20 years ago the greatest Warhammer 40,000 rulebook of all time was released.
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| HELL. YES. |
No, really. August 2004 saw the release of the 4th edition rulebook for Warhammer 40,000, and reflected the very apex of the Warhammer 40,000 IP (fight me First Wave oldhammer). It was the last version of the game to be written by the original creative team behind the Warhammer 40,000 franchise (with Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers both leaving Games Workshop after the book was written amongst several other big names), and it is a worthy swan song that emphatically reflects the culmination of their experience. It is a tabletop game masterpiece, a triumph in every aspect from atmosphere and aesthetics to graphics and layout.
So that's why we're going to be talking all about it here.
Of course, 4th edition does not exist in a vacuum. Like all titans of history it has achieved the heights it has by standing on the shoulders of giants, in this case 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000. 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 is of course a fine and brilliant 40k game in its own right, an elegant game engine that manages to thread the needle between complexity, streamlining, realism and cinematic evocation wonderfully. The 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook itself is likewise a triumph in its own right and a worthy champion of the second best Warhammer 40,000 rulebook of all time (again, die mad First Wave oldhammer). It had some key flaws however, mostly from some counter-intuitive formatting choices and being both blessed and cursed with internal army rules appendices, which allowed it to function as a complete self-contained game but did come at a terrible cost of including almost no hobby-related content at all.
This then is the foundation of 4th edition Warhammer 40,000, and a key part of what makes the 4th edition core rules so great. They don't try to reinvent the wheel the way that... pretty much every subsequent 40k game has. They're evolutionary instead of revolutionary, an incremental quality of life upgrade over the 3rd edition core rules that exists mostly just to collate six years of errata and updates into a single coherent tabletop rule set rather than being change for the sake of change (and shareholder revenue demands).
The result is, right off the bat, packaged in the best rulebook ever made for 40k, the most cohesive well-structured rulebook ever written for 40k. It breaks down into the perfect golden ratio of content - 1/3 game rules, 1/3 setting lore and 1/3 hobby inspiration - which is already a great start, but is also a big oversimplification. Because part of the magic of the 4th edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook is that all three of those things are united into a single holistic whole, so closely and harmoniously intertwined that it is virtually impossible to separate them.
The real magic of 4th can't really be encapsulated in mere words alone, and really needs to be experienced to be believed. So that's what we're going to do now, take a walk through the 4th edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook, king of 40k rulebooks.
And that starts with this cover.
A beautifully understated, elegantly simplistic front cover that has everything it needs and none of what it doesn't. No weird colours or bizarre Game Of Thrones inspired graphic elements, just a a plain sinister charcoal colour palette, an iron-patterned border and a delightful Geiger-esque backdrop that hints at all kinds of dark and terrible mysteries and horrors ahead. At the top is proudly emblazoned the game logo, the iconic charcoal-eagle back and militaristic faded green lettering that scream 'brutal science fiction warfare' and remains the definitive 40k logo to this day (no matter how much First Wave oldhammerers and GW may try to fight it). Front and centre is a brilliant silver cybernetic battle-hammer and skull that is a fantastic little sci-fi twist on the battle-hammer and skull motif on contemporary Warhammer rulebooks (and a nifty little visual easter egg that took me 19 years to realise).
But that's just the very outer surface. It only gets better and better from here.
When you first open the book there's a blank white front page, a pregnant pausing calm before the symphony to let you properly prepare yourself. After a few beats of anticipation pass and you've taken it all in, the page turns and you're confronted with an intro of dark twilight cosmos...
... and this haunting passage.
It's a a somber opening crawl that's shared with the 3rd edition rulebook, and it always reads with some sort of solemn forlorn Richard Burton-esque or Tom Baker-like received pronunciation British narrator. It gives a new player their first glimpse of the Imperium and an idea of what life is like for the average human in the 41st Millennium. It warns them of unimaginable suffering, horror and bloodshed in the galaxy, but also an opportunity for tremendous glory to be won should they choose to enter it - because after all, as it so eloquently concludes, the universe is a big place and whatever happens you will not be missed by the hand of destiny.
Then of course you reach the contents page, outlying out all the key page numbers in a face of lovely gothically militaristic typeface and chipped basalt graphic header on a grisaille colour palette that a lot of the book is printed with. Because of this the contents page sets the mood of the rest of the book quite nicely, but not before you move on to the second intro plate.
The tasteful black grisaille backdrop, the forbidding figure, the Karl Kopinski sketch art. Oh yes, this here is a definitive gateway to 40k.
