The Basic Rules of Warhammer 40,000 (11th Edition)

So you have caught the bug. Maybe a mate cracked open a box of gorgeous little plastic soldiers, maybe a trailer for the next video game hooked you, or maybe you simply walked past our shelves and felt the pull of the grimdark. Whatever brought you here, you have arrived at the same place every commander starts: staring at a rulebook the size of a house brick and wondering what on earth “BS 3+” means.

Take a breath. Warhammer 40,000 looks fearsomely complicated from the outside, but at its heart it is a tidy little machine: move your models, roll some dice, remove the casualties, grab the objectives. This guide walks a brand-new recruit through the core rules of 11th edition — the shiny new version that landed in 2026 — without the jargon headache. Get these basics down and you will be pushing miniatures across a battlefield in an afternoon. When you are ready to pick a side, our Warhammer 40k factions range is where the shopping-list damage begins.

First, what are you actually trying to do?

Here is the single most important thing a new player needs to hear, because it saves you from a very common rookie mistake: you do not win 40k by wiping out the enemy army. You win by scoring more Victory Points than your opponent, and you score those points mostly by controlling objectives — key patches of ground scattered across the table.

You could blow every last one of your opponent’s models to scrap and still lose, because while you were busy playing target practice, they were sitting on the objectives banking points. Annihilation is a means, not the end. Keep that in the back of your mind and half your tactical decisions will suddenly make sense.

The battle round: five phases, in order

A game of 40k is measured in battle rounds. In each round, both players take a full turn — you do everything you want to do, then your opponent does everything they want to do. Most games run for five battle rounds, and then whoever has the most points wins. Simple.

Every single turn marches through the same five phases, always in this order. Learn the sequence and you have learned the skeleton of the entire game.

• Command: the admin phase. You gain a Command Point, take any Battle-shock tests, and trigger start-of-turn abilities.
• Movement: shuffle your models across the board — steadily, at speed, or backwards out of a fight.
• Shooting: pick targets, then roll fistfuls of dice to gun them down.
• Charge: declare who is running into combat and roll to see if they make it.
• Fight: models locked in close combat swing their blades, fists and chainswords.

Once the fifth phase is done, you hand the battlefield over. Your opponent runs through the exact same five phases, and then the round is complete and a new one begins. That is the rhythm of every game you will ever play.

The core dice engine: Hit, Wound, Save, Damage

Whether you are firing a bolt rifle across the table or burying an axe in someone’s helmet, an attack is resolved with the same four-step dice sequence. Truly, if you learn nothing else today, learn this. It is roughly 90% of what you will do all game.

Step 1: Roll to Hit. Roll one six-sided dice (a D6) for each attack. Your weapon has a Ballistic Skill for shooting or a Weapon Skill for melee — say, 3+. Roll that number or higher and the attack connects. A gun that hits on a 3+ succeeds on a 3, 4, 5 or 6. Nice and steady.

Step 2: Roll to Wound. A hit is not a wound. Now you compare your weapon’s Strength against the target’s Toughness and roll again to see if you actually hurt it (more on the exact numbers in a second).

Step 3: The Save. Now the defender fights back. They roll their armour save — a Space Marine’s power armour is a 3+, for instance — worsened by the weapon’s Armour Penetration (AP). A weapon with AP-1 drags that 3+ save down to a 4+. Some elite models also get an Invulnerable save, a force field that ignores AP entirely. Pass the save and the attack pings off harmlessly.

Step 4: Damage. Fail the save and the model takes the weapon’s Damage. A lasgun does 1 damage; a lascannon does a meaty D6. Deal damage equal to a model’s Wounds characteristic and it dies — remove it, and grab yourself a fresh coffee.

The Wound roll, decoded

The Wound roll trips up more beginners than anything else, so here it is in plain English. After a hit, roll a D6 and compare the attacker’s Strength (S) to the defender’s Toughness (T). The bigger the gap in your favour, the easier the wound.

• S is double the T (or more): wound on a 2+. Your gun massively out-muscles the target.
• S is higher than T: wound on a 3+.
• S equals T: wound on a 4+. A coin-flip.
• S is lower than T: wound on a 5+.
• S is half the T (or less): wound on a 6+. You are basically tickling it.

This is why a humble Guardsman’s lasgun bounces uselessly off a battle tank, while an anti-tank gun turns that same tank into a smoking crater. Match the right weapon to the right target and you will feel like a genius. An unmodified roll of 1 always fails, by the way — the dice gods insist on a little humility.

The Movement phase in detail

Movement is where games are quietly won and lost. Every model has a Movement (M) characteristic — the number of inches it can travel — and in this phase each unit picks one of three orders.

• Normal Move: travel up to your M value. You can still shoot and charge as usual. Your bread and butter.
• Advance: add a D6″ to your move for a burst of speed. The trade-off? You cannot charge this turn, and only special “Assault” weapons may fire.
• Fall Back: peel a unit out of an enemy’s clutches. You escape close combat, but normally cannot shoot or charge for the rest of the turn — the price of a tactical retreat.

Two rules to keep in your back pocket. First, Engagement Range is 2″ — get within two inches of an enemy and you are locked in combat. Second, unit coherency: keep every model within 2″ of a squad-mate, and within 9″ of the whole unit, or they start behaving like a rabble. One handy quality-of-life change in 11th edition: pivoting a model on the spot no longer costs any movement, so no more counting millimetres just to turn a Dreadnought to face the enemy.

