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The editorial uses modelling, painting, gaming and reading as the four pillars that support the hobby. It introduces the issue through concrete examples of each, from converted Knights and Battlemages to Speed Freek painting, a vehicle-heavy battle and the concluding instalment of the Chronicles of Bain.
The Collegiate Arcane trains gifted humans to control dangerous realm-magic and channels that expertise into Sigmar’s armies. Its eight Colleges draw elemental motes from the world around them, so even a wizard far from their native realm can find the energies needed for healing, deception, metalworking or destructive battle spells. Masters of Combat Arcana supplement scholarly training with practical wards and counter-spells suited to the front line.
Practised battle spells can become instinctive, while grimoires preserve complex invocations and help a wizard prepare unfamiliar magic in advance. The Colleges also stage dangerous contests suited to their disciplines: Bright College apprentices endure fiery trials in the Crucible, whereas Grey Wizards seek victory through illusions that can imprison an unwary mind. A short scene illustrates the lesson as Blissa abandons a failing shield, sidesteps a sorcerer’s attack and kills him with conjured fire-serpents.
This Cities of Sigmar hero creator builds a custom Collegiate Mage for Path to Glory, with permission required to bring the character into other games. Apprentice, advanced and archmage budgets determine the available destiny points and game points; a basic human wizard then gains an origin, an optional flaw, a bespoke spell, a companion and further upgrades. Flaws deliberately free points for other strengths, making a frail or reckless eccentric as viable a starting concept as a disciplined battlefield specialist.
A modular spell builder lets the player decide whom a custom Battlemage targets, how far the spell reaches and what effects it combines. Damage, healing, concealment, slowed movement, flight and weapon enhancements carry different destiny-point costs, while choosing a harder casting value can recover points. The resulting ability is recorded on a blank spell template and given a name and background that suit the mage’s personality.
A mage can ride a warhorse or acquire a familiar, with separate upgrade paths for fast cavalry, flying companions and fighting familiars. The familiar increases magical capacity but can be drained to rescue a poor casting roll at the cost of later power. Further options develop the wizard’s fighting skills, magical defence or spellcasting mastery, including a blasting wand, a protective ward and the chance to repeat a successfully cast spell.
Matt builds his flamboyant Bright Wizard around the Strong Fashion Sense flaw, using an Old World Battle Wizard with a swapped Battlemage head and a frog familiar. Red and yellow Contrast-painted robes reinforce the fiery theme without supplying named colours. The accompanying Advanced Arcanist warscroll combines the familiar, a blasting wand and spell mastery with a concealment spell imagined as a cloud of choking ash and cinders.
Dan turns a spare Freeguild Soul Shepherd into a Celestial Wizard by replacing its head and censer with Battlemage components, then adds a Sylvaneth spite as a familiar. Purple and blue robes, including a blue-grey beard, distinguish the elderly arcanist from his green-clad army. Toya Jian’s example Advanced Arcanist profile pairs magical disruption and improved casting with Celestial Conveyance, a spell that accelerates an allied unit and grants flight.
Two wizards spend a finite pool of power dice to cast spells, move around a magical arena and exhaust the opponent’s reserves. Casting risks miscasts but can produce irresistible total power; defending players instead lock one of their own spells to attempt an unbinding roll. After each turn the used or selected spell rotates out of the player’s hand and a different public spell rotates in, making timing and denial as important as a large casting roll.
The arena’s zones add a positional contest to Arcane Duel. Warding zones and the anti-magic aura restore access to locked spells, life-giving spaces replenish dice, and the central nexus increases the harm inflicted by successful attacks. Distortion fields drain reserves, while ley lines move either wizard, allowing a player to displace a rival from a protective position or force them towards danger.
A conversational guide introduces Armageddon as an industrial hive world whose huge population, manufacturing capacity and strategic position make its survival important to the Imperium. It separates the planet’s actual wars from the versions preserved in Imperial records, where Angron’s invasion was suppressed, and follows the conflict through Ghazghkull’s assaults and the long rivalry between the Ork warlord and Commissar Yarrick.
Armageddon’s Steel Legion favour mechanised infantry, with Chimeras and protective clothing suited to a poisoned industrial world. Invasion has reversed the normal outward flow of regiments, as the planet increasingly consumes both its own recruits and soldiers sent from elsewhere. The illustrated survey distinguishes the indigenous legion and jungle-fighting Ork Hunters from supporting Krieg, Cadian, Mordian, Elysian, Savlar and Catachan formations.