From here the book proper begins, and boy how does it begin. It begins with an absolute bang. It begins by quite literally dropping you into the middle of the Imperium in the 41st Millennium.
It starts off slowly, intimately, showcasing the very most intimate innermost corner of the Imperium, the doors to the Imperial throne room lined with the oldest artefacts in the Imperial realm and adorned with the story of the Imperium itself in pictures (an art piece that first appeared in the 3rd edition rulebook to similar design and effect).
At the same time as you are so literally dropped into the Imperium, you are also equally viscerally dropped into the mind of an Imperial subject, the mind and thinking of Imperial aristocrats perfectly encapsulated in the captions that run beneath the artwork.
Then it takes you a step further out, showcasing the titanic dystopian insanity of the Imperial Palace, which makes the Tyrell Corporate headquarters look positively meek in comparison. Flanked of course by some delightfully bizarre guardian machines that appear nowhere else outside this specific art piece and are all the more glorious for just that (take note NuGW, some things are best left as little cryptic background mentions. Looking at you Custodes).
Then it takes you further out still, and you find yourself on a typical street in the Imperium.
This is the first of several such magnificent two-page spreads in the intro section to the book, and like this one almost all of them are beautifully drawn by the greatest Warhammer artist of all time Karl Kopinski. It is in Karl Kopinski's art pieces that Warhammer 40,000 finally came of age and matured into a coherent living breathing science fiction universe.
Then we meet the assholes in charge of the Imperium.
The four heads of state of the Imperium, captured by Adrian Smith. Each one so grotesque and corpse-like that you almost mistake them for wax sculptures, and yet they're every bit as real 'living' humans as any other Imperial lord. When you build an Imperial army, these clammy trilobites are who you're really fighting for.
Then you come across a series of windows, into the wider galaxy, each one a snapshot of some corner of the 41st Millennium.
They're collected from a variety of sources, mostly various Warhammer 40,000 codex books with the exception of the first panel which is from Inquisitor.
Then you step forward onto the surface of Mars 38,000 years into the future.
In case you couldn't tell this piece is by John Blanche, and does an excellent job of adding some depth to the universe beyond what shows up in the tabletop game. Other 40k books sometimes feature it as well but ruin it by adding needless colour. Here you get to enjoy it in all it's full grisaille monochrome glory - much much better!
Then you return to Terra and visit the central headquarters of the Imperial Guard.
This one has always been one of my favourite art pieces from the book's intro. There's just something about the "Edwardian-Georgian Great War Imperial Britain era on crack" style mega-engineering on display, with its solemn pristine white marble and alabaster facade, along with the assortment of characters on display - the tiny privileged minority of grandiose Imperial aristocrats with their militaristic veneer looking out from atop a mound of shambling mutilated horrors holding them up and gazing upon the endless columns of regimental banners, each one in turn blessed by the abbot of glorious sweet and noble death as the twisted wretches fall to their knees in equal parts reverence and terror. All with the neo-medieval gothic horror version of "Service Guarantees Citizenship, I'm Doing My Part" running underneath it. The whole thing just encapsulates the Imperial Guard brilliantly.
Then you step out into the path of an Ecclesiarchal crusade.
Another Karl Kopinski gem, this has always been my other favourite of these art spreads, again it gives the most vivid and visceral glimpse of the real Imperium that you can get. Just look at it and hear the gurgling rattles coming from the death-maidens on the right as they lose themselves in the throws of the death-ecstacy, and the crack of the priests' scourges as they drive their charges forth while others preach sermons from their mecha-pulpits. It's the sort of glorious scene that you simply cannot capture with models and can only exist in artwork, and such artwork is what really brings the 41st Millennium to life.
Finally you step in front of a charge of Space Marines.
This piece set the entire aesthetic language for the Space Marine model range from 2005 - 2008, and is another one of those wonderful windows into the world that can only really be encapsulated in art and ultimately falls flat when the model design studio tries to do it. Still it does a perfect job of showing you the real Adeptus Astartes - brutish savage techno-barbarians barely civilised and frothing at the mouth for the lust of death, equipped with the very apex of Imperial technology.
What a way to open a game book. The only real flaw, something shared throughout the entire rulebook, is that it is almost entirely fixated on a very minor game faction, the Imperium. Still, for a glimpse into that specific niche group, it is exquisite.
It's also an excellent testament to the power and information-density of the more visual based medium used in GW's game books from 1998 to 2004. The sheer amount of lore on display in this section would take anywhere from 50 to 100 pages of Criminologist Narration text like you find in 2nd edition or 5th edition books, but here? It's all conveyed in just 16 pages, many of which are two-page spreads of a single art piece. A picture really does say a thousand words.
