WHITE DWARF · NOVEMBER 2020
Tome Keepers Index Astartes, Argovon campaign expansion, solo Age of Sigmar rules, Bugmansson and outlaw Necromunda brutes.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
The editor celebrates the Tome Keepers’ arrival as a fully realised Chapter, with an Index Astartes, Johan Grenier’s artwork and a growing miniature collection. A tour of the issue’s physical gifts also introduces Jakkob Bugmansson, a squirrel Blood Bowl star and a Wizards’ Duel playmat, explaining how the magazine’s hobby projects connect to playable extras.
Readers describe an army painted while travelling at sea, memorable solo games and a first attempt at miniature painting. The team explains Dark Angels chequered heraldry and supplies Jason’s Truskan Snowhound recipe, while Damien Tomasina discusses the multiple reflected and firelit sources that make his Triumph of Saint Katherine glow.
Phil Kelly sets out a deliberately broad chronology for the Mortal Realms, explaining why exact dates are often less useful than shared eras. The timeline follows the awakening and alliances of gods, the capture of Slaanesh, emerging peoples and the cracks in Sigmar’s pantheon that eventually open the way to the Age of Chaos.
Stu Black separates the purpose of enjoying a game from the immediate objective of winning its mission. Deep strike distances, wound allocation, psychic mishaps and Overwatch illustrate how abstract mechanisms can preserve speed, balance and meaningful decisions even when a more literal simulation might appear plausible.
Hishrea’s cold oceans, nomadic hunting fleets and punishing climate shape an Imperial campaign led by General Tansk. The costly Nurtheos landings eventually destroy the Necron dolmen gates, but the arrival of overwhelming tomb fleets forces withdrawal, leaving the official judgement of the commander at odds with evidence of her skill and the troops she saved.
Callum Davis presents several viewpoints from the Hishrea assault: a Tome Keeper duels a Necron commander, Sisters climb a defended bluff and Rangers struggle towards ice cliffs through lethal fire. A later briefing to the Tritons frames another landing as a necessary sacrifice, joining individual courage to a much larger, grinding operation.
Foronika’s valuable blackstone makes a hostile, irradiated world strategically indispensable. Major General Valdu’s troops endure shifting fronts, appalling losses and uneasy coordination with the Adeptus Mechanicus, while official histories and surviving rosters reveal a campaign increasingly sustained by merged remnants and penal formations rather than a clean advance towards victory.
Exhausted Major General Valdu must persuade a difficult Mechanicus ally to accept a workable defence with too few available troops. Moving units to protect vital forgeshrines threatens other desperate fronts, and even a hard-won agreement is immediately overtaken by new emergencies, exposing the moral and practical burden behind strategic decisions.
The second campaign phase introduces Xenotech points, accumulated through battle and recorded with the army. Players can preserve the resource for the coming phase or spend it alongside Command points on temporary devices that shield troops, manipulate positioning or transform enemy matter, making immediate advantage compete with longer-term preparation.
This Incursion Crusade mission asks a raiding attacker to lure frostwyrms into the defender’s territory rather than relying solely on direct force. Noisy weapons attract increasingly likely attacks, while bespoke stratagems support infiltration and positioning; the defender must survive the environmental threat and deny the raid its unusual victory conditions.
A Strike Force Crusade mission centres on facilities and blackstone extraction sites seized by the opposing army. Progressive control and enemy destruction combine with an end-game reward for holding key locations, while mission stratagems alter the fight around those sites and the campaign context gives the industrial objectives their significance.
Dan Harden and James Gallagher bring the magazine’s Chapter project together through founding history, Istrouman culture, organisation and recorded wars. The Tome Keepers’ reverence for knowledge and written lives supports a thoughtful approach to combat but also creates tensions with less humane Imperial allies, while the Indomitus era brings Primaris reinforcement and new campaigns.
Four named officers receive bespoke profiles built around the Chapter’s existing converted miniatures: Captain Nasiem, Epistolary Lykandos, Orator Sephax and Ancient Kae. The supplement recommends Ultramarines successor tactics and supplies equipment, abilities and points, allowing the fictional 3rd Company’s command group to become a playable force.
James Perry builds parchment-coloured armour over a Wraithbone undercoat, using thin smooth layers and controlled shading before sharp pale highlights. Separate recipes cover black casings, metals, red heraldry, green lenses, leather and skin, while painting a sergeant’s helmet separately makes the contrasting head easier to finish cleanly.
A diluted Skeleton Horde coat provides a fast route to the Tome Keepers’ pale armour, with corrections and edge highlights restoring a clean finish. James combines that method with conventional treatment of weapons and metallic details, then offers recipes for dark skin and the studio’s textured brown bases.
Lyle Lowery’s growing Tome Keepers include a Battalion’s worth of troops, armour and specialists, with books added to an Apothecary to reflect the Chapter’s funerary duties. He explains his armour shortcut and colour choices, while the final page examines four command conversions and James Perry’s contrasting paint method on supporting squads.
Jakkob Bugmansson leads a Barak-Nar expedition into the Eightpoints to recover ancestral brewing knowledge. His escort’s doubts become a desperate fight against Chaos raiders, but the Brewmaster General’s unexpected courage and skill win them over; the recovered discovery promises more than nostalgia for a duardin with a commercial eye.
Jakkob Bugmansson appears as a special challenge-battle fighter rather than an ordinary points-costed addition to a warband. His ale, axe runes and other abilities accompany XXXXXX Marks the Spot, a cargo-recovery fight in which hired bodyguards and their adversaries compete over scattered barrels and potentially earn a unique reward.
