Warhammer 40,000 might be one of the biggest and best known wargames around, having made the leap from the tabletop to video games, books, comics, and now, with the help of megafan Henry Cavill, an Amazon streaming franchise of TV shows and movies. But it and its grand, densely written world are still difficult to parse for newcomers who don’t know the right side up of a chainsword.
Admittedly there’s probably no good or particularly safe side of a chainsword, but if you’re curious about the 40K boom now that Amazon has gotten into it—and celebrities like Cavill and Rahul Kohli have taken to evangelizing it—and don’t know where to start, here’s a beginners’ guide to the game and world of what Cavill, Games Workshop, and Amazon are hoping could be one of the next big blockbuster sci-fi franchises.