This has always been what makes the game books from the golden age of GW in the early 2000s so brilliant. Game books from other 40k editions TELL you what the 41st Millennium is like. The 3rd edition codex books and this rulebook SHOW you what the 41st Millennium is like.
From there begins the 'rules' section of the book. It starts with a fairly straightforward introduction to how tabletop games work before presenting you with this, an example of what a 40k army might look like.
The army itself is of course very small, barely a skirmishing patrol and with a very conspicuous shortage of core line troops, but it is a very feasible goal and good aiming point for someone just starting out and getting their first game ready forces up and running, and that is exactly who this page is aimed for, breaking down in detail what each thing in the picture is and what it does and where it fits into the larger overall big picture.
The rules are, well they are what they are. Suffice to say that they fix most of what needed fixing in 3rd edition and left alone most of what didn't, producing the best core rule set GW made for 40k.
What's far more important and noteworthy are how the core rules are fully integrated into the lore and worldbuilding in the rulebook. There are quotes running along the bottom of most page that keep giving you windows into the mindset of the Imperium, and also include some hysterically witty satire that has aged like a fine long-term investment scheme.
There are also pictures of models in combat to illustrate certain concepts, and there's a big diversity of the factions showcased. There's Tau and Eldar and Chaos Space Marines all in the first few, for example.
And even this dramatic scene of some Seraphim facing off against some mutants.
That scene alone was enough to get me thinking more about Witch hunters even when I first looked through the rulebook when I was 10 years old. Because even if nothing else stuck with me, the idea of a bunch of cool badass women fighters slinging twin pistols around like Tanya Adams dropping in on jetpacks to confront mutant hordes seemed like kind of a cool concept. My awareness of how metal it was has only grown in the decades since.
The book includes this treatise on basic Imperium weaponry too as the perfect way to bridge the gap between the shooting and close combat sections.
There are a couple of similar overviews in the 3rd edition rulebook, but this one is more concise and fits better with the whole ethos of the Imperium as a state that is not even remotely rational.
It's not just photos either though, the rules section is permeated with quotes and spectacular artwork to illustrate the concepts as well, like this awe inspiring piece in the Cavalry section.
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| That. That right there is all you need to know about Cavalry units in Warhammer 40,000 |
The rulebook also takes inspiration from the recent success of the Lord of The Rings Strategy Battle Game project that was such a big influence on the game books that followed. In particular, the rulebook follows in the style of the Lord of The Rings rulebooks by including little doodad art pieces scattered throughout its contents, most notably these little cyber minions here and there.
The core 'rules' section is a little under 87 pages. After that there is some brutal John Blanche artwork of Space Marine Chaplain Mathis leading the scourging of the defiled Basilica of Saint Dolan.
And then...
This.
Just as The Poet and The Pendulum changes its movements emphatically, so too do you get this explosive transition to the next section of the book. The introduction itself isn't really all that full of new information at this point, but it gives a little appetizer for the rest of the content that is to follow. Most glaringly it completely omits any mention of the main flagship game faction of Warhammer 40,000, but it's not a deal-breaking mistake.
The next pages are a beautiful big colour spread of the galaxy that point out the location of the main flagship game faction of Warhammer 40,000 and a small few other points that might be of interest.
As a 10 year old kid I hated that so few locations were pointed out, but as a mature sophisticated adult this book was really aimed at I deeply appreciate the mass of empty space with no information about it, a beautiful virgin paradise free for me to populate with my own ideas. The little snippets of forgotten Imperial text are a wonderful touch too.
What is the mystery behind the Ymga monolith? What horrors lurk among the Hell-Stars of the Garon Nebula? Who will defeat the Arch-arsonist of Charadron? The only way to find out is in some games of Warhammer 40,000 - CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
The next few passages give a more detailed overview of the Imperium's whole deal, covering what it's like on the galactic stage at the start and then going into more detail on some of the more tabletop-game relevant aspects of the Imperial regime. The opening section on the Imperium itself invariably sounds itself in a pompous Tom Baker narrative voice, especially when it brings you to the Eastern Fringe where this is truly the frontier of Imperial Space, where the impossibly ancient Halo Stars can be seen as flickering wychfires beyond the furthest rims of the galaxy and the Imperium is little more than a half-remembered myth.
The whole thing of course is wonderfully rendered out on a beautiful chipped cracked stonework graphic background and chipped Basalt graphic headers/cutouts that set the atmosphere of the Imperium wonderfully alongside the bizarre fever dream stylings of John Blanche. At the same time, the more plain typeface of the main text body itself helps keep everything just that little bit grounded.
