, edited by Ian Livingstone, replacing the Owl and Weasel newsletter; it began as a general role-playing magazine before narrowing to Games Workshop's own games.

Games Workshop joined which stock index in December 2024?

Games Workshop entered the FTSE 100 in the December 2024 reshuffle, its market value having passed £4 billion on the strength of Warhammer sales and licensing.

Which figure-making company did Games Workshop help fund in 1978?

Citadel Miniatures was set up in Newark-on-Trent in 1978 with Games Workshop money to cast metal figures; its miniatures soon became the company's core business.

Who designed the original Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader?

Rick Priestley wrote Rogue Trader, the first 40k rulebook, during his years as Games Workshop's lead games designer; after leaving in 2010 he co-wrote Bolt Action for Warlord Games with Alessio Cavatore.

The game's creator cites Paradise Lost, 2000 AD and which horror writer among his major influences?

H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror lies behind the setting's daemons and eldritch gods; the Emperor himself owes something to Leto II, Frank Herbert's God Emperor.

Who first added the Chaos Gods to the Warhammer setting?

Bryan Ansell introduced the Chaos Gods to Warhammer; the setting's lead designer later reworked them, feeling Ansell's version sat too close to Michael Moorcock's Lords of Chaos.

The idea of daemons as human nightmares given form came from which 1956 film?

Forbidden Planet (1956) supplied the 'monsters from the id', creatures born from a mind's hidden fears, which became daemons as the nightmares of mortals given form.

The Imperium's ban on artificial intelligence was inspired by which novels?

As in Dune, it followed an ancient war against thinking machines.

Roughly how many worlds does the Imperium of Man comprise?

The Imperium spans roughly 1 million worlds scattered across the galaxy, ruled for over 10,000 years as an authoritarian techno-feudal theocracy in the Emperor's name.

What is the name of the psychic beacon generated by the Emperor's mind?

The Astronomican is a psychic lighthouse projected from Terra, fuelled by thousands of sacrificed psykers, that Navigators steer by on interstellar voyages; the Emperor has been on life support for ten millennia.

What is the source of magic in the 40k universe?

The Warp, also called the Immaterium, is the psychic dimension that powers sorcery and psykers alike; the Imperium rounds psykers up on the Black Ships.

What is the Space Marines' formal name?

Adeptus Astartes is the formal name of the Space Marines, the Emperor's genetically engineered warriors organised into Chapters of roughly a thousand; the Adeptus Custodes are his personal bodyguard.

How many hearts does a fully developed Space Marine have?

A Space Marine has two hearts, the secondary heart implanted to back up the first, plus a third lung and an extra kidney among the nineteen implants of the process.

What is implanted in a recruit to turn them into a Space Marine?

New gene-seed grows in Marines' own bodies and is harvested surgically for the next generation.

How many original Space Marine Legions were there, two of which are 'redacted' from Imperial records?

There were 20 Legions, one for each Primarch, but the records of the Second and Eleventh were expunged and their fates never explained in the lore.

How many Legions rebelled against the Emperor during the Horus Heresy?

Nine Legions sided with Horus, among them the World Eaters, Death Guard, Thousand Sons and Word Bearers; the early-31st-millennium civil war is the subject of the Horus Heresy novel series.

Which Primarch returned to lead the Imperium and launch the Indomitus Crusade?

Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines, was revived after ten thousand years in stasis and launched the Indomitus Crusade once the Great Rift tore the galaxy in half.

The Primaris Space Marines were introduced with which edition?

Primaris Marines arrived with the Eighth (2017) edition's launch box, Dark Imperium; they stand taller than the older Firstborn Marines and wear Mark X armour.

The Space Marines' Land Raider tank is based on which real vehicles?

The Land Raider copies the British Great War tanks of 1916-18: a rhomboid hull with tracks running all the way round and weapons mounted in side sponsons.

What is entombed inside a Dreadnought walker?

A mortally wounded Marine, too broken to fight on foot, is sealed inside a Dreadnought's sarcophagus for the rest of his life, making it a cyborg walker rather than a robot.

Terminator armour first appeared in 1989 in which spin-off board game?

Space Hulk (1989) pits Terminator-armoured Marines against Genestealers in the cramped corridors of a derelict starship; the game was revived in 2009 and again in 2014.

Which Imperial Guard regiment is modelled on World War One trench warfare?

The Death Korps of Krieg wear gas masks and greatcoats, dig in with artillery and ride horses in the style of the Western Front, a deliberate First World War German look.

Which faction is often described as the female equivalent of Space Marines?

The Sisters of Battle, formally the Adepta Sororitas, are the all-female warriors of the Ecclesiarchy, armed much like Space Marines but fuelled by faith rather than genetic enhancement.

