I’ve realized, belatedly, that the animated Warhammer 40,000 short in Amazon’s adver-tainment anthology Secret Level did me irreparable harm, the full effects of which are finally bearing fruit. That short, the only one I remember for actually being good, burrowed into my brain like Butcher’s Nails where it remained dormant until now, activating like an unexploded virus bomb. Almost overnight I became obsessed with all things Warhammer. I’ve plowed through the first three Horus Heresy novels and a couple of the collected short story anthologies, and totally rearranged my YouTube and Instagram habits to feed me more lore videos. But it wasn’t enough. And since I categorically refuse to actually take up the miniature-painting, IRL wargaming aspect of the hobby because I know that’s a sure path to bankruptcy, I picked up Owlcat Games’ Rogue Trader just to see if it can satisfy my desire to see every traitor and heretic ground into dust and cast into the Warp.

Rogue Trader is a top-down CRPG that feels like a less dense version of Baldur’s Gate III . In combat, characters are alloted movement points and action points, and once they’re all spent, the turn is over. I chose the Commissar class, deciding immediately that any job with a perk called “One for the enemies, two for the traitors” was one I wanted to put into practice. At first blush, I really didn’t think a game that casts me as a measly human would provide the Warhammer fix I was looking for.

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