Dan Harden’s Clan Ferrik skaven and Jonathan Stapleton’s Barak-Jazbaz Kharadron fleet blast each other apart while competing for a falling comet. Unpredictable artillery, destructive magic and the comet’s own lethal heat leave very few survivors, but Admiral Strongarm finally secures the objective and a costly Kharadron victory.
Both armies predict the landing site of a valuable comet before its uncertain arrival changes the battlefield. The fallen celestial object can move and inflict severe damage, yet controlling it is essential to victory, forcing players to balance prediction, positioning and the danger of standing too close to the prize.
Sam Pearson adapts Age of Sigmar into a solo or cooperative campaign for a small party of heroes. Exploration increases threat towards a final confrontation, wounds and losses carry forward, and a simple automated adversary turn lets players concentrate on their adventurers while a printable roster tracks progress and discoveries.
Generated Nighthaunt groups combine ordinary minions with spectral bosses whose behaviour depends on their distance from enemies. Summoning, teleportation and healing make the undead a persistent threat, while specific instructions translate characteristic abilities into automated choices without requiring a separate controlling opponent.
Bloodbound opposition brings combat-driven minions and powerful leaders into the automated campaign. Boss results include mighty blows, summoned Flesh Hounds and coordinated Murderlust movement, while unit-specific instructions govern prayers, unbinding and signature abilities so that a solo player can resolve the force consistently.
Grots, squigs and troggoths provide a varied generated enemy force for the hinterlands. Their bosses mix cowardly repositioning, cunning support and hazardous fungus brews with violent attacks, while special instructions preserve recognisable abilities such as troggoth regeneration and boulder throwing within the automated turn.
The campaign’s compact battlefield setup supports changing scenery and directions of approach, while victory awards rolls on a shared loot table. Map fragments, healing items, spectral lanterns and powerful relic benefits give survivors reasons to continue exploring and let the party’s capabilities evolve between encounters.
The adventurers fight generated enemies on a small battlefield where an ambush can introduce further dangers. Destroying the opposing force ends the encounter, but the distinction between major and minor victory depends on keeping every hero alive, making survival a campaign concern as well as an immediate tactical goal.
A boss waits behind supporting adversaries in the campaign’s climactic confrontation, with reinforcements prolonging the struggle. Victory still rewards keeping the entire party alive, while the hero who lands the decisive blow can gain a lasting command trait, tying the final battlefield achievement to character development.
Jervis Johnson explains why everyday words need precise definitions when used in game rules. A substantial glossary distinguishes concepts including attacks, damage, wounds, movement, visibility and being within or wholly within a distance, using specific examples to clarify the intended sequence of play and reduce conflicting interpretations.
John Bracken presents a Wurmspat control deck that deliberately makes its durable fighters tempting targets and turns Quarry interactions into an advantage. Objective holding, pushes, carefully selected defences and spells draw opponents into unfavourable engagements, with notes on individual cards explaining how the unusual package supports its scoring plan.
Jay Clare revisits a classic magazine mini-game to recreate Gandalf’s confrontation with Saruman in Orthanc. Secretly chosen combinations of Push and Crush attacks meet equally concealed magical defences, while priority, walls and the Palantír add tactical uncertainty to a compact two-wizard contest with its own rules and play surface.
Underhive outlaws can recruit creatures and corrupted machines that lawful gangs would normally shun. The introduction explains availability, with the most unnatural Warp Horrors restricted to Chaos-associated gangs, and frames the following profiles as dangerous but powerful additions for players willing to embrace mutation and forbidden technology.
A mining automaton driven mad by malicious code becomes a heavily armed brute for outlaw gangs. Its profile supplies hiring cost, weapons, skills and advancement access, with special rules capturing the machine’s vicious instability and a converted example showing how spikes and a skull distinguish it from a conventional Ambot.
An escaped abhuman whose body has been twisted by the warp offers formidable muscle to an outlaw gang. Weapon choices, mutation upgrades and advancement options accompany the profile, while slow-witted behaviour limits coordinated activation and keeps the creature’s resilience and strength from functioning without practical drawbacks.
Chaos-associated gangs can recruit a genuine warp-spawned abomination rather than a merely mutated human. The profile combines unnatural resilience and terrifying attacks with several body upgrades, giving players a choice of how the horror manifests while restricting recruitment to gangs already bound to forbidden powers.
A gang can rear a monstrous underhive predator as a loyal but alarming companion. The flexible profile accommodates many different model concepts through options such as extra limbs, venom and specialised appendages, with its natural toughness and ferocity supported by a defined set of skills and advances.
Vaun frees the Keep’s psykers but abandons the captured Sisters, forcing Miriya to engineer their escape and contact Canoness Galatea. As a Sororitas assault breaks through the outer defences, LaHayn prepares to claim the Engine’s power; Vaun reaches the chamber in time to strike down his former master at the threshold of success.
The team continues lockdown projects, from spectral Nighthaunt and a tiny squirrel Blood Bowl star to Imperial Fists and an unexpectedly silver-armoured Tigurius. Painting notes include worn ghostly armour and Dan’s night-time Shadowsun scheme, while an aside reveals that this issue’s battle was fought just before the first UK lockdown.
Paul Foulkes expands his Silver Templars for Crusade games against his son’s Death Guard. A Reiver-based Phobos Captain and an artwork-matched Lieutenant demonstrate economical conversion choices, with company colours and small relic details connecting the new officers to the established Chapter collection.