Total War: Warhammer 40,000’s map destruction is “the biggest mental shift” for the strategy series in years, but “we’ve kept it to areas where it it really works”

I confess, I don’t think very hard about cover when I’m playing Total War games – I’m too busy micromanaging cavalry and ensuring all of my ranged unit formations are nice and stretched out, with minimal depth for a cannon ball to travel through. I’ll have to address that mentality when playing Total War: Warhammer 40,000, which is not only a strategy game in which you can do an Exterminatus on planets, but also one in which players can destroy many other objects smaller than planets, including objects your squishy Imperial Guardsmen are cowering behind.

“One of the really big and exciting things that we’re doing here is the destruction now is going to come into play,” observes David Petry, the game’s battle product owner, during the closing segment of the very first Total War Show & Tell. “That forest – if you don’t like it, get rid of it.”

Gosh, it’s this year’s variation on the apocryphal Todd Howard refrain “see that mountain? You can climb it”. It seems probable that you can level individual mountains in Total War: Warhammer 40,000. Mind you, the developers say they’re being careful to only apply map destruction “to areas where it really works and makes sense”.

The video segment includes a flyover of several WIP Twarhammer40K maps, which are said to cover a lot of variety. Planets have different biomes, and each faction brings different architecture. The size of the maps also allows them to be divided into smaller tactical layouts, and they’ll feel different depending on where you spawn.

Much of that is also true of past Total War games, of course. According to head of community engagement Joshua Williams, the “biggest mental shift” with TwortyK is factoring in the ability to delete terrain cover and obstacles, whether using surface-to-surface ordnance or by calling in an orbital strike. “With dense maps in other Total War games, these are all obstacles I am forced to work around the whole time,” he says. “But a lot of these buildings I can get rid of. I can make this a lower density map if I want.”

“Being completely clear, not absolutely everything is destructible, right?” Petry follows up. “We’ve kept it to areas where it really works and makes sense, and it feels like it can really sort of add to that depth. But I mean, another big part of it is these cover zones, right?” [Because again] we are dealing with a universe of really powerful but flat-firing weapons. And so cover becomes incredibly, incredibly important.” Units can also stand on ruins and the like for a clearer shot, though I assume this will also make them more vulnerable.

“You can end up in these cover-to-cover fights, right?” Petry goes on. “And at that point, it’s about what tools do I have available to me? What can I unstick this situation with? And of course, you’ve got so many toys here. You’ve got units that can jump over things with jetpacks and land and get into a melee, because melee is a great way to unstick a cover, but you can also [shoot at a building that’s next to them] and drop it on them.”

As for orbital strikes, these rely on having your fleet in position with the right armaments. “So if you’ve loaded it up with a macro cannon, and you’ve got a bunch of really angry space marines ready to jump down, they can appear exactly where the enemy doesn’t want them,” Petry says.

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is one of Julian’s most anticipated games of 2026, though it seems likely the game won’t release this year. Also on that list: PVKK: Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant, a game about operating a huge planetary defence cannon, and Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator. Big fan of big barrels, our Julian. As for myself, I am a noted Imperium detractor and so, more eager to hear about Total War: Warhammer 40,000’s interpretation of the Eldar, who apparently “play totally differently to anything we’ve ever done”.