Warhammer 40,000 review

Warhammer 40,000 is a miniatures wargame that just oozes atmosphere. The Empire of man-kind spans the galaxy, an unimaginably vast conglomerate of planets and peoples. Presiding over the Empire is the Emperor himself, an ancient and withered husk of a human kept alive by the throne he sits upon, itself a vast life support system created with long forgotten technology. The borders of the Imperium are under constant threat from alien incursions, whether it be from the brutal green skinned Orks, the strange Eldar, the beast-like tyranids or any number of other xenos. Standing guard at the frontiers of the Empire is the Imperial Guard, an enormous army made up of the many and varied inhabitants of the Imperium. Bolstering the ranks of the Imperial Guard are the Space Marines, an organisation resembling futuristic Templar Knights. This then is the setting for Warhammer 40,000 - a future of constant warfare and crumbling civilizations.

Although Warhammer can be an expensive game to get into, two fully painted armies facing off against each other across a tabletop dressed as a battlefield is an awesome sight. The citadel miniatures which are used in the game are extremely well sculpted and many people simply collect these for the sake of it, never intending to play the actual game with them. Although they can be quite pricey, in my opinion no other company produces models that can rival them for quality.

The game itself is a relatively simple affair. First thing is to select your army for the coming engagement. Each unit, vehicle, monster and character has a points value assigned to it. Using your pool of points agreed on at the beginning of the game, you set about putting your army together. Your choice is obviously going to be constrained by the models you have available and there are some limits on the number and type of units you can field. Each figure is given a number of stats which reflect aspects such as how accurate a shot they are, how strong their morale is, how physically tough they are, etc. Once this has been done, it's a simple matter of choosing table sides and setting up your armies.

Play is taken in turns, rolling to see who gets the first move. Your turn in composed of these phases in order:

Movement

Move any of your units that you wish to. Movement is measured in inches and most units can move six. Vehicles and certain fast creatures may be able to move further than this. Moving some units can have an impact on whether they can fire their heaviest of weapons or how far they can shoot.

Shooting

Shoot with any units you wish. Your units must have line of sight to their target (when this isn't obvious, you can crouch down and put your eye alongside the model to see whether he can indeed see round the corner of that building or over the top of that hedge) and they must be in range. A difficulty number is assigned on the "to hit" roll based on the shooting characters balistic skill. If you roll this number or more on a six sided dice, it's a hit! For any hits scored you roll another dice to wound, again based on a difficulty number found by cross referencing the strength of the weapon with the toughness of the target. Providing the wound roll was successfull, the target then gets to roll an armour save, providing that the armour piercing value of the wound doesn't negate this.

Units or characters that have been particularly mauled may have to make a leadership test to see if they fall back or flee screaming for the rear. This is a roll of 2 six sided dice and must be below the unit's leadership value to succeed.

One problem with this game is that whoever goes first tends to have a big advantage over the other player. They effectively get to fire with all of their army, whilst the second player is only going to be able to fire back with his army minus any casualties taken on the first player's turn.

As you can probably already tell, this game involves a lot of dice rolling.

Close Combat

Once the shooting's done, unit's may engage in close combat (providing they're close enough to an enemy unit to instigate this) or continue with a close assault that was initiated on a previous turn. Close combat is conducted much the same way as shooting. Combatants act in initiative order, a roll is made to hit, followed by a roll to wound, followed by a saving throw. Close Combat continues each turn until one side is wiped out or flees.

Play continues in this fashion, with each player taking it in turns to act out these three phases, normally for a total of 6 complate turns (although this is entirely up to the individuals concerned to decide upon). You can either play this game as a straight out fight to the death, or use one of the scenarios provided in the rule book (or make your own up, if you're feeling imaginitive).

What do I think of this game?

Well I've spent a hell of a lot of money on it so I guess I must like it. It's not the most elegant of systems - it involves rolling an awful lot of dice an awful lot of times, and there's no doubt that the luck of the dice plays a large part in the game. Plus there's not really any rules that reward you for out-manouvering or out-flanking your enemy. It mostly seems to degrade into a slug fest, pumping your enemy full of six sided dice until they can't take any more.

Having said that, the game's got a lot going for it. It's basically like a hobby in itself. The models are fantastic and very easy to customize. Building the battlefields you're going to fight across is a lot of fun and you can let your imagination run riot. Needless to say, the various paint schemes you can come up with for your army are virtually unlimited and there's a lot of armies to choose from, each catering to a different playing style or a different interest. My personal army is the Imperial Guard as I like my tanks and have a certain level of fondness for the average grunty trooper. The rich gothic atmospere of the Warhammer world helps to add a bit of flavour to your battles to.

Jim Patching