The Warhammer 40K board game has created a vast universe of its own. Its characters and machinery have been causing a sensation for many years, but not many people know the backstory of Warhammer 40,000.

Warhammer 40k’s backstory is scattered throughout its rule books, White Dwarft magazine, and the Imperial Armor novels from the Black Library. Black Library is the publishing arm of Games Workshop that provides the history of the particular units in the 40k board game.

Knowledge about the history of the Empire of Man and its enemies is interesting for both new players and experts. Here’s a quick 5 minute introduction to the story behind the Warhammer 40K board game:

The story begins when the Emperor freed humanity from its suffering during the Dark Age of Technology, also known as the Age of Strife. The emperor gathered human colonies throughout the Milky Way and created the largest empire mankind has ever known: the Empire of Man.

The Emperor is also an excellent psychic, and uses his powers to guide interstellar mutant navigators through their space travels. Other psychics who do not know how to use their powers are often sacrificed to enhance the emperor’s abilities.

However, the world of Warhammer 40k is never safe from the enemies of the emperor and humanity. Space travelers are often vulnerable to Chaos demons and thus become possessed and in turn wage wars in the Empire themselves.

To solve these problems, the emperor created Primarchs who were supposed to lead legions of Space Marines, the superhuman defenders of the human race, in the fight against the emperor’s enemies. However, even before the Primarchs were “born”, the Chaos demons took them and scattered them throughout the galaxy, and thus began the Great Crusade. During the Great Crusade, the Emperor himself led the Space Marines on their quest to liberate more worlds for humans and find the lost Primarchs.

One by one, the Primarchs the Emperor encountered returned from the Empire’s side. One Primarch, however, by the name of Horus, was possessed by the demons of Chaos and led 4 other Primarchs in a battle against the Empire.

Fortunately, the Emperor and his best army fought and killed Horus. However, as a result, the mortal body of the emperor was shattered. Now the emperor’s body resides within the Golden Throne that protects him from adversaries as he guides navigators through interstellar travel.

The 40K board game is based on the idea that space battles are constantly drawn between the Empire and alien invaders: the Orks, the Eldar, and the Chaotic demons, to name a few. The 40k board represents the battlefield in space where these alien armies wage war against the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard, the largest army in existence with billions of strong soldiers. The Warhammer 40K board game allows you to build your own miniature army of whatever race you want and join in this epic interstellar battle.