There are many factions warring across the Warhammer 40K galaxy, each sticking their necks out for what they believe in. With room for only one faction coming out on top, which faction is likely to win in the current setting?
It’s important to remember that Warhammer 40K lore is still being written, and unless Games Workshop are desperate, the story will never come to a true end. We are likely to see years of back and forth between the factions and new exciting battles wage and leaders fall and get resurrected.
Whilst the franchise is making money, it’s likely never to end.
That being said, if there had to be an end – which faction is most likely to win?
What is each Warhammer 40K faction’s goal?
To understand which armies will win in Warhammer 40K, we first must understand what it is they’re all after. Winning doesn’t necessarily mean surviving, as their goal could be something different to the eradication of the other factions.
Despite there being lots of armies to play from, they can be collected into bigger factions that share the same purpose.
In the Warhammer 40K theatre, you’ve got the following players:
- Imperium of Man (this encompases the Astra Militarum, the Adeptus Astartes, Adeptus Mechanicus, and so on. Any human army) – this faction is fighting for survival and to purge the galaxy of aliens, mutants, and daemons.
- Forces of Chaos (despite the Chaos Gods not being buddies, they don’t really engage in wars with each other so to defeat their common enemy: the Imperium) – this faction is fighting to destroy the false Emperor of Mankind and to make The Warp conquer the Universe, claiming it for the Chaos Gods.
- The Aeldari (Eldar) – this faction is one of the oldest, and is trying to bring themselves back to prominence in the galaxy like they once had. Additionally, they are trying to kill the Chaos God Slaanesh, who they brought into existence.
- The Drukhari (Dark Eldar) – this faction revels in pain and suffering, and their only goal is to continue their hedonistic piratical lifestyle by surviving whatever the galaxy throws at them.
- The T’au Empire – this faction is a collection of alien races whose goal is to expand their empire for the “Greater Good” of the T’au Empire and its people. It’s unclear what enough looks like for the T’au, but the “Greater Good” may only be achieved with T’au Empire domination.
- The Orks – this violent and barbaric faction is only concerned with fighting. As long as they’ve got a good fight lined up, they’re happy. All an Ork plans to do with their life is to keep fighting.
- The Tyranids – these voracious insectoids’ only goal is to keep eating. Like an ant infestation on a cosmic scale, their hive fleets go from planet to planet for the Tyranids to consume all of the biomass before moving on. They live to feast.
- Genestealer Cults – this faction’s only goal is to worship and help the Tyranids consume the galaxy. They will infiltrate and take over planets to signal the closest hive fleet over to consume the planet – and themselves.
- The Necrons – these ancient beings have woken up after eons of slumber to reclaim a silent galaxy, only to see it bustling with life. Their goal now is to march forth and destroy all living things as they did at the dawn of creation.
- Leagues of Votann – this is a smaller faction that strives to expand their territory after much was destroyed after the Warp. They engage in trading expeditions to gain the resources needed to relocate and grow. They don’t wish to control the galaxy, just to be big enough for its people to thrive.
From the end goals of these factions, you can likely tell which ones are a little more threatening than the others.
To make this discussion fair, I will be considering each faction’s end goal to see if they’d hit their personal goals before seeing which factions will “win” by outlasting all the others, or at least the madness of the current setting.
To know how Warhammer 40K will likely end to determine who would “win,” we’ll need to have a look at the most threatening factions – and know what makes them so dangerous.
The most threatening Warhammer 40K factions
Almost all of the Warhammer 40K factions are pretty balanced with each other. They each have their own challenges and forces they need to constantly deal with, and they each have their own trump card that they’ve either almost actualised, or have already.
It’s difficult to say which faction will dominate the others, but it’s very easy to see which Warhammer 40K factions are looking to be the most threatening right now. And to little surprise, it’s not the League of Votann.
The Orks
The Orks are an interesting case. They span across the galaxy like a rash, and although they almost always get beaten back by the Imperium, they are always somehow hitting important locations and overrunning worlds in their mighty WAAAGH!s when left unchecked.
They are numerous and strong, but a concentrated effort will almost always repel them. And yet they’re all over the galaxy raising hell. Destroying all in their wake, decimating planets, and thanks to their fungal biology, they are never in short supply.
You could massacre a hundred Orks, and their orkoid fungus would grow a hundred more.
The biggest pain in the back side of the galaxy, the Orks aren’t threatening because they’re the strongest (although an Ork would tell you that they are the strongest (and the biggest)), but because they are constantly attacking everything all the time. As though a persistent leak, they’ll wear the galaxy down eventually.
Relentless and restless, no one is ever safe from the reach of the Orks, no matter who you are.
The Tyranids
The most pressing threat at the moment, the Tyranids (and by extension the Genestealer Cults) are consuming whole planets all the time with their gargantuan hive fleets that are dining through the galaxy. As they consume biomass, they get stronger, and there are numerous hive fleets at work.
What’s worse, is that it’s been hinted that the present hive fleets are merely scout ships for an even larger armada.
All of the galaxy is in fear of these insatiable and mindless creatures. Even if the Tyranids lose one battle, they likely wouldn’t have suffered a net loss of biomass, allowing them to press on and keep consuming.
They are many, and they are devouring all in their wake.
The Necrons
The Necrons were key players in the War in Heaven, and still have access to their incredible powerful and ancient technology that went toe-to-toe with divine beings. Although the Godly C’tan have been rendered to shards now, having such great power is an asset to any army.