Towards the end you come across the first of four splash pieces about some historically important wars in the setting's backstory, starting with the pivotal Age of Apostasy that was so fundamental in shaping the Imperium, accompanying a sample John Blanche's magnum opus The Sisters of Battle.
This is probably my favourite one of these little Battle Overviews. Not only does it have the best and most evocative ending, but it also has this wonderful little blurb about Ophelia VII listing a bunch of torture methods used by the Witch Hunters, many of which seem to have been made up specifically for that blurb and it is glorious. Who knows what Death-masking entails? I do, and the answer fills me with dread.
Then there is an overview of the Imperium's military capabilities as a primer to the core of the middle section of the book - the Warhammer 40,000 game factions themselves. Each Warhammer 40,000 power is given four pages of spotlight, a big single page art panel depicting an example of one of their members, a little blurb about them above a selection of individual models, and then a big two-page photo spread of the GW studio army for them.
These photo spreads are so beautiful it would be a crime against basic decency and dignity not to include them all here so you too can marvel as I have for decades at the very apex of the 40k model range. Never before or since have 40k models looked so good.
The first for some unfathomable reason is the Space Marines, presented here in all their glory as a Space Marine army should look like.
Magnificent. It is with the goal of creating an army of models just like these ones that I have started accepting refugee Space Marine models. And when I ponder making them into an Ultramarine army, it is a vision of them looking exactly, precisely just like these ones that is front and centre in my head (along with some Firewarrior shout-outs). Except maybe with a different colour on the base rimes.
Then it's the Imperial Guard's turn.
Glorious. In addition to the main GW studio armies, the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard both get some extra pages to showcase the variant armies and model ranges. The Imperial Guard one features some of the most beautiful variant sculpts for the different Imperial Guard regiments.
Like I said each one of these spreads is prefaced with a little intro consisting of some full-page character art, a little intro blurb and a selection of models from the range. They look like this one.
My favourite thing about these intros is that with... three exceptions, all of the models in the intro gallery have a specific name. They're not just 'Battle Sister #4', they're Sister Carmina of the Adepta Sororitas. For someone just starting out in the game this does a perfect job of introducing you to the central key mechanic of the game that is naming Your Dudes and giving them some backstory.
And then you get one of the most beautiful model ranges and the absolute peak Imperium aesthetic.
It's perfect. It's beautiful and perfect and exactly what I will always want my 40k to be.
After the Inquisition page there's a brief interlude of more lore writeups, starting with an awesome crossover plug-in for Warhammer 40,000's main parent game Battlefleet Gothic.
It also features a passage about the Adeptus Mechanicus which also contains a description of the Skitarii troops as they always SHOULD be, basic cyborg humans equipped with very high-end Imperial Guard wargear like lasguns, hellguns and high-quality stubber guns, sharing the common tech-base of the Imperium, free of any ridiculous stupid bespoke proprietary nonsense guns god I hate NuGW so so much.
But I digress.
The rest of the interlude covers how The Warp works, including psychic powers and warp creatures, and it illustrates another great thing about these text interludes - they're full of all these little cryptic throwaway references to various places and creatures that are brought up here and never mentioned again. Any given list in these passages will include 2-3 items or species or places that exist in the tabletop game, but also at least one or two names that have been invented solely for the purposes of the lore in this rulebook and never show up anywhere else ever again, and it is beautiful. It makes the setting so much richer because there's always so much more going on beyond the tabletop.
Not everything needs a model in the 40k game NuGW.
The interlude ends with a description of the Horus Heresy and a spectacularly beautiful art piece depicting The Emperor In Flesh confronting that old noonday dragon. It is an instant classic. But this of course is all building up to an introduction to...
Perfection. It is MAGNIFICENT. This, right here, is the very absolute peak of the Chaos Space Marine model range, perfectly paired with a beautiful frosty ruined city in the snow. As perfect as the models themselves are, the awe-inspiring scratch-built terrain backdrops they're showcased on is what truly brings these photo spreads to the next level.
Also there is nothing that screams Chaos and Chaos Space Marines more than the killer buzzsaw Rhino that has commanded my dark imagination for 20 years.
There's another interlude of lore text after this that includes my second favourite Battle Overview in the book, about the Black Crusades and paired alongside the breathtaking Karl Kopinski Chaos Space Marines artwork. The lore blurb itself is easily the best description ever written for what it's like to build and unleash a Chaos army in Warhammer 40,000, and ends with a great introduction to the embattled world of Cadia where the Imperial Guard spearhead a desperate resistance against the occupying Chaos forces - the perfect place for you to conquer with an army of your own and show those good for nothing nepo-babies Abaddon and Creed how it's REALLY done.