Yarrick and Ghazghkull are presented as enemies whose mutual hatred has become inseparable from a grudging respect. The Commissar frustrated the Ork assault on Hades and pursued his opponent beyond Armageddon, while Ghazghkull repeatedly sought his death yet came to value Ol’ Bale Eye as his best enemy. The sidebar traces that recurring pursuit rather than treating either invasion as a self-contained encounter.
A survey of the combatants and a double-page planetary map bring the history of Armageddon up to the renewed Ork assault. Ghazghkull’s mass teleportation technology delivers the Great Waaagh! into the system, with Wazdakka’s Speed Freeks leading the attack across Armageddon Prime. The accompanying profiles place surviving veterans, new Imperial leaders, Ork specialists and the returned Yarrick in the same continuing war, while the map distinguishes Imperial, Ork-held and ruined hives.
A gazetteer follows the contrasting fortunes of Armageddon’s major hives and wilderness regions across its successive invasions. Hades survives Yarrick’s famous defence only to be obliterated by an asteroid; Tempestora remains in Ork hands after a submarine assault; and Helsreach’s resistance leaves its lower levels flooded. Other entries explain the devastation of Thoraddis, treachery at Acheron, the relative isolation of Tartarus and the continuing threats hidden in the Equatorial Jungle and Fire Wastes.
Yarrick’s publication history runs from a blue counter in Battle for Armageddon and his first 1992 miniature to successive rules, models and Black Library stories. The retrospective follows the changing claw, banner and heroic imagery, the Fortress of Arrogance Baneblade, and the later suggestion of his death. His May 2026 return preserves a recognisable silhouette while adding reinforced legs, a larger power pack and more support for the enormous claw, details that hint at the cost of his survival.
The second Knight gallery collects individual Imperial and Chaos war machines painted and converted by studio hobbyists. Each contributor ties a striking model to its pilot, household or personal history, then explains practical choices in construction or colour. The spread ranges from a walking Dark Angels shrine to weathered renegades and daemonic engines, with compact recipes that make the varied armour and metal treatments reusable.
Chris’s Knight Abominant weaponises the suffering of captive psykers through a corrupted Throne Mechanicum, allowing its witch-hating pilot to unleash psychic destruction without admitting to sorcery. The battered brass armour is built from successive drybrushes over black, with sepia-darkened metal and pale blue-green corrosion. The model’s carrion daemons and displayed corpses reinforce the accompanying account of expended prisoners being lashed to its hull.
Charlie’s ancient Cerastus Knight Lancer is an ally of the Dark Angels whose past reaches back to the Great Crusade and the fall of Caliban. A chapel built from several scenery ranges, plasticard and Dark Angels components turns its carapace into a moving monument; Bretonnian and Legion transfers support a hand-painted family crest on the shield. The supplied scheme combines airbrushed green armour with grey masonry, dark steel and warm gold trim.
Duncan’s Knight belongs to a household whose pilots surrender their former identities and assume the recorded personality of an ancestral warrior. Lupinotum’s inherited obsession is astrology, reflected in markings etched across pale and green armour. The recipe uses simple base colours and a luminous blue blade, then seals the model before brown oil washes and brown-orange streaks supply a heavily weathered finish.
Nathan imagines an arrogant exile from House Orhlacc returning from underwater imprisonment as a Chaos-tainted knight seeking vengeance. Maulerfiend tendrils, spare Chaos Knight armour and a Great Unclean One’s flail reshape the machine into a bristling sea-monster. Stippled purple armour and distressed mixed-metal surfaces create grime, while Wraithbone and Tesseract Glow give its details a bright, unnatural green contrast.
David’s first Knight-scale project creates a renegade household related visually to House Lucaris, but substitutes silver trim, additional bone panels and different transfers. Sacrament of Wrath’s blue-green armour is mixed from Stegadon Scale Green and Kabalite Green, while shaded bone and darkened metal provide strong contrasting blocks. Several brown washes build the rust, and the contributor describes the project as the beginning of a second Knight rather than a finished exploration of every technique.
Scott depicts a Knight stolen from House Terryn and presented to Huron Blackheart, with pilot Vultir Luzken now seeking glory among the Red Corsairs. Sponge work and drybrushing leave patches of the old blue-and-bone livery visible beneath new red armour. Ancient brass, yellow plasma glow and green lenses complete a project deliberately restricted to those texturing techniques; a future black hand emblem is discussed as a planned addition.
Jason unifies his Knights with an existing Ryza Mechanicus army through white armour and orange markings, while imagining a household absorbed into the forge world. Aggressive poses and scratch-built weapons emphasise that allegiance: a Paladin carries a Basilisk earthshaker and a Skitarii loading crew, and rebuilt leg joints use plasticard hydraulics and guitar-string cables. Gloss varnish before the shade helps preserve crisp armour, with brown stippling adding damage.
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