The sad truth about Warhammer games is that it’s much easier to round the bad ones than it is the good—something we’ve already done here on PC Gamer. But don’t worry about that right now. We’re here to celebrate the games that enrich your obsession with Games Workshop; the titles that put the ‘fab’ in ‘Fabius’.

I’ve been ruthless. The dutifully average games lost in the warp between good and bad are nowhere to be found. Warhammer Quest is absent, as is Man o’ War: Corsair—a game as impossible to hate as it is to recommend. I’ve also left off the beautiful, doomed Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. It was decent while it lasted—the servers have long since been switched off -  but it deserves a mention for having the most enthusiastic dev interviews in the history of gaming. 

Sit back and scowl through this disappointingly brief list of the best Warhammer games on PC.

Total War: Warhammer 2

It’s nice to start with an easy one, isn’t it? After years in the 6/10 wilderness, Warhammer Fantasy fans were rewarded with two excellent Total War games in the space of two years. No more modding Medieval II. No more staring back wistfully at Shadow of the Horned Rat. This is the Warhammer world as it once was, brought to life with epic flair and a palpable love of the source material.

Whether or not you care about swirling magical vortexes, the second game deserves the nod because of its scale and ambition. Seeing that gigantic map crammed with warring Warhammer races is a dream for anyone who spent their youth thumbing through army books while listening to Slayer, wondering which dwarfs lived where. It’s so big, in fact, that Creative Assembly are almost out of factions with one game still to come, meaning it’s unlikely to get better than this. (Unless you’re really passionate about Chaos Dwarfs. Which you’re probably not.)

Warhammer: Vermintide 2

Total War: Warhammer does an incredible job of pulling the camera back and letting you see the Old World from a distance, but it can feel impersonal. Warhammer: Vermintide 2, however, lets you get so close to a place on the brink of destruction that you feel every shattered bone and can inhale the singed fur. Vermintide’s  tumbling cities and besieged farms are so perfectly imagined you sometimes wish the Skaven hordes would slink off and let you enjoy the scenery in peace. 

At least, you would if killing them didn’t feel so good. Smashing through swathes of rat men is a messy, ichor-spewing joy. It’s even better in the second game, thanks to the variety and threat that comes from the inclusion of Chaos and some gruelling new bosses. Few multiplayer games can hold your interest like Vermintide 2: every run is different and the loot grind is compelling enough to keep you playing forever. Add specialist classes for the five characters, and this is as detailed and loving an examination of Warhammer Fantasy you’ll get this side of painting your own Ironbreakers.

Blood Bowl 2

Perhaps it’s slightly disappointing that one of the best games on a Warhammer list is the comedic sporting spin-off—or perhaps that’s exactly as it should be. But Blood Bowl 2’s muscular, turn-based take on American Football is distracting fun, and an improvement over the slightly bewildering original. 

It also does a great job of highlighting the contrasts between the warring Warhammer Fantasy factions who, for reasons I daren’t explore, have decided to stop invading each other and play footy instead. Elves are all about swift runs and crisp passes, for example; whereas orcs just want to wreck everything. The result is an unusual, initially impenetrable game that looks great and improves the more you play. Unlike the Blood Bowl players themselves, who will probably end up crippled or dead. Touchdown!

Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat

Back before we dared dream about orc siege towers rolling in real time towards the walls of Karaz-a-Karak., when Archeon was still known as Diederick to his mates, strategy fans had to make do with Shadow of the Horned Rat—a fine, story-driven strategy game that gave us a glimpse of what Creative Assembly would deliver on a massive scale 21 years later.

Playing as Morgan Bernhardt, you can follow the main quest and defend the Empire from orcs and skaven, or customise your missions in a quest for boundless wealth. It’s progressive stuff for the first ever adaptation of the tabletop game. It’s dated now, obviously, and the version of GOG.com is apparently has some technical issues when running on modern PCs, but get it to work and you’re essentially experiencing Warhammer RTS royalty.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

Every Warhammer 40k fan, in the dark hours of restless nights, has laid awake wondering. ‘How do chainswords actually work? Are they like standard swords, but sharper? Or do they slowly slice through things like a normal chainsaw?’ Enter Space Marine, in clompy, size-40 boots, to answer your questions with an explosion of ork guts. (The answer is ‘both’, apparently.)

