Total War: Warhammer 40K: why small squads beat big armies

It seems like everyone on Earth has played Total War: Warhammer 40K except me. There wasn't one big moment that pulled me in. It was the sheer volume of coverage: Space Marines, Orks and tanks trading blows at a scale that looked like someone took the battles I imagined when I first discovered 40K and pushed the graphics settings to a financially irresponsible level. The smaller battles don't worry me. Squads you care about matter far more than huge armies.

I've been drifting into Warhammer, but Total War is a series I never went deep on. I knew it existed, I knew people loved it, and I knew asking a Total War fan to explain it could cost me a whole afternoon. So this is written for anyone in my position: you love 40K, you've seen the clips, but you never quite understood what Total War is.

What Total War is, and why Warhammer 40K is a first for the series

Here's the short version. Half of Total War is a huge turn-based map where you manage armies, take territory and make decisions that eventually show you you're not as clever as you thought. Then, when two armies meet, you switch to real-time battles controlling hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tiny soldiers who are about to die because you clicked the wrong button.

It's a 25-year-old series that has covered everything from Rome to medieval wars to the fantasy version of Warhammer. This is the first time it takes on 40K: Space Marines, Orks, tanks, guns, chainswords and far fewer horses. It's also the first Total War coming to consoles as well as PC, on PS5 and Xbox, which probably means more to someone like me than to a PC player who has been at this since 2004.

I'd seen the fantasy Warhammer Total War games and they looked great, but I never had the moment where I thought I had to learn all of it. Apparently all it took was swapping dragons for a man in 800 kilograms of armor holding a chainsword, and I was hooked immediately.

What Gamescom revealed: factions, Armageddon and a new engine

There are four factions at launch, among them Space Marines, Orks and the Aeldari. If you're at my level of jargon, the Astra Militarum is the Imperial Guard. You get established forces such as the Ultramarines, Cadians and Bad Moons, but you can also build your own, name it and choose its colors. My first thought was how quickly I could paint everything red and claim they're Blood Angels, because years of getting into Warhammer apparently taught me nothing about variety.

The campaign is set in the Indomitus era with Armageddon as a focal point, featuring Commissar Yarrick, Ghazghkull Thraka, the Imperial Guard and an enormous number of Orks. Armageddon has always spent much of its existence as the least desirable place to live in the galaxy.

Creative Assembly has built a new engine, and it has clearly thought about newcomers like me. There's a clearer interface, bigger buttons, easier access to information, and controls that work on a controller without needing the finger skills of an eight-year-old playing Fortnite. According to people who have tried it, the game is more approachable without losing depth, and that matters to me. Whenever I see a strategy game with 17 menus, six currencies and a chart in the corner, FIFA comes to mind.

Drop pods and orbital strikes are what sold me

What truly convinced me was the combat. In one Gamescom clip, Space Marines bring in reinforcements by drop pod. They don't simply arrive: a huge chunk of metal slams into the middle of the battlefield, and then you use it as a weapon. Orbital strikes rain down, buildings collapse and Orks fly everywhere. That was the moment it clicked for me.

I've only just started playing Warhammer properly on the tabletop. I'm still at the stage of carefully moving a Space Marine behind a wall because someone has explained to me for the third time that yes, the enemy can shoot him if they can see him. Then I see this, and it's as if Creative Assembly is saying you can simply bomb the entire building from orbit. Much easier.

That's what I want from a Warhammer 40K game. Not just lots of units on screen, but those ridiculous, legendary moments where you pull the camera back and realize this isn't 20 plastic figures fighting over rubble anymore. It's a real war. I apparently wasn't the only one impressed: it won Best PC Game at Gamescom, though whether an unreleased game should be collecting awards has sparked debate. There's a lot more coverage to come before it actually launches, in 2027.

The campaign: star systems, 600 turns and units that persist

The campaign side looked the most intimidating to me at first. Campaign theaters, star systems, planetary campaigns, persistent progression. My immediate reaction was "Oh, homework." But it's simpler than it sounds. You pick a faction and fight one huge campaign across multiple star systems. Each system roughly has its own small campaign. You fight over planets, build forces, take territory and move on. Crucially, you don't start from scratch each time, and characters and progression can carry over with you.

A full campaign theater is roughly 10 linked campaigns, and Creative Assembly has talked about a single campaign going past 600 turns. To someone who has never played Total War, that sounds enormous. I genuinely wondered whether I'd need to put it in my will. But scale isn't what interests me. It's what persists. The moment a unit survives a few battles or refuses to die when it should have, it isn't just that squad anymore. Those are my guys. Taking someone across a planet, keeping them alive, dragging them to the next system and eventually reaching Armageddon with troops who were with me for the whole journey is far more exciting than how big the map is.

The planets themselves are 3D worlds you can rotate, divided into regions, with hive cities as strategically important locations rather than decoration. Because this is 40K, strategically important can also mean bombing them from space, which certainly simplifies planning. There's a persistent tech system, with each faction adding its own layer on top.

Space Marines balance renown against suspicion. Renown means everyone thinks you're great. Suspicion means the Imperium would like a word. Yes, refusing an order to slaughter civilians earns you suspicion, because of course it does. This may be the most Warhammer mechanic anyone has ever designed. The more I read, the more it felt like they're building a huge 40K story that happens to be a strategy game.