The rest of the interlude goes into more detail about Chaos Space marines and Daemons, before pivoting into the next series of faction intros with a treatise on the alien species that inhabit the 41st Millennium. Again, this is an amazing little two pages of text that includes a number of alien species made up on the spot and all the more glorious for it. And again it sets up the rest of the colour section wonderfully. Much like the tracks in a truly great music album, each one of these little lore pieces is carefully placed for best effect to build on the ones next to it and take you on a truly immersive journey.
There's also this transcendently brilliant quote by Helem Boesch,
"Contact with alien races always renews one's faith in Humanity. It is my belief that foreign travel narrows the mind wonderfully."
Again at every turn the rulebook gives you the perfect window into the horrifying mindset and internal logic of the Imperium in all its evil.
But we're a long way from the Imperium now as you are shown the full indescribable beauty of the Eldar model range at the very top of its aesthetic.
Just look at that breathtaking beautiful collection of models, resplendent in a beautiful green and white colour scheme. THIS is the Eldar army I have always dreamed of.
It's also worth noting here that if you've been paying attention you'll have noticed that there is a story behind every single one of these photo spreads, relayed in the caption at the bottom. Another brilliant clever little touch to introduce new players to the central game mechanic of storytelling in Warhammer 40,000.
Then hot on their heels comes the Eldar's unashamedly wicked partners in crime, the Dark Eldar.
Look at them. Just look at them. Absolutely flawless. Beauty in model form. This is by far the best the Warhammer 40,000 Dark Eldar model range has ever looked, their glorious unique triangular design language has never been surpassed. One day I will wax lyrical about the many joys of these Dark Eldar models in far greater detail, but for now suffice to say I cannot help but EEEEEP! with giddy excited joyful love at the sight of them here.
Speaking of, the next 40k power to be introduced is- EEEEEP!
Beautiful. Brilliant. Glorious. This is the ultimate Necron model range, a mass of glittering metal souless mindless automatons slaved to the incalculable evil of their C'tan masters, a relentless wave of sheer horror that cannot be reasoned with or bought and will never stop until it has eradicated all life in the universe or been wiped out trying, JUST as Necrons should be. And look at those green plastic energy components, what a marvelous beautiful innovation they are.
I just love it all so so much. EEEEP!
But the excited joyful squeals don't stop there, they continue in earnest with the next lineup, the big green Mangalores of Warhammer 40,000.
HELL YES. Look at how beautiful those models are! Look at the Wartraks and Wartrukks, the heavy metal Stormboyz that I have loved since first glance. The peak scrap-punk aesthetic. The half-track Warbikes. God I just love it all so much!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! I LOVE IT!!
If you have been following this blog at all for the last decade or so you will not need any reminder of how much I love both the Tau and this particular Tau model range, and here it is in all its glory. Well OK GW kind of did it a little dirty here by showing only a small little chunk of the Studio Tau army including most criminally only one Hammerhead, but it's still a beautiful composition all the same. No ridiculous oversized mega-suits, no bland digital camouflage or silly white and red colour schemes, no lame drone-surfing Ethereals, no ugly NeanderTau helmets, just a beautiful collection of beautiful supermarionation inspired sci fi designs gathering together in high up in the middle of the Pale Sisters in Bretonnia.
The Tau part of this section is criminally neglected, one of the very few flaws this book has, especially conspicuous given that they are of course the main flagship game faction of the franchise. Most glaring of all is the failure to include one of those two-page battle overviews - it can't have been that much more expensive or impractical to throw in an extra two pages with some stunning artwork like that Karl Kopinski Devilfish number and a little blurb about, say, the Third Sphere wars and a little blurb about Nimbosa or Dal'yth or something.
But I digress.
Last but not least is of course the Tyranids at the very peak of their aesthetic.
HELL YES. It's perfect. All of it is perfect. I love everything in this picture. Look at those hellish psychotic nightmare grins. Look at those creature designs that show a common link without going straight into 'everyone is a gaunt or a Warrior' madness. Look at that brutal carnifex and that awe inspiring Hive Tyrant and the sinister malevolently elite Tyrant Guards surrounding it. These, these right here are the Tyranid models I have always wanted and always will.
God I just love all these model ranges so so much.
Finally there's a two-page spread battle overview about the Tyrannic Wars to round off the middle section of the book.