Space Marine received mixed reviews upon launch, but if you’re after relentless violence, grim darkness or eternal war—the Three Amigos of the 40k universe— there’s something here for you. Mark Strong is perfect as anvil-in-the-service-of-The-Emperor Titus, who slices, shoots and curbstomps his way through more orks than it’s conceivable to count, before the forces of Chaos turn up and characteristically ruin everything. It’s the perfect, mindless way to lose a Sunday afternoon: pop Space Marine on your Steam sale wishlist and suffer not the Xenos to live. It’s what Roboute Guilliman would have wanted.

Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior

Ahh, the Tau. The artisan burger yurt to the Space Marines’ Drive-Thru McDonalds. It doesn’t matter if you think they’re the greatest hope for peace in a galaxy, or another alien race to flatten; all you need to know is that they have lovely guns and firing them feels nice. 

If that sounds like faint praise, it’s because Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior is okay. A flighty, fun, by-the-numbers FPS that stands out because many of its fellow 40k games are deeply average and because any game featuring pulse rifles can’t be all bad. It’s also fascinating because it’s such an odd choice: the Tau are surprising heroes for a spin-off game—lovely guns aside—and pitting them against the Imperium of Man is a curious reminder that yes, the genetically-modified, systemically intolerant space racists with skulls on their shoulder pads probably are the baddies. Except, y’know, when they’re not.

Space Hulk

The original 1993 release of Space Hulk could probably be on this list, because it cleanly recreates the horror of being a walking man-tank trapped in a corridor full of monsters. But the 2013 update looks nicer, and crucially, is much easier to buy. In both cases, the games are worth your time because the original board game is so good—it’s asymmetrical strategy at its finest, with lumbering but powerful marines facing off against a highly mobile force of unknown numbers. 

It’s a generous game, too, with a meaty campaign and free updates released as a thank you to the fans. Does it compare to playing the original on the grimy carpet of a trusted, 40k-loving friend? Probably not. But it’s far simpler to track down, and the brutal genestealer AI will make you feel like you’re actually taking on a cerebral alien threat. Lovely.

Dawn of War 2

It’s madness that Dawn of War III somehow ended up on our list of worst-reviewed Warhammer games on Steam. But let’s not get into the reasons why, and instead agree that whatever you think of Dawn of War’s recalibrated trajectory, the second game is still worth celebrating.

There’s an absurd amount of content here, drawing in diverse races from the entire 40k universe. And it feels right; like your favourite miniatures brought to life before you. Forces hit with a satisfying wallop, and it’s as grim, dangerous and ultimately satisfying as the most hard-fought tabletop battle. While the multiplayer elements seem lightweight compared to its MOBA-influenced sequel, the single-player campaign is a notable improvement over the brilliant original.  If you enjoy the original Dawn of War 2, be sure to try Chaos Rising and the excellent Dawn of War 2: Retribution. The three-player Last Stand mode is immense if you can get some friends together. 

I played Vermintide for a couple of years without mods and liked it plenty, but when I finally installed a few (via this modpack) they immediately became essential. With better bots and the ability to drop the HUD at the press of a button, I can turn it Vermintide into a game about photographing the Old World. A squad of competent AIs protects me while I wander around setting up perfect angles on Tudor houses and twin moons, something no human players would ever put up with.

At the other end of the spectrum are mods like the Stormvermin Mutation, which upgrades enemies so that what would have been slaverats become clanrats, clanrats become armored stormvermin, and every special is replaced by a rat ogre. The first time I tried that I wound up facing two ogres and a pack of stormvermin simultaneously on a narrow bridge. It didn't last long. 

And there are plenty of other mods available for the original game, many in the same collection. There's another difficulty increase called Onslaught, sound replacers, UI tweaks, cosmetic changes, and even a separate mod that adds a playable chess set. Because why not?

Official mod support was planned for the original Vermintide but is yet to appear—it's still there, grayed-out and "Coming Soon!" on the launcher's menu. Fatshark's technical director Robin Hagblom tells me it's still coming, "but Vermintide 2 is top priority at the moment. Hopefully we'll open both workshops simultaneously, but no promises."

