The Butcher's Nails Is the Most Violent Warhammer 40,000 Show Ever Made by Games Workshop

The hugely popular Space Marine 2 did a great job of delivering third-person action, but what about a big-budget first-person Space Marine game? So far, that doesn’t exist, but the latest Warhammer 40,000 animated show from Games Workshop gives fans an idea of what it might look like.

During Games Workshop’s Big Summer Preview showcase, the UK company revealed the debut trailer for a new animation called The Butcher’s Nails, which is due to hit the company’s streaming platform, Warhammer TV, soon. The gory clip stars a World Eaters Berzerker called Makrath, who joins forces with members of fellow Chaos Space Marine faction, the Iron Warriors, during an assault against loyalist Space Marines backed up by soldiers of the Astra Militarum.

The trailer shows Makrath ripping his enemies to shreds from a first-person perspective, giving us an idea of what a World Eaters Berzerker sees from within his helmet. There are cool, Space Marine HUD elements — the kind you’d expect to see in a first-person Space Marine video game. Makrath’s Bolter is positioned at the bottom of the screen, just as you’d expect in a first-person shooter. You even see the outlines of enemies as if they’re marked, just as you can in so many sci-fi first-person shooters. I particularly like the moment Makrath executes an Imperial Fist with a Bolter shot to the face. Very Doom.

Yes, it very much looks like a first-person Chaos Space Marine game to me, which, now I think about it, I very much want. Space Marine 2 is wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But there’s something about a first-person perspective that I think would make for a more intense experience, and playing as a Chaos Space Marine would be a welcome palate cleanser.

And the World Eaters would be the perfect pick for such a game. For the uninitiated, the World Eaters are the angriest Space Marine legion (their primarch is called Angron!). The Butcher’s Nails, after which this animated show is named, are implants that turned the World Eaters into crazed gladiators, and helped them along the path to Chaos. In the current Warhammer 40,000 setting, the World Eaters rampage across the galaxy, slaughtering pretty much anything and everything in their way without rhyme or reason. Angron, now the Daemon Primarch of Khorne, is angrier than ever. Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! And so on and so forth.

And so, yes, the World Eaters would be the perfect fit for an ultra gory, relentlessly violent, fast-paced first-person melee shooter hybrid, one where you speed towards those righteous Space Marines and squisky Guardsmen and tear them apart.

And yes, I know the excellent Boltgun exists, and a sequel is on the way. But I’m talking about a first-person Space Marine game that isn’t a boomer shooter and isn’t all about making the Ultramarines flex their muscles like the Warhammer 40,000 poster boys they are. Don’t get me wrong, Boltgun is great, but what I have in mind is different. It’s, well, it’s this animation in video game form.

Perhaps The Butcher’s Nails will have to do for now. In a post on Warhammer Community, Games Workshop said “much of the action is from Makrath’s perspective — literally depicting what he sees from inside his helmet.” On top of that, “The action is relentless — the entire episode is almost a single non-stop fight scene.”

In other Warhammer 40,000 news, it emerged this week that popular Tabletop Simulator Steam mods that recreate the in-person Warhammer 40,000 game have received takedown requests from Games Workshop, sparking a backlash within the community.