Battles
The great wars, sieges, and campaigns of Warhammer 40,000: the conflicts whose fire forged the setting.
M41 (745.M41)Hive Fleet Behemoth
The first great Tyranid incursion into the galaxy, a devouring vanguard that heralded the coming of an extragalactic doom.
M41 (990.M41)Hive Fleet Kraken
A cunning and splintering swarm that learned from every defeat, scattering into a thousand tendrils that gnaw at the galaxy still.
M41–M42Hive Fleet Leviathan
The largest hive fleet ever recorded, striking from beneath the galactic plane to sever the Imperium's southern reaches.
M41 · The 13th Black CrusadeThe 13th Black Crusade
Abaddon hurled his greatest host yet against the Cadian Gate, and this time the fortress world of Cadia did not survive the reckoning.
M36The Age of Apostasy
The mad High Lord Goge Vandire seized absolute power and drowned the Imperium in blood before his own faith turned against him.
M42 (Era Indomitus)The Arks of Omen Campaign
Abaddon unleashed vast blackstone leviathans to seize the galaxy's warp-lanes, setting the stage for his darkest design yet.
M41, the 41st MillenniumThe Aurelia Crusade
A Chapter defended its own home sub-sector against Chaos corruption, xenos invasion and the slow poison of secrets buried in its own past.
M41 · The Badab WarThe Badab War
One Chapter Master's pride swelled into a decade of fratricide, as Space Marine turned upon Space Marine in the isolated Maelstrom Zone.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Battle of Armatura
The martial heart of Ultramar is stormed by traitors, its academies of war reduced to killing grounds for a lost generation.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Battle of Beta-Garmon
The Great Slaughter engulfs the Beta-Garmon Cluster as god-machines and Legions bleed one another white for the gateway to Terra.
M41, the 41st MillenniumThe Battle of Kronus
A contested world became a crucible where six warring powers fought a sprawling campaign for dominion over its blasted continents.
M41 (745.M41)The Battle of Macragge
The homeworld of the Ultramarines was drowned in a tide of alien horror as humanity first learned the true meaning of the word Tyranid.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Battle of Molech
Horus assailed a fortress-world not for conquest but to claim the same forbidden warp-power the Emperor had once taken there.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Battle of Nuceria
Angron returns to the world that enslaved him and drowns it in blood, ascending to daemonhood atop a mountain of the dead.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Battle of Phall
Two rival siege-legions clash in the void of Phall, gunnery and boarding actions raging as the Imperial Fists fight to reach Terra.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Battle of Pluto
The fortress-moons of Pluto, keystone of Sol's outer defence, are stormed and shattered as the traitors force the Elysian Gate.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Battle of Tallarn
The greatest armoured battle in history grinds across a virus-bombed Tallarn as millions of war machines clash amid choking ruin.
M41The Battle of Tyran
Humanity's first true encounter with the Great Devourer, as an agri-world was stripped to bare rock by an unknown xenos swarm.
M36The Beheading
In a single night of silent slaughter, master assassins murdered every one of the High Lords of Terra in their own sanctum.
M42 (Era Indomitus)The Charadon Campaign
A sprawling war for a forge-rich sector saw green tides and plague legions clash with the Imperium amid rust and ruin.
M41The Damnos Campaign
An ice-world's mining excavations woke a slumbering tomb, and the Ultramarines paid in blood to reclaim what the sleepers took.
M41 · The Damocles Gulf CrusadeThe Damocles Crusade
The Imperium marched across the Damocles Gulf to smother the upstart T'au Empire, and found the young xenos far harder to break than it expected.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Defence of Sotha
Upon a watchful world crowned by the Pharos, the defenders of Sotha hold against darkness to keep a beacon of light burning.
M42 · The Devastation of BaalThe Devastation of Baal
Hive Fleet Leviathan descended upon the Blood Angels' dying homeworld, and the sons of Sanguinius gathered to make a last stand for Baal.
M41 · The 13th Black CrusadeThe Fall of Cadia
The fortress world that had guarded the Eye of Terror for millennia was broken at last, its defenders defiant even as the sky fell upon them.
M41The Fall of Medusa V
As catastrophic warp storms tore a doomed world apart, a dozen factions warred over its dying surface before it was swallowed whole.
M41 · The First War for ArmageddonThe First War for Armageddon
A daemon primarch and his host of Khorne fell upon Armageddon, and the Grey Knights waged a secret war whose witnesses were silenced.