The initial lack of official support didn't dissuade modders, of course. According to Grimalackt, who maintains the Quality of Life modpack, it began with cheats. "Modding in vermintide 1 started as a DLL injection," he says. "Its first uses were very clear-cut cheats. 'Win game' buttons. Adding all the items to your inventory, god mode, etc." 

As he explains, they were designed to mess with the code in the middle of a game. "The possibilities given by that are obviously beyond game-breaking, especially since a lot of the game was at first coded with the assumption that the other clients were running exactly the same code as you were." He gives examples of potential malicious uses like kicking hosts out of their own games, impersonating other players in chat, or crashing someone else's game without even being in the same lobby as them.

The mods that became popular weren't the ones that let you cheat or troll other players, however. "I think the biggest reception was to the various sound replacers I made," says modder Aussiemon. "This was one of the types of mods made possible with Fatshark's assistance, as nothing like it had ever been done before. I wrote a script to play the 'headshot' sound from Unreal Tournament 2k whenever a special skaven was shot in the head." People started sending him requests for things like the MLG airhorn playing when gutter runners attack and soon he became the go-to guy for all your audio mod requests. "It ended with John Cena's theme music playing when an ogre showed up, and that silly balloon hammer mod." 

Nowadays the most popular mod is Grimalackt's Quality of Life  collection, with its toggleable options like third-person camera, the Stormvermin Mutation, and those bot improvements I l like so much. Some of these things were made possible by Fatshark giving modders access to their SDK tools, creating a Steam community for them, and answering questions directly. "We'd post about an issue we were having, or access to an uncompiled file for reference, and Robin would reply within the day with a suggestion or reference file. These discussions led to the first custom models, textures, and sounds in Vermintide 1, and we definitely would never have gotten that far without Fatshark's insight.

"It wasn't just their advice though," Aussiemon continues. "Fatshark gathered our suggestions and thoughts on mod support to form a plan for Vermintide 2. I think a not-so-insignificant part of the official mod design will be the result of a collaborative effort between Fatshark and the modding community."

What's next?

Fatshark is aiming to add Steam Workshop support to Vermintide 2 in late April. "Though even past this it will still be an ongoing project," Hagblom says, "improving the tools, adding more functionality and adding access to more parts of the game so it won't be a fire-and-forget release."

They've made a Discord channel to connect modders and share information, working with them to map out how to best implement it. "It's really paid off for us too even without the actual mods," says Hagblom, "because they've in turn helped us finding repro cases for bugs and reported when they've found things that haven't exactly been working as intended."

Bringing everyone together before mod support goes live means that when the Steam Workshop goes live there will be plenty ready to fill it. "The first priority will obviously be to transfer everything from Vermintide 1 that is still usable in Vermintide 2's context," says Grimalackt. "Since Vermintide 2 still shares a lot of code from the first game, the task is usually not too difficult, with some mods sometimes working after a simple copy/paste with little to no adjustments. Third-person for example falls in that bag. It was already made functional in Vermintide 2 within days of one of its betas, although obviously can't be shared yet until official support comes around."

As well as third-person mode he says visible damage numbers and health bars, chat blocking, bot improvements and crosshair customizations mods will all make the leap to Vermintide 2. Aussiemon is already working to bring over Fashion Patrol, which turns stormvermin white, as well as his mods for skipping cutscenes, freeing up hat cosmetics so anyone can wear them, scaling the UI for 4k, and adding more mission stats.

Following the transfer of old mods, Grimalackt predicts UI improvements will be the focus. "Any of the complaints about any of the UI screens that Fatshark doesn't fix themselves, and that are within modding powers are going to get fixed by mods." 

Aussiemon agrees. "Some people want detailed weapon stats. Some people want faster endgame screens. Some people want us to port over the UI from Vermintide 1. Working with the UI code isn't easy, but this will probably be what people will focus on first anyway. UnShame is already working on a 'weapon stats' tab at the equipment screen, in fact. I'm sure Fatshark will eventually implement some of the common suggestions themselves, but there'll always be ideas for modders."

