How Do You Fix Necromunda, and Does it Even Need Fixing?

 

On the 26th June 2026 Games Workshop announced that the next major release for their gang-warfare tabletop game, Necromunda, would a complete re-launch of the title. Old rules would be thrown out, new ones would be introduced and new additions and alterations would be made to the core experience.

Within the community many fans had suspected that an updated starter set was a likely release for 2026, with the last general starter set being 2021's Hive War, and the 2024 Secundus boxed set being more of a self-contained spin-off. So most were in agreement that a fresh starter to draw in new players set was well overdue. What many were not expecting was a full system reboot. Given that all through 2025 Necromunda had seen a ream of new releases, including expanding the ranges for the Enforcer and Nomad gangs, the idea that all these new additions were to be immediately thrown out and re-written seemed somewhat inconceivable.

On top of all of this, it has to be said that for the most part, the iteration of Necromunda that was launched in 2017 still felt by the year of 2026 as somewhat unfinished. When the Ash Wastes expansion was launched in 2022, there was a general understanding that each gang was expected to eventually get models and rules for both an exclusive vehicle and mounted units. As of time of writing most gangs are missing either one or both.

Likewise, while there had been a steady release of miniatures over the years for multiple special characters, Hanger's On and "Alliance" detachments, there still remains a lack of official models for a large amount of character types described within the rules. The 2025 release for the Hangers-On boxed set seemed to suggest we'd see more of an up tick of these releases in plastic, but now that may not be the case.

All this is to say that many would agree that there was still places left for the 2017 edition of Necromunda to go, and wiping the slate clean feels surprisingly premature for an edition that has essentially been around for ten years.

Still, as any Necromunda player can tell you, we have to accept the dice as they roll. This is what Games Workshop has decided upon, and this is what we're going to get.

Reactions have been unsurprisingly negative. Other than the aforementioned fact that many players were still expecting model releases and Ash Waste expansions for their respective gangs, there is a worry based on GW's press release that the new edition will be overly simplified. Ask any Necromunda player and they'll tell you that the best part of the game is all the wacky situations you can get into with the expansive rules whacking up against each other.

This is a game for telling stories. It's a game that is tailored towards banking everything on an impossible shot, or the humble canon fodder saving the day. It's a game where using the rules to create a silly gang feels more rewarding than creating an overpowered one.

Yet, a change is coming along, and we're going to have to accept that some things we love from the game may not carry over, but I do think it is premature to start despairing right away. We know almost nothing about the new rules, and internet sleuths trying glean an idea of the changes based on the one announcement article are no closer to paying dividends.

Instead, I thought it would be worth thinking about what changes really ought to be made to Necromunda as it stands, and what alterations, eliminations and conversions the game could benefit from, both in the moment to moment experience and in terms of drawing in new players.

The way I see it, Necromunda has three broad problems:

Power Creep, Campaign Over-focus and Rulebook Bloat.

Power Creep.

When Necromunda first relaunched in 2017, the general load-out of weapons and gear afforded to gangers was fairly limited, and the special abilities of most characters all the way up to the Gang Leaders were moderately balanced. What this meant was that most games played out as a desperate battle of potshots and frantic close combat encounters. Gangers could be wiped out by a lucky hit early in the game, or cling on, struggling all the way to the end.

This all felt very in line with what the game was supposed to represent, a bunch of low-tech roughnecks struggling over meagre territory and resources. Most weapons did modest damage at around 3 - 4 Strength, while Armour Saves at 5+ or 6+ were at best a Hail Mary.

By 2026, Necromunda has become a game where players are fielding multiple instant death machines. Nearly every character is rolling out equipped with armour piercing weapons. Close combat specialists are charging into combat with 5 or more attacks. Most Champions are defended behind Armour Saves of 4+ or 3+.

When Necromunda began I would always sing its praises by claiming that the humble Lasgun is one of its most reliable weapons. By 2026 there are some gang load-outs where a Lasgun is almost incapable of doing any damage at all.

This problem is down to a variety of factors. Gangs with better than average Armour Saves started being introduced as early as the Enforcers in 2019, so the House Gangs were given access to better armour to catch up. More and more special weapon types were being introduced, so gang access to mainstays like Melta-guns and Plasma weapons became standardised. When specialist versions of gang Champions were introduced in the House books, many of these were designed as pure close combat specialists, hitting on 2+ in close combat with so many attacks that the odds were almost always in their favour.

The problem this caused is that games started to feature characters and load-outs that essentially became 'instant death' dealers the moment they got in range. For the person controlling these characters, it felt very cool and exciting, but to the player on the receiving end it was anything but, and not at all fun to be in a situation where you were losing fighters with no counter or recourse.

So, what needs to change to get things back in gear? Some stuff you just can't put back in the box. We can't un-do the special Champion characters, but maybe there are a few thing that can be tweaked to make them less overpowered.

First of all, maybe consider changing all characters with a +2 hit skill, be this Weapons Skill or Ballistic skill, to go up to 3+ instead. This is still a strong ability skill to have, especially with range modifiers, but moves them away from getting guaranteed hits nearly every time.

Likewise, there could be some re-shuffling when it comes to the way close combat works. I've seen some suggestions that a target's Reaction Attack should trigger after the attacker's first attack roll, with multiple reactions playing out concurrently if the target has an Attacks score higher than 1. This gives close combat focussed characters a better chance of survival, giving them the potential to kill their attacker before their full number of attacks can come into effect.

I've also seen suggestions that targets of close combat attacks should have some kind of 'block' mechanic, such as if the attacker has an Attack score of 3, and the defender has an Attack score of 2, then the defender should be able to sacrifice one of their reaction attacks to 'block' one attack, eventually reducing the attacker to 2 attacks.

All good ideas, but I have to say I'm not 100% sure on them. I think personally the entire game could do with a reduction in the amount of close combat attacks characters can have. Bring regular Champions down to 1 attack like a basic ganger, with only Leaders and special Champions having access to 2, and 3 attacks in rare cases for special characters and Brutes.

I think rapid fire weapons could also benefit this way, where the player can choose to fire a single shot, or on 'full auto,' with the player only getting the benefit of the Rapid Fire trait on 'full auto' but with a reduction to their hit roll. This prevents gangs like the Squats from being able to mince opposing players with just their basic weapons.

