99 Fun Facts About Warhammer 40k

Warhammer 40,000's first edition needed which third person at the table?

A gamesmaster refereed the fight, because the 1987 rulebook was half role-playing game: forces were often rolled up on random tables, and it suited small skirmishes, not armies.

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

Nottingham is home because of a takeover in reverse: the firm began in London, but in the 1980s its Nottinghamshire miniatures arm took control and moved everything north, settling at Lenton in 1997.

Which Chaos God of Warhammer 40,000 is hailed with the cry 'Blood for the Blood God'?

Khorne's followers finish the cry with 'Skulls for the Skull Throne!'; he despises sorcery, so his armies charge into close combat and field no psykers at all.

Which word for a subgenre of speculative fiction derives from Warhammer 40,000's tagline?

Grimdark squeezes the tagline 'In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war' into one word; first recorded in the 2000s, it now labels bleak fantasy by writers such as Joe Abercrombie.

Which Games Workshop division publishes the setting's novels?

Black Library began in 1997 as a small team producing Inferno!, a magazine of short stories; its success led to novels two years later and a list that has since grown to hundreds of titles.

Games Workshop founders Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson created which hit gamebook series?

Fighting Fantasy began with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982 and sold millions; seven years earlier the pair, with John Peake, had started Games Workshop by making wooden game boards.

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

White Dwarf spent its first ten years covering other firms' games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest and Traveller, before turning in the late 1980s into a showcase for Games Workshop's own.

Games Workshop joined which stock index in December 2024?

The FTSE 100 admitted Games Workshop in its December 2024 review, lifting a maker of toy soldiers out of the FTSE 250 and into Britain's hundred biggest listed firms as retailers B&M and Frasers dropped out.

Which miniature-figure company did Games Workshop help set up to cast metal models?

Citadel is the reason Warhammer exists: role-players bought one figure at a time, so its manager commissioned a battle game that needed whole armies of them.

Who wrote the original 1987 rulebook of Warhammer 40,000?

Rick Priestley has said he always meant the setting to be ironic, and that it amused him to see the brutal, self-deceiving Space Marines hailed as heroes.

Warhammer 40,000's creator names Tolkien, Robert Heinlein and which horror writer among his influences?

H. P. Lovecraft's mark is on Chaos: artefacts that drive their owners mad and secret cults serving evil gods come straight from his brand of cosmic horror.

Who first added the Chaos Gods to the Warhammer setting?

Bryan Ansell set out the Chaos Gods in a huge handwritten manuscript; the game's lead designer later reworked them, finding the original 'a little too close for comfort' to Michael Moorcock.

The Horus Heresy, the civil war that founds 40k's backstory, deliberately retells which epic poem?

Paradise Lost: the game's creator called the Heresy 'just a parody of the fall of Lucifer as described by Milton', with the Emperor's favoured son turning on him as Satan turns on God.

In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium's ban on artificial intelligence echoes which series of novels?

Dune's ban on 'thinking machines' became 40k's 'abominable intelligence', outlawed after the revolt of the Men of Iron; the game's creator also copied Herbert's invented chapter-opening quotations.

The Imperium of Man is proverbially an empire of how many worlds?

The '1 million worlds' is a saying, not a census: the Imperium's scribes have never fixed the true number, and its planets lie scattered so thinly that most of the galaxy between them is unexplored.

In Warhammer 40,000, what is the psychic beacon generated by the Emperor's mind called?

The Astronomican is a lighthouse that Navigators steer by, and it is fuelled by people: thousands of psykers burn out their lives to keep it lit for the Emperor to direct.

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

The Warp is a parallel realm of raw supernatural energy, and also humanity's fast road between the stars: ships travel faster than light by diving through the dimension where daemons hunt.

What is the Space Marines' formal name?

Adeptus Astartes Chapters number about a thousand warriors each: after the Horus Heresy the huge Legions were broken up so that no one man could command such a force again.

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

Gene-seed cannot be made in factories: it grows anew inside every Marine, in glands that are cut from the fallen so that the Chapter can raise its next generation.

