World Eaters army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The World Eaters are one of the Traitor Legions of Chaos Space Marines who now inhabit the Warp rift known as the Eye of Terror in the Imperium of Man's Segmentum Obscurus.
The World Eaters, originally known as the War Hounds, were also once the XII Legion of the twenty First Founding Space Marine Legions, and one of the first to betray the Emperor of Mankind for the service of Chaos and the Warmaster Horus.
This Legion was a collection of nearly inhuman monsters long before Horus became corrupted and monsters they would remain, only with what little remained of their restraint and their Humanity stripped away after their fall to Chaos.
The World Eaters are now the dedicated servants of the Blood God Khorne, the Chaos God of war and murder, and live for nothing more than to spill blood in his name. The World Eaters' Primarch Angron was one of the first of the Space Marine primarchs to join with Horus when he turned against the Emperor and began the Horus Heresy.
The Legion is no longer united, having long ago surrendered to the pure bloodlust inspired by their patron Khorne. Instead they now operate as separate warbands of Chaos Space Marines who seek to spread death and terror in the name of the Blood God across the galaxy.
The World Eaters were known from their very inception as the most brutal and direct of assault troops. Their fearsome doctrine was very much the result of the early life of their primarch.
Angron was raised on the world of Nuceria as a slave-warrior, driven by a cybernetic cranial implant called the Butcher's Nails into savage bouts of uncontrollable violence for the entertainment of the masses.
But Angron did not remain a slave for long, for he was possessed of the indomitable will of a Primarch, and he rallied his fellow gladiators to break the chains of their bondage, slay their oppressors and escape to freedom.
Having led his army of escaped slave-warriors into the mountains, Angron found himself hunted relentlessly, until only a thousand or so of his companions survived, cornered by five entire armies of Nucerian overseers. Determined to sell their lives dearly, Angron and his warriors dug their own graves, a signal to the enemy that no quarter would be asked and the fight would be to the death.
But Angron was not to fall the following morning, for it transpired that the Emperor had been observing his deeds from orbit. The Emperor came before His long lost gene-son and told him, as He had the other Primarchs, of the purpose for which he was created. Yet Angron rejected the Emperor's words, determined instead to fight and to die at the side of his fellow slave-warriors.
As the sun rose and the encircling armies closed on Angron's band of warriors, the Emperor saw that not even a mighty Primarch could prevail against such odds. As battle was joined, the primarch was teleported to the Emperor's vessel, and though he was saved from certain death as all his comrades died in his absence, he never forgave his gene-father for what he would forever view as a gross betrayal of a warrior's vows to his battle-kin.
Taking his position as primarch of the XII Legion, which he renamed the "World Eaters," Angron instigated a program of replicating the cranial implants he himself had been fitted with as a slave-warrior, knowing that the devices granted such advantages in speed, aggression and strength that no enemy in the galaxy could stand before his Legion once all had received them.
Yet, it was soon found that the implants were based on lost technology of which the ancient Mechanicum was ignorant, and while they used Angron's own implant as a template, they were never able to fully recreate it.
Of all the Space Marine Legions created by the Emperor of Mankind during the First Founding, none were so savage and dreaded as were the World Eaters.
For while others such as the Night Lords could justly claim to have brought worlds into Imperial Compliance through fear alone, and others such as the White Scars and the Space Wolves could descend without warning and leave a world burning in their wake, for the World Eaters to be assigned to a campaign meant only one thing for the enemy -- extermination.
Extermination not by Virus Bomb or atomic firestorm, but by chainaxe and bolter, worlds drowned one-by-one in the blood of their inhabitants.
The Emperor of Mankind sought to unite all of Humanity under one banner following the Long Night of the Age of Strife, and end inter-Human conflict. Once united, the Emperor intended to begin the next stage of His great plan to ensure Human domination of the Milky Way Galaxy, which He judged to be necessary if Humanity was to survive the never-ceasing threats to its existence embodied by Chaos, myriad xenos races and its own fragile Human nature.
In time, when the Emperor's eye first began to fall beyond Terra, He began to raise new armies to fight His Great Crusade. He drew these new troops in part from the forces that had already unified Terra during the Unification Wars of the late 30th Millennium.