From there you pivot to the final section of the book, the DARK MILLENNIUM.
The Dark Millennium is the other real meat of the rulebook, and also illustrates just how closely interwoven the lore, hobby and game mechanics are in this rulebook as it contains much of the game's core rule mechanics despite being the rulebook's hobby section. It starts with an overview of all the different points contained within it.
Then it comes to the first proper section of Dark Millennium, a beautifully written guide on how to go about collecting a tabletop army for Warhammer 40,000.
This is easily the best introduction guide to collecting model armies ever written, at least for Warhammer 40,000. Just one page outlying all the most useful concepts and advice for putting together a tabletop army, then opposite that three pictures illustrating three different examples of how you might put that into practice for a given 40k army, in this case the Imperial Guard. The only singular flaw to be found is in normalising paltry little 1500 point skirmish bands as an upper ceiling for games.
Besides that this entire page was my guiding star for putting together tabletop armies for almost a decade, and for the last decade since the only modification I have made is to stockpile up all the models I want while still possible before they're discontinued - once they're safe I still follow the guidelines when it comes to actually putting together and painting them.
This section then shows you two further examples of completed armies that are the personal projects of GW staff members, specifically Ted Williams and Phil Kelly. In both cases their creators give some commentary on their process in building the army, including decisions on paint scheme and unit composition. There are also some painting guides to help you recreate the colour schemes if you wish.
The piece on Ted Williams's Blood Angels was especially influential on me. I always yearned dearly to one day have my own Tau featured in the rulebook alongside a painting guide for them and my commentary on how they came to be just like this one, so that they too would inspire some new Warhammer 40,000 hobbyist the way I was inspired here.
Unfortunately, such a dream will never come to be.
You then get walked through some of the basics for making Terrain, a vitally crucial part of tabletop gaming. The first pages cover basic overviews of tabletops themselves and scatter terrain, followed by a selection of example terrain setups based on the GW studio terrain collection, each one as beautiful and glorious as the last.
The terrain guidelines are, like the rest of the hobby material, seamlessly blended into the lore and game mechanics together into a single holistic whole in near perfect harmony. This brief terrain section is only a primer, with the real detailed terrain walkthroughs placed where they are relevant to the various missions.
The first of these missions you're presented with is Combat Patrol, a stripped down 40k game type focused around very small scale skrimishes with a lot of restrictions about what can be included in them. It's mostly intended for very short games when time constraints allow for no other alternative. This section also includes three example Combat Patrols with very simple paint schemes, showing a variety of styles that you could expect to find in the store armies of any local model store.
Pertinent to this concept of simple and fast is the next terrain guide, easily one of the best GW ever wrote.
It is glorious. On the one page is a quick overview on how to use a coloured table cloth as a makeshift tabletop ground so you can get up and running quickly and cheaply. One the other page is sheer brilliant genious - a quick and blisteringly easy means to create extremely high quality 40k ruined buildings out of serial card. No fancy tools beyond scissors, no chemicals beyond PVA glue and paint, no serious extra cost. Just photocopy the template on the page, use it to cut out the necessary shapes from the cereal box you just finished using and were about to throw out, then glue them together with a few extra embellishments from teh card scraps and paint the whole thing grey. And there you have two great looking ruined Imperial Buildings with just some common household scissors, 50c of PVA glue and some waste cereal card. Talk about upcycling!
There are two more such terrain guides, including another one with a similar ready-made template, but they don't have quite the same elegant self-contained simplicity as this one. Nonetheless with all three of them you can have a perfectly cromulent array of tabletop terrain extremely quickly and for the cost of just a little bit of spare pocket change. No other 40k rulebook has ever provided this option so concisely, and this feature alone would be enough to elevate this rulebook to the status of 40k GOAT besides all the other brilliant perfection it contains.
You are then taken through a series of half the missions in the Warhammer 40,000 game, which are unfortunately placed here separate from the others as a lamentable result to GW surrendering to the criminal demands of Tourneycorns and Sour Prudes who hate fun - the last remaining flaw of this masterpiece, though just like a beautiful woman such minor quirks only make them more uniquely mesmerising.
Nestled in between these missions is a little piece on creating little objective doodads.
Objective divots are an extremely overused game mechanic that has long since worn out its welcome, but if you absolutely must have them in your Warhammer game then this is the way to do it.
Following on from this are the Battle missions, a classic staple of Warhammer 40,000, along with the rest of the terrain building guides, for Bunkers and craters - including a template for building bunkers out of styrofoam - and a gallery of fortifications from the GW studio terrain.
