What is the difference between warhammer 40k and warhammer

Hieronymous View Profile View Posts. Warhammer 40k is like warhammer fantasy turned up to In space. Zorlond View Profile View Posts. Some other minor things - Dwarves aren't in 40K, they just aren't around.

Same goes with the Lizards and most Undead. Tyrannids too. And forgot to include an 'off switch'. In 40K, they're dying, wholesale, unable to reproduce to replace their numbers. In 40K, he's a body on a throne. It's not entirely clear if he's alive or not. It annihilates worlds. Imagine a single nuke that can turn the entire surface of Earth into the surface of the Moon. There's no equivalent in Fantasy, if only because there's no 'rebuilding' possible after.

And that's just off the top of my head. There's no doubt a ton more minutiae that differentiates the two. Some corrections: Originally posted by Zorlond :. Originally posted by Zorlond :. Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi :. Apart from that, the rules for building an army list in the two games are pretty different. Detachments are groups of units where you are required to bring a specific number of units with a specific unit role, but also allowed to bring specific other unit types.

If you can manage to fit all of your army into detachments, you gain various bonuses. Special weapons for units might have their own additional points cost.

You can also buy battalions for points. A battalion is a specific group of units that grant you various bonuses, such as an extra command point and the option to take an extra artefact for one of your Leaders. Hopefully a new edition of AOS will adapt something like this, but for now, it seems like 40K is in the lead when it comes to campaign systems.

You can read about all of them on our 40k army overview page. AoS has around 24 armies available but the number is growing all the time divided into 4 Grand Alliances: Order, Chaos, Death and Destruction. You can read about all of them in our AOS army overview guide and 40k army overview guide. For both games, you need basically the same things to get started, but there are a few key differences. First of all, you will need some miniatures to play the game.

With very few exceptions, every single unit you can field in both games have a corresponding box of miniatures you can buy from Games Workshop. They are also sold by a ton of different hobby stores, both physically and online.

Starter sets and the various big boxes are often the only way to save some money when buying models brand new. Both games use only six-sided dice, and you can use whatever versions of these you want. So buy in bulk and get loads of dice! Both games measure distance in inches, so any tape measure that measures inches is fine. Games Workshop has a lot of plastic scenery available for both 40k and AOS, with rules for using them in the game. Some factions in both games even have special scenery available to them that give bonuses to your army.

You can, however, use third party scenery, cardboard boxes and LEGO bricks if you want to. The GW plastic terrain looks good, but it can be very expensive to fill a board with only GW terrain. Looking at cheaper terrain options can never hurt.

In 40K, unit rules are printed on datasheets, which are generally found in codexes. A codex is the book each army in the game has for all its rules and lore. When you buy a box of miniatures for the game, that box will also contain a basic datasheet for the units you can build with that box, but it might not include all options available to that unit. In AOS, unit rules are printed on warscrolls, which are freely available to download from the Games Workshop webstore under the page for each box of miniatures available in the game.

A battletome contains all the lore and special rules for an army you can field in the game, as well as the warscrolls for units from that army. The utility of these apps are pretty different though. Warhammer 40, The App is a very good army builder that helps you keep track of all the different choices you have when building a 40K army. The main problem with the 40K app is how it is tied to physical books. This means that even though you have the paid subscription, you still need to go out and buy physical books to take advantage of the functions in the app.

In the original conceptions of both properties it was likely that the Warhammer World did exist in the same universe as Warhammer 40, as the Warhammer World is known to have been terraformed and reshaped by beings known as the Old Ones , essentially the same alien entities as the Old Ones of the Warhammer 40, universe. The Warhammer World's continents are arranged very similarly to those of Earth and may be an indicator that the Old Ones also played some role in shaping the Earth and affecting the development of Humanity in general several million years ago, after their supposed disappearance from the galaxy.

Other worlds in the Warhammer 40, universe have been discovered by the Imperium of Man that also have been terraformed into a shape reminiscent of Earth's distinctive continents.

In this conception it is possible that the Humans of the Warhammer World were settlers who first arrived on the planet many millennia ago during the Dark Age of Technology and then reverted to a primitive state as so many Human populations did across the galaxy during the Age of Strife , while the Elf and Dwarf populations were beings shaped by the Old Ones from Aeldari and Squat stock, respectively. The forces of Chaos are even more active on the Warhammer World than they are on many other planets of the galaxy because of the collapsed Warp Gates the Old Ones built on the planet, devices that are very similar in function to the Aeldari 's Webway technology, which was itself derived from the Old Ones ' knowledge of the Immaterium.

These damaged Warp portals have allowed the Warp to manifest fully at the north and south poles of the Warhammer World, essentially creating two small Warp rifts at both ends of the planet similar to the Eye of Terror which spew Chaos energies directly into the physical universe, creating what the inhabitants of the Warhammer World call the "Winds of Magic.

Because Chaos can manifest its forces directly on this world, its Elf, Dwarf and Human defenders of Order were slowly but inexorably losing their battle with the Ruinous Powers , ultimately culminating in the Warhammer World's End Times.

Following the destruction of the Warhammer World in the End Times and the birth of the Mortal Realms of the follow-on property of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar , it is now clear that in current lore, the universes of Warhammer 40, and Warhammer and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar exist in entirely separate realities. All that unites them at present is the existence of Chaos and the Realm of Chaos , which is functionally identical between both universes.

Many of the armies and factions in Warhammer 40, can be originally traced back to the same concepts in Warhammer Fantasy. The most obvious examples are the Ork and forces of Chaos armies that are almost unchanged in their primary characteristics from their fantasy counterparts, and Warhammer hobbyists often switch models and parts between the two game systems.