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Warhammer 40,000

science fiction wargame

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ209026 ↗
Source-derived summary

Warhammer 40,000 (also known as WH40K or 40K), is a British miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop. It is the most popular miniature wargame in the world, and is particularly popular in the United Kingdom. The first edition of the rulebook was published in September 1987, the eleventh and current edition was released in June 2026.

As in other miniature wargames, players enact battles using miniature models of warriors and fighting vehicles. The playing area is a tabletop model of a battlefield, comprising models of buildings, hills, trees, and other terrain features. Each player takes turns moving their model warriors around the battlefield and fighting their opponent's warriors. These fights are resolved using dice and simple arithmetic.

Warhammer 40,000 is set in the distant future, where a stagnant human civilisation is beset by hostile aliens and supernatural creatures. The models in the game are a mixture of humans, aliens, and supernatural monsters wielding futuristic weaponry and supernatural powers. The fictional setting of the game has been developed through a large body of novels published by Black Library, Games Workshop's publishing division.

Editorial summary

“Warhammer 40,000” enters the record as science fiction wargame. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Warhammer, science and fiction can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987, 2026—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Warhammer, science and fiction.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Warhammer 40,000” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Warhammer, science and fiction provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q209026. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987 and 2026.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Warhammer 40,000 primary sources, Warhammer 40,000 archive and Warhammer research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Warhammer 40,000” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.