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

20 Legions were raised, one for each Primarch, but every record of the Second and Eleventh was erased before the Heresy, and their brother Primarchs swore never to speak of them.

Which Space Marine Legion was the first to turn to Chaos?

The Word Bearers fell through piety: they worshipped the Emperor as a god, he publicly humiliated them for it, and they went looking for gods who would welcome worship, the first of nine Legions to turn.

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

Roboute Guilliman lay in stasis for ten thousand years, frozen at the instant of death, until he was revived to lead the Indomitus Crusade and win back worlds cut off by the Great Rift.

The Primaris Space Marines debuted in which launch box of Warhammer 40,000's eighth edition?

Dark Imperium introduced Marines who stand taller than the old 'Firstborn' and went on to replace them: by the tenth edition many Firstborn kits had been retired from sale.

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

British Great War tanks gave the Land Raider its rhomboid hull and side-mounted guns, a shape devised for climbing over trenches: a turret on top would have made the real tanks too tall and unstable.

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.

Which 1989 board game sends Terminator-armoured Space Marines against Genestealers in cramped corridors?

Space Hulk plays to the armour's strength: Terminator suits come into their own in spaces too tight for vehicles, and here slow, heavily armed Marines face faster enemies that can only claw.

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

The Death Korps of Krieg fight in gas masks and greatcoats and treat death as atonement: their world once rebelled, and its own loyalists drowned it in atomic fire to win it back.

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

The Sisters of Battle exist through a loophole: after a tyrant's reign of blood the Church was forbidden to keep 'men under arms', so the army it kept is made up entirely of women.

Warhammer 40,000's Orks were modelled chiefly on which real-world troublemakers?

Football hooligans gave the Orks their Cockney accents and their creed: where other races go to war for gain, Orks start fights simply because fighting is fun.

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.

In Warhammer 40,000, an Ork's body is a blend of animal 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.

In Warhammer 40,000, 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.

In Warhammer 40,000, what are the two major surviving Aeldari sub-factions?

Asuryani and Drukhari took opposite roads after their empire fell: the Asuryani live ascetic lives aboard vast Craftworld ships, while the Drukhari must inflict pain on others simply to stay alive.

In Warhammer 40,000, Tyranid technology is entirely what?

Tyranid technology is entirely biological: ships, guns and even bullets are living creatures bred for the job, grown from the biomass of the worlds the swarm strips bare.

Which artist's work inspired the look of Warhammer 40,000's Tyranids?

H. R. Giger, the artist behind Alien's creature, shaped the Tyranids' look, and their Genestealers borrow from the film itself: they infect human hosts, whose hybrid offspring serve the swarm.

In Warhammer 40,000, the Necrons are an ancient race of what?

Skeleton-like androids are what the Necrons became when star gods promised them immortality: their minds went into metal bodies, and the gods devoured their souls.

In Warhammer 40,000, the T'au seek to unite other races under which ideology?

The Greater Good, or T'au'va, puts the community before the individual, and the T'au export it: alien peoples such as the Kroot fight in their armies, and some human worlds have defected to join.

Which caste supplies the T'au Empire's diplomats and merchants?

The Water Caste talks worlds into joining the empire before the Fire Caste has to fight for them; Air crews the starships, Earth builds, and the Ethereals rule all four.

The Leagues of Votann are based on which fantasy race?

Dwarves in space: the Leagues of Votann revive the Squats, a faction dropped so abruptly that fans still say a discontinued army has been 'squatted'.

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

Dan Abnett wrote both series, and his reach goes beyond 40k: the Guardians of the Galaxy line-up he co-created for Marvel in 2008 became the basis of the 2014 film.

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

Relic Entertainment, the makers of Homeworld, threw out the genre's harvesting of gold and lumber: Dawn of War rewards holding ground instead, which keeps its armies fighting.

Who is the playable protagonist of Space Marine 2?

Titus was jailed by the Inquisition for resisting Chaos suspiciously well, then spent a century of penance in the Deathwatch; he returns as a lieutenant, a rank below the captaincy he held in the 2011 original.

Space Marine 2 was developed by which studio?

