Warhammer Academy

Warhammer is so big that it can be hard to know where to start, or even if you want to start. Warhammer Academy is a new initiative from Games Workshop to shepherd people into Warhammer 40,000 through structured videos lessons and tutorials, in the style of a MOOC (massive open online course.) It's a friendly introduction to the setting, the game, and the hobby, that you can do at your own pace. I've completed literally all the courses (about 135 hours of video content, I think) and this is my review of the service.

What is Warhammer Academy?

Warhammer Academy is a complementary $0 online course that you can take at your own pace to learn about the lore of Warhammer 40,000, how to play the game using Combat Patrol kits, and how to assemble and paint models. There's no cost, and no sales pitch. You earn achievements as you progress, and you're free to engage as much or as little with the site as needed.

The site structure of Warhammer Academy

The Warhammer Academy website is designed like an online class (although you're the only student in the room). It offers several lesson paths, which are essentially courses of study. The site design is great, and you can start a class, walk away from it for several days, and then return to the site and pick up right where you left off. You pick what interests you, and then consume all the content you want. You can pick and mix, or you can watch through an entire course and get a little achievement award for your diligence.

The pathways never assume you know anything about Warhammer 40,000, so you can start with whatever course interests you. I started with lore, and then watched the gaming content, and then the hobby (building and painting) content.

Path of the loremaster

The lore videos introduce you first to the high-level factions in 40k: Imperium, Xenos, and Chaos. After that overview, you can proceed on to pathways that cover specific armies. For the Imperium, for example, there are videos about Space Marines, Adepta Sororitas, Adeptus Mechanicus, and so on. At the time of writing, the space marine videos "only" cover 6 chapters (Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Grey Knights). For the Xenos, all the xenos armies are covered. Chaos includes Chaos Space Marines, but no Red Corsairs or dedicated lore about Chaos Daemons.

There's an enormous amount of lore within the 40k setting, but these lore videos graciously abbreviate it and just provide the stuff that's most important. I've been guilty of torturing a friend with hours of Warhammer lore videos from Youtube, which at the time seemed like a fine idea, but you quickly realise that even the dulcet tones of Arbiter Ian, the best 40k loremaster on Youtube, can start to degrade into white noise. Warhammer Academy wisely sticks to the rudimentary information about each army, with just enough references to historical events so you understand that there's more to learn with further exploration elsewhere.

What's maybe missing here is an introduction to Black Library. I guess a lot of people (like me) find Warhammer books through other means, so maybe if you're at Warhammer Academy then it's assumed you'll find Black Library on your own. Still, Black Library is prolific, and I can't help but think that a few book recommendations would be useful, as long as it's done earnestly with newcomers in mind.

Path of the gamer

There's a whole class on how to play Warhammer 40,000 on the tabletop, and it's really well done. It very wisely focuses entirely on Combat Patrol, using a starter box as the example armies and battlefield. It steps through the rules in a not-boring way, striking the right balance for time given to simplicity and rules that apply only to edge cases.

At the end of the course, two of the presenters play a full game of Combat Patrol. Once again, they try to strike a balance between explaining every last interaction and allowing you to just see a game as it realistically gets played. I guess I'd like for them to have referenced a rule by name or terminology more often, or maybe talk more about some of the dice rolls (for example, they might have mentioned that they were rolling weapon types separately), but then again there was never a moment where I felt something was unclear. They did a good job of explaining the game, and then they showed you the game being played. I think it works.

I love that they're supporting Combat Patrol as an entry point, too. I sometimes feel like the Warhammer community (whatever and whomever that is) forgets about Combat Patrol, because I hear a lot about 1,000 point armies and 2,000 point games, but rarely do I hear about Combat Patrol tournaments or clubs that play it. It's an entry point, but I appreciate it as a format, as well, just because small armies are easier to store. But small armies require special missions (it's hard to play a mission requiring you to claim 3 objectives when all you have are 2 units), so Combat Patrol could use official recognition and support. It's nice to see recognition for the format, and I'd love to see some Combat Patrol missions in future White Dwarf issues.

