WHITE DWARF · MAY 2021
The Fallen special, final Faith under Fire entries, Soulblight heroes and a skaven modelling and painting guide.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
Readers share a Tome Keeper, family hobby projects and unusually colourful conversions, with a penguin photograph providing an unexpected magazine-reading location. Replies discuss drinks in the Mortal Realms, painting ruined scenery and a bright orange mercenary group, alongside a non-metallic Custodes centrepiece.
The team explains the earthy tiles and ground of a Ravaged Lands gaming board. Brown foundations and progressively lighter drybrushing unify the textures, while a diluted orange glaze adds warmth to the masonry before a final pale pass restores the raised details.
Keerakit Sapvisut explains the reflected-light choices behind a non-metallic gold Custodes Dreadnought. Strong transitions establish the polished armour, while a different cool mixture creates the steel blade; imagining the light source first keeps the apparent reflections consistent across the imposing model.
Phil Kelly revisits worldwide campaigns from early mailed-in results to Armageddon, Albion and later organised story events. He examines how players’ games across different systems helped determine shared outcomes, turning campaign maps and collective participation into lasting parts of Warhammer’s background.
The four Crusade projects reach fifty Power with new troops, support and personal characters. Battle photographs highlight both the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the growing armies, while the participants’ next choices begin to reflect practical experience as well as their original collecting plans.
Joel Martin adds Hellblasters and Infiltrators, giving the reconnaissance troops a desert camouflage inspired by older Space Marine schemes. Spotted browns and dark dividing lines break up pale armour, offering a deliberate contrast to the bright green core while supporting the force’s developing rapid-strike identity.
Jonathan Stapleton completes the remaining Indomitus Necrons and converts Overlord Onryx into a more personal leader. Repositioned equipment and carefully redirected cables change the silhouette without losing the sculpt’s character, while future heavy support is chosen to address gaps exposed during early games.
A battle-worn group of Sisters rejoins Drew Palies’s crusade after surviving the Noctis Aeterna. Celestians receive individual conversions and relic details, led by an altered Amalia Novena, with their veteran appearance reinforcing the background of an army whose members have endured a long and costly campaign.
Lydia Grant finally brings imposing Orks into her grot-heavy collection, adding Nobz, Meganobz and a Big Mek. Sickly pale skin and rusty equipment preserve the established wasteland palette, while the new leadership and hard-hitting units offer a response to the Gretchin’s repeated battlefield difficulties.
Typhus reaches his true target through a warp wound known as the Sore, bringing devastation to the worlds surrounding Metalica. Defences on factory and battery worlds are undermined by corrupted servitors, plague and traitor engines, though determined Sisters, Skitarii and Knight commanders still achieve costly local victories.
Guardsmen patrol a precarious maze of wrecked tanks where every hatch and passage can conceal an enemy. Handen’s fear and hurried decisions make the vehicle graveyard an oppressive battlefield in its own right, turning an apparently routine search into a struggle to move without attracting lethal attention.
Four industrial theatres represent energy reserves, violent crosswinds, plague-afflicted troops and a powerful astropathic relay. Units can drain or overload supplies, seize elevated infrastructure and intercept psychic messages, with themed battle rewards linking these exceptional conditions to Crusade progression.
James Ashbey and Duncan Waugh trace the destruction of Caliban and the scattered lives of its renegade sons. The article distinguishes open servants of Chaos from more ambiguous fugitives, then explains the Unforgiven’s secret agents, relentless interrogations and growing concern over Luther’s escape and the Fallen’s mustering.
The Fallen Angels specialist detachment adapts Sorcerers and Rhinos to serve alongside the Fallen and grants Cypher a disruptive aura. Stratagems and a Calibanite relic sword support the force’s treacherous identity, providing a compact framework for using an otherwise unusual collection.
Pete demonstrates how Dark Angels, Chaos and Heresy-era Marine parts can become convincing Fallen with relatively simple swaps. Mark III armour, veteran robes and carefully selected icons communicate their mixed history, while removing unwanted symbols and reusing spare components avoids unnecessary sculpting.
