Four playable factions have been confirmed for Total War: Warhammer 40K: Space Marines, Orcs, Aeldari, and the Imperial Guard. But there’s at least one more group we’ll be seeing whilst fighting amongst the stars – the Traitor Guard, branches of the Imperial Guard who have turned on the Imperium due to Chaos corruption or plain ol’ revolution.
I spotted the Traitor Guard’s faction icon while playing Total War: Warhammer 40K at Gamescom, although I never encountered them first-hand. Afterward, I caught up with Dave Petry, battle product owner for Total War, and asked whether the Traitor Guard would function differently in battle compared to the Imperial Guard, or if their shifting allegiance would be purely cosmetic.
“There will be some presence of traitorous things occurring,” says Petry, picking his words carefully. “They’ll be around [as] things that you can fight, and will be causing trouble and uprisings throughout your campaign. And that’s probably all that I ought to be talking about for now…”
Whether the Traitor Guard will differ from the Imperial Guard remains to be seen, but there is precedent for unique factions not being immediately playable in Total War. The first Total War: Warhammer launched with chivalric faction Bretonnia on the campaign map, but they were only made playable when their roster was fleshed out the following year.
Of course, the Traitor Guard could just be grumpy Imperial Guard. But given the secrecy, I wonder if Creative Assembly has more tricks hiding up its sleeve? There has been no concrete sign of Chaos in Total War: Warhammer 40K, with my campaign preview focused on fighting orcs as Space Marines, but the developer has already confirmed plans to add more factions post-launch. Given Creative Assembly wants to make “the seminal Warhammer 40K game,” it will only be a matter of time until the heretics arrive.