All the Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 weapons revealed so far

Warhammer 40k has one of the best armouries in all of sci-fi. Forget your “elegant weapons for a more civilized age” – the guns, swords, and explosives in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium are big, ugly, and ridiculously fun to play with. This guide to Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 weapons covers the whole arsenal revealed for the game so far.

Wargamer’s time with the Space Marine 2 preview build has us hopeful that it will be one of the better Warhammer 40k games out there. For a long time, the original Space Marine held the title of “best representation of a boltgun in 40k media”, though we’re inclined to give the crown to retro-shooter Warhammer: 40k Boltgun nowadays.

We’re tracking news of the Space Marine 2 release date eagerly, and you’ll find all the rest of the information about the game in our Space Marine 2 walkthrough.

Here’s everything we know so far about Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 weapons:

Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 main weapons

You can only carry one main weapon at a time in Space Marine 2, so pick one to suit your playstyle. We got to play with five in the preview build. The boltrifle, auto boltrifle, and bolt carbine are all assault rifles (well, technically they’re assault rocket-grenade launchers), but they each offer a different tempo of violence.

The Meltagun fires a short-range pulse of superheated energy that pulps weaker enemies and stuns larger ones. The Heavy bolter is excellent at breaking up swarms of smaller Tyranid creatures, but it has limited ammo – if you pick one of these up, expect a set-piece battle to follow.

The trailer for Space Marine 2 coop multiplayer showed one of the companion marines using a Plasma Incinerator, an armor-melting and temperamental weapon: we’ve included it in the table below, but we can only speculate on its actual stats.

Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 grenades

So far, only frag grenades have been revealed for Space Marine 2 – these are classic, explosive, anti-personnel grenades, perfect for blasting apart hordes of Tyranid Termagants. We hope that we’ll get some of the more exotic explosives from the 40k universe later – implosive krak grenades, tank-killing melta bombs, or reality-splitting vortex grenades.

Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 pistols

The Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 pistols are back-up ranged weapons that never run out of ammunition, though they still need to reload. It’s quicker to swap to a pistol than to reload any of your main weapons, and you’ll often whip out your pistol for a quick execution shot.

The Plasma Pistol shows up in the most recent Space Marine 2 gameplay trailer, but wasn’t available in the demo build that Wargamer played.

Warhammer 40k Space Marine 2 melee weapons

Space Marine 2 has a full melee combat system, with parries, dodges, stuns, and executions. Warhammer 40k has a massive arsenal of melee weapons, though we’ve only been able to play with a few so far. Even when equipped with a two-handed Heavy Bolter, you’re still able to club your enemies with its metal bulk.

Two melee weapons appeared in the first gameplay trailer but not the preview build: the power sword, a gladius sheathed in a matter-splitting disruption field, and thunder-hammer, a hugely heavy hammer with an overcharged disruption field generator that activates only when the weapon strikes an enemy. The stats we’ve given below are based on their appearance in the lore.

If you’re a fan of third-person action games but you’re new to Warhammer 40k, we actually have a guide answering the question “What is Warhammer 40k?” just for you. You can also check out our guides to the many Warhammer 40k factions, which go in depth into the lore of the many warring species in the setting.