Warhammer 40,000 · plain language layer

You don't need to know all of it yet.

Everything here is written for someone who started this year. No meta talk, no assumed vocabulary. The official rules are free — this site is the plain-language layer on top, plus the hobby side nobody puts in the rulebook.

01At the desk

Paint on your hands, model in a clamp.

Painting, start to finish What to buy and how to get your first model painted, end to end. Start here if you have never painted a model. Technique reference Thinning ratios, brush load, order of work, and the colours that need a different starting point than you would guess. When it goes wrong Symptom-first fixes — frosted primer, filled detail, cloudy varnish, stripping a model back down. Table-ready painting Fast, sourced methods for getting a whole army playable quickly — not a showcase piece.

Basing Texture, rims, static grass. The step that makes a table-quality model look finished.

02Before a game

Kitchen table, army list open, nobody rolling yet.

Factions What each army actually plays like — identity and playstyle notes, not datasheets. What changed in 11th 10th vs 11th edition, the actual differences, in plain language — detachments, stratagems, cover, objectives, and more.

Building a list Detachments, points, what a legal army actually requires.

House rulings Calls we have made, so we make the same one twice.

03At the table

Mid-game, someone has a question, dice are waiting.

Battle tracker Command points, victory points, and battle round. Saves to your phone as you play. Track damage with dice or tokens at the table. Turn order The five phases, what you may do in each, and the order operations resolve in — plus what you can do on your opponent's turn. Charts Wound rolls, strength against toughness — the numbers you look up twenty times a game. More on the way. Keywords & abilities Every core ability and keyword that shows up on a datasheet, in one searchable list — what [BLAST] does, what TOWERING is for.

The armies on this table

Photo slots — your own painted models, one per army. Files go in assets/img/.

Tyranids identity · painting log World Eaters identity · painting log Everyone else all factions

Where the real rules live. Games Workshop publishes the 11th edition Core Rules as a free PDF and in the Warhammer 40,000 app. Download them. This site summarises and explains; it does not replace them, and when the two disagree, the PDF wins.

Datasheets for every unit are also free in the app. If a page here is out of date after an errata, fix it in the repo rather than arguing about it at the table.