Saber Interactive reused the swarm technology of its zombie game World War Z to hurl hundreds of Tyranids at the player, with the outpost siege of Starship Troopers as its reference.

Which studio, makers of the Vermintide games, developed the 2022 co-op shooter Darktide?

Fatshark carried its four-player horde formula over from Warhammer Fantasy to the hive city of Tertium, where the players are 'Rejects', prisoners conscripted by the Inquisition.

The 'Warhammer 40,000' in the 1987 title was added to avoid confusion with a board game of which 2000 AD strip?

Rogue Trooper became a Games Workshop board game in 1987, and the firm feared buyers would muddle it with its new game's near-identical working title, so the Warhammer brand went on the front.

Which Space Marine Chapter starred on the box art of Warhammer 40,000's 1993 second edition?

Blood Angels charged across the 1993 box, in a starter set of Space Marines against Orks; the eleventh edition of 2026 came full circle, announcing itself with Blood Angels fighting Orks again.

Which phase did Warhammer 40,000's tenth edition scrap in 2023?

The Psychic phase went: psychic attacks moved onto each unit's datasheet beside its guns and blades, to be used when shooting or fighting, while the Morale phase gave way to Battle-shock tests.

Which studio struck a deal in December 2022 for the TV and film rights to Warhammer 40,000?

Amazon MGM Studios, then called Amazon Studios, won the rights because of a fan: Henry Cavill, who has loved the game since boyhood, helped secure them and bring them to the studio.

Which fortress world guarding the Eye of Terror was destroyed in the Thirteenth Black Crusade?

Cadia held the only stable route out of the Eye of Terror until Abaddon smashed a fortress into its surface; its soldiers' boast that 'the planet broke before the Guard did' outlived it.

Which Superman actor and avowed Warhammer 40,000 fan signed on in 2022 to star in its screen adaptation?

Henry Cavill was made an executive producer as well as its star, and has said he cannot get enough of the lore built up over the decades.

Despite the number in its title, most Warhammer 40,000 fiction is set during which millennium?

The 41st millennium is the setting's present day, while the Horus Heresy novels look back ten thousand years to the 31st.

Before Warhammer existed, Games Workshop made miniatures for players of which American role-playing game?

Dungeons & Dragons players rarely needed more than a handful of figures, so Warhammer was created in 1983 to give customers a reason to buy more.

The comical Orks of Warhammer 40,000 are traditionally written with which working-class English accent?

Cockney accents suit a species written for laughs: Orks rate a gun by how loud and fast it fires, a quality they call dakka.

Which ancient civilisation inspired the look of the Necrons, who lie dormant in vaults in Warhammer 40,000?

Egypt shapes the Necrons' whole aesthetic, and their tech sorcerers, the Crypteks, fill the role of the psykers the race cannot have.

Which trading card game released Warhammer 40,000 pre-built decks under its Universes Beyond crossover label?

Magic: The Gathering uses its Universes Beyond label for outside worlds, and has given The Lord of the Rings the same treatment.

Which real planet is home to the Mechanicum, the machine-worshipping engineers of Warhammer 40,000's Imperium?

Mars is ruled by a Fabricator General, and during the Horus Heresy its tech-priests fought a civil war over which side to supply.

The armour of T'au infantry in Warhammer 40,000 is modelled on which class of Japanese feudal warriors?

Samurai armour shaped the T'au foot soldier, while their hovering vehicles borrow from mecha anime and manga.

Which star of Alien and The Elephant Man voiced a Chaplain in the 2010 Warhammer 40,000 film Ultramarines?

John Hurt voiced Chaplain Carnak alongside Terence Stamp and Sean Pertwee, in a computer-animated feature that went straight to DVD.

The 1990 Warhammer 40,000 board game Space Crusade was the sister title to which Milton Bradley fantasy hit?

HeroQuest came out a year earlier from the same partnership, and Space Crusade was sold as Star Quest in Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Which comics publisher opened its Warhammer line in 2020 with Kieron Gillen's Marneus Calgar series?

Marvel handed its first Warhammer 40,000 series to a writer whose earliest comics work had appeared in Warhammer Monthly.

