WHITE DWARF · MARCH 2019
Phil Kelly guest-edits Carnage, Assassin lore and rules, Ghyran hobby guides and the Vigilus warlord challenge.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
Guest editor Phil Kelly reflects on twenty years of contributing to White Dwarf and introduces an issue shaped by storytelling and favourite hobby traditions. Recreating the old Carnage battle is a particular pleasure, alongside fiction, world-building, army showcases and advice from the studio’s regular columnists.
Phil answers requests for new hobby features, helps identify useful scenic possibilities and responds to a question about the hobby’s many ways to play. A reader’s black-and-red miniature prompts practical advice on highlighting dark armour and building restrained red contrasts, while the letters celebrate collecting and personal projects.
Reader submissions include distinctive Space Marine chapters, a colourful Lotann and imposing servants of Nurgle. The feature highlights how a Rot Fly’s head and wings can transform a Daemon Prince, and offers simple photography advice to help readers present their own miniatures clearly.
Phil Kelly builds imaginary landscapes through coastlines, settlements, faction symbols and evocative names. Real maps provide inspiration without dictating the result, while photocopies and deliberately unexplored regions leave room for revision and future stories; his Vigilus sketch shows how this practical process becomes finished studio artwork.
Jervis explains why a unit’s value changes with terrain, opponents and combinations, making an exact universal price impossible. An initial calculator and comparisons establish a starting point, but playtesting, tournament experience and periodic reviews remain necessary to respond to optimised lists and the evolving game.
Grave robber Jhoris Parl discovers that Lethis’s dead are becoming dangerously restless as its protective wards weaken. Pursued by spirits, he encounters Anvils of the Heldenhammer whose harsh response to his crime is interrupted by signs of a much greater threat rising beneath the city.
Four armies return to the spirit of an old White Dwarf Carnage game, with Sylvaneth, Khorne, undead and ogors fighting over one central temple. Deals, summoned spells and murderous prayers repeatedly shift the contest, but Sam Pearson’s depleted Blades of Khorne hold the prize at the end, proving that determined objective control can survive overwhelming casualties.
A four-player battleplan sends rival armies towards a central Nexus of Power, with command benefits for approaching it and a variable end to the fighting. Random turn order and multiplayer diplomacy complicate the apparently simple goal, encouraging a compact force and a clear plan for retaining the centre.
Ghyran’s seasons and cycles of decay provide a richer palette than simple green vegetation. Examples contrast ancient moss-covered wood, fresh spring growth and Nurgle’s corruption, showing how army colours, magical accents and bases can communicate different relationships with the same realm.
Natalie makes spring growth the unifying idea of her Sylvaneth and Wanderers, using bright greens, pink blossom and fresh magical accents. Younger creatures have ruddy bark while older ones look grey and gnarled, and matching Wyldwoods extend the seasonal identity onto the battlefield.
Washes and drybrushes over a pale undercoat make Tom’s daemons look both greasy and leathery. Corroded brass and bloody sores reinforce the deliberate contrast with flourishing life, demonstrating that decay can give a Ghyran army just as strong an identity as green foliage.
A skull taken from the gargant’s own club becomes King Brodd’s crown after careful trimming and test-fitting. Repositioned arms carry a huge improvised temple fragment, giving the character recognisable status through a conversion that remains grounded in readily available kit parts.
Clump foliage turns the Endrinrigger’s equipment into a surface for moss and lichen. Creeping vines replace the flying support, and green accents on cloth and corrosion connect a normally industrial figure to Ghyran’s living environment.
A Flagellant head, Treelord spites and Dryad branches transform a Battlemage into a Jade Wizard bearing an Arboreal Stave. Wintery greys and greens with cyan magic provide a quieter version of a Realm of Life palette, showing how spare components can express an artefact’s story.
A Spite-Revenant and Wild Rider head form a male Branchwych while the proper scythe and bittergrub preserve the model’s battlefield identity. Added spites illustrate its magical ability, and a pale undercoat with a blue-green wash gives the finished figure an ethereal appearance.
Dark earth receives successive brown and bone drybrushes before a glossy, foul pool is added. The simple sequence gives a base both readable texture and an obvious patch of corruption, suitable for the diseased side of the Realm of Life.
A deep green foundation is drybrushed through lighter greens to make dense vegetation read clearly at miniature scale. A dark rim contains the effect and keeps the vivid ground visually separate from the model standing above it.
Warm brown earth is highlighted with ochre and pale bone to pick out its grain. A neutral rim finishes a flexible natural base that can accompany a Ghyran army without competing with brightly painted figures.
Red bracken is lifted through brighter red and orange drybrushes to suggest autumn growth. Painting the plant pieces while still on the sprue keeps the process quick and avoids marking already finished miniatures.