As for the rest of the power creep, I think there's some pieces of wargear, like Armoured Undersuits, that should be scrapped entirely. To me the game is much better when armour has that 'Hail Mary' factor, and the ability for players to just bump up their save by 1 for a down payment has been a contributing factor to the aforementioned power creep. On a similar note, I'd like to see the removal of Suspensors, bringing Heavy Weapons back to requiring both actions to fire, as well as the removal of scopes and other upgrades like Focussing Crystals that allow players to bump up their chance to hit.

When it comes to absurdly powerful weapons like Meltaguns, or Wargear ripe for abuse like Falsehoods, I think the game could benefit from an 'Exclusive' gear classification. Essentially this would mean that you can still purchase Meltaguns, Plasma guns, whatever, for your gang, but only one 'Exclusive' item could be purchased. So, should a player decide to give one of their Champions a Meltagun, that is their one 'Exclusive' piece of gear allocated to the gang, they cannot then purchase and equip another Weapon or Wargear in this category, so they cannot also, say, equip another ganger with a Plasma Gun, or a Falsehood. If you want one of these absurdly powerful items, you have to pick one, and only one.

I think there's a fair few pieces of gear that would suit being restricted in this category. Displacer Fields, Phase weapons, Rad weapons. I think it would get gangs back to focussing more on modest weapons like Lasguns and Shotguns, and prevent players from trying to build characters around the most broken combinations of Weapons and Wargear that they can.

On that same line of thinking, I'd like to see Tactics Cards get a bit of an overhaul, and some of the more powerful cards removed entirely. I think the more specific, low-scale cards like 'Click' and 'Last Gasp' make the game more interesting and competitive in comparison to cards that can completely turn a game around when used, like the ability to disregard an Out of Action or force an opponent into a Bottle Test.

These changes, as listed, would all be in aid of bringing back the 'tug of war' feeling to the game, over specific, powerful characters dominating the battle.

Campaign Overfocus

Necromunda was designed from the ground up with campaign play in mind. This is a good thing. The appeal of the game is putting the players into the mindset of these wacky and high-concept gangs, being able to watch them grow and evolve and delve more into a role-playing mindset. Campaign play absolutely needs to stay.

What has been a problem with the campaign focus in the past, however, is the fact that so many elements of the game have become exclusively wedded to the campaign mode, with no real ability to use these elements in a quick skirmish. While it certainly works to encourage players to want to dive into the campaign mode, it also has the unfortunate side effect of discouraging skirmish play, and by extension making the game look more off-putting to new players.

As an example, take the Secundus boxed set. This was touted as an independent starter set. It featured two gangs, Malstrain Genestealers and Van Saar Tek Hunters (with Spyres). With the exception of the self-contained scenario that was released with the box, neither of these gangs were legally playable for either standard Skirmish or Regular campaigns. If you bought the set and were completely green to Necromunda, you would still be left without a standard playable gang. The set was very much intended as a base for the Underhells game instead, with the Tek Hunters and Spyres featured as an expansion to existing gangs, and the Genestealers intended as Arbitrator controlled monsters.

As another example, 2025 saw the release of the Palantite Justicars boxed set. To a new player, one would think that this was a brand new gang that one could put together and play right out of the box. Upon further inspection however, you would discover that the Justicars are actually an "Alliance" detachment, that is intended purely to be used in campaign play. While they can be used as the base for an Outcast gang, these are not usually recommended as a starting point for new players.

The current iteration is riddled with instances like this. As it stands there are rules for Alliance gang detachments, which cover Merchant Guilds, Criminal Organisations and Noble Houses. There are rules for special characters known as House Agents, which includes the towering Ozostium Aranthus, the main villain of the recent ongoing storyline. There are multiple rules for Hangers-On, many gang exclusive, which work as permanent gang upgrades in the form of characters that 'might' show up in battle on a bad roll.

All of the above, by their standard rules, can only be used in Campaign play. There are no rules that allow these character types to be used in a skirmish outside of a gaming group's commonly agreed upon house rules.

While, again, this does encourage players to seek out and explore the campaign side of things, it can also make the game look bafflingly impenetrable to outsiders. If a new player likes the look of the Malstrain Genestealers, or the Water Guild Subnautican, or the Haera Helmawr model, they're going to be instantly deflated when told they can't just buy it off the shelf and use it in their first trial game.

On top of all of this is the fact that, in my experience, most people are playing more skirmishes than campaigns. This isn't down to the campaigns being bad, or players not wanting to do campaigns, but the vast majority of Necromunda players are adults in their 30's. Being able to get together with enough constant regularity to run a Necromunda campaign can be quite difficult and as such most of their play time will be one-off skirmishes as and when players are available. I know that speaks to my experience with the game, and I imagine it does to many others.

What I'd like to see is GW take all those rules and models that are exclusive to campaign play and adapt them to be used in skirmish. Give the Alliance detachment a numerical point count so they can be fielded along with a gang as normal, same goes for the House Agents and funky weapons buried away in the Black Market.

If players don't have the time to sink into a campaign, they should at least have the chance to use a lot of this fun stuff whenever they can find the time for it.

Rulebook Bloat.

Even from its launch in 2017 I always felt like Necromunda could be a bit cumbersome and unwieldy. I would frequently refer to Necromunda as "A game of twos," because there were multiple instances of two similar mechanics to keep track of. Ammo Checks and Ammo Rolls. Break Checks and Bottle Tests. Flesh Wounds and Wounds. Even for an experienced player, there was so much to keep track of that it was easy to forget where and when to do various rolls.

Over time, this only got worse with the inclusion of additional mechanics and traits. Gang bonuses, damage over time, extra rolls on 6s. With so much in the air, things easily slipped through the net, while the multitude of extra mechanics meant leafing through rulebooks to double-check how things worked was a common occurrence.

Over the years I've had a bad habit of forgetting to roll a Cool Check when activating a fighter after my gang has Bottled Out. Other players have frequently forgotten when their weapon was out of ammo and fired multiple shots before they remembered to reload. Character abilities have frequently been misinterpreted and incorrectly passed around by word of mouth.

