Total War Warhammer 40k Traitor Guard are confirmed as campaign enemies, but Creative Assembly still hasn’t called them a fifth playable faction.
Total War’s Dave Petry had every chance to say the Traitor Guard are just another enemy faction you’ll run into on the campaign map. He didn’t, and instead, he told GamesRadar they’ll cause “trouble and uprisings,” described them as “things that you can fight,” and then cut off the conversation before the follow-up could be asked whether they would be “playable in game.”
Studios don’t usually guard the boring stuff this closely, so that kind of careful wording is why the Traitor Guard question will keep getting attention now.
For now, what we actually know is pretty thin. A Traitor Guard faction icon showed up (unplayable) in the Gamescom demo build, and the announced playable roster is still four armies: Space Marines, Orks, Aeldari, and Astra Militarum. There’s no fifth slot with Renegade Guardsmen sitting in it, so anyone calling them a confirmed playable faction is filling in a blank Creative Assembly has deliberately left open.
And honestly, that gap may end up being more interesting than another army on the faction-select screen because we’ve already seen how the battles actually play. What we haven’t seen is what the campaign does to you between those fights, and Traitor Guard uprisings sound like they could be a big part of that answer.
- What’s actually confirmed: Traitor Guard appear as campaign enemies causing “trouble and uprisings,” and Creative Assembly hasn’t announced anything beyond that.
- The non-answer: Petry called them “things that you can fight” and then guarded the follow-up, which could point toward a rebellion or corruption system rather than a fifth army.
- If we’re reading it right: the Imperium could lose ground to itself mid-campaign, leaving Astra Militarum players defending their own territory as well as the borders.
Petry Had Every Chance To Call Them A Normal Enemy Army
“Uprisings” is a weird word to use if you’re only talking about another AI army. Normal Total War Warhammer 40k enemies can declare war and come marching in from a border you can see on the map. An uprising sounds like something starting inside territory you already thought was yours.
If that’s what Petry meant, then we’re talking about a very different campaign problem. Territory could change hands without another army simply crossing the border and attacking it, which opens the door to something closer to rebellion, corruption, or loyalty than a normal faction war.
We could absolutely be reading too much into a press-friendly choice of words. Pair it with how carefully he handled the follow-up, though, and the idea starts making more sense.
Don’t forget that in the Fantasy version of the game, Bretonnia sat on the original Total War: Warhammer map as a non-playable faction before eventually becoming something players could take into a campaign. If you’re already hoping for playable Traitor Guard, that’s exactly the kind of precedent that’s going to get the gears turning.
How They Could Play
Two versions of Traitor Guard could play completely differently, too. A full playable army is something you learn, build around, and eventually decide to main. A hostile faction spawning uprisings behind your lines is the thing that ruins the turn you already had planned because suddenly you’ve got a problem at home.
For a Total War campaign, that second version feels like a pretty viable option. This game has been building anticipation since the first rumors it was real, through a closed beta, and now the developers are hinting it could take something like ten years to finish.
With that kind of plans, having strong campaign systems at launch could matter a lot more than whether the starting roster says four factions or five.
Final Thoughts on the Total War: Warhammer 40k Traitor Guard
At this point, the fifth-faction question may be less interesting than what Traitor Guard could actually do to the campaign. An Imperium that can lose ground to itself while Orks, Aeldari, and everyone else are leaning on the borders sounds a lot more like 40k than simply adding one more army to faction select.
That’s why the questions Petry didn’t answer are still the ones we want to know more about now. Can you start an uprising, stop one, or feed somebody else’s? Do Traitor Guard armies get anything unique once they appear? Can loyal territory fall permanently, or are these rebellions something you eventually clean up? And is any of this tied into a wider corruption system Creative Assembly simply isn’t ready to name yet?
Until the studio starts answering those questions, “confirmed as enemies causing trouble” is still the line between what we know and what we’re speculating about.
Everything on the other side is heresy for now, but it’s really interesting heresy at aleast.
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- Total War Warhammer 40k: Release Date, Factions & Gameplay
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- Astra Militarum Army Rule in 10th: Orders and Bonuses
- 40k Traitor Guard Rumors Emerge: What Can We Expect?
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What do you think the Total War Warhammer 40k Traitor Guard turn out to be, another army or a campaign problem?