Which British death metal band took the title and cover art of its 1989 album Realm of Chaos from Games Workshop?

Bolt Thrower were offered the artwork after Games Workshop heard the band's second Peel session, and three of its members were already fans of the game.

Which of the four specialist roles in a Space Marine Chapter is filled by psykers who wield sorcery in battle?

Librarians are a Chapter's magicians, yet the Black Templars have none in their ranks at all.

The 2023 retro shooter Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun pays homage to which 1993 id Software classic?

Doom and its 1990s peers shaped the game so heavily that some of its own marketing called it a boomer shooter.

Which publisher released thirteen Warhammer 40,000 video games from 2003 to 2011, including the Dawn of War series?

THQ's run ended a one-publisher era: after 2011 Games Workshop stopped granting the licence to a single company and spread it across many.

What do Warhammer hobbyists call building a unique model by combining parts from several different boxed sets?

Kitbashing is sometimes allowed at official tournaments, as long as most of the model is Games Workshop plastic and it stays easy to identify.

Chaos Space Marines devoted to which Chaos God have bloated, diseased bodies yet prove unusually resilient?

Nurgle's followers pay for that toughness in speed: an army themed around him is built from slow-moving but hardy troops.

Which Kingsman actor voiced the Ultramarines captain who leads the 2011 game Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine?

Mark Strong played the captain as he fought an Ork invasion of Graia, a factory world that builds the Imperium's towering Titans.

Which Warhammer 40,000 spin-off game from 1995 pits rival gangs against each other beneath a hive city?

Necromunda is also the name of the planet where it is set, whose hive city is likened to a termite mound many miles high.

Which Tyranid sub-species in Warhammer 40,000 infects humans to found secret cults ahead of an invasion?

Genestealers sire human hybrids who form a hidden cult, and in later editions those cults became a playable army of their own.

The Emperor's favoured sons turning to Chaos in Warhammer 40,000 mirrors whose fall in Paradise Lost?

Satan's rebellion in Milton's poem gave the designers a model when they reworked Chaos, which had first been judged too simplistic.

After a trademark row, Games Workshop began renaming the Imperial Guard with which Latin-style title?

Astra Militarum is one of the proprietary names adopted after a trademark claim over an e-book's title drew public criticism from well-known authors.

What name is given to the Emperor's two-century campaign to reunite humanity before the Horus Heresy?

The Great Crusade carried the Space Marine Legions to star systems more than 50,000 light years from where it set out.

Which British author's Runestaff novels, with their King Huon, helped inspire Warhammer 40,000's Emperor of Mankind?

Michael Moorcock shaped the setting twice over: its first version of Chaos was judged too close to his work and was reworked to stand apart.

Which Steve Jackson Games card game received an official Warhammer 40,000 edition in 2019?

Munchkin comes from the American Steve Jackson, who is often mistaken for the British Steve Jackson who co-founded Games Workshop.

Which Games Workshop painting competition awards the Slayer Sword to the miniature judged Best of Show?

Golden Demon began in Britain, is described as the longest-running miniature painting competition in the world, and has since spread to several countries.

Which Warhammer 40,000 faction fields battle mechs that tower over tanks yet stand smaller than true Titans?

Imperial Knights first appeared in the larger-scale Epic battles and only became an army for the main game in its sixth edition.

Which Aeldari sub-faction in Warhammer 40,000 follows Cegorach, a deity known as the Laughing God?

Harlequins are one of several minor Aeldari groups, alongside the Exodites of the Maiden Worlds and the Ynnari, who follow a god of the dead.

Which Space Marine Chapter does the player command on the planet Tartarus in the 2004 strategy game Dawn of War?

The Blood Ravens' 3rd Company, led by Captain Gabriel Angelos, lands to help an Imperial Guard regiment hold off Ork invaders.

Games Workshop bans miniatures made by which home-manufacturing method from official Warhammer 40,000 tournaments?

3D printing is barred outright, and stand-ins are not allowed either: players must use the official model for every unit on their roster.

Warhammer 40,000 second-edition editor Andy Chambers later became lead story writer on which Blizzard sequel?

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty came after his fourteen years at Games Workshop, where he had also led the design of two spin-off games.