What makes the Necrons really threatening, however, is that they are composed of living metal and can “resurrect.” Damaged Necrons can teleport back to base to undergo repairs, meaning a Necron never really dies.
Stalwart and fearless, the deathless Necrons managed to genocide the galaxy before, and they have the means to do so again. Any engagement with these foul beings are typically left with catastrophic casualties.
The Imperium of Man
That’s right, the “good guys” of the 41st millenium are a threatening power as they’re almost too big to fail. Considering just how long the Imperium has been going on for, if it were to collapse due to internal struggles, it would have already. It spans across so much of the galaxy that the amount of failsafes it has renders it almost immune to internal collapse.
So many leagues of armies and super soldiers make the ranks of the Imperium a force to be reckoned with. I mean, it did take Abaddon the Despoiler 13 crusades to take down Cadia – just one planet.
The endless war machine of the Imperium is a match for divine beings and savage aliens, and their ranks know no bounds. Their endless loyalty allow mortal men to stare into the eyes of a literal daemon, and pull their triggers.
Such bravery and loyalty has allowed this faction to face off against incredible odds and win, making them truly formidable.
So, who wins in Warhammer 40K?
Now that we know what each faction is fighting for, and the most prominent players in the game, we can go over the likely scenarios that would lead to an end of Warhammer 40K if we consider the current setting.
Firstly, let’s just get out the way that the Orks are already winning. They always have been, since the day their ancestors were made by the Old Ones. Even if they die out due to a stronger faction, they’d still have won. All they want to do is fight, and they will fight to the end.
Factions like the Eldar, the Leagues of Votann, the T’au Empire, and the Drukhari, will likely not be able to establish their goals before a greater power consumes or defeats them. Although the Eldar are powerful, the level of prominence they desire will take far too long to properly achieve, and they just aren’t strong enough compared to the other forces at play.
The Chaos are technically always winning, yet are destined to lose. Spreading turmoil and madness and is what the Chaos Gods enjoy, and whilst the Imperium is alive, they get to keep doing that, so they win with each person tortured, converted, and killed. However, killing the Emperor of Mankind is likely beyond them.
If they all banded together they could likely topple the Imperium, however, they all hate each other. Constant disorder and backstabbing happens within the ranks of the Chaos forces on numerous levels, always keeping the military forces a step behind of what they could actually be.
Whilst the Chaos Gods are divided, they will never crush the Imperium, although their day to day activities of sowing terror and reaping violence allows them and their followers to keep revelling in joy – effectively winning every day.
So, what a surprise! The most threatening factions are likely to be the ones to survive the madness and achieve their goals. It isn’t so cut and dry, however.
Naturally, the Tyranids have pretty good grounds to eat the galaxy, as it looks like there is no stopping them, and the Imperium scarcely scores wins against the indomitable waves of gnashing teeth.
However, the Necrons aren’t made from biomass. Any Tyranid and Necron engagement is extremely costly for the Tyranids, and the fearlessness of the Necrons allow them to stand and fight. Funnily enough, the galaxy’s only stand against the Tyranids are the Necrons. And it gets better.
With the return of the Silent King, who laments the fate of the deathless Necrons, there is hope against the Tyranids. He has embarked on a journey to wake the other Tomb Worlds to unite a force against the Tyranids specifically. If he’s successful, which he likely will be, he’ll manage to wage a devastating war that would end in the demise of the Tyranids. Or at the very least, chase them away from this galaxy.
So whether any other faction exists hinges on this Necron vs Tyranid battle. Will the Silent King manage to muster his forces and beat back the hive fleets before they devour everything? And what happens after?
Although the Necrons’ goal is generally to reclaim the galaxy, the Silent King wishes only to destroy the Tyranids before the younger races feed them too much. He also wishes to revert the metallic forms of his people. Unlike other petty Necron dynasties, the Silent King does not wish for a galactic genocide, and so whether the Necrons win is down to the Silent King reinserting himself as ruler of the Necrons as he once was.
If the Imperium were to survive the Tyranid crusade, then it would go back to business as usual. They’d likely be the faction that came out of the crusade stronger compared to their peers, and would be able to exterminate all the aliens, mutants, and heretics much easier. I doubt the act of the Necrons, or the Nectontyr if they’re reverted back, would change humanity’s stance on them.
I also doubt that the Imperium would be able to fully actualize their goal of eliminating all alien life and destroying every single heretic, although they’d make great headway into it. So the Imperium wouldn’t lose, exactly, but their true winning goal is a pipe dream at best. Although surviving what’s to come and still being a prominent power could be considered a win.
At the end of it all, I believe only a few factions will come out “winning.”
The Orks, thanks to their endless lust for violence whether they survive or perish.
The Necrons, but only if the Silent King successfully leads over them once again.
The Chaos followers whose only purpose is to spread madness, death, and torture in their limited lifetime.
I believe the other factions wouldn’t die out completely in the end, although they’d be so decimated that they’ve essentially lost, with their goals being put to bed. The only possible exception to this is the Imperium, who would most likely survive the Tyranid apocalypse and come out stronger than the others would. It’s hard to tell whether they’d win in a match-up against the Necrons, however.
Chaos wouldn’t be destroyed, and may run amok in the devastated universe. However, their dividedness will never allow them to actually achieve total victory and dominion.
And there we have it, the most likely “winners” of the current Warhammer 40K setting if it were to end right now. Do remember that the writers will keep finding new ways for the conflict to continue, with the factions never really winning, but never really losing.
I hope your prefered team is one of the ones set to “win,” but if you’re a League of Votann player, then you already knew what the answer would be.