Naturally, not all of these elements can be cleaned up and simplified, but I think the game really could benefit from changes that leave the players with less to keep track of and less rule book consultation.

Some suggestions? How about eliminating the Ammo Check and instead having a weapon automatically go straight out of ammo when the bullet symbol is rolled on the Ammo Dice? How about rolling your Cool Checks on every fighter for a Bottled gang at the start of the round, rather than on activation? How about resolving Blaze the same way as Broken rather than having to mess around with scatter dice?

Likewise, I think a lot of the weapon traits could easily be consolidated. Melta and Sever are basically the same thing, while trying to keep track of the difference between Power, Phase, Shock, Flash, Stun and Seismic makes things easy to mix up. I think the system could really benefit from being stripped down to a group of core, easy to remember traits instead of the dozens of permutations we have now.

On a similar note, I think the descriptions could be shortened to an easily readable statement. The description for the Power trait simply needs to be 'On hit roll, if 6, ignore armour save.' With very brief, straightforward descriptions like this, it would be much easier for the rule books to come with a 'cheat sheet' that fits all of the traits and abilities on one page.

This, I think, comes to the crux of the matter. There simply needs to be a reduction of instances that require constantly going back and checking the rulebook to see how things work. Traits, Abilities and Tactics that require multiple steps should be simplified or removed. When actions are written as, 'roll this, then check this, then roll again, then do this,' it wastes everyone's time and becomes easy to forget. Likewise, Special Abilities and weapon Traits that require rolling on a chart are such a bane on the game and stop the action every time it comes up. They need to go.

All things considered, I think I've made my argument clear. I've nothing against a plethora of traits and special rules, but they need to be easy to remember, follow a similar line of logic, and require as few steps as possible. Abilities like Dodge are great, you just need one roll of the dice on a hit. Abilities like Crushing Blow, where you have to nominate one of your attacks and that results in an extra roll, is cumbersome and easy to mix up.

Everything Else

Beyond all that there are a few more things I'd like to see alterations to, but given that we know so little of the scope of the new edition, it's going to be hard to speculate on what is sticking around and what isn't. I could go into the ways I think they could improve Chem Alchemy for House Escher, for example, but we don't know if House-exclusive mechanics like Chem Alchemy are going to remain in the game in the first place.

I could go on about how I'd like Dome Runners to be given more utility and weirder Wargear like Ratskin Maps and Mung Vases given more focus as campaign rewards. I'd like to see Bounty Hunters become more viable, with maybe the ability to hire them specifically to target troublesome members of opposing Gangs. I'd like to see the Sentries rules re-worked to be a bit more interesting to play and of course I'd like to see the Vehicle rules heavily simplified, because as-is trying to explain Ash Wastes rules to new players is a fucking nightmare.

And don't get me started on Spyrers.

In the end, I'd like Necromunda to thread the needle of streamlining the rules without losing any of its complexity and character. I'd like to see more elements folded into the Skirmish mode without Campaigns losing any of their appeal. I'd like to see the more powerful weapons scaled back without it feeling as though the gangs were being nerfed.

No easy thing, but Necromunda had had nearly a decade of revisions and alterations, so, if nothing else, I'd hope that GW has enough data and experience to make the right calls.

And if they don't, well, we have nearly ten years of content to keep us going if we don't end up liking the new edition, and that ain't bad.

-----------------------------

Jack Harvey 2026

Mechanicus 2 is a Great Game, but Shouldn't Have Been Called Mechanicus 2

 

Having just finished Mechanicus 2, I can safely say that Bulwark Studios' follow up to their surprise 2018 hit is a well crafted tactical experience, an entertaining cyber gothic jaunt, and a worthy entry into the canon of great Warhammer 40'000 video games. You wouldn't know it, however, looking at the average discussions on the Mechanicus game Reddit page, or from its currently mixed review score on Steam.

Truth is, I understand why some players feel sour on Mechanicus 2. It is a very different game from the first, with very different priorities. It zigs where the previous game zags. It focusses its attention elsewhere. If you came out of Mechanicus 1 wanting more Mechanicus 1, then Mechanicus 2 certainly does not deliver on that.

In many respects, the game reminds me of the similar situation Dawn of War 2 found itself in. A very smartly designed game with a lot of depth and creativity, that nonetheless was not what players wanted coming out of Dawn of War 1.

So, let's tackle that, I guess.

Part 1: Just Another Brick in the Wall.

One of the reasons that Mechanicus caught so many people's attention is that despite being a Turn-Based Strategy Game, it was mechanically different from what so many people were used to. Normally TBS games follow the core design popularised by XCOM. Units have a predetermined turn order, a limited pool of 'action points,' and inflicting damage is dictated by an invisible dice roll chance to hit.

Mechanicus, instead, eschewed nearly all of these conventions. You could choose to play your units in any order each round. Instead of having a limited number of actions, your units shared a pool of 'cognition points,' which were accumulated from various power sources across the map, and could theoretically allow units to make as many moves as they wanted. Attacks always hit, though damage could vary and certain abilities could negate it.

The only exception to these rules were secondary support units, which could only move and shoot once per turn, but these very much were supporting players in the fight, with your Tech-Priests in the starring role.

What this did was bring a great degree of tactical depth to the game, and allowed players to focus on a wide variety of strategies. It also allowed for a significant scope of progression. At the start of the campaign, players had to be very careful, as they were limited to only a few cognition points. By the end of the game, your Tech-Priests were running across the length of the entire map in Turn 1 and mauling Necrons in close combat, or firing off multiple shoulder mounted canons to wipe out the enemy before they could even act.

This, naturally, made the game something that obsessive players could easily get addicted to. Your Tech-Priests have a wide variety of skill options to choose from, and they can mix and match them from multiple trees. With some experimentation it is possible to reach some absolutely game-breaking builds, and the re-playability of the campaign meant that there was ample opportunity for such experiments.

What Mechanicus had in mechanical depth, however, it lacked in terms of narrative scope. The plot of the first game is relatively threadbare, with the Imperial war against the Necrons going on entirely in the background, and the missions themselves involving Adeptus Mechanicus strike teams embarking on expeditions to weaken the Necron war effort.