To carry out the Great Crusade and reunite all the scattered colony worlds of Mankind beneath the single banner of the Imperium of Man, the Emperor created the genetically-enhanced transhuman warriors known as the Legiones Astartes, the Space Marine Legions.
These elite forces would serve as the speartip of His Great Crusade, bringing the light of the secular Imperial Truth and enforcing Imperial Compliance with the new regime on every Human-settled world encountered.
Such sources that survived the later Siege of Terra at the height of the Horus Heresy regarding the origins and formation of the XIIth Legion of the Legiones Astartes are fragmentary at best, and in compiling their record Imperial scholars were forced to rely on second-hand accounts from those who fought alongside them, and the apocryphal accounts handed down by those many who had cause to fear and resent this most feared of Space Marine Legions.
It appears that the Terran origins of the XIIth Legion showed no particular bias as to the techno-barbarian tribe or city-state from which the initial influx of recruits were taken as there was in the case of the other Legions.
There has been some circumstantial evidence that there may have been psychological screening used to single out the most inherently aggressive and competitive recruits in an experimental pre-selection program. Whether this came to pass is merely supposition, for it is apparent from such records that survived that the XIIth Legion were from the outset deemed a highly aggressive force, its warriors hot-blooded and savage.
One of its most ferocious and promising candidates, Ibram Ghreer, rose quickly within the ranks of the nascent Legion, and eventually assumed command of the XIIth as its first Legion Master.
During the final days of the Unification Wars the XIIth Legion's first recorded engagement was during the Sa'afrik Liberation where they served as a spearhead of shock troops, mounting direct annihilation assaults on enemy forces, both in open battle and against fortified positions, and able to carry the attack despite their then-relatively small numbers by sheer courage and the fury of the violence they could unleash.
The name of the world on which Angron was raised has long since been lost to history, though records indicate it was once called Nuceria. The pre-Heresy Legion made use of the world called Bodt for many solar decades as a training site for new recruits during the Great Crusade.
However, in the early days of the Horus Heresy, long before the Siege of Terra, the World Eaters Legion was diverted to crush a single world utterly by Angron during the so-called Shadow Crusade. It is not known if this world was their Primarch's homeworld or not, but popular belief was that it was indeed the world on which Angron had been a slave.
Angron also ordered the destruction of several other worlds, seemingly at random, during the Heresy.
Unlike the other Traitor Legions, the World Eaters at present are not known to hold any world as their own in the daemonic realm of the Eye of Terror that the Traitors now call home.
This is speculated to be due to the fact the Legion is essentially no longer a coherent entity since the World Eaters are actually comprised of multiple warbands of Khornate Berserkers who traverse the galaxy looking for slaughter and maintain no overall organisation or coordination between them.
At its creation, the XIIth Legion, like almost all the Space Marine Legions of the time, followed the so-called "Terran Pattern" of organisation as formulated by the Imperial Officio Militaris at the outset of the Great Crusade.
But even in this earliest period the Legion's procurement and outfitting showed a considerable bias towards direct assault and operations within the close and deadly confines of the kinds of battlefields designated as "Zone Mortalis" in Imperial strategic doctrine. During Angron's transition of command, this would continue, and the Legion's organisational structures were kept largely intact but often further streamlined, with its echelons being biased in make-up towards line infantry formations.
These formations were a hybrid of tactical/close assault troops for the main part, supported by dedicated heavy assault units such as Terminators and specialised units such as Land Speeder squadrons. This organisation lent itself well to a highly aggressive strategic posture and belligerent tactics, which while extremely costly in terms of casualties, were also highly effective.
The rank structure of the World Eaters under Angron remained simple and direct, the Primarch having little but scorn for the trappings of elites and pointless accolades and titles. It is said that Angron refused even to be addressed as "Lord" by his Astartes, but he did see the virtue of a reliable and transparent chain-of-command in war.
The original War Hounds Legion was also known for its harsh enforcement of internal discipline and the hot-blooded temper of its Legionaries. Command within the Legion was gained through a mixture of martial prowess on the battlefield and displays of leadership on the front line, with specialists singled out by aptitude early on.