A dark green foundation and two progressively lighter drybrushes create evergreen foliage. The accompanying sprue-painting method lets a hobbyist prepare many small plants together before attaching them to models or scenery.
An enlarged Wyldwood canopy is painted separately from its trunks to make batch work easier. Pale spectral bark and pink blossom evoke flourishing magical life, with extra foliage reused from other kits and leafless donor trees reserved for a different, haunted setting.
Scenery painter James Littler demonstrates a quick method built around drybrushed base colours, lighter highlights and shared weathering. Two contrasting ruins use the same underlying approach, showing how a unified dirty finish can tie distinct colours to a gaming board without painting every detail like a character model.
Military green and metallic details give Ryza ruins a utilitarian identity. Shared brown weathering and cracked earth make the building look abandoned while matching it to a muddy battlefield.
Grey walls receive warm metal and yellow details before dirt and chips bring the structure into its environment. The recipe establishes the practical industrial scheme used later for the complete Imperial outpost.
Unnatural blue and pink staining makes an ordinary ruin feel touched by sorcery. A pale highlight and spectral oxide wash reinforce the alien colour cast, suggesting either Tzeentchian corruption or a strange underworld.
Grey stone is shaded with green and surrounded by muddy corrosion to suggest repeated flooding and renewed vegetation. Restrained colour changes establish an overgrown setting without adding an elaborate sculpted jungle.
A dark ruin receives a cool grey drybrush before thick snow gives its location away. The contrast between the building and its surroundings shows how a small material choice can establish a strong battlefield atmosphere.
James advises treating scenery kits as parts of a believable place, then considering which combinations tell a useful story. Familiar industrial components suggest a refinery, repair garage or other purpose, helping the finished battlefield feel coherent while remaining convenient for actual games.
Ladders bridge a gantry gap to support a crane assembly. Careful marking, small cuts and reinforced joints make the reused parts fit securely, creating a practical repair structure from standard industrial scenery.
A Galvanic Servohauler arm is reshaped to fit a Sector Mechanicus support. Cutting away a small section at the joint lets circular and rectangular fittings meet cleanly, while keeping the pieces separate until painted makes the awkward assembly easier to finish.
Matching diameters let a furnace and Haemotrope Reactor form a new cylindrical power source. Removing pipes and adjusting supports makes the combined shape plausible, with small hidden gaps accepted because the completed gaming piece will normally be viewed from above.
The finished board combines ruined buildings, stacks, reactor and vehicle repair equipment in one consistent weathered scheme. Bright crane and machinery colours make functional areas easy to distinguish, while objective pieces and small workshop accessories add narrative possibilities without sacrificing cover or playable space.
Phil Kelly traces his route from reading and painting through art study, White Dwarf and games development to writing the setting’s background. His enthusiasm for aliens, monsters and maps connects personal collecting habits to work with Jes Goodwin and other studio colleagues, while the interview explores how established mythology and new ideas support one another.
Dave Sanders follows an Underworlds warband from distinctive new miniatures to fighter profiles, inspiration conditions and a coherent deck of cards. A calculator provides guidance, but intended playstyles and extensive testing determine the final result, leaving room for players to discover strategies beyond the designers’ first expectations.
Robin recounts judging the 2018 NOVA Open, from keeping many simultaneous games moving to answering difficult questions and observing strong tactics. His notebook captures issues for future rules work and player feedback, while the longer convention also gives developers time for conversations that a single-day visit rarely permits.
Phil Kelly describes an institution that preserves Imperial authority through individual, carefully authorised killings. Selection, training and political oversight make its operatives enormously powerful but potentially dangerous tools, while secret temples and tensions with other Imperial servants underline the uneasy morality behind their supposedly precise violence.
Vindicare training turns patience, marksmanship and weapon maintenance into an almost monastic identity. Special ammunition and a purpose-built exitus rifle let a lone operative defeat protection intended for armies, while the account shows how emotional devotion is redirected towards the weapon itself.
Polymorphine and extreme self-control allow Callidus operatives to infiltrate communities and reshape their bodies for the final approach. Their methods combine deception, timing and specialised weapons, making the target’s own trusted surroundings part of the assassination.
An Eversor is engineered for terror through surgery, drugs and relentless aggression. Cryogenic transport and carefully controlled awakening make the operative a weapon to be unleashed rather than an ordinary infiltrator, and the same unstable biology that enables its killing spree makes its death dangerous.
The Culexus Temple recruits rare psychic blanks whose very presence repels and weakens warp-sensitive enemies. Political resistance nearly ended their development, but secret support preserved the project and produced wargear that focuses the operative’s null nature into a devastating anti-psyker weapon.
