Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is totally real, so we’ve created a wishlist to send to the Emperor

(Image credit: Sega)

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I usually think game developers should scale things back—games are too big, too expensive, and too full of nonsense. This is not what I want from a 40k game, though.

Related articles

In Games Workshop’s miserable future, everything is big: an empire spanning a million worlds, spread across the entire Milky Way; gargantuan hive cities where billions of people live and die without ever stepping outside; flying cathedrals so large that they contain distinct societies, full of people who will never set foot on a planet; giant, power-armor-clad warriors carrying guns as large as a person.

Total War games are already known for their immense scale, but if Creative Assembly wants to capture the endless wars of the 41st millennium, it’s gonna need to go the extra mile.

But I want that scale to matter. To be more than set dressing. What I don’t want is for entire worlds, containing billions of lives, to be reduced to a node on a space map, represented by a single battlefield. I want the size of the galaxy to create wrinkles and logistical conundrums. I want to see orks and Space Marines be dwarfed by mechs the size of overly-ambitious skyscrapers—to stare at the battlefield and wonder, “How the heck am I going to deal with this” before watching my army getting crushed underfoot.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I’m genuinely very curious to see how Creative Assembly will handle the scale of 40k. Warhammer Fantasy’s ‘World-That-Was’ was well defined, but part of the attraction of 40k by comparison is that it’s this gigantic universe which can contain a seemingly infinite number of settings within it. It’s something that both game developers and Black Library authors use to great effect, inventing and fencing off their own little planet or system to make their own.

For example, will Total War: Warhammer 40,000 feature the Sabbat Worlds from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series? How about the Kaurava system from Dawn of War: Soulstorm? How do you decide what is canonically part of that big 40k map and compile it, while also ensuring the scale isn’t so large that the series’ RTS battles become irrelevant. CA has obviously found a way to do that which appeases Games Workshop and I’ll be fascinated to see what that even looks like.

(Image credit: Sega)

Fraser Brown: Plenty of Warhammer games give a nod to their tabletop origins with things like army painting, but in Creative Assembly’s Warhammer trilogy the closest we got to that was a single daemonic leader who could be customised much in the same way as we might indulge in some kitbashing.

This time, I’d like something a bit more robust. Just changing some colors would be nice, but since we’re dreaming here, I’d like to suggest something a bit more ambitious—a system that lets us tailor both the aesthetics of our units, from colours to emblems to accessories, as well as the actual gear they bring with them. Something that reflects the wargear system of the tabletop game.

Related articles

Let me stick bits and bobs on my troops, and then see that reflected in their model. If I want to give my Space Marine a wolf cloak and a power claw, let me do it. Yes, I really hope we get some Space Wolves love.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: 100% this. It’s a shame to zoom in on a unit in one of the Total War: Warhammer games and see a bunch of elves with the exact same haircut. If we’re talking about tyranids from the same hive fleet then sure, they can have a uniform look, but a bunch of ork freebooters or aeldari harlequins should look flashy and individual. Let us choose our own color schemes and hats and whatnot.

(Image credit: Sega)

Sean Martin: As with most longtime Total War players, I have a morbid fascination with endgame scenarios. I’ll never forget the first time the Mongols invaded in Medieval 2 and I saw their doomstacks rolling across the map towards me. It’s a long-standing feature of the series, but one that’s particularly well-suited to 40k.

It could be a giant warp storm splitting the map, a massive ork waaagh, a Black Crusade, a tyrannid hive fleet invading to feed on your planets, or necrons crawling out of the ground as you discover you’ve been sitting on tomb worlds this whole time.

A lot of these scenarios will be limited by the number of factions available at launch (four are confirmed), but just as Total War: Warhammer had Archaon’s invasion, I hope we’ll get a fun endgame crisis to start with.

Fraser Brown: I’m expecting big things here. I mean, this is a universe where entire planets getting taken over by alien cults is just a normal Friday, and where the Imperium will gladly annihilate a world just to stamp out the influence of the Ruinous Powers. The bar is set pretty high.

(Image credit: Sega)

Jody Macgregor: Total War is about regiments of infantry and cavalry, about ranks and flanks. Which is fine for Warhammer Fantasy, but in a 40k game I want mobile squads rushing from objective to objective, and I want them to be able to take cover in the rubble of a bombed-out hive or the trenches of a battlefield.

Total War’s never really mastered “shooting from cover”, but with Astra Militarum in Total War: Warhammer 40,000 then I want to see them sliding in the mud to get down behind some barbed wire while being showered by the dirt as mortar shells go off.

