A 6 year old Warhammer game is about to become my new best strategy game

In the Warhammer cosmos there are now dozens of games in all sorts of genres, many of which are… okay. However, a few of the games have surprisingly strong gameplay. MeinMMO editor and Warhammer expert Benedict Grothaus has now discovered an older gem that he can’t let go of.

During my quite long vacation, I met up with a few friends for a LAN party. You know, nerds who drag their PCs to a table and sit across from each other while gaming.

The biggest question we asked ourselves: What are we actually gaming with over 30 and few genres in common? It quickly became clear: it should be strategy and we all think Warhammer is dead. So the suggestion came to play Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War. The game comes from the same studio as Zephon, which is currently being celebrated on Steam.

The plan was actually just a round to get a taste of it. In the end we played it over the entire LAN and even now I still play with friends or alone. Although Gladius was released in July 2018, I am still impressed with its content.

Basically Warhammer Civilization in the 41st millennium

Anyone who has already played Civilization 6 will find Gladius very familiar. The gameplay is almost identical: you have a city or cities, expand them and explore the map with your units.

However, Gladius leaves out one important factor: diplomacy. You don’t need them in Warhammer anyway, after all it’s not called Peacehammer. Instead there are absurd units with a lot of penetrating power and always on the bell somewhere.

Whether against the AI, other players or neutral units, there is almost always a skirmish somewhere or even a full-blown war with a large front. This requires strategic and tactical sensitivity – even I, as a strategy veteran, have lost valuable units due to stupid mistakes.

The game is played in rounds, which at least makes planning and the economic part of the game (the “eco”) more pleasant than would be the case in a hectic real-time strategy game. What fascinates me most, however, is how well Gladius represents Warhammer lore without assuming any knowledge at all.

Gladius captures the essence of the peoples brilliantly

Almost all known races from Warhammer 40,000 are represented in Gladius. Only the conglomerates of Votann are missing and some sub-factions, such as the Custodes, although they would make little sense in this setting.

Each faction comes with its own mechanics, units and play styles. Tyranids need biomass for everything, Space Marines drop their cities (and later units) from orbit, and the Empire litters the battlefield with corpses – foreign and their own.

Do you want to know which faction is the strongest? I’ll tell you in the ranking:

For those who don’t know Warhammer, they’re just peoples with differences. But Warhammer fans discover in these ways of playing what the factions represent in the lore.

My army is of course the Adepta Sororitas, the holy warrior nuns from Warhammer. They come with everything you would expect from them: fanatical units, cruel penances and of course flamethrowers galore.

Here you can see the trailer for the Adepta Sororitas:

Easy to get started, expensive overall package

Gladius doesn’t have a campaign, just features individual battles on random battlefields. However, if you want a story, you can complete quests that essentially replace the campaign and also act as a tutorial. This makes it quite easy for new players to take a look and learn.

If you want to get started with Gladius, you can regularly find the game on GOG or Steam for a few euros – on offer for as little as 3 euros, sometimes even for free. The crux, as is so often the case with Warhammer, is the price of the expansions. In the basic game you only get four factions:

All other factions and additional mechanics such as the “Lord of Skulls”, a kind of sudden death unit, cost money. Even in the current sale on Steam, the entire collection costs me over 100 euros, even though I already own part of it. The game is still cheaper than Total War: Warhammer 3 at over 270 euros, but it’s still decent.

Then again, paying an absurd price for your hobby is probably part of the Warhammer experience. Anyone who plays the tabletop is probably used to emptying their account regularly. But if that’s too expensive for you, here you’ll find the best video games to get to know the world of Warhammer.