In August 2025 in issue 515, White Dwarf magazine published a set of rules for a cooperative mode for Warhammer 40,000, inspired by the breakout hit Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 video game. I'm never one to bury the lede. Space Marine Operations is a great game. It's easily the best way to play skirmish-level Warhammer 40,000. It's better than Kill Team, and I like Kill Team. It's absolutely the best introduction to Warhammer 40,000. Honestly, Space Marine Operations is almost too good, and over Christmas it was released as a $0 download from Warhammer Community.
The rules exist exclusively as a tie-in to the Space Marine 2 video game, which turned out to be a much bigger hit than anyone had expected. Space Marine 2 is a first-person shooter, but the tabletop game of Warhammer 40,000 is very much a large-scale wargame for an entire army. I can only imagine the confusion someone coming from the video game to the tabletop game would feel for the shift in focus. Besides that, I get the feeling that there's not an insignificant contingency of tabletop gamers (myself included) who have been pining for a solo (or co-op) mode of Warhammer 40,000 for years. In short, the arrival of Space Marine Operations is as timely as a squad of Astartes on an Tyranid-infested space hulk.
The rule set for Space Marine Operations is just 8 pages (excluding illustrative graphics). That's not in addition to rules from Warhammer 40,000 or Boarding Actions, that's the full rule set. You can download Space Marine Operations and start playing with almost no prior knowledge of wargaming. The rules are beautifully self-contained, clearly explained, and elegantly designed. There's a page for movement, a page for attacking, a page for defending, a page for the turn order, and a page defining valid actions.
The weakest rule is the game's use of tiles to measure movement. A movement speed of 2, for example, means a miniature can move 2 squares. But if you don't own official Boarding Actions terrain, then you don't know what a square is. There's an easy solution, though. A Boarding Actions square is about 4" (10 cm), so you can use a ruler to measure moves in increments of 4 inches.
The rules don't explain that square on the board is 4" because the game was developed explicitly for Boarding Actions. It's assumed that if you're reading the article, you play Boarding Actions. Realistically, given the video game's popularity, I don't think that's a fair assumption to make. But then again, the rules are available for $0 and only require a handful of miniatures, so the strong suggestion to also purchase a terrain kit for the game board and walls makes sense. It's an extremely modular way of delivering a boxed game without the box. If you already have the components, then you can start playing as soon as White Dwarf 515 arrives in your post box, and otherwise you know what to go buy.
The 5-phase round structure of Warhammer 40,000 10th edition doesn't apply to Space Marine Operations. Each round in this game is just 3 phases:
A normal game of Warhammer 40,000 lasts for 5 rounds, which has always been my least favourite thing about the game's design. It's sort of a necessary evil, but it's always felt arbitrary and unrealistic. Battles aren't normally limited to a set length of time. In Space Marine Operations, the game isn't limited by an arbitrary round count, and instead ends once the players have either achieved the goal of the mission or have fallen to the enemy.
Warhammer 40,000 has done a lot to embrace modular design over the past several editions, with 10th edition being the most modular yet. Space Marine Operations takes the opportunity for some extra modularity in its design, too.
First of all, enemy behaviour is not defined by the rules. Instead, each mission tells you how enemies behave. In one mission, an enemy might just want to kill space marines, but in another the enemy might also want to seize control of power generators, or destroy the ship, or whatever.
Secondly, the stats of your space marines are defined by "class" (Assault, Bulwark, Sniper, Heavy, Tactical, Vanguard). You choose a role for each space marine on your crew, regardless of what model it is. I imagine for most people it'll be obvious which model suits each class, but if you don't own a marine in Terminator armour, then you can just use whatever you do own. Obviously you can do the same thing in Warhammer 40,000, and I often do, but the rules don't support it. Gabriel Seth has taken on many strange guises in my games, and it works well enough, but it always takes a mental cycle to remember which model is playing with Seth's rules. In Space Marine Operations, you only have 3 models on the table, and none of them have set rules. You play by class, and as long as you provide yourself with some clue to signify which model represents which class (the one with the really big gun is the Heavy, the one with the rifle is the sniper, and so on), it's easy to keep track of each marine's stats.
All stats for each model fits on a single card the size of a standard poker card.
That's everything. Each miniature is defined in just 7 stats. There are more stats for a single weapon in Warhammer 40,000.
Amazingly, despite minimal stats, the space marines you play in Space Marine Operations feel the most like space marines in any Warhammer tabletop game I've played. These guys are tough. They hit hard, and they can really take a beating.
There's a lot of potential for near-death experiences, too. Most attacks include Execution Dice, and if you remove an enemy from the board with an Execution Die, then you repair 1 armour segment.
Additionally, players can spend a Revive Point to restore all armour on a downed space marine. When that happens, the marine's card is flipped over to the red Injured side. This side of the card has no statistical difference from the initial side, but once an injured space marine is downed there's usually no coming back. Thanks to more good modular design, a mission may also grant players the ability to revive a marine without expending a Revive Point.
One of the problems with solo or co-op Warhammer before Space Marine Operations was all the dice rolling. You had to constantly change context as you roll an enemy's attack, and then wounds, and then your hero's saves, and then your hero's return attack (in melee, anyway) and wounds and enemy saves. Even if you were clever enough to use different colours for your dice pools, it took serious brainpower to keep track of whose dice you were rolling, for what, and why, and what phase of the turn you were in, and whose turn it was.
In Space Marine Operations, all enemy attacks succeed, and you just roll saves for the marine being targeted. This, to be fair, is how I eventually started playing solo Warhammer, but it's nice that this official-looking rule set uses the same hack.
If you're curious about Warhammer 40,000 but don't know where (or whether) to start, then I think this is by far the best option. While it's possible to play Warhammer 40,000 as a skirmish game (I do it all the time), the rules expect you to be playing with big armies, and unit stats reflect it. Instead, buy a box of space marines and a box or 2 of Tyranids, and you're ready to play.
I purchased a starter set with marines and Tyranids, for less than $200 NZD, for a games day I held at the library, and taught people how to paint and then play Space Marine Operations together. I think a copy of Space Marine Operations ought to be bundled with every starter set, or it ought to be sold in a box of its own. I'd love for the stat cards to be sold in decks, with profiles for more factions.
This is one of those games that I'm really glad to have gotten for the price of my White Dwarf subscription, but that I honestly want more people to know about because it's the best delivery of a Warhammer tabletop gaming experience. I don't mean it's necessarily the best Warhammer game. I don't want to trade Warhammer 40,000 for a game with just 7 stats and 3 marines, but I also know I don't have to. Space Marine Operations is the ideal starter game for anyone interested in Warhammer, a great option for co-op and solo play, the best portrayal of space marines on the tabletop in a long time and, most importantly, a lot of fun.
Grab a copy of your own from Warhammer Community. Additional enemy stats and missions have been released in White Dwarf issues 516 and 517.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.