It’s a long accepted folk wisdom that Warhammer 40k lore is an impenetrable mass, accessible only to experienced insiders who’ve put in the hours (and years) to understand which toy soldiers are which. So the arrival of DK Books’ Warhammer 40,000: The Ultimate Guide – a 336-page tome full of luscious, annotated model photos and lore descriptions aimed at newcomers – is quite a landmark.
Released by DK Books and Games Workshop on Thursday, October 3, the Ultimate Guide is marketed as “the first-ever Warhammer 40,000 encyclopedia”, and – after a couple weeks of early access, devouring it with my fanboying eyes – I reckon that’s fair (thanks to DK for our free copy).
This thing is chock full of high-quality, blown up photos of superbly ‘Eavy Metal-painted Warhammer 40k minis, with engaging descriptions, annotations, and info boxes with deep cut narrative references that’ll delight existing fans and inject depth and mystery for newbies. No surprise, then, that the whole thing was written by two GW veterans and serial Black Library novelists: Gav Thorpe and Guy Haley.
There have been many, many big heavy Warhammer 40k books over the years that provide descriptions of GW’s grimdark future and the various Warhammer 40k factions that populate it – but none that I’ve seen have gone quite so far in pinning down and labelling everything like a butterfly collection in a museum.
Every army gets a look-in, from the various strands of the Imperium of Man (not all the Space Marine chapters get their own pages; rainforests are dying you know) right through to the relatively newly added Leagues of Votann, right at the end.
For each faction, we get a fair balance between describing the archetypal units, and zoom-ins on famous characters and their exploits – Dan Abnett fans will enjoy the detailed box-out on the main characters of the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, which has pride of place in the Astra Militarum section (even if, like me, they haven’t gotten around to painting them yet).
A particular – if only occasional – highlight for me is the book’s comparison between different models of the same character, over time. The Ultramarines section showcases the 1988, 1993, 2005, and 2018 versions of Chapter Master Marneus Calgar – an important touch to remind readers, both new fans and old, that 40k has been around for nearly 40 years, and some of its leading lights have evolved rather a lot in that time.
Retailing at $45 (£35), the Ultimate Guide is a chunky purchase for a sci-fi coffee table book you might want to put away when the inlaws come round.
But it’s also 15 bucks cheaper than the Warhammer 40k 10th edition core book, and – since part of that book is taken up with the core rules to start playing, which are now free online anyway – this might actually be a better introduction to the universe for a new fan (especially if they prefer visual learning to walls of grimdark text). I’d certainly have dug it, especially as a youngster getting into the hobby.
If this sort of thing gets you worked up to get color on some of your grey models, check out our guide to painting miniatures for some helping hands. Alternatively, follow Wargamer on Google News for daily updates across the tabletop world.
Source: Wargamer