M41 · The 12th Black CrusadeThe Gothic War
Abaddon seized the ancient Blackstone Fortresses and turned them into star-killing weapons, forcing a desperate war across the void of the Gothic Sector.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Horus Heresy
The galaxy-spanning civil war in which the Warmaster Horus turned half the Emperor's Legions to Chaos and shattered the dream of Unity.
M42 · The Indomitus CrusadeThe Indomitus Crusade
With the galaxy split by the Great Rift, the returned Guilliman led a century-long crusade of new legions to drag the Imperium back from the abyss.
M41, the 41st MillenniumThe Kaurava Conflict
An entire system became a battleground for seven rival powers, each bent on the annihilation of all others in a war without quarter.
M42, the Era IndomitusThe Konor Campaign
As the Great Rift split the heavens, a vital system stood defiant against the tide of Chaos that poured from the newborn wound in reality.
M41 · The Macharian CrusadeThe Macharian Crusade
A brilliant general swept across a thousand worlds in seven years like a new Alexander, only for his conquests to unravel when he wept for no more to take.
M42 (Era Indomitus)The Nachmund Crusade
A precious stable corridor through the Great Rift became the most contested passage in the galaxy, drowned in endless war.
M41, the Time of EndingThe Necron Awakening of Sanctuary 101
A garrison of battle-sisters became the first to face the silent, unstoppable dead of a Necron tomb-world stirring from aeons of slumber.
M42, the Era IndomitusThe Noctis Aeterna
When the Great Rift opened and the Emperor's guiding light guttered, whole segmentums were plunged into a blind and screaming darkness.
M34-M36The Nova Terra Interregnum
For nearly two millennia the Imperium was split in two, as a rival power on Nova Terra defied the authority of Holy Terra itself.
M41–M42 · The War of OctariusThe Octarius War
The Inquisition loosed a Tyranid splinter fleet upon an Ork empire hoping the two horrors would consume each other, and instead forged something worse.
M42 (Era Indomitus)The Pariah Nexus War
The Necrons ignited a vast region of null-space to smother the warp and turn the galaxy against all psykers and souls alike.
M42 · The Plague WarsThe Plague Wars
Mortarion led his rotting Legion out of the Great Rift to drown Ultramar in pestilence, and Guilliman rose to defend the realm he had built.
M41 · The Sabbat Worlds CrusadeThe Sabbat Worlds Crusade
Across a hundred worlds and many decades, the Imperium waged a grinding crusade to wrench the Sabbat cluster back from the grip of Chaos.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Schism of Mars
The Red Planet tore itself apart as the Mechanicum split between the God-Emperor and the machine-heresy of Chaos.
M31 · The ScouringThe Scouring
With Horus dead, the loyalists turned to vengeance, hounding the broken traitors across the galaxy and into the fires of the Eye of Terror.
M41 · The Second War for ArmageddonThe Second War for Armageddon
Ghazghkull Thraka brought his first great WAAAGH! to Armageddon, and a single indomitable commissar became the soul of its defence.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Shadow Crusade
Lorgar and Angron unleash a tide of slaughter across Ultramar, burning worlds to keep the Ultramarines from reaching Terra.
M41The Siege of Hydra Cordatus
The masters of siegecraft, the Iron Warriors, descended upon a hidden Imperial fortress to seize the gene-seed hoarded within its walls.
M41 · The Siege of VraksThe Siege of Vraks
When an armoury world turned apostate, the Death Korps of Krieg were sent to take it back in a seventeen-year hell of trench and tunnel.
M41, the Time of EndingThe Siege of the Fenris System
The Sons of Magnus returned to settle a ten-thousand-year grudge, drowning the world of the Wolves in sorcery, fire and betrayal.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Solar War
The Warmaster's armada tears through the void-fortresses of the Sol System, breaching the last bastions before the Throneworld itself.
M41The Taros Campaign
An Imperial punitive expedition to reclaim a desert mining world became a grinding logistical disaster against the disciplined armies of the Tau.
M42, the Era IndomitusThe Terran Crusade
The resurrected Primarch of the Ultramarines drove a desperate fleet across a broken galaxy to reach the Emperor before all hope was extinguished.
M41 · The Third War for ArmageddonThe Third War for Armageddon
Ghazghkull returned to Armageddon with a WAAAGH! beyond counting, and the Imperium poured armies into a slaughter that no one truly won.
The Great CrusadeThe Ullanor Crusade
The Great Crusade's crowning triumph, where the Emperor's armies broke the mightiest Ork empire yet encountered and elevated Horus to Warmaster.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Underworld War of Calth
Beneath a poisoned world, Ultramarines hunt Word Bearers through endless arcologies in a lightless war of ambush and hatred.