Next are the Raid missions, including the rules for Hidden Setup and Sentries. The really important part here is the colour photo gallery showcasing some model conversions for sentries. I mentioned some time ago on here that my Fire Warrior teams were directly inspired by these sentry conversions, and here they are.
Absolute perfection. They even have tasteful black base rims.
There is also a showcase and guide for creating little model doodads for Hidden Setup markers, traps and minefields that also inspired me and left me feeling deeply marginalised for the criminal lack of Tau representation among them. There was the Tau minefield of course, which used to cheer me up but now HORRIFIES me at the thought of cutting up so many precious irreplaceable Battlefleet Gothic models.
Seriously, don't ever cut up OOP models. Give them to someone else who will appreciate them if you don't want them.
No, really. Don't ever do it. It is the worst possible dick move you can possibly do in this hobby.
Following this are the Breakthrough missions, again placed here at the insane demands of Sour Prudes, and then - KILL TEAM.
Kill Team is a unique 40k game mode that is completely unique to 3rd and 4th edition Warhammer 40,000. It is a very small scale asymmetric variant of the Sabotage Raid mission that pits a single team of bespoke fighters - the eponymous Kill Team - against masses and masses of henchmen in an analogue tabletop version of an 80s action film. The entire game is a love letter to 80s action movie tropes, and does not even pretend to be anything else, and it is spectacular and glorious just for that very reason.
There are a selection of example Kill Teams showcased throughout the section, most notably this one.
This was the Kill Team example that especially influenced my own Fire Warrior teams, if I had to pick just one. This was another section where I felt extremely invisible seeing no Tau Kill Teams showcased, and in turn became very resolute to one day build my own. Again I dreamed that one day they would make it into the rulebook so that no other Tau player would ever have to feel as alone and invisible as I did, but sadly that is another of many of my dreams that has died screaming.
The Kill Team section ends with a gallery of spectacular terrain setups with Kill Team missions in progress on them. Then you come to the real meat of the Warhammer 40,000 game, the Campaign rules.
Warhammer 40,000 as a tabletop game is of course built around playing campaigns, and they are the absolute highest form of 40k gameplay there is. The Campaign section covers most conventional campaign types, starting with the simplest forms like Tree Campaigns.
Then you are introduced to the very apex of 40k, Map-based Campaigns, the ultimate fusion of grand strategy, strategy, operations and tactics.
This guide for Map Campaigns is exquisite, covering all of the core logistical concerns with running one and reinforcing the core storytelling element that is central to the Warhammer 40,000 game. The crown jewel is an example map from one of the GW studio's own Map Campaigns inspired by the battle of Vogen in Cityfight.
For many many years I dreamed of leading my own armies to conquer Vogen on that very map, even discussing it with my friends who were also dabbling in 40k at the time. I had my grand strategies planned out and everything, mostly centred around taking over Gibbet Hill as a base of operations and raining down laser powered death on all who opposed me, in keeping with the combat doctrine I have always used in all my RTS video games. Subsequent exercises made after I started paying attention to the silly little mechanic lines under each text box called for a more nuanced and flexible approach.
Following this is an overview on Rolling Campaigns, and then a treatise on Node Campaigns that will become more important later on.
Then are a some gorgeous photo spreads of two beautifully painted campaign armies.
These shots were yet another big influence on me, and I always dreamed of my Tau one day being shown alongside them in the rulebook as another campaign army with a little blurb about its backstory. This dream too lies broken and dead.
The photo spreads segue wonderfully into the rules for experience in Warhammer 40,000. After each game units in Warhammer 40,000 earn or lose varying amounts of experience depending on how well they did, and once they reach certain thresholds they get various extra bonuses in the form of Battle Honours. Changes in unit composition have a disruption on this depending on how well the unit in question is trained.
In yet another holistic marriage of hobby, rules and lore the Battle Honours themselves are accompanied by a gallery of various models that have been somehow modified to reflect a specific Battle Honour as an example of some of the ways they can be shown, alongside a little caption talking more about the backstory of the model in question.
I'm sure it will come as no surprise at this point to learn that one of my dead broken dreams was to have some of my Tau featured in these galleries too alongside the others to bring some more Tau representation in and help make sure no other Tau player ever feels as alone and invisible as I did.
Following from this is another of the rulebook's great triumphs, The Battle For Phoenix Island. This is a complete pre-built ready to use Node Campaign, serving as both an example of how all the information in the Campaign section can be put into practice as well as a starting off point for new players to run their very first Warhammer 40,000 campaign. All of the necessary information needed to play out the campaign is given, including lore and introductory instructions...