Each expedition works as a sort of Rouge-lite run, where the player has to navigate across the map of a Necron complex, avoiding hazards, and making logistical decisions that can potentially help or hinder the player in the battles proper. The health of the squad persists across these runs, so losing Tech-Priests early can doom one before it has truly begun.

While each run has a specific story conceit from the high ranking Tech-Priest giving the briefing, there are only four types of battles. Kill all enemies. Survive a number of rounds. Reach an extraction point. Kill a Necron boss. Despite all this, the variability of the game means that it never feels stale, and you barely notice the limited number of objectives when playing the game the first time around.

Wrap all of this inside one of the most infectious soundtracks ever committed to a game, and you've got the makings of an absolute cult classic, and that is exactly what it was. Mechanicus got by with very good word of mouth, sold well, and had players eagerly awaiting a sequel for years. When that sequel did arrive, however, it wasn't quite what the fans expected.

Part 2: Welcome to the Machine.

Mechanicus 2, is not Mechanicus 1. Despite sharing similar DNA, and being a narrative sequel to the first game, Mechanicus 2 is otherwise entirely its own thing. Most of the elements that made Mechanicus unique are significantly de-prioritised in the sequel.

The big contributing factor, I feel, was the decision to focus more on the secondary units. Unlike in Mechanicus 1, where most of the action was done by your squad of Tech-Priests, this time only one Tech-Priest partakes in the battle, the bulk of the fighting being done by your force of what were previously secondary units, which, again, may only move and shoot once per turn.

What this does is move the focus away from the cognition point system. Where in the first game your access to cognition points could make or break a battle, here they are primarily used for activating your Tech-Priest's secondary weapons and buffs. This change also transitions over to the Necron campaign, who don't have access to cognition points at all, but instead a 'Dominion' system, where the more damage the Necrons do over the course of a battle, the more powerful abilities they gain access to.

All this puts Mechanicus 2 more square in line with traditional TBS games. While it still has some of the original's more unique elements, you can still activate your units in any order, and attacks (nearly) always hit, the game feels much more designed with a casual player base in mind. If you were the kind of person who bounced off the first game because it was too unorthodox, Mechanicus 2 is being more traditional will likely win you over.

So too do these priorities relate to your character's skill trees. Gone are the sprawling levels of customisation from the first game, instead each character is already specced to perform a particular role, and has a skill tree to accompany that. Most of your points will be spent on expanding your deployment count and buffing your basic troops. There are no game breaking power combos here.

If you've read this far you're probably coming to the conclusion that Mechanicus 2 lacks a lot of the mechanical depth of the first game, and a lot of the unique aspects that made it interesting, and you'd be right. Why then, do I still consider the game great? Well, because I'm judging Mechanicus 2 by what it is, not what it isn't, and what it is is a solid, action packed ride through some of the more lesser explored parts of the Warhammer 40'000 universe.

Part 3: High Hopes.

While Mechanicus 1 had some very interesting characters with quirky personalities, and some great vocal taunts from its Necron villains, it didn't really have much of a plot to speak of. You arrive on the planet, you fight a bunch of Necrons, you beat them, roll credits. By contrast, Mechanicus 2 puts a significant amount of effort into weaving a detailed plot with twists, turns, surprises and betrayals.

Not only does it do this, but it delivers two campaigns that allow you to experience the story from different perspectives. There are mysteries raised in the Adeptus Mechanicus campaign that are resolved in the Necron one, and vice versa. Both campaigns have a sprawling cast of characters, from the cynical and demanding Omnisynnod council of Tech-Priests, to the Necron Phaeron's scheming advisors and generals, to cameo appearances from the Leagues of Votann and the Iron Hands chapter of Space Marines.

This widening of scope and greater priority on story means we get to experience a broader deal of the action this time around. While we don't get to partake in any large scale battles, you won't be commanding any tanks or aircraft here, we will still find ourself fighting on the planet's surface as much as we do in Necron tombs, and we'll even do battle in towering Forge-City spires.

All this is to say that Mechanicus 2's priorities are in a very different place. It wants to take you on more of a roller-coaster ride than the first game, albeit still at the kind of pace you'd expect with Turn-Based combat. This is a game that wants you to be absorbed into the fiction of its world more than that it wants you crunching numbers in order to unlock more powerful combos.

And I know some players are going to have a problem with that. I know many fans who have dedicated hundreds of hours to the first game are going to be disappointed to find that the sequel does not have the same degree of complexity.

It's very clear that Bulwark Studios didn't want to just sit back and do Mechanicus 1 again. They wanted to make a game with a different kind of scope with different priorities, and they absolutely nailed that in my opinion. Narratively, this game digs deeper into the backstory of both of its primary factions in ways that we haven't seen in video games before.

I love the cynical paranoia and duplicity of the Adeptus Mechanicus' senior Tech-Priests. I love the constant schemes and double-crosses that plague the Necron court. I love that the Votann are finally getting a bit of a spotlight. I love that I can joke that Scaevola and Nefershah have a toxic yuri relationship.

Alas, Mechanicus 2 just isn't getting a fair shake, and it is in no small part thanks to it's name.

Part 4: You Know You Just Can't Win.

I honestly reckon if they hadn't called it Mechanicus 2 then the game would have been embraced with open arms. It they'd called it, Warhammer 40'000: Battle for Heketeus IV, or Souls of Steel, or something, then audiences would have been more receptive to the changes. They'd have gone in understanding that the game is entirely its own thing, not something that picking up the baton of Mechanicus 1 and enhancing and evolving its gameplay mechanics.

I understand, though, that doing a name change probably wasn't really an option. In this current era of the digital economy, it is insanely hard to capture people's attention and get the word out. Had Bulwark Studios gone with a different name, they'd have run into the very real possibility that audiences would miss that it was a sequel to Mechanicus. They'd basically have to forgo the word of mouth and good will the first game had got in the hopes they'd find an audience all over again.

They had to call it Mechanicus 2 because brand recognition is the best form of advertising you can get these days. Better to run the risk of being labelled an unworthy sequel than languish at the bottom of the Steam charts on day of release. In a better world, in a more sane one that didn't have such a demented digital distribution process, Bulwark could probably have got away with a name change, but not in this one.