Why around 200 Space Marines on a battlefield is the right call

This was the part that worried me most. Hear Total War: Warhammer 40,000 and you picture 4,000 Space Marines charging across the screen while everything explodes. That isn't what they're doing. Squads go up to around 10 Marines, and Creative Assembly says it would be unusual to see more than 200 across the whole battlefield.

It sounds disappointing until you see it working. These aren't disposable men in blue. They're Space Marines, ridiculously hard to kill. They don't panic and run. Even when their morale breaks, they become shell shocked rather than fleeing. Things are going terribly and they keep fighting, which is very British and also fits Space Marines. Wounded troops recover, but if a Marine actually dies, replacing him is much harder. Losing five men doesn't mean you have 400 more. It means losing the Marine who's been with you since Armageddon.

I think that's the right decision. Since I started playing Warhammer seriously, I've realized I want a story unfolding, not efficient unit trading. I'm already attached to my silly little plastic Blood Angels. I spent ages painting them, learned who Dante is and found out about the Black Rage, and then in an actual game I lovingly walk one into completely open ground because I forgot how line of sight works. I don't need 800 replaceable Space Marines. Give me ten I've taken through three campaigns. Give one of them a heroic moment surviving what he shouldn't, then make me upset when an Ork finally kills him 40 hours later. That's what Warhammer is to me.

Around these small squads you get orbital bombardments, precision strikes and drop pods putting reinforcements exactly where you need them. You jump units into position using cover, suppress enemies, drop reinforcements behind them and sometimes solve a tactical problem by firing something at it from space, which will probably be my favorite strategy. I'd be more worried if Space Marines were just another huge Total War army. If I have a few squads and losing one hurts, that's more tense. Knowing how I play, I'll probably spend 40 hours building an elite veteran force and then accidentally leave half of it in front of Ork artillery.

The open questions: transports, co-op, campaign length and price

There are real question marks. Transports don't work properly at launch. Land Raiders and other vehicles are in, but loading troops and driving them across the battlefield isn't ready, and Creative Assembly says it will add that later. I respect the honesty. I'd rather hear that they couldn't get it working than watch 12 Space Marines slowly spin into a wall trying to board a Land Raider. But it's still a fundamental gap, because transports are central to how 40K armies work. Modding may help: Steam Workshop support is supposed to arrive at launch, even if full official tools take longer because the engine is brand new.

Multiplayer and co-op remain a question mark, and that matters to me. Some of my strongest memories from games like Fable 2, and maybe 3, came from playing with other people. Total War seems perfect for it. I can already picture talking a friend into a crusade, spending 20 minutes pretending we understand a crucial strategic decision, then watching it all collapse because either my friend or I moved the wrong army. I'll definitely enjoy it alone, but I think having someone else who remembers the ridiculous stories from a 600-turn campaign is far more appealing. You don't remember every mission, but you remember the idiot you played with.

Campaign length is the same story. More than 600 turns sounds amazing, but it also sounds like something I'll start in 2027 and finish shortly before retirement. I need to see whether it keeps giving you something interesting to do, or whether turn 427 becomes a chore.

There's no release date or price. 2027 is the rough window, with no month, confirmed cost or preorder bonuses. Anyone confidently telling you it's 59.99 or 79.99 doesn't know, and neither do the rest of us. The Best PC Game award split opinion: half excited, half asking how an unreleased game won anything, which is fair. Other Total War fans point out that people were skeptical of Total War doing Warhammer at all, and it became enormous. I'm somewhere in the middle. It's a good sign and impressive for those who tried it, but I won't frame the Gamescom award or book annual leave for launch day. It's still a demo.

What could make me wait to buy it

No single missing feature stops me buying it. The lack of transports is annoying and the absence of co-op is disappointing, but I'll still play it, and a 600-turn campaign is almost part of the appeal. What could make me wait is if it launches in 2027 and reviews say it's great once it's complete. I'll be experiencing it for the first time on a new engine with a controller, so the interface has to work. I want to buy the game as intended, not volunteer for six months of quality testing. Long-time fans already say this about Creative Assembly's previous releases: the game usually becomes quite different after six months. I won't preorder blindly just because a drop pod made me feel 12 again, though I'll probably fall for it anyway.

Consoles and 40K could make Total War a gateway for newcomers

You don't need to be a Total War fan to care. I'm definitely not. I've spent most of my gaming life watching games like this from a safe distance, thinking they look impressive and then admitting I have no idea what's going on. That used to be fine: Total War was a PC strategy series for an audience that knew what the buttons did. Bringing it to PlayStation and Xbox changes that.

We've all seen the bad version of making a complex game accessible: strip out 14 interesting systems and add a giant yellow arrow. That doesn't seem to be happening here. They're making the interface understandable and the controller work while leaving the deep strategy intact. If they pull that off, it matters more than whether transports carry troops on day one, because suddenly people like me who have never played Total War but know what a Space Marine is have a way in.

Warhammer has spent recent months doing this to me again and again: the miniatures, then the stories, then listening to Eisenhorn, then talking about Dawn of War. Now it has apparently decided I need grand strategy too. But this isn't like Fable or The Witcher, which hit me through nostalgia. Total War: Warhammer 40K is the opposite. It's something familiar pulling me toward something new.