The 7 best games to enter the world of Warhammer

Mordheim: City of the Damned

Warhammer is originally a tabletop strategy game where you move figures around the table and resolve battles with dice. Mordheim adapts this gameplay in a fantasy setting.

In the tactical RPG, you are supposed to travel to the city of Mordheim and retrieve artifacts after a mystical comet has crashed there.

In doing so, you command small squads from a faction that you can choose – such as Sisters of Sigmar, Skaven, Undead, or Chaos cultists. You sneak through the city with combat squads and engage in turn-based battles with enemies.

The game places more emphasis on tactical gameplay than on the actual story, but if you are interested in Warhammer as a game, you have a good entry point here. Mordheim was released during a flood of Warhammer games and is considered one of the few “good” games from that time. You can play Mordheim on Steam, Xbox (One), and PS4.

In terms of difficulty, Mordheim is somewhat higher. You will probably need to take a few hours to understand the systems.

Battlesector

Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector is essentially the 40k counterpart to Mordheim. If you’re curious about how the tabletop works but don’t want to sell your kidney to acquire an initial army, Battlesector is the best alternative.

The strategy game lets you face small combat squads against others on the battlefield, either in PvE battles or in small skirmishes against other players. In addition to Tyranids and Space Marines included in the base game, there are DLCs available for:

• the Tau Empire
• Necrons, basically Space robot mummies
• battle-hungry Orks
• Adepta Sororitas, the feared female order of the Imperium

The gameplay is kept quite simple and is easy to understand for beginners. In contrast to the tabletop, however, Battlesector lacks depth and tactical variety – however, it has fewer special rules. It serves more as an entry into the world rather than a true substitute for the miniatures.

You can obtain the game on Steam, PS4, and Xbox. A nice feature: Battlesector offers a hotseat mode, which allows you to take turns playing against each other on the same device. In case you didn’t completely destroy your friendships back when playing Worms.

Bonus: Dawn of War

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is one of the best strategy games of all time and personally for me even at the top of the list. Especially with the expansions Winter Assault, Dark Crusade, and Soulstorm, you get a comprehensive 40k experience that is hard to find elsewhere.

Actually, the game would have even appeared higher on the list, but the entry is not that easy. Dawn of War still has between 1,000 and 2,000 players on Steam, but it was released in 2004.

Many of the players have been playing for 20 years. If you want to jump into multiplayer, you’ll have some difficulties against the experience of veterans. However, if you’re looking for a real-time strategy game and enjoy battling against AI, Dawn of War is highly recommended from both a Warhammer and RTS perspective.

If you’re interested in Warhammer, the tabletop might also be worth a look. However, you should expect to invest a lot more time and money. Just building and painting the miniatures takes a long time and can be expensive, but it can definitely be worth it: Warhammer 40,000 has helped a fan through difficult times – His collection is worth thousands of euros