All in all, its a damn shame that Bulwark has found itself between a rock and a hard place. Mechanicus 2 is a great game, of that I have no doubt, but I don't really know what you could do to quell the dissenters. For many, this game is going to be the great disappointment of 2026. For those who spent years tweaking their Tech-Priest's power-sets and experimenting with combos, Mechanicus 2 really does have nothing to offer them.

This, unfortunately, doesn't bring me to an easy conclusion. It is highly likely that in time the opinion of Mechanicus 2 will mellow, but right now that mixed review score on Steam is really going to jeopardize the studio's reputation. I'm really hoping that the rumoured Votann DLC will smooth some things over and really let them reinforce that this is a game focussed on story first and foremost.

Mechanicus 1 hasn't gone anywhere. It is still there. Still available to play. Mechanicus 2 hasn't changed that. As the old adage goes, "Why not both?"

---------------------------------------

Jack Harvey 2026

Why That Warhammer 40'000 TV Show Is Probably Never Going To Happen.

 

I know you probably don't want to hear this, but that Henry Cavill Warhammer 40k TV show is probably not going to happen.

Don't feel bad. It was always going to be a long shot.

If you're a Warhammer fan of any stripe chances are you will have fantasised about a 40k movie or TV show at one time or another. This is not unusual. When you have a niche interest then mainstream live-action productions can frequently feel like cultural approval. "You were always right to like this thing."

It's a mostly false assumption, of course. You shouldn't need external validation to like the things you like. Fallout isn't any more a valid fictional work than Halo just because Fallout had a successful TV show while Halo's flopped, but to Halo fans it obviously stings a bit when they hear colleagues around the water cooler talking about Fallout when they could have been talking about Halo.

So when we get titbits of news about a Warhammer TV show or a movie happening we tend to hold onto them like a flotation aid. "It's going to happen," we tell ourselves "Mainstream acceptance at last!" The truth of the matter is, however, that hope alone isn't going to deliver these fantasies, and Warhammer 40k, a fictional setting that is defined frequently by the very absence of hope, has a difficult road to walk before your work colleges will be gushing about Roboute Guilliman around the water cooler.

I've always wanted to see a successful 40k TV show or movie some day, but I know how unlikely a proposition that is, not just from my degree in media and film production, but also just from paying attention to the film and TV landscape of the last fifteen years. Just because, against all odds, we got a successful TV show based on Fallout, doesn't make a 40k TV show any more likely.

In fact, keep Fallout in your mind for now, because that's a good place to weave into the first and primary issue a 40k show is going to have to face.

Part One: Budget.

TV shows are expected to make money. You know this. However, they work a little differently from films because they are not a "one time charge," product like movies are. With films, a studio creates the product (shoots the movie,) makes it available for purchase (puts it in cinemas,) charges for the product (sells tickets,) and then hope their takings outweigh their expenditure (if enough tickets are sold, the cost of the movie is paid for, and everything else is profit.)

With TV, everything is a little more opaque. You don't pay a one time charge for every episode of The Traitors you watch. Instead, TV shows are expected to "contribute," to an overall entertainment and media service. The more viewers the shows get, the more money the company can make, either through advertising (the more viewers you pull in, the more you can charge potential clients,) or through subscriptions (the more viewers you have, the more likely they are to keep paying you month-by-month, and the higher you can charge them.)

(Note: One exception here is state broadcasters like the BBC, which do not work towards a profit and instead is paid for by a licence fee. It's a little more complicated in their regard, but ultimately they still have to justify their existence by pulling in decent viewing numbers.)

All this is to say, TV services do not want to spend a lot of money if they can get away with it. Winning back their costs can be much harder than film. It's why they commission so many reality TV shows. A low budget show failing to find an audience is bad, but an expensive TV show failing to find an audience can be catastrophic. It's the kind of situation people lose their jobs over, or in worse cases can doom entire networks.

"But Jack!" I hear you cry. "What about Fallout? That was a weird risk based on a niche IP that was no doubt very expensive to to pull off, and that made it to air!"

So, the thing is, I get it. Fallout is based around an IP set in a universe of very specific, hyper technical lore and backstory, with a unique aesthetic and involves guys in big suits of power armour shooting guns. Sure. If they can pull off a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin, they can pull off a Space Marine Terminator, right?

See, you're not wrong. We really are living in an era where studios are willing to take a greater chance on more risky projects. In many ways this was thanks to Game of Thrones, which at the time was a very risky proposition that many predicted would be an expensive disaster. Thrones became a massive hit, and a huge earner for HBO. Many of the folks involved would become household names. It's genuinely surprising that a TV show based around the kind of story only my D&D group would have been interested in became a common subject of discussion by my Dad's mates at rugby matches.

But Game of Thrones, and even Fallout, is a galaxy away from something like 40k. Fallout is still, by and large, a setting that you can film mostly with sets and locations. It's going to take place in dusty desert environments, or ruined convenience stores, something that US TV production has an abundance of. Game of Thrones, taking place in a world and time completely separate from ours, could be filmed with locations and props rooted within our real world past.

Take a look at one image from Warhammer 40'000, though. Any one. A codex cover. A video game screenshot. A diorama of the models themselves. What is the first thing that jumps out to you?

These images are BUSY. They are often filled with large groups of people, huge, titanic machines and buildings in the background. Artifacts and livery are emblazoned on nearly every piece of clothing. Purity seals rustle in the breeze. Cyber-cherubs glide through the sky. Servitors cluster around broken vehicles as soldiers, dead in the eye, charge towards their next brush with death.

In 2010, Games Workshop released their very first attempt at at a Warhammer 40'000 cinematic production. It was called Ultramarines. It used state of the art CGI and motion capture technology. It had an all-star cast of venerable British actors and a script penned by Dan Abnett, author of many beloved 40k novels. It flopped spectacularly and was dismissed by almost everybody as a failed experiment.

The film had many problems. The script was bland and unadventurous. The CGI looked simplistic and was compared unfavourably to video game cutscenes. However, the real problem is clear as day to those who think about it. The film just looks too empty. While the Space Marines and their weapons are rendered in loving detail, the sets around them are starkly lacking in anything at all. Open hanger bays and flat desert environments are the stage on which this adventure is set. It were as though the film took place on an empty Garry's Mod server.