A chronology of assassinations records how individual deaths redirect rebellions, wars and the politics of Terra. Victories sit beside misjudgements and unintended consequences, illustrating both the reach of the Assassinorum and the uncertainty of using a surgical strike to control a vast, unstable empire.
Updated datasheets and Stratagems give the four major Assassin temples distinct battlefield roles. Recruitment options and shared rules support adding a specialist operative to an Imperial force, while temple-specific abilities emphasise precise shooting, infiltration, close-range slaughter or suppression of psykers.
Studio hobbyists present varied interpretations of the four Assassin miniatures. Alternate suit, mask and scenic treatments demonstrate how much personality a small specialist model can have even when its basic pose and equipment remain fixed.
The Vindicare guide uses fine edge highlights to separate dark synskin, weapon casing and small equipment details. Painting the figure and scenic base separately preserves the contrast between crisp character work and drybrushed rubble, with practical advice on bracing hands, thinning paint and controlling the brush.
Danzek’s Cadian column races a Speedwaaagh! across Vigilus while a dust storm closes off its escape. An Imperial official’s cowardice nearly destroys the mission from within, and survival brings little reassurance as the approaching greater invasion makes the earlier ordeal seem only a prelude.
A new collecting challenge recruits four hobbyists to represent major armies fighting over Vigilus. Personal targets, regular updates and eventual games turn an ambitious collection into manageable stages, with readers encouraged to run similar projects through their own clubs and stores.
Sam expands an existing cult with the recently released units, beginning with fast-moving reinforcements. A small scenery project and possible Kill Team encounters give the collection a home and a reason to grow beyond simply reaching a points total.
James starts his Black Legion with Haarken and jump-pack troops, using separate assemblies to make ornate models easier to paint. Beginning with the gold trim before filling the armour black offers a practical route to building a sizeable force for the war on Vigilus.
Mark begins a fresh mechanised Ork force with a weathered Scrapjet and plans for conversions among the new vehicles. Looting, fuel raids and destructive small games provide the theme, turning the painting challenge into an escalating Speedwaaagh!.
Black Library fiction drives James’s choice of Raven Guard, while skull-like heads and spare components personalise his first troops. He keeps the final painting scheme open after a test model, showing that the challenge begins with experimentation as well as a clear collecting direction.
Damien Pedley’s Vassal Knights share the red, black and bone heraldry of Legio Invigilata and a ruined Armageddon setting with his other Imperial forces. Reposed walkers, dramatic bases and personalised heraldry give each enormous model a role, while his discussion explains how shifting from competition pieces to whole armies renewed his enjoyment of the hobby.
Separate armour panels allow airbrushed colour transitions, masking and transfers before oil weathering ties the finish together. A dark metallic skeleton and controlled sponge chipping contrast with glossy red and pale heraldic areas, giving the large models the appearance of old, heavily used engines.
Damien builds large scenic Knight bases from foam, cork, plaster, mesh, pipes and small mechanical scraps. Ruined roadways and fences establish the industrial war zone while making the bases substantial modelling projects in their own right, especially beneath the immense Porphyrion.
Timothy Brown and Ross Watson explain how their roleplaying game explores individual stories within the isolated Imperium Nihilus. Flexible frameworks and power levels accommodate very different characters, while corruption, uncertain psychic powers and the consequences of choices preserve the danger and moral darkness of the setting.
Paul Gegg embraces Goblin unreliability through careful use of Trolls, secret weapons, fouls and bribes. Rosters, development choices and annotated starting formations aim to keep the team’s dangerous toys active long enough to matter, while a thrown Doom Diver offers a risky route to a one-turn score.
James Swallow discusses his writing career, the growth of Nathaniel Garro and the approach to the Death Guard’s final catastrophe before Terra. The relationship between an established tragic destination and a character’s difficult choices gives the novel its tension, while Garro’s unexpected popularity shows how a small lore reference can become a major narrative thread.
A branching reading guide organises the series from the Great Crusade and betrayal into major war fronts and character threads. Suggested related titles complement the main paths without all becoming compulsory, giving readers an alternative to tackling every numbered volume in strict publication order.
Studio hobbyists share new Nightvault games, completed models and preparations for the Realm of Life feature. A brief Ghyran history tracks invasion, Alarielle’s return and the recovery of the Genesis Gate, placing the issue’s green modelling themes within their wider setting.
David Moss recreates his brother Phil’s Imperial Fists illustration as a diorama, using impressionistic light and heavy shading rather than his usual miniature style. A difficult kneeling Apothecary and focused drybrushing turn the original image’s exhausted battlefield atmosphere into a three-dimensional scene.