// KOTAKU — GAMING
Total War: Warhammer 40,000 Feels Like The Perfect Strategy Game For 40K Sickos
Over the past few years, Warhammer 40,000 has become a huge part of my life—so much so that I’ve now found myself reading books to learn as much as I can about its lore, and even playing its tabletop counterpart competitively. So when I heard that Total War: Warhammer 40,000 was going to be at Gamescom 2026, I knew I needed to play it. After spending roughly an hour with it, I’ve learned that this is the perfect game for Warhammer sickos like myself, and an even better one for introducing new people to the franchise.
I say this for a few reasons. First, Total War takes place in the Armageddon sector of the galaxy, a major point of interest in the current Warhammer 40,000 setting. Second, from what I’ve played, the game doesn’t have any legacy characters; instead, it introduces new people we haven’t seen before and encourages players to create their own homebrew chapters for full immersion. Lastly, the current playable factions are all extremely popular, and most play like their tabletop counterparts.
One thing worth pointing out is that in the demo build I played, I could only play as the Space Marines. But I did get to see the Astra Militarum and Orks in action fighting one another. The only faction that was missing from this demo was the Aeldari. The Space Marines’ mission was spelled out quickly: I had to find top-secret information before the Orks discovered it. To prevent that, the Emperor’s Finest were sent out to retrieve it.
This first cutscene did a fantastic job of briefly explaining who the Orks were, why they shouldn’t be taken lightly, and why the Space Marines were the right ones for the job. Within just a few short minutes, I had been given a deep lesson on some major factions and had a good idea of what they stood for.
Before I jumped into actual combat, I was given a brief overview of the planet. As I looked at it, I had to command my squads to travel from one region to another. What was nice was that it made the world feel huge. But that feeling quickly faded the more I zoomed out, because I could then see the whole galaxy at large and all the nearby planets in the cluster.
After the cutscene ended and the level finally started, I saw a menu that looked extremely complicated at first glance, but quickly made sense. It showed the loadout of every Space Marine in my squad, what weapons they had equipped, how they should fight, and their health. As I was pushing up the map, I noticed I only had maybe a total of five squads with me. That may seem like a small amount of troops to take on a recovery mission, especially when you consider there were about five Orks for every one marine. But that worry was put to ease immediately when I remembered the game was trying to be as lore-accurate as possible, and one squad of Space Marines was more than capable of putting a dent into the Green Tide that was in front of me.
Still, I did exactly what the cutscene warned me about and underestimated the Orks. Before I knew it, I was immediately pinned down by a wall of fire and was forced to take cover in nearby debris. Before any of that became a true threat, I called in some backup from reserves and had them crash-land in front of a huge squad of Orks, immediately killing a bunch of them. This gave me time to push up with my remaining forces and walk away with the information we initially came to retrieve.
This is where I started booting up the game’s second mission. Before I jumped into the action, I was given a brief look at the customizations Total War has to offer. In short, I was able to change everything from the shoulder pad color of my Marines to the chapter’s name, allowing me to put my own personal flavor into the grim darkness of the far future. The next mission was another simple one: Help the Astra Militarum take back a station from the Orks. Admittedly, I did what most lore-accurate Space Marines would do in that situation, and let the Astra Militarum die by themselves in the name of the Emperor.
Despite