Orks were primarily inspired by what?

Orks were modelled on football hooligans, loud Cockney-accented brawlers who fight purely for the fun of it; their largest invasions are called Waaagh!s after their battle cry.

What makes ramshackle Ork technology actually work?

A psychic field the Orks generate collectively, their Waaagh! energy, makes their tech work as long as enough of them believe it will, which is why red vehicles really do go faster.

Ork biology is a combination of animals and what?

Orks are part animal and part fungi: they reproduce by shedding spores, which is why an Ork-infested planet is almost impossible to clear.

The Aeldari travel the galaxy through what network?

The Webway is a labyrinth of tunnels outside realspace, built by the Old Ones and extended by the ancient Aeldari empire, letting them cross the galaxy without the perils of ordinary interstellar travel.

What are the two major surviving Aeldari sub-factions?

Asuryani and Drukhari are the great survivors of the Fall: the Asuryani live aboard the Craftworlds that fled it, while the Drukhari are the sadistic raiders of Commorragh, the Dark Eldar.

Tyranid technology is entirely what?

Tyranid technology is entirely biological: their ships, weapons and even ammunition are purpose-bred living creatures, all linked by the Hive Mind.

Which artist's work inspired the visual design of the Tyranids?

H. R. Giger, designer of the Alien xenomorph, set the biomechanical look that runs through the Tyranids' chitinous, many-limbed bioforms.

The Necrons are an ancient race of what?

The Necrons are skeleton-like androids: the Necrontyr transferred their minds into undying metal bodies sixty million years ago; they have no psykers but field C'tan shards and Crypteks.

The T'au seek to unite other races under which ideology?

The Greater Good, or Tau'va, is the T'au philosophy of collective welfare that they spread by diplomacy and force, absorbing species such as the Kroot and Vespid as auxiliaries.

Which T'au group operates the starships and aircraft?

The Air Caste crews the T'au starships and aircraft, its members slender and lighter-boned; Fire fights, Water negotiates, Earth builds and the Ethereals lead.

The Leagues of Votann are based on which fantasy race?

The Leagues of Votann are 40k's Dwarves, a return of the old Squats; the Kin happily use artificial intelligence, which the Imperium forbids.

Which author wrote the Gaunt's Ghosts and Eisenhorn novel series?

Dan Abnett wrote the Gaunt's Ghosts series, beginning with First and Only in 1999, and the Eisenhorn trilogy about an Imperial inquisitor; William King wrote the fantasy side's Gotrek and Felix.

Which studio developed the 2004 real-time strategy game Dawn of War?

Relic Entertainment, the Vancouver studio behind Homeworld and Company of Heroes, built Dawn of War around the Blood Ravens' campaign on the planet Tartarus.

Who is the playable protagonist of Space Marine 2?

Demetrian Titus, a captain in the 2011 original, returns demoted to lieutenant after a stint in the Deathwatch, fighting Tyranids and the Thousand Sons across worlds such as Kadaku and Avarax.

Space Marine 2 was developed by which studio?

Saber Interactive, the studio behind World War Z, developed Space Marine 2, which Focus Entertainment released on 9 September 2024 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Darktide, released in 2022, is a spiritual successor to which series?

Vermintide and its 2018 sequel, Fatshark's Warhammer Fantasy co-op games about fighting Skaven, gave Darktide its four-player horde-shooter template, transplanted to the hive city of Tertium.

What prompted the 'Warhammer 40,000' prefix to be added to Priestley's title shortly before launch?

Games Workshop held a 2000 AD licence for a Rogue Trooper product and worried customers would confuse the similar names, so it marketed the new game as a spin-off of its existing fantasy battle game.

Which Space Marine Chapter featured on John Blanche's box art for the 1993 second edition?

Blood Angels in red armour charge Orks on Blanche's 1993 box art, and the starter set's plastic Space Marines were Blood Angels as well, facing Ork Boyz and Gretchin.

Which part of the turn sequence did the tenth edition (2023) eliminate?

The Psychic phase was removed in tenth edition, with psychic powers folded into ordinary shooting and unit abilities; it also replaced Morale with Battleshock tests and capped each detachment at six stratagems.

Which studio acquired the TV and film rights to Warhammer 40,000 in December 2022?

Amazon MGM Studios (then Amazon Studios) reached an agreement in principle for the rights in December 2022, finalised a year later, with Henry Cavill attached to star and executive produce alongside Vertigo Entertainment.

What table width does the tenth edition (2023) rulebook recommend for a game?

The tenth edition recommends a 44 inches by 60 inches table for a standard 2,000-point Strike Force game; there is no grid, and players measure distances with a tape measure.