In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future There is Occasionally Very Small War: Fireteam and Warhammer Underworlds

I see board games in the store and they always look so cool and then I buy them and bring them home, I’m so excited to open them, and then I play them, like, twice… This column is dedicated to the love of games for those of us whose eyes may be bigger than our stomachs when it comes to playing, and the joy that we can all take from games, even if we don’t play them very often.

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I wrote last time about my love affair with Warhammer Underworlds and how it has now probably come to an end. Something I haven’t ever written about, though, is the one-off attempt to do something similar for Warhammer 40,000.

For those who are only vaguely familiar with Games Workshop’s various products, they have two flagship titles. One is Age of Sigmar, which is set in a high fantasy world filled with, y’know, swords and dragons and all that jazz. The other is Warhammer 40,000, which is set in the far future (the year 40,000, give or take) and is filled with guns and spaceships and all that jazz.

All of their various ancillary games take place in one of these two settings – or in the “Old World” that was Warhammer Fantasy Battles before Age of Sigmar came along, and which has fairly recently been dusted off and re-released. Of the two, I couldn’t tell you which is more popular with any certainty, but a glance around sure makes it seem like 40k is the winner.

Warhammer Underworlds takes place in the world of Age of Sigmar. Fireteam is the closest thing that there is to an equivalent game for Warhammer 40,000.

Which is not to say that there aren’t plenty of skirmish games to be found in the grim darkness of the far future. Besides Kill Team, which is the most generic “Warhammer 40k but smaller” game on the market, there’s also Necromunda, a popular game of gang warfare which takes place on one specific planet in the 40k universe, and features models that are incompatible with the larger gameplay sphere for some reason.

All of these are more involved than Warhammer Underworlds which is, as I have mentioned, the smallest and simplest of the company’s various skirmish games. Fireteam brings many of the elements that make Underworlds tick to the grimdark 40k universe, to varying effect.

We’ll start with similarities: Fireteam comes in a box the same basic dimensions as a “season” of Warhammer Underworlds, and it shares several other qualities with its high fantasy cousin, including battlefields made up pre-packaged hex maps that come with the game, and rounds that are played out across a limited number of activations, rather than each member of your eponymous fireteam necessarily getting a turn every time.

There are also a lot of differences, though. The world of Warhammer 40k is different from Age of Sigmar in a variety of ways but the one that is most important on the tabletop might be that there are simply a lot more guns in the far future, which means that ranged combat takes a higher priority than it’s likely to in the quick and dirty skirmishes of the mythic past.

Also different is how one scores points. In Warhammer Underworlds, objective cards (which are kept secret from your opponent) tell you how you’ll score victory points and ultimately win the game – although killing the enemy will usually do the trick, too. In Fireteam, however, there are various missions that include holding objectives, overtaking enemy territory, or raiding resources, putting Fireteam closer to a standard game of Warhammer 40k, at least in this regard.

Like a season of Underworlds, Fireteam comes straight out of the box with two fireteams, so that two people can play with just the contents of the package. These include “Assault Intercessor Squad Gideon,” your obligatory team of Space Marines, and “The Deathless Destroyers,” a much more populous group of Necrons – think the endoskeletons from Terminator.

Alongside these, the box also contains cards and rules for three other fireteams, including orks (space orcs), aeldari (space elves), and Imperial Guard (human soldiers who are less badass than Space Marines). To play with them, though, you’ll have to supply your own models or, if you do what GW wants you to do, buy them from elsewhere in their line.

The biggest difference between Fireteam and Underworlds is hinted at here. These five fireteams are all there is – and likely all there will ever be. While Underworlds became a standard part of the Games Workshop spread of Warhammer products, Fireteam was one of many boxed games released through a partnership with Barnes & Noble and then largely forgotten.

The game first came out not that long ago, back in 2021. As far as I know, it is already out of print, and there’s never been any indication that any future releases are planned using its rules or mechanics. Still, if you want to play Warhammer Underworlds but in the grim darkness of the far future, it’s as close as you can currently get, and it offers at least a few options of who to play with, assuming you’ve got the extra models, or are willing to engage in some substitutions.

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Orrin Grey is a writer, editor, game designer, and amateur film scholar who loves to write about monsters, movies, and monster movies. He’s the author of several spooky books, including How to See Ghosts & Other Figments. You can find him online at orringrey.com.