Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 gets a horde mode, and one class gets a thunder hammer because the devs thought 'it will be very cool'

A new patch brings endless wave-based combat to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 in the form of Siege mode, alongside a host of gameplay tweaks, new cosmetics, and a big old thunder hammer for the lucky Bulwark class.

Siege mode is a horde-style affair where three Space Marines take on an endless assortment of Tyranids and Chaos Marines. The mode takes place across three sectors which players cycle through, completing side missions, upgrading gear between rounds, and calling in Space Marines and Imperial Guards for assistance: or even pooling resources to call in a Dreadnought, one of 40K's premiere murder machines.

Every fifth wave ends in a boss battle, sometimes against multiple elite baddies, and players who survive 15 waves total are catapulted into an endless mode with increased difficulty, reduced resources, and shorter prep times. Apparently even Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines, "understands that ultimate victory here is unlikely—but your bravery will echo through the halls of eternity."

Saber has been testing this mode and the main feedback has been related to the wave timer limit. It's "made some optimizations so the Siege mode can last longer" with timers now set across the entire session, and the time increasing when a wave is defeated. It's also made enemies get stronger faster in the endless mode, so that "players die in fair combat rather than due to the timer." The developers think that in the future, they'll be able to "get rid of the timer entirely."

Siege mode and the cosmetics therein are free for all players, but the patch does add a bunch of paid-for looks: fans of the White Scars and Blood Angels chapters, watch your wallets. Saber is also working on a "very big” customisation update that will allow players to swap in armour parts across classes, though it's not ready for this patch.

One other patch note that really jumped out: the Bulwark class is now going to be able to use the Thunder Hammer. Reason? "We are adding this option only because we think it will be very cool."

Say no more fam.

The new patch also adds Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion and DLSS4 support for "better upscale [and] multiframe generation in NVIDIA settings for 50xx series cards." There are also a slew of weapon and gameplay tweaks across all modes: the full patch notes are here.

Space Marine 2 has been an enormous success for Saber and Games Workshop, selling over seven million copies so far. Games Workshop has already said "clearly we're looking for the next one" which, erm, will probably be the in-development Space Marine 3. Expect the post-launch support to continue for a good while with Space Marine 2 though: "There are surprises even dataminers haven’t found out about."