Warhammer 40K: a miniature war game

Hello Charlie, today I'll be talking about the game Warhammer 40K in all of it's aspects.

Warhammer 40k (abbreviated to 40k from now on) is many things, a universe where books and other media such as video games are set but most importantly it's a game where you play with little plastic men and women or aliens and fight other people little toy soldiers.

An overview of the universe 

40k is set in the year 40 thousand, for ten thousand years the imperium of man has fought against the threats without and within. To live in such times is to live in the most cruel and bloody regime imaginable. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.

A brief overview of the factions at play

The Imperium of Man

The Imperium is a theocratic, feudal, empire ruled by the God Emperor of Mankind. The Imperium didn't used to be like this. In the year 30 000, the Great Crusade to reclaim the stars for humanity ( and kill all the aliens) was ongoing. The Emperor wasn't worshipped yet. He had 18 vat grown sons called the Primarchs, who each led a legion of space marines, gene enhanced super soldiers. Foremost amongst them was the War master Horus Lupercal, he fell to Chaos (more on this later, but for now just imagine hell) and brought his legion and 8 others to fight the emperor. After a brutal war, during the siege the Terra ( Earth) Horus and the Emperor duelled, and as a result of this duel Horus was killed but the Emperor was mortally wounded and placed upon the Golden Throne, a life support device. The loyalist Primarchs were killed or lost to time and space and the traitors retreated to the Eye Of Terror. Then the Emperor became the God Emperor, but in reality he is a rotting corpse barely alive, unable to communicate. 

The Imperium are extremely xenophobic and are definitely not the good guys. 

The notable armies that defend the realm are the astra militarism (Normal army men who use horde tactics), the Sisters of Battle ( Nuns with Guns) and the Space Marines.

                                              The Astra Militarium 

The Sisters Of Battle

                                                           The Space Marines

Chaos and the Warp

The Warp is a dimension underneath our own that ships travel through to get from one place to another. It's also basically Hell. All of humanities negative emotions echo in the Warp and create daemons and also have created four gods. Khorne the God of war, Tzeentch, the chaos god of change, trickery and sorcery, Nurgle the God of pestilence and decay and Slaanesh the God of Excess. All of these gods fight each other in what is known as the great game, they also feed off of all of the races in the milky way. 

After the Horus Heresy, the traitors went to the Eye of Terror, an area where the Warp leaks into the real world. There they fought between each other, but then a powerful space marine, Abaddon united them and caused 13 black crusades against the Imperium. During the 13th the planet of Cadia a vital line in holding back the Eye of Terror was blown up, causing the eye of Terror to spilt the Galaxy in half.

                                                        Abaddon the Despoiler 

The Xenos Races

There are many diverse Xenos races in the galaxy, I'll only talk about the ones that are playable.

The Orks are the only race that is having fun in 40K. They love fighting and laughing and are very good engineers. They sometimes form a Waagh! A mix between a holy war, migration. They're very funny and one of my favourite factions.

                                                             An Ork Big Boss

The Tau are a young, inventive race who are the only race in 40k who understand what diplomacy means and integrate other alien races into their empire. They are the closest you can get to good guys in 40k despite basically being the British Empire in space.

                                                 A Tau soldier

The Aeldari are space elves. They used to rule the galaxy until they birthed Slaanesh. Most of their race died. Some survived by leaving on craft worlds, massive world ships, some went and lived on planets far away and abandoned their technology and some just kept going on with excess to stave off Slaanesh, they are respectively The Aeldari, the Exodites and the Drukhari.

                                                               Aeldari

                                                             Exodites

                                                              Drukhari

Tyranids are an all consuming race of alien bugs who eat planets. They are controlled by a hive mind of all of the bugs and are the greatest threat to the galaxy at this time. They send trillions upon trillions of bugs to eat planets and this attack upon the Milky Way is only the vanguard of an even greater force.

                                                    Tyranids Hormagaunt

Last, but not least is the Necrons. The Necrons are 60 million year old robots. They used to be flesh and blood until powerful entities called the C'Tan tricked them into giving their souls to them and becoming robots. The C'tan miscalculated however and were spilt into shards by the Necrons. The Necrons then slept for 60 million years and are only now waking up. They are a mix of Egyptian times and terminator.

                                                                  Necron Overlord

Thank you for reading my article about 40K and I hope you enjoyed the setting and were interested by it.