Summary

  • Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a live-service game with constant updates, attracting loyal players.
  • Using existing models in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide The Miniatures Game may disappoint tabletop Warhammer players, but the game targets video game enthusiasts.
  • The game aims to attract new players into the Warhammer collecting cycle.

Games Workshop recently revealed Warhammer 40,000: Darktide The Miniatures Game. I’m surprised it took this long for the company to repackage some existing models and draft a game to go alongside them – it seems like a gimme considering Darktide’s continued success.

Darktide is not a perfect game. It’s nowhere near. But developer Fatshark is constantly producing updates to slowly improve it, and that’s keeping players on board. Most live-service titles these days falter within their first year, so the fact that Darktide’s crunchy combat has kept thousands of players engaged for 18 months is impressive.

Darktide is undoubtedly helped by the Warhammer 40K licence, but the majority of players are battling on in spite of dreadful live-service mechanics. Both Vermintide games went the same way, launching in a mess and slowly being rebuilt by the developer until the loyal players are rewarded with a fun experience.

Vermintide 2 board game when, James Workshop?

However, I immediately noticed a backlash to the Darktide board game in online circles. All the models in the box are already existing sculpts, there’s nothing new. Apparently this is disastrous and thousands of ardent tabletop Warhammer players won’t be buying it. But this game was never for you.

This game is for Darktide players. For video gamers. For players who have poured thousands of hours into Fatshark’s game on their Xbox or PC, and might look at replicating the experience on their kitchen table. Darktide peaked at 9,465 players on Steam with the latest update, and while that is trending downwards, Games Workshop will hope that a portion of them buy the tabletop game and are converted to customers of its primary product: toy soldiers.

Sure, the Ogryn is a decade old at this point, but he’s useless in your existing army anyway. Why would you want one extra Ogryn who looks more special than the rest? Games Workshop has already shown with its axing of the Warcry range that it doesn’t want unique units in its large scale game systems, so why would it change that for a video game crossover? It would be cool if the Ogryn was a little more detailed for the board game you’re not going to play, but that’s not why you’re buying the game.

How would a Darktide miniature even capture the myriad cosmetic options available to video game players? It’s never going to look like your Veteran.

This is a wider issue with Games Workshop’s boxed releases. How many people played the game that came with Betrayal at Calth that James Hewitt lovingly designed? How many people bought it for the plethora of Mark 4-armoured Heresy-era Space Marines? Same question for Imperial Knights: Renegade. Most people don’t even play the custom scenarios in new edition starter sets, they’re more intent on swapping the Space Marines for more Tyranids so they can add twice as much plastic to their Hive Fleet.

Close

This isn’t a bad thing, per se. Like I say, this is a hobby primarily about buying toy soldiers. You can paint them and play with them, but Games Workshop wants to keep you buying for any reason, and for most of us that reason is collecting. Collecting to paint, collecting to build the most meta list, collecting to play the bespoke board games that everyone else ignores, it all involves buying miniatures. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide The Miniatures Game is an attempt to bring more people into this perpetual cycle.

I don’t know how good the Darktide board game will be as a game. I know the models look average, but that’s the point. Maybe it’ll be brilliant, and faithfully recreate the chaos of the video game with brutal combat and endless waves of mutated foes. Maybe it’ll be boring, a cash-in gateway to push pixel players towards more profitable plastic. But make no mistake: this game is to bring new players in. It’s not made for veterans.

I hope it’s engaging, or else the generic Poxwalkers are joining the ranks of my Dark Mechanicus (I’m no better than the rest of you, see). I hope I can play it with my family, and we can enjoy it together. But this isn’t a game for me, and it’s not a game for you. It’s for little Timmy on his Xbox, who has a birthday coming up and a Warhammer store nearby.

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