M41 (989.M41)The War for Rynn's World
A single catastrophic missile shattered a Chapter's fortress, and the Crimson Fists fought a desperate war of survival against a green tide.
The War in Heaven · circa 60 million years pastThe War in Heaven
Sixty million years before the Imperium, star-gods and elder races waged a war so vast it reshaped the galaxy and seeded every horror to come.
M42, the Era IndomitusThe War of Beasts
A sentinel world guarding the only stable passage through the Great Rift drowned beneath a war of a hundred factions and a single desperate defence.
M42, the Era IndomitusThe War of Dakka
A warlord's dream of the ultimate battle set the wastes of a besieged world roaring with engines, guns and the endless bellow of the greenskin horde.
M41 (Time of Ending)The War of Fenris
The daemon-fleets of Nurgle assailed the icy homeworld of the Space Wolves, dragging Fenris itself to the brink of damnation.
M32 · The War of the BeastThe War of the Beast
A century after the Heresy, an Ork warlord of monstrous cunning raised a WAAAGH! so vast it nearly finished what Horus began.
M31 (the Horus Heresy)The Webway War
A secret war fought in the tunnels beneath Terra, where the Emperor's guardians held back a tide of daemons breaching from the Warp.
M41Waaagh! Ghazghkull
The greatest Ork warlord of the age gathered a green tide beyond counting, twice drowning the hive-world of Armageddon in war.
The Horus Heresy
Sub-setting
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Alaxxes Nebula Ambush
The shattered survivors of Isstvan sought sanctuary in a shrouded nebula, and found instead a patient hunter waiting in the gas and the dark.
M31 · The Horus HeresyThe Battle of Calth
The Word Bearers ambushed the Ultramarines above Calth, poisoned its star, and dragged a whole world's war beneath the surface into the dark.
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Battle of Constanix II
The great god-machines walked against one another across a forge-moon's foundries, brother-engines duelling as the Mechanicum devoured itself.
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Battle of Dwell
An ancient world of scholars and seers was fed to the twin appetites of butchery and excess as two damned Legions vied to outdo each other.
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Battle of Paramar V
A sprawling supply-world stacked with the materiel of the Great Crusade fell to a legion that fought with deceit as readily as with the bolter.
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Battle of Perlia
A world of ash-flats and ruined hab-sprawls became a slow grave for two armies locked in a war of attrition neither could easily win.
M31, the Great CrusadeThe Battle of Sarosh
A diplomatic compliance turned to treachery when a hidden warp-cult unleashed a daemon upon the Warmaster's honour guard, forcing a world's destruction.
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Battle of Trisolian
A once-loyal system was made an example in blood and fear, its people broken not to conquer them but to teach the galaxy dread.
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Battle of Yarant
A fortress-world on the road to Terra became a byword for sacrifice as its defenders bought the Throneworld precious weeks with their lives.
M31 · The Horus HeresyThe Burning of Prospero
Leman Russ led the Space Wolves against Magnus and his sorcerers, and the crystal spires of Prospero were thrown down in fire and grief.
M31, the Great CrusadeThe Diasporex Campaign
A vast nomad fleet of humans and xenos living in harmony was hunted through the dark by two Legions who could suffer no such coexistence.
M31 · The Horus HeresyThe Drop Site Massacre
Seven Legions came to Isstvan V to break the traitors, and four of them turned their guns on the loyalists' backs in the greatest betrayal of the age.
M30–M31 · The Great CrusadeThe Great Crusade
For two centuries the Emperor and his Legions reconquered the stars, forging a million worlds into one Imperium before the dream turned to ash.
M31 · The Horus HeresyThe Isstvan III Atrocity
To purge the doubters from his own Legions, Horus virus-bombed a whole world, murdering his loyal sons before openly marching on Terra.
M31, the Horus HeresyThe Manachean War
The opening blow of the Shadow Crusade fell upon the worlds bordering Ultramar, a lightning conquest meant to bleed the sons of Guilliman white.
M31 · The Horus HeresyThe Siege of Terra
The Warmaster Horus flung the traitor host against the walls of the Imperial Palace, and beneath its ramparts father and son settled the fate of humanity forever.
M31 · The Horus HeresyThe Signus Campaign
Horus lured the Blood Angels into a daemon-haunted cluster to destroy them, and Sanguinius saved his sons at the price of a curse in their blood.
M31 · The Horus HeresyThe Thramas Crusade
The Lion and the Night Haunter fought a long, cold war of ambush and reprisal across the Thramas Sector to control the road to Terra.