Look, let's be honest, happy news has been rolling in lately for the Warhammer 40,000 fandom. Released in 2024, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 boasted a level of polish good enough to pull in newbies, while Gamescom 2025 gave us Dawn of War 4 and The Game Awards brought the reveal of Total War: Warhammer 40,000, sending everyone into an absolute frenzy. You can probably hear someone screaming about a Dawn of War Definitive Edition somewhere out there, but that is surely just your imagination.

Among them, the title the fandom anticipated the most is Total War: Warhammer 40,000. Given the nature of the Total War series, pulling off aerial assaults or fast-paced skirmishes is quite tricky, making a crossover with Warhammer 40,000 feel rather unlikely. Yet, this unexpected reveal caught the eyes of both the Total War and Warhammer 40,000 fanbases, landing it squarely at number three on the Steam wishlist. Gamemeca managed to snag an opportunity to try out an alpha build of Total War: Warhammer 40,000. The union of Total War and Warhammer 40,000 proved to be experimental, but it certainly brought enough hype to get you excited.

This preview session was strictly limited to the Space Marine faction. If you are already well-versed in the Total War series, starting the game lets you dive straight into the campaign, but otherwise, playing through the tutorial section titled Getting the Basics Down is highly recommended.

The tutorial kicks off with an Inquisition transport crash-landing on a planet. Just like in other Total War games, you have to select and move your friendly units across a massive map. Considering the setting is a planet, what left a striking impression was how moving the map rotated a spherical planetary surface rather than the flat planes seen in previous entries.

The first battle involves clearing out an Orc squad—the long-time nemesis of the Imperium of Man—and recovering the cargo from the crash-landed transport. True to being a tutorial, you follow the Chapter Master's orders to station your troops on a hill to greet the enemy, or charge in to deal with them depending on the situation. The swarming Orc Slugga Boyz certainly boast high health pools and huge numbers, but they simply melt under the heavy bolter fire of the mighty Space Marines. Hills and cover mechanics have been faithfully implemented too.

The game also showcases the mechanic of dropping reserve troops in from above. In the tutorial, Assault Intercessors were deployed right on top of the Orcs' heads to reinforce the melee line. The drop pods seemed to act as a sort of cover, blocking incoming enemy bullets. Furthermore, a faction ability called Bomb Cluster unleashed artillery across a wide area, letting you instantly vaporize the swarming Orcs.

After wrapping up the tutorial, diving into the proper campaign let us experience the first battle as the Space Marines. The Astra Militarum, Orcs, and Eldar were unavailable for play this time around. The Space Marines feature deep customization options. You can craft your very own chapter, tweak the armor colors, and pick out the heraldry. At first, a somewhat blasphemous chapter centered around yellow was crafted, which we immediately regretted because it became indistinguishable from the armor of the Orc soldiers appearing right after.

The opening campaign begins in the Tallow Star sub-sector, where you have to deal with Orcs occupying a relay station. If you jump in expecting a mere tutorial level, it will naturally be tough, but for anyone with Total War experience, it is not a steep barrier to entry. Familiar control schemes, such as right-clicking to designate squads, have been preserved.

At first, you experience an auto-resolve battle against a small Orc squad with a massive power gap, followed by a clash against a huge Orc army at the relay station. Even with auto-resolve, some rather absurd scenarios unfolded; despite it supposedly being an easy battle, the captain and two squads of Space Marine Aggressors cleanly perished in a baffling result. In the subsequent skirmish against the massive Orc host, the endless waves of troops naturally brought the phrase overwhelming odds to mind.

The Orcs unabashedly flaunted their signature pugnacity and war-crazed nature. Stormboyz sudden-assault units flying in from afar, alongside Battlewagons—few in number yet tearing through enemy lines and running amok—constantly assaulted the Space Marines. The Space Marines could respond across multiple fronts as well, using orbital bombardment Lance Strikes to deal heavy damage to a localized area, or leveraging Librarian psychic abilities for area-of-effect damage.

The battlefield was massive, but given the elite combat doctrine of the Space Marines, spreading troops out widely proved difficult. As a result, head-on clashes of pure strength took place right in the middle of the map where forces congregated, and the one-man-army Space Marine units mowed down countless Orcs with just a bit of micro-management. The colossal Stompa also disintegrated under focused fire and Lance Strikes.

What makes it unique is the evident effort to fuse the fundamental framework of a miniature game into Total War. Different stats existed for each unit class, and you could catch glimpses of sprites that seemed to emphasize each individual troop type. In the campaign, you could decorate your personal chapter much like painting physical miniatures. Compared to previous Total War titles that emphasized the mass gathering of soldiers, the traits of each squad felt far more distinct.

When zooming in closely on a squads, you could witness realistic combat animations you would expect from Space Marines, such as smashing Orcs with rifle butts in close combat. Observing Warhammer 40,000 squad units up close delivered a bizarre yet thrilling sensation, almost as if miniatures were coming to life. Of course, since it is ultimately a Total War game, you will mostly be surveying the battlefield from a high vantage point.

Overall movement across the map still felt like a work in progress. It was structured around a sort of grid or node system, making it easy to initiate combat with units sitting on the same landmass. However, units moved to arbitrary spots within a designated node rather than a player-specified exact location, hurting the intuitiveness. Consequently, reinforcing units after training them did not feel entirely seamless. Naturally, since this is an alpha build, such issues are expected to be ironed out down the line.

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, with Korean language support. A release date will be announced at a later time.