Warhammer, in about two minutes
It’s a hobby with three parts: you collect little models, you build and paint them, and you play tabletop battles with them. That’s the whole thing. Everything below is just detail.
What it actually is
Warhammer is a tabletop miniatures wargame made by Games Workshop, a British company that has been at it since the 1970s. You buy boxes of small plastic figures — soldiers, monsters, tanks — clip them off their frames, glue them together, and paint them. Then two or more people set their painted armies on a table and fight a battle, moving the models by hand and rolling dice to decide what happens.
There’s no screen and no app required to play. It’s a physical game: a tabletop, a tape measure, a fistful of six-sided dice, and a rulebook.
The two worlds
Almost everything sits inside one of two settings. They share the same hobby but tell very different stories.
| Setting | Flavour | The one-liner |
|---|---|---|
| Warhammer 40,000 | Far-future science fiction | Space marines, alien hordes and endless war among the stars — famously bleak and over-the-top. |
| Age of Sigmar | High fantasy | Knights, gods, orcs and dragons across a set of magical realms — the sword-and-sorcery side. |
“40K” is the bigger and better-known of the two. There are also smaller, quicker games set in the same worlds — Kill Team and Warcry use a handful of models instead of a whole army — which are a gentler way in.
How the hobby breaks down
- Collect. Pick a faction you like the look of — that’s your army. You buy it a box or two at a time.
- Build & paint. Assemble the models with glue, then paint them. Plenty of people enjoy this part most and never play a game at all — it’s a craft in its own right.
- Play. Match your army to an opponent’s by an agreed points value so it’s fair, then play through a few turns of moving, shooting and fighting. Whoever holds the objectives wins.
How a game plays
Players take turns. On your turn your units move, shoot, charge in and fight, one phase at a time. Every action is settled by rolling dice against a model’s stats — hit, wound, and the other side’s armour gets a save. Distances are measured in inches with a tape. A typical game runs five turns and an hour or three, depending on the size.
Getting started
The easiest on-ramp is a starter or “battleforce” box, which bundles models and a slim rulebook. Beyond that you’ll want clippers, plastic glue and a few paints. The core rules are free to download, so you can read how it works before spending anything.