And then, of course, the stranger ideas will flow in. Aussiemon says that after texture, model, and sound replacers, "eventually the Vermintide 2 tools will let us make new items, animations, cutscenes, and even levels." In the first game he managed to turn the Pub Brawl, a limited-time event that let players biff each other up in the Red Moon Inn, into something players could enjoy whenever they wanted. Now he's working on a follow-up.

"I've written a mod that allows friendly fire in Taal's Horn Keep," he says, going on to explain that without access to bespoke animations like those the first game had for Pub Brawl, like fists and Lohner pouring flagons of Bugman's ale, it won't be exactly the same—unless Fatshark does something like Pub Brawl for Vermintide 2. "Pub Brawl was a fan favorite though, so I bet we'll see it make a comeback. When it does, I'll have a mod."

A barricade against cheats and trolls

Modding Vermintide 2 won't be a complete free-for-all, of course. Some players will want to hog-wild while others would rather stick with the vanilla game. "To cater to both these things we will be splitting the game into two realms," Hagblom says, "the official realm and the modded realm. So if a player is playing in the official realm, they will be able to know that everybody else playing are playing legitimately. Though, since we've had a lot of mods for Vermintide 1 with QoL improvements, more advanced UIs and the like we still want this to remain without forcing these players to play in the wild west of the modded realm. To solve this we will allow mod creators to apply to get their mods vetted for 'sanctioned' status. We will then go through the mod, make sure it doesn't contain any cheats or unfair advantages and if everything checks out, clear it to be played even in the official realm."

As Grimalackt says, "Those who want to create absolutely ridiculous mods will now also be able to share them more openly, since there will be an 'untrusted' realm with separate matchmaking where everything is permitted, at the cost of loot not carrying over to the trusted realm."

Something we probably won't see is rebalancing to make the game easier, much as I'd like it if mid-level bosses like Bile Trolls and Chaos Spawn had about half as many hit points on Recruit difficulty. Grimalack calls it "very unlikely" that custom difficulty rebalancing will make it through the new system. "The bot improvements will likely still make a comeback, however," he says. "The only complaint the devs ever really had about them was their sometimes ridiculously accurate aim, so that part might have to be left unimproved, but their handling of tomes and grimoires will almost assuredly be changed just like in the first game."

As for making the game harder, "Vermintide 2 is already significantly harder than the first game. Some of the heroic deeds are also heavily inspired by the first game's difficulty mods. The 'Vanguard' modifier, is effectively what Stormvermin Mutation was, as it directly turns clan rats into stormvermins, and slave rats into clan rats (and does the same to Chaos equivalents), just like the Stormvermin Mutation once did. It doesn't turn all specials into bosses, however, so I guess I still have something to do.

Lines will be drawn at mods that infringe on intellectual property. "So for instance no Lord of the Rings mods," Hagblom says. "When the Mod SDK is released it will have a EULA specifying the exact dos and don'ts."

Grimalackt is looking forward to the fact he won't need to maintain the equivalent of his Quality of Life modpack for Vermintide 2. "Every modder will be responsible for uploading and maintaining their own mods, and won't have to go through me to have me include their work in my package. I'll be able to dedicate more time to creating my own mods instead. Fear not though, the QoL modpack will eventually still live on as a Steam Workshop list of recommended good starter mods, sometime down the line."

He already has ideas for what he'll do with the free time he'll have. "One thing I also definitely have to do sometimes soon is turn everything into plague monks. You don't see enough of those guys around. I can already imagine the screeching from a horde of monks…"

In a break from the regular format, Samuel and Phil have both played new, recently released PC games. Sam goes head to head with an unspecified cult in Far Cry 5, Phil chunders on a friend in Sea of Thieves, and both have a rant about why, yes, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is very difficult thank you very much.

Download: Episode 62: Honkin’ On Watermelon. You can also subscribe on iTunes or keep up with new releases using our RSS feed.   

Discussed: Far Cry 5, Sea of Thieves, Warhammer: Vermintide 2

Starring: Samuel Roberts, Phil Savage

The PC Gamer UK Podcast is a weekly podcast about PC gaming. Thoughts? Feedback? Requests? Tweet us @PCGamerPod, or email letters@pcgamer.com. This week’s music is from Far Cry 3.