For a 40k story this is a big problem! Where are the servitors, clanking to their work? Where are the servo skulls buzzing around? Where are the inconceivably large ruins tangled in colossal pipes and support beams, flanked by titanic statues of warriors and saints?

More than anything else, it is the sheer amount of "stuff," going on that really makes 40k what is is, and that isn't something that you can do on the cheap.

Now I can already hear you typing. "Well why not start small? We don't need to go right into a massive story. Start with something like Gaunt's Ghosts, where all the heroes and antagonists are human, or tell a story about a small war-band investigating a low-tech planet!" I understand that instinct. If budget is the problem then why don't we shrink things down? Why not strip away the bigger stuff at first until the show has a sizeable enough audience that can then coax the studio into giving them a bigger budget?

Here you have two problems. Firstly, budget isn't a matter of "big is expensive, small is cheap." HBO's Deadwood was famously one of the most expensive TV shows ever made at the time it went to air, and that show just took place on one old-time wild-west street. Using CGI and blue-screen can often be MORE expensive than locations or sets. Productions can bleed money in a variety of ways. Writing a story about an Inquisition agent trailing a fugitive in just a single Hive City block sounds like it could be done on the cheap, but it could just as easily become astronomically expensive as it is, putting aside the fact that even a small scale-40k story has to have weapons and armour purpose built for the show. They can't just do what Alien Earth did and get some off-the-shelf helmets and fatigues and slap some Pulse-Rifle looking frames on existing gun props.

Problem number two is the bigger one though. That's not Warhammer 40'000. That's a story SET in Warhammer 40'000. The difference? Well imagine if they did a Fallout TV show and it was set entirely within a vault. Just the characters getting swept up in drama and adventure, but they never actually enter the wasteland. Sure you could do a decent story with that framework. There's no reason why a Fallout story can't be set entirely within a vault, but fans of the games are going to spend the entire viewing experience as Milhouse asking when they are going to get to the fireworks factory. As for the new audiences, they might very well enjoy that show, but it would not be representative of the "Fallout experience." Half the appeal would be lost in adaption.

They didn't do that though did they? They asked "What is the core Fallout experience, in brief?" The answer is, generally, "Naive and inexperienced vault dweller is forced to leave their relative safety and learn to survives in a hostile wasteland, learning about the strange state of the world from both new friends and enemies."

That is exactly what they delivered when the first season went to air.

So what is the core Warhammer 40'000 experience? Fundamentally it is "Massive armies clash in a nightmare future war." Massive armies. Nightmare future. This is WARhammer. In this dark future there is ONLY WAR. You can't justify a WARhammer TV show that is about an Inquisitor or Assassin on a lone mission, or a small squad on a tactical raid. "Massive armies, going to war." That is what will be expected, that is what will be needed, this is what Games Workshop is going to want as a forward facing part of their brand, and anything else, even if good, would be misrepresentative of what 40k is supposed to be about.

You have to ask if it would be even remotely possible to pull that off on a TV budget.

Part 2: Marketability

So lets say we nail it anyway. We get a smart and savvy show-runner that knows how to squeeze every cent out of their budget and a writing team that can make every second of screen time feel like a genuine 40k experience. This is still something you're going to need to get broadcasters, investors, shareholders and distributors behind.

If you're a deep fan of 40k it might be easy to forget just how weird this fictional setting is. A lot of people compare it to Dune, or Alien, and make the argument that Event Horizon is an unofficial prequel (it isn't, and it never will be, stop trying to make that a thing,) but the truth is that 40k is far stranger than all of those by design. The Imperium of Man is supposed to be as off-putting as possible in such a way that it can feel more alien to us than some of the aliens in 40k do.

This is a setting that has a church more perverse than the most oppressive theocracies in history. This is a setting where your average Joe works morning noon and night in lung blackening conditions all to get by long enough for their children to grow up and do an even worse job. That is if they aren't lobotomised and turned into cyborg servitors first, or recruited to die an agonising death in a war on the other side of the galaxy.

This is a setting where a single second's thought of resistance can see you executed in the most heinous way, thanks to the merest possibility that your thoughts for a better life leave you open to demonic possession, and if your fight for a better life did ever get off the ground, there's the very real possibility that it gets co-opted by the aforementioned demons or alien parasites and just ends up making everything worse.

Oh, and also there's a bunch of big green aliens that look and act like cartoon characters and spend their entire lives acting like they are in hyper-violent Buster Keaton routines.

Oh, and the Elves from Lord of the Rings are there basically playing 4-D chess with galactic politics.

Oh and there are a bunch of metal spooky scary skeletons that...

You get the idea.

Point is, the 40k setting is a really difficult fictional world to introduce to an audience going in blind. To compare this to Fallout again, that show simply needed to explain that "Nuclear war happened, there's robots and mutants and future-knights, and a bunch of people living in bunkers, and everything is like the 50s." That's not too much of a hurdle, and given that most people have seen one of the Mad Max films, they're probably already halfway there before the end of the first episode.

40k though? There's so much you need to get through. Sure you can leave out the backstory of the Emperor, servitors, how the warp works, what exactly Space Marines are, etc, but the problem is if you leave too much unexplained it is going to become a problem further down the line. This will especially be a problem when adapting a pre-existing story from one of the books or comics, because those were written under the assumption that the reader already has a familiarity with the setting in the first place.

That isn't to say it can't be done. I think a lot of the video games do a good job of quickly explaining to the player everything they need to know before going into battle, but video games aren't TV. You can get away with over-explaining background lore in games in a way you can't really in live action drama. In playing Darktide, for example, through interactions with the medical and armoury servitors, we immediately understand their role and purpose within the setting without ever having to be sat down and told what they are. A TV show might have a more difficult time applying show-don't-tell to the setting's more weirder aspects, and that's even before a story of bleak, oppressive totalitarianism introduces something wacky and over-the-top like Nurglings or the Orks.

On top of all this, you have to remember, that executives don't like risks. Believe me when I say that the people at the top have no idea what they are doing, so nine times out of ten they just try and copy what is already successful. This is how you end up with every studio trying to start a cinematic universe after the success of the Avengers. This is how you end up with a dozen Game of Thrones spin-offs and knock-offs. These are the kind of people you need to convince a TV show is worth spending money on.

