One of the greatest franchises around is Warhammer 40 000, a tabletop wargame that has been adapted to many different forms including novels and video games. The video games based on the series have included third person shooters, hack n slash games, action rpgs, real time strategy games and of course turn based strategy games. One genre that has not been touched though, is the fighting game genre. This is unusual because of the sheer potential such a game has, and the different directions it could take. Yes, there are issues of some characters being more powerful than others such as a Space Marine being more powerful than an imperial guard, but there are different ways a game can go.
The first is a fighting game with the primarchs, the sons of the Emperor of Mankind, and would include both the traitor primarchs and the loyalists. This would make sense in the lore, as they would all be around the same level of skill and power, and there would be a balanced roster. DLC could include the Daemon forms of the traitor primarchs as well as the modern incarnations of Guilliman and Corax. This may not allow for a ton of characters, but it would make for a fun fighting game with all the primarchs could do. Konrad Curze, the primarch of the Night Lords is basically an evil Batman with brutal methods, Magnus is a powerful Psyker, Jhagatai Khan focuses on hit and run strikes, wile Guilliman is more conventional, just to give some examples. There is much potential for this to b a mid tier budget game with a neat premise.
But this is not the only idea for a Warhammer 40 000 fighting game. No, the bigger idea would be a fighting game based on the Feast of Blades. The Feast of Blades is a tournament held by the Imperial Fist Space Marine chapter, and their successors such as the Crimsons Fists and the Black Templars, where they spar in a great tournament designed to foster relations between the chapters formed by the sons of Rogal Dorn. However, the game could take liberties and as a non canon affair, and can say the Fists have invited other chapters for one tournament such as the Ultramarines, the Blood Angels, the Blood Ravens, The Space Wolves, The Salamanders and the Exorcists. Again, as long as its understood this is not canon.
You could even go one step further and have a story where Chaos marines invade, such as the Black Legion, The Thousand Sons, The Crimson Slaughter, The Red Corsairs and more. Throw in a showdown with a powerful final boss, and the game could have an excellent arcade mode, and the various chapters and warbands present would make for a balanced roster, with a representative or two from each. This could even be a three vs three fighting game similar to King of Fighters.
Warhammer 40 000 has tried many genres, but fighting games have yet to be attempted. This needs to change and I think I have shown why.