The Shooting phase

Time for violence at range. Pick a unit, choose an enemy target that is within range and line of sight, and then run each weapon through the Hit-Wound-Save-Damage sequence you just learned. A few things worth knowing as a beginner:

• Line of sight is “true”: get down at table level and see if your model can actually see the target. If a wall is in the way, it cannot shoot through it.
• Cover now hurts the shooter. In 11th edition, a target sitting in cover imposes a −1 penalty to the attacker’s Hit roll rather than boosting the defender’s save. Terrain keeps your troops alive — use it.
• Big units, big dice pools. Ten models firing two shots each is twenty dice. Roll them in batches so you do not lose count — and invest in a decent handful; our Warhammer dice range will save your sanity.

Charge and Fight: getting stuck in

The Charge phase is where nerves fray. Pick a unit within 12″ of the enemy and roll 2D6 — that is how many inches it can charge. Roll high enough to reach the enemy and pile in; roll low and your would-be heroes are left standing awkwardly in the open. There is real jeopardy here, and it is glorious.

Then comes the Fight phase, and this is the one place the strict “my turn, your turn” order breaks. Units that charged fight first, before anything else, which is a big reward for a successful charge. After that, the players alternate picking units to fight. Each fighting model piles in up to 3″, makes its melee attacks — same Hit, Wound, Save, Damage dance — and then survivors consolidate another 3″ toward the nearest enemy or objective. Close combat in 40k is fast, brutal and frequently decisive.

The Command phase, Command Points and Battle-shock

We skipped past the Command phase earlier, but it matters. At the start of each of your turns you gain 1 Command Point (CP). Think of CP as your pool of tactical favours — you spend it on Stratagems, special one-off tricks like re-rolling a charge or hitting an enemy with extra firepower. One important 11th-edition guardrail: a single unit can only be affected by one Stratagem per phase, so no more stacking six buffs onto one squad to make an unkillable monster.

The Command phase is also when you take Battle-shock tests. Any unit that has lost more than half its models must roll 2D6 and beat its Leadership. Fail, and the unit is Battle-shocked: it cannot use Stratagems, and — crucially — its Objective Control drops to 0, so a wobbling unit holds no ground at all. In 11th edition a Battle-shocked unit stays shaken until it passes the test on a later turn, so morale genuinely matters now.

Winning the game: hold the objectives

Back to where we started, because this is how you actually win. Objectives are scored using Objective Control (OC). Every model has an OC value printed on its datasheet. Add up the OC of all your models near an objective, compare it to your opponent’s total, and whoever has the higher number controls it and scores the points.

A cheap, numerous horde can bully an elite squad off an objective through sheer weight of bodies — a Guardsman and a Terminator both usually have an OC of 1 or 2, and ten beats one every time. This is the great balancing act of 40k: firepower kills, but bodies score. The most beautifully painted gunline in the world will lose to a scruffy horde that simply refuses to leave the objectives alone. Move up, hold ground, score points.

What’s actually new in 11th edition?

If you are a returning player dusting off an old army, here is the quick rundown of the biggest shifts, so you are not caught out mid-game:

• Objectives live in terrain. The old 40mm objective markers are gone; key positions are now tied to terrain features on the board.
• Cover debuffs the shooter rather than buffing the defender’s save — a cleaner way to make terrain matter.
• One Stratagem per unit, per phase. The days of buff-stacking are over.
• Army building uses Detachment Points. Each Detachment costs 1–3 points from a small budget (roughly 2 at 1,000 points, 3 at 2,000), letting you mix and match your special rules.
• Battle-shock has teeth, lingering until you pass the test instead of resetting each turn.

How to actually get started

You do not need two full armies and a 2,000-point war to begin. In fact, please do not start there. Ease in like this:

Step 1: Start small. A Combat Patrol-sized game — a couple of dozen models a side — is the perfect on-ramp. Fewer models means fewer rules firing at once, so you can actually absorb the sequence of play. A full-size Strike Force game is 2,000 points; save that for when the phases feel like second nature.

• Pick a faction you love the look of. You will paint these models for hours, so aesthetics matter as much as rules. Browse the full 40k range, and if you want the lowdown on each army our factions hub is a friendly place to start.
• Grab a starter box. They bundle two forces, terrain, dice and the core rules in one cost-effective lump. We break down the current options in our guide to which 40k starter set is right for you.
• Get the hobby kit. Clippers, glue, and a starter set of Warhammer Colour paints will turn grey plastic into a proper army.

Step 2: Play the free rules. The Core Rules for 40k are available for nothing, so you can learn the ropes before spending a penny beyond your models. Rope in a patient friend, play with the models in front of you, and do not fret about getting every interaction perfect — everyone fudges a rule or two in their first few games. That is half the fun.

Fancy some hands-on help? If you are local, come and say hello — there is no substitute for rolling dice across a real table with someone who knows the ropes.

Final thought: Warhammer 40k is detailed, but it is not difficult — not once you have the five phases and the Hit-Wound-Save-Damage loop in your head. Everything else is just trimming on top of those bones. Start small, keep this guide open on your phone, and remember the golden rule: it is the players sitting on the objectives who take the crown, not the ones with the biggest kill count. Now go and command your first army.

Further reading: new to the whole hobby? Start with What Is Warhammer 40k? A Beginner’s Guide, then get your models table-ready with How to Build and Paint Your First Warhammer 40k Army.