"It's like Dune!" you plead, as they take a look of concept art of a big green monster that almost certainly doesn't come from Denis Villeneuve's beautifully cerebral fever dream. "Uh... with a bit of Lord of the Rings!" you add, as they flip through the script to be confronted with a scene that uses words like "Immaterium," "Astropath," and "Gellar fields," You pull at your collar, sweat running down your brow. "Uhh... you ever see the film Event Horizon?"

The things is, they are not just the ones you have to convince. With any pitch, there are multiple points of failure, from the executives at the top, to the broadcasters that set the budget, scheduling teams who pick the timeslot, to the test audiences that can trap it in development limbo, to the final viewing figures that can doom the project on day one.

This is a difficult proposition for any TV show, but it's going to be a particular uphill struggle for something that is going to use the word "Omnissiah," on a regular basis. A 40k show is going to have to jump through so many hoops from concept to screen, in order to get the support it requires, the budget it needs, and to be able to actually advertise and sell itself to the general public.

And even after all of that, there's no guarantee it'll actually be good.

Part Three: Fan Reaction.

When Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out in 2017 I heard about the reactions first. Fans were abandoning the franchise after years of dedication, online chatter suggested. Star Wars had been ruined beyond repair, I was told. I was left wondering what lore-breaking controversial changes had been made that would cause such an uproar.

Then I went to see the film and it was a normal Star Wars film where normal Star Wars stuff happens.

I'm not going to litigate the reaction to The Last Jedi here, but I think there is no better example of how we now live in a world where fan expectation can blow things completely out of proportion. Thanks to the internet, amongst other culprits, fandom disappointment can now be turned into a world altering event. It would be funny if wasn't for the actual harm that comes from fan backlash. Harassment, stalking, death threats and worse have all manifests from the unhealthy obsession that fandom has festered into in certain corners of society.

40k is no different in this regard, but no other IP is situated to be such a perfect breeding ground for unrealistic expectations and petulant backlash. Given the size of the franchise, and the fact that this is a big universe being adapted, not a linier story, it is going to be almost impossible to please everyone. 40k means different things to different people and what a TV show chooses to prioritise is going to appeal to some and alienate others.

The titular Space Marines, for example, are beloved by many fans but despised by others for their tendency to steal the spotlight from the other factions. A TV show that dedicates an inordinate amount of time to our big boys in big shoulder pads is almost certainly going to bristle against fans who want to see parts of the wider galaxy. A TV show that locks itself purely into the point of view of human protagonists is going to struggle to win over the fans who like to experience the story from the alien and supernatural perspectives.

On top of that there's just the general tendency for fans to bend themselves out of shape over the most trivial of details. Last year Games Workshop famously drew the ire of some fans over the introduction of a female member of the Adeptus Custodes faction, due to them being related to the more traditional Space Marines, who have long been described as an all-male army, an aspect of canon that the fanbase frequently argues over.

Certain fans are going to be willing to write the show off wholesale over minor inaccuracies. More extreme parts of the internet will drive themselves into a frenzy over larger ones. Something as minor as depicting a weapon working differently, or a character acting more or less powerful than usual has the potential to light the tinderbox. Including an element that contradicts a larger part of canon runs the risk of a massive backlash. All this in spite of the fact that Games Workshop have gone on record that 40k is supposed to be a universe of inaccuracies and misinformation, and thus any part of canon is liable to be re-written at any given time.

There's also the uncomfortable fact that a lot of Nazis really like 40k.

This comes to the bemusement of many because 40k is a fictional setting that unambiguously depicts fascism, religious fanaticism and authoritarianism as evil and stupid, but it isn't that surprising. As mentioned earlier, 40k is an IP first and foremost, not a singular story. This primarily leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

There's an entire other article to be written on why the far right will happily latch on to a franchise that is meant to be explicitly anti-fascist, so let me just say that if you buy the models and play the games you are mostly free to pick and choose what you want to pay attention to as far as the background story is concerned. It really isn't that much of a jump to convince yourself that the Imperium is not a nightmare future scenario that must be avoided at all costs, but a blueprint of a society that is justified in its atrocities in the name of survival.

Games Workshop has tried to pry off the fascist portion of the fan base many times but here they still remain, fused to the wood like barnacles, and they'll be the first to hit the message boards the moment a TV show happens to depict something that isn't to their liking, which, you know, probably ought to be something within the first ten seconds if you're writing this correctly.

So, given that a 40k TV show has to contend not only with the expectations of a predictably rabid fanbase, but also the very people it is supposed to be criticising, there's an almost non-zero chance that somebody on the creative team, be it a writer, director, or more than likely, actor, finds themselves in the firing line of fan-ire. Harassment, death threats, you know the deal by now.

An ecosystem like that is going to make one wonder why you'd even want to bother doing an adaption at all.

And that's the million-dollar question here. Even if you can secure that budget, and put together a pilot that can sell 40k to a general audience, how do manage the sprawling masses of fans, many of whom have very different priorities and expectations? How do you make sure it doesn't balloon into an uncontrollable backlash? If the Last Jedi, a, frankly, very safe and normal Star Wars movie, caused a fan schism that derailed careers, what hope is there for a 40k series that has almost no chance of being able to please everybody in the first place?

Conclusion: That Warhammer 40'000 TV show is probably never going to happen

I want to be wrong about this. I really do want to see the 40k universe in live action. TV, movie, whatever, I want to be able to sit down and watch Hollywood actors dressed in extravagant costumes use words like "Ministorum," and "Gargant," with a straight face. I want to see massive armies clash in the mud and the dirt as demons cackle and servo-skulls whizz through the air. I want Henry Cavill to actually get a project that he sees through to the end.

Yet, I think I've made it pretty clear the hurdles the project needs to jump over. 40k isn't another sci-fi property that Amazon or Netflix just needs to throw a decent budget at to get to work. This isn't Foundation, or Halo, and it certainly isn't Fallout. There's no pre-existing example that serves as a route to success.

Unlike the 40k setting, however, hope still exists, in one form or another. There's a spark, a possibility, that this whole thing will come together. I want to believe that. I want to be sitting here in a couple of years time writing "We got a 40k TV show, it was great, and here's how they pulled it off."