... the campaign map itself...
... instructions for campaign play and terrain guides....
... And even a gorgeous two-page spread of the example armies the GW studio team used as a suggestion of what kind of forces to run with it.
There is also a spread of example terrain and table setup suggestions.
And it's incredible. Everything a new 40k player would need to run their first ever campaign with a friend. And yes, this too inspired me a lot and was a big influence on me and I always had a dream to one day have my own Tau featured as part of a pre-built campaign like this one and that dream died screaming some time ago. I'm sure this is all starting to sound very tedious by now but that fact that so many things in this book are firing my imagination and inspiring me is a compelling testament to just how fantastic it is. The mark of a truly great tabletop rulebook is its ability to inspire the imagination of any new player reading it for the first time, and that is exactly what this rulebook does in a way that no other 40k rulebook has before or since (though the 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook comes damn close).
The rulebook then starts to wind down by opening and expanding the horizon with a brief primer on the wider world of GW and some of the different types of tabletop cliques that you might encounter in the wild.
The best part about this section is that it includes a shot of some Tau on the tabletop, which is a welcome sight when you're starting to feel a little invisible after a mass of lavish gorgeous photo galleries of other game factions.
Of course it wouldn't be a GW rulebook without a plug for the wider company somewhere, and that comes right on the heels of the wider hobby world primer with a guide on where you can find out more information about GW and Warhammer and 40k if you would Like To Know More.
The main body of the rulebook comes to a close, as promised at the end of Dark Millennium, with a lavish two-page photo gallery of exquisitely painted display miniatures from the 'Eavy Metal GW painting team to the winners of the Golden Demon painting competition.
From there is mostly just odds and ends, a series of quiet corridors containing reference material for use during gameplay and an Index for easy access of information. Then, at long last, do you reach the end.
And what a perfect ending it is. A small quiet forlorn long-forgotten chamber of forlorn white alabaster, the long lost most ancient heart of the very Imperium itself, where history began long ago and where it will end long in the future, echoing with the quiet distant choirs of destiny, recording the secret forgotten Heroes of The Imperium in a credits reel fit for a classic. And at the very end a little cyber-minion diligently scrivening more ancient forbidden secret history onto parchment to be hidden away forever, alongside one last quote from inside the mind of the Imperial aristocracy that is the perfect closing line to end on.
And then you reach the end of the book!
Even the back cover is perfect, recapping the overall premise of the Imperium and giving a brief little blurb about what the hell Warhammer 40,000 even is, and some necessary publishing information at the very bottom, all bound up in the same wonderful packaging as the rest of the book.
There are no two ways about it. This book is a masterpiece. It takes everything that was great about the 3rd edition rulebook that preceded it and combines that with all of the wisdom learnt by the Games Workshop writing team in the following six years, not least from the Lord of The Rings project, to create a near-flawless rulebook that stands the test of time with distinction and remains the greatest 40k rulebook Games Workshop ever wrote.
But this rulebook is also special for another reason. It was the last 40k ruleset that was written by the original creative team behind Warhammer 40,000, in particular Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers. Andy in particular has said as much that the 4th edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook was the Swan Song of the original 40k creative team, and indeed much of what remained of the original Games Workshop team in 2004, and man does it show. That sentiment permeates every page, lending the entire book a spectacular sense of a grand sweeping epic coming to a final crashing close - the perfect mood and atmosphere for the Imperium faction in 40k.
In turn it is just the perfect natural stopping point for the 40k franchise, which is what makes it all the more tragic that GW just could not leave well enough alone and continued after it. The 4th edition codex books and models that followed in its glorious wake are a sad tale, but never once did they falter in their noble ideals and good intentions, and for all their numerous flaws it is notable that the 4th edition codex books alone out of any 40k game had the nerve to confront the so-called 'codex creep' phenomenon and not just halt it, but actively reverse it. They were ultimately betrayed in turn by corporate strategy decisions at GW, and that is a whole story worthy of a full blog post (or video essay) in its own right. But here, and now, at this 4th edition rulebook, the 40k franchise was at its perfect self-contained whole and there has never been before or since a more perfect natural stopping point for the franchise.
Ultimately the 4th edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook is to the 3rd edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook what Once is to Century Child - both are spectacular glorious marvels of pure beauty in their own right, but the later one makes good use of lessons learned to produce a masterpiece that is just that much richer, grander, more sweepingly epic and more polished in its experience.
And that is why this year we celebrate this magnificent triumph here again.
Because it demonstrates that even after ten thousand twenty years, there is no better rulebook for Warhammer 40,000!
