If you have ever eyed a wall of Warhammer boxes and felt you needed a degree to start, Games Workshop has just made the first step free. At its Big Summer Preview on 26 June, GW unveiled Warhammer Academy, a free official video library that teaches the hobby from the ground up, launching with more than 150 lessons for Warhammer 40,000.
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Find events near youWarhammer 40,000 is the hugely popular sci-fi miniatures wargame of grim far-future battles, and it can look daunting from the outside: armies to assemble, models to paint, a thick rulebook to learn. The Academy arrives just as the game's new edition lands, so it suits returning players dusting off their dice as much as total newcomers. Lessons split into three tracks: Lore and Collecting, for working out who the factions are and which one is for you; Building and Painting, for assembling and painting your models; and Gaming, which runs from setting up a table and moving units all the way to fielding a full army. Games Workshop says the content is free, that it will keep adding to it, and that the Mortal Realms of Warhammer Age of Sigmar will join "in the not-too-distant future."
A free, structured way in is exactly the sort of thing that turns a curious browser into someone who actually books a game. If you already know your bolters from your chainswords, treat this as your cue to teach someone else: round up a few friends, run a learn-to-play afternoon, and list it as an event on Backseat Gamer so other locals can pull up a chair. New players pick the game up far faster across a table than alone with a rulebook, so it is also a good moment to find a group near you.
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