That'd be nice right? It's probably never going to happen though, and no amount of news updates every six months saying Henry Cavill is totally getting his shoulder pauldrons measured right now is going to change that.

--------------------

Jack Harvey 2026. Images used under Fair Use. Warhammer 40'000 is (c) Games Workshop.

Jack's September Update, or Why Things Have Been so Quiet Around Here Lately.

 

Hi folks. It is news to nobody that this blog has been pretty slim on both updates and content recently. In fact it has had the least amount of updates since I started this blog in 2008. There's a reason for that, and I figured I'd go into some of the details here, maybe just for my own benefit than anything else.

Truth is I've kind of been in a depressive spiral since November of last year. 2024 was a hectic year. There was a lot of stuff that I wanted to get done, like the print editions of my work, and multiple significant conventions that I wanted to make the most of. I figured if I just got my head down and kept at it, I could just then relax over the Christmas period and brace myself for the new year.

However, the Christmas period did not relax me. I'd burnt myself out over 2024, so I decided to dial back the amount of events I'd do in 2025 and projects that I wanted to take on. This then had the knock-on effect of demoralising me more, making me feel like I was lacking forward momentum and squandering the year. Combined with some personal stuff just making things worse, I started to feel swamped even with the reduced workload.

Eventually I could feel myself slipping back to the anxiety ridden depressive that I was before I went through therapy in 2016. I knew then that I needed to get myself checked out. I'm currently back in therapy now, and while it's slow going, just admitting to the problem managed to take some of the weight off my mind.

I haven't been completely unproductive. I've been spending a lot of time working on the script for a 16 issue long comic series. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but I'm leaning towards turning it into a webcomic. I've been practising page layouts to get back into the swing of things.

I've also been making plans to try and consolidate my works online. Right now this blog is only getting me so far, and I could really use a proper website that collects all of my most recent work, as well as directs people to where they can buy my books and comics. I think if I want to start taking things seriously I need to focus a lot more on the admin side of things.

So, where do I stand right now? I'll be away travelling for a few weeks in September, which hopefully will let me take my mind of things and release some of the pressure. I've no more conventions planned for this year, but I do have a couple projects on the go that'll be going up some time later this year.

In the meantime I'll still be working on my artwork as normal, and trying to figure out what I'm eventually going to do with this script. As ever, you can find me posting on Bluesky, Tumblr and Deviantart.

I'll leave you with a couple of 40k fan comics that I did for practice.

Thanks for reading!

Warhammer 40'000 - Who Killed Warboss Badgutz?

It gives me great pleasure to finally get the chance to introduce you all to Doctor Grotson, the intrepid Gretchin detective who as you can expect doesn't exactly fit in easily with the rampaging hoard of Orks he has found himself in the company of.

When Warboss Badgutz is found dead with no clear culprit, the Ork rules of succession are thrown into confusion. Desperate to stop the Ork forces from fracturing, Doctor Grotson takes it upon himself, with a little help from the Warbosses prospective replacements, to to find out who exactly had offed the vicious leader, and more crucially, find out why they haven't claimed his throne.

This was a real fun little story to write. Both comedy AND murder mysteries are difficult to balance, and that's before you throw in the Warhammer universe's most raucous inhabitants to the mix. It was a real experiment in seeing what I could get away with while holding the story together.

To top it all off, we have some amazing artwork by Ork artist extraordinaire Alex 'Crippled Giraffe.' He did an absolutely steller job of bringing the characters to life. If you're in the mood for more Orky antics I highly recommend you check out his work.

Who Killed Warboss Badgutz? can be read full over on AO3.

Warhammer 40'000 - A Conspiracy of Riches

 Hello all. Today I'm pleased to bring you a story from the grim dark future of the 41st Millennium. A Conspiracy of Riches is a comic scripted by me and brought to life by the amazing Kristina Amuan.

This story has been a long time coming, as I've long been wanting to work together with an artist on a comic I've scripted to teach myself the intricacies of the collaborative process and show off the artwork of somebody I greatly admire at the same time.

Sent to defend one of the Imperium's largest gold reserves in the segmentum, Captain Thelonious of the Novamarines Chapter finds his faith in the Emperor tested as he is tasked with putting the Imperium's wealth and privilege ahead of it's loyalist subjects. What lines are the Captain and his Lieutenants willing to cross, and what fealty is is he willing to transgress, in his quest to stay true to his oath as incorruptible defenders of mankind?

Once again a massive thanks to Kristina who not only helped me make the story the best it could be, but also showed incredible patience with such a large project. I know she would have really liked the story to have run for more pages to give the climax more time and detail, but I wanted the story to keep to a lean 4 - 5 page size like the Warhammer Monthly strips of old.

Thanks for reading!

Warhammer 40'000 - A Beautiful Dream

 

Hey folks. I recently entered a short story into Cold Open Stories fast fiction contest for January and came in as a runner up. If you're not familiar with Cold Open Stories, they're a collective of Warhammer fan authors who get together to assemble monthly releases of top quality fiction.

If you want to check out a story of resistance against an oppressive galactic empire you can read the story here. Of course, you can also check out all the other fantastic stories by other writers too.

Thanks for reading.

Hidden Depths - A Necromunda Story

 I've said in the past that I was planning on revisiting the world of Warhammer 40'000 for more stories and comics, but in this instance I wanted to drill down more into the murky world of Necromunda specifically. 

However, this is not a story of one of the notorious house gangs, but instead of the enigmatic Water Guild and their heavily armoured Subnauticans. 

For Subnautican 117-R, working within the bowels of Hive Primus' deep reservoirs makes it easy to forget about the chaotic, ruthless world around her. However, when an anomalous life-form finds its way into the sector's pipe system, her search for aid clashes with ambitious Escher gangers, fanatical Redemptionists, and even the cut-throat politics of her own guild. However, none of this can contend with the threat that the mysterious creature itself heralds, hidden away within the dark depths below.  

You can read the whole thing here.

Cover art is by the outstanding Mustafa Bekir. A big thanks for this wonderful piece, and if you want to check out more of his work you can find more information here.

Since It's so good, I'm also going to post the unedited version below.