No rank or role within the Legion was exempt from the expectation that they would fight as hard as the rest, however, nor was the desire to grapple with the foe and cut them down by blade-stroke discouraged if the opportunity arose, be the Space Marine in question an Apothecary or Artillerist rather than a frontline fighter.
Compared to many of the other Astartes Legions, order and discipline did not come as naturally to those of this gene-seed heritage as might be expected. Tempers often seethed, slights perceived or real were met with anger and more often than not violence would result should a World Eater's sense of honour be impugned.
Any officer of the Legion knew they were expected to back up their authority by force if needed, and the punishment of infractors by an officer's own hands was the Legion's way. To disobey an officer's order in battle was a death sentence to be carried out without delay.
Trial by combat soon became the Legion's preferred route for settling disagreements within its ranks, and bloodletting by warriors in open discord was an honourable thing both in Angron's eyes and that of his Legion. Here also could one of higher rank be challenged for the right of command, although such rare contests were always to the death.
In the aftermath of the betrayal at Istvaan III, the World Eaters Legion, under their savage Primarch Angron, became ever more insular as a Legion and uncontrollable on the battlefield, proving a double-edged sword even to their allies. The psycho-surgery rife within the Legion became even more widespread and extreme in its use, and the Neophytes inducted with ever-increasing pace into the World Eaters' ranks to replace the fallen were cerebrally mutilated with the Butcher's Nails implants as a matter of course.
Since the infamous Battle of Skalathrax, the once mighty World Eaters Traitor Legion has splintered into countless murderous hosts. Those warriors who worship Khorne are anarchic individuals, their armies little more than ragged coalitions of rival warbands ready to turn upon one another at the slightest provocation.
Only the leadership of a truly mighty individual can hold such a force together for long as its Chaos Lord. Listed below are several such notable warbands that originally were members of the unified World Eaters Legion:
Hand-to-hand combat was the XIIth Legion's preferred form of warfare, even before it took the Emperor-given name of the War Hounds for itself. This did not mean that the World Eaters lacked ability and competency in ranged engagements or armoured warfare and supporting artillery attack.
Indeed, no lesser luminary in the arts of mechanised warfare than the Iron Hands' Primarch Ferrus Manus praised the War Hounds' armoured assault at Aldabaran Septus as the "epitome of iron-clad rage given form," but for the War Hounds such things were a tactical means to an end.
That end being successfully delivering the killing force of the Legion, its Space Marines, where they could inflict the most harm and come to grapple with their foe at close quarters. The War Hounds had a preponderance of close combat weaponry habitually carried by its rank-and-file.
In addition to the use of the ubiquitous Combat Knives or Gladius, even Legionaries attached to reconnaissance squads and vehicle crews commonly carried chainblades, flay-cutters and mono-serrated bayonets, back-up knives, hatchets and cleavers. In dedicated assault units this profusion of bloody killing tools was added to by a weapon that dated back to the techno-barbarian tribes of Terra, the broad-bladed Chainaxe.
With the coming of Angron as their commander, the XIIth Legion's predilections for hand-to-hand bloodletting reached even greater heights, as the master-gladiator taught his warriors new weapons and new ways to kill, and what can only be described as a cult of personal combat took hold of the Legion at a fundamental level.
The Chainaxe was further refined under Angron's direction, and such was the reputation it gained, that its use spread to several other Legions. But in the abstract the weapon could be seen as a symbol of the World Eaters themselves -- brutal and savage, remorseless and unsubtle, a machine with but one purpose -- to kill.
When the XIIth Legion launched a planetary assault, they did so in a most unusual matter. Upon reaching a planet's surface, the World Eaters would burst from drop pods and charge down the assault ramps of their gunships, rapidly established security perimeters at their respective landing zones. Recon squads ranged out and lines of communication were solidified between adjacent units as companies organised and cohered. Once fully assembled on the ground, the order was given to advance.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.
30 World Eaters datasheets on the current roster, each with its points, model statistics, keywords and abilities.
28 World Eaters datasheets that are no longer part of the current army roster. They are kept for reference and for players whose collections still contain the models.