Path of the hobbyist

The course for building and painting miniatures is excellent. If you think you've seen videos about building and painting before, you should still watch these because they basically spell out the Games Workshop method for the hobbyist side of 40k. The presenter explains how to cut parts off a sprue, how to remove mold lines, how to prime, and then paint. Clear instructions, step by step. This is the kind of the documentation I love to see.

Interestingly, they explicitly state that you don't have to prime your miniatures, and that instead you can brush a Warhammer (Citadel) base paint directly on the plastic. I'd never heard this before, and I feel like I should try it on a test model just to find out how it works. It makes sense to me, but it does seem strange. I've always been told not to paint without a primer, but I really do hate the priming step. I don't prime Wizkid miniatures, but those feel different to Citadel miniatures. Anyway, it's something to try later.

<img src="/games/blog/_img/screenshot_warhammer-academy-painting.webp" alt="A Grey Knight painting tutorial on Warhammer Academy" >

As with the gaming lessons, each painting course is structured around Combat Patrol. There are videos for each miniature type in each Combat Patrol box. If you buy a Combat Patrol kit and you want to know how to paint your models like they look on the box, then these videos are what you want to watch. The person painting in the videos has, of course, amazing brush control, so even the simplest brush strokes may be aspirational to you, but it does serve as an example of what you're aiming for. I've painted hundreds of miniatures at this point, and I'm still working on making the brush and the paint do what I want them to do, and it's great to see how a professional painter goes about it.

Interestingly, there are no Contrast Paints in the tutorials, not even for shading. The lessons stick to traditional base and layer paints and washes. I feel like the results are a little too clean, but maybe I think that because I know I couldn't yet achieve it if I tried.

Each individual video demonstrates exactly 1 model from a Combat Patrol box, painted in 3 stages. You can follow along through the Level 1 section to end up with a model that's Battle Ready. Later, as you get better at painting, you can follow along with Level 2 and Level 3 to bring your model up to Parade Ready standards. Because I watched the videos from start to finish, I do feel like I've learned some new tricks, so I might revisit some models I've already painted to add some edge highlights and other detail work, and that's exactly the intent of the course design. The presenters specify that no model is ever incompatible with a higher level of paint tutorial in this series. Level 3 builds on Level 2, and Level 2 builds on Level 1, so you can start playing after you've got all your models just to Level 1 standards, and then improve them over time.

This goes to show how methodical, and maybe even dogmatic, Games Workshop is about its processes, and I admire that. Their method may not be the only method of getting paint on plastic toys, but it is universal and scalable, and surprisingly flexible for being so rigidly defined. It might be too much for someone who isn't painting Citadel models, or for someone who's been painting their entire lives, but as a relative newcomer who thought I'd never have the coordination to paint a 28mm miniature, I appreciate the firm guidance that Games Workshop provides. I don't want to be told that anything's possible and that there are no rules, because that doesn't help me bring a project to completion. I know anything's theoretically possible, and that there are no rules and no colour scheme police, but that's not instruction. I'm not interested developing my own style, I just want to get my models painted and on the table, and Warhammer Academy demonstrates how relatively simple that can actually be.

A good hobby resource

There's no marketing in Warhammer Academy. Games Workshop largely lets the obsession sell itself. They'll send you marketing emails if you let them, but even those are mostly used to generate hype rather than to force you to commit to a purchase. It's a pretty refreshing business model. You don't have to wade through prompts to subscribe to anything or to make your first purchase. It's just a lot of information about Warhammer 40,000, and even more general information about building and painting models. It's a really good resource.

Of course, this isn't exactly anything new. There are countless Youtube channels demonstrating the exact same thing, and many of them are very good. Luckily, they can co-exist. We still have Youtube tutorials, and now we have Warhammer Academy. I think we're better off for choice.