Part of what I am asking for is pathfinding that can actually handle moving a unit through a narrow city street. But I think sieges would be more fun if holding the walls was actually a better tactic than ditching them to occupy a chokepoint somewhere in the streets behind them.

Sean Martin: I was also pondering how Total War: Warhammer 40k could handle cover, because you’re 100% right, Jody: the game will need a cover system. I always thought Dawn of War did a good job with cover, making it area-based, and considering Total War already has AoE terrain effects in 90% of its games (like long grass in Troy, water or trees in Total War: Warhammer etc.), I wouldn’t be surprised if we got something similar.

Three Kingdoms also has pre-battle constructions like towers or anti-cavalry fences even on non-siege maps, so maybe we’ll see that put into practice for building trenches and such. My one hope is that we get city maps of some kind, where we can use the streets and structures to chokepoint enemies or fire on them from above. So much of 40k warfare is city-fighting that it won’t feel quite right if it’s all just open field.

(Image credit: Sega)

Sean Martin: It never bothered me too much when Total War: Warhammer didn’t get naval combat. Sure, it would’ve been nice to have dragons burning ships, witness Druchii sea monsters rising from the waves, and I think I speak for us all when I say not including the swashbuckling skaven pirates of Clan Skurvy was a missed opportunity.

Unlike Warhammer Fantasy, though, it’s almost impossible to not include battlefleet warfare in 40k. Some of the most important conflicts in the setting are space battles, with navies, orbital defense platforms, and battle barges blazing away above planets to secure a foothold—hell, if we ever get the Imperial Fists, we’re going to need The Phalanx, their supermassive mobile star fort HQ.

I guess you could have space battles on a map inside a ship and justify it as your troops breach torpedo’d in, but it wouldn’t really feel accurate, considering most shipboard combat in 40k is close quarters. Whether it’s orbital bombardments, deep strikes, virus bombing planets, or even cool potential campaign events like a space hulk or a Blackstone Fortress appearing, space battle is inextricably linked with 40k. I really hope Creative Assembly doesn’t skimp here.

Fraser Brown: I’d be so down for this, but Creative Assembly’s attempts at just regular naval combat have left a lot to be desired, so space combat feels like a tall order. Granted, there are already multiple systems ripe for adaptation, not least of which is Battlefleet Gothic, the tabletop game, and Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, its videogame counterpart. Honestly, as long as it’s better than Rogue Trader’s space combat, I’ll probably be happy.

(Image credit: Sega)

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: Too many Warhammer 40,000 games play it safe with the story, throwing heroic Space Marines against nefarious baddies and calling it a day. There’s so much more than that to the setting, and some of the best 40k games we’ve had have been ones that embrace its weirdest elements—from Mechanicus’ squabbling tech-priests to Darktide’s absurd dystopia.

Something on the scale of Total War seems like the perfect opportunity to have your cake and eat it too. There’s space enough for both straight-faced Imperial heroism and all the fringe strangeness. And given we got everything from chaos dwarfs to zombie pirates in the studio’s Warhammer Fantasy series, there’s plenty of room to be optimistic.

In practical terms I think for me that means two things. One, I’d love to see the game really delve into the personalities of some non-human factions. Show me the galaxy from the perspective of some real weirdos, like the Genestealer Cults or the drukhari.

The other is it’d be great for it to bring in all sorts of obscure elements and even things we don’t normally see on the tabletop. Let me have a jokaero advisor to tune up my weapons, battle hrud pirates out in lawless space, and recruit mercenary Blood Axe orks to fight alongside my Imperial Guard.

Fraser Brown: Yes! It’s gotta be weird. Ultimately, Warhammer is a slapstick satire that some people take far too seriously.

(Image credit: Sega)

Sean Martin: A big universe needs big units, and there are fewer things bigger in 40k than Titans. My favorite battles from the Black Library books have always involved these colossal walkers, as princeps and their crews harness each god machine’s spirit and hunt each other across ruined cities and blasted battlescapes. It’s part sci-fi bridge crew, part mech-battle.

I really hope Total War: Warhammer 40k lets me be the kind of player who brings three Imperial Knights to fight an entire opposing army. We’ve certainly seen an escalation in unit size in Total War: Warhammer with the Dread Saurian and Rogue Idol of Gork and Mork, but some of 40k’s units have the potential to be so much bigger.

Beyond a certain level it does become game-breaking (considering a rare Imperator class Titan is hundreds of feet tall), but it’d be a shame not to see smaller titans, Imperial Knights, or even ork Gargants take to the battlefield to stomp enemies.