Which star gods of Warhammer 40,000 did the Necrons once serve, then overthrow and shatter after the War in Heaven?

The C'tan were broken into shards, and the Necrons keep those shards enslaved and field them in battle.

Which alien auxiliaries provide close-combat support for the ranged-focused T'au armies of Warhammer 40,000?

Kroot fill the gap in an army that shuns hand-to-hand fighting, while the insect-like Vespid serve as fast-attack infantry.

Which Warhammer 40,000 faction serves as the Emperor's personal bodyguard at the Imperial Palace?

Adeptus Custodes are known as the Ten Thousand, and in the Horus Heresy novels they appear as the Custodian Guard.

Which hellish region of space in Warhammer 40,000 hides the Planet of the Sorcerers, refuge of Magnus the Red?

The Eye of Terror became his refuge after the razing of his home world, and in the game's later storyline it swelled until it split the galaxy in half.

Which Warhammer 40,000 spin-off of warship fleet battles, sold from 1999 to 2013, inspired the Armada video games?

Battlefleet Gothic is named after an in-universe fleet that guards the Gothic Sector, and its primary developer was Andy Chambers.

Which Warhammer 40,000 expansion lets players fight battles of 3,000 points or more, Titans included?

Apocalypse lets a player field an entire Chapter of a thousand Space Marines instead of the 30 or 40 used in a standard game.

Which 2008 role-playing game, Warhammer 40,000's first official one, casts players as an Inquisitor's Acolytes?

Dark Heresy launched with 200 numbered collector's copies that sold out in six minutes.

What name does Warhammer 40,000 give the rulebook dedicated to a single army, such as the Necrons or the T'au?

Codex books carried over from the second edition into the third, which ended by adding four new ones, among them the Necrons and the T'au.

Which atheistic creed did the Emperor of Mankind promote before the Imperium came to worship him as a god?

The Imperial Truth championed science, rationalism and human primacy, even as an outlawed cult within his own crusading armies began to deify him.

Which nickname did Warhammer 40,000's second edition earn for letting special characters fill half an army's points?

Herohammer armies could pour up to 50% of their points into one named character, where the first edition had offered only three generic hero profiles.

Which British rock band released the 2021 single Chaos Space Marine ahead of the album Ants from Up There?

Black Country, New Road made it the lead single of their second album, and critics compared the song to the work of Arcade Fire.

Which American tabletop gaming honours inducted Warhammer 40,000 into their Hall of Fame in 2004?

The Origins Awards had already named its second edition the best miniatures rules of 1993.

Which disease-ridden Traitor Legion faces the Primaris Marines in Warhammer 40,000's Dark Imperium boxed set?

The Death Guard are the Fourteenth Legion, and one of their captains, Nathaniel Garro, stayed loyal and fled aboard the frigate Eisenstein to raise the alarm.

Which branch of Warhammer 40,000's Inquisition received its own army book under the name Daemonhunters?

The Ordo Malleus army was later replaced by one built from the Grey Knights, the Space Marines who had been its elite troops.

Which science fiction author wrote the 1990 novel Inquisitor, first of Warhammer 40,000's Inquisition War trilogy?

Ian Watson also wrote the 1993 novel Space Marine, and Inquisitor was reissued in 2002 under the new title Draco.

On which planet did the Traitor Legions ambush and slaughter loyal Space Marine Legions in the Dropsite Massacre?

Isstvan V left the survivors of the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders known as the Shattered Legions.

Which flagship of the Warmaster Horus do loyalist agents infiltrate before Leman Russ's attempt on his life?

The Vengeful Spirit was scouted by Garviel Loken, who marked its passageways in the runes of the Space Wolves to guide the attack.

The video game Darktide sends its squad of conscripted prisoners into which hive city on Atoma Prime?

Tertium is in the grip of a Chaos uprising, and the squad of Rejects is pressed into service by the Inquisition to root it out.

Which studio behind the Pathfinder role-playing games developed the 2023 game Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader?

Owlcat set the story in the Koronus Expanse, a dangerous and mostly unexplored region reached only by a treacherous passage.