Staff collections interpret the Fallen as dusty gunslingers, sinister commanders and remnants of a lost Legion. Black-armour recipes, green-and-white chequers and period equipment reinforce their uncertain loyalties, while an opposing Interrogator-Chaplain provides the natural pursuer for these individualistic forces.
Arthur Higham combines cool black armour, warm cream robes and red details on a simply kitbashed Fallen warrior. Different highlight widths distinguish polished plates from cloth, while brown shading warms the design and small recipes cover weapons, iconography, rope and reflective red lenses.
A pale Wraithbone foundation makes the robes easy to establish before multiple Black Templar coats deepen the armour. Higham explains controlling Contrast rather than overloading recesses, separating the two red materials and reusing these black-and-bone methods for other armies with similar surfaces.
Tom Barmby builds a Battle Sister defending a dying companion, inspired by the Hospitaller artwork. Adapted poses, blue-tinted black armour and a restrained flagstone base keep attention on the relationship between the two figures, while resin water introduces a new technical challenge.
Craig Pickup stages a confrontation between Imperial devotion and Chaos worship, converting a Sister into a corrupted counterpart. Different treatments of skin and non-metallic surfaces reinforce the opposing figures, with ruined ecclesiastical architecture and scattered relics connecting their duel to a shared religious setting.
Damien Tomasina places Sisters from different Orders around a precious relic on Hagia during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. Their distinct attitudes and wounds communicate the cost of the defence, while the composition’s sacred light asks whether faith can survive the surrounding destruction.
Seyni N’Diaye creates an allegorical scene inspired by Sabbat Worlds artwork, imagining a remembrancer’s tribute to heroism. A converted Sister and Tech-Priest, carefully balanced warm and cool tones and a dove bearing a streamer give the charge a deliberately lyrical quality.
Simon Elsen sends a Sister into the Kadath Spires to uncover a daemonic relic. The composition contrasts fragile light with encroaching corruption, combining cracked charred terrain, weathering and both Contrast and traditional paint techniques to make the setting itself part of the threat.
Patric Sand turns Penitent Engine and old Epic Warhound components into a wandering mechanical shrine. A Titan hip joint becomes its unusual head, and muted beige-grey armour gives dust and oil room to show, making the imposing creation feel like a weathered traveller.
Arran Johnson places a Sister Superior against attacking Harlequins in a ruined industrial setting. Diamond patterns and hazard stripes create a lively visual contrast, while open windows let the final defensive moment remain visible from multiple viewing angles.
Max Faleij, Aidan Daly and Tom Winstone assess how the challenge entries communicate faith through composition, conversion and painting. Their comments explain why narrative clarity and thoughtful use of colour matter alongside technical finish when judging such varied interpretations of one theme.
Dean Lecoq’s winning diorama centres on a Dark Apostle testing the faith of Sisters from the Order of the Last Candle. Warm red armour, restrained cool grey and finely painted scars, candlelight and runes establish a layered narrative whose details reward close inspection.
A Zaitreci Lumineth expedition makes a last stand against Lauka Vai’s Avengorii host in Shyish. The aelves’ formidable magic and mobile defenders cannot prevent the undead from claiming the required kills, with resurrecting infantry ultimately wearing down even the Spirit of the Mountain.
Jervis Johnson adapts a 1985 Orc’s Drift battle into a small Age of Sigmar scenario involving aelven defenders and a skaven attack. Sentries, a returning patrol and an escaping spy create competing priorities, preserving the original encounter’s character through event rules and asymmetric scoring.
Destiny points create personal Necromancers, Wight Kings and Vampire Lords with chosen weapons, companions and supernatural gifts. The options range from spectral support and restored followers to flight and bat transformation, allowing a Soulblight campaign’s principal characters to develop beyond existing named profiles.
Neferata questions a captured servant of Be’lakor to test her suspicions about the Dark Master’s ambitions. Her subsequent exchanges with Katakros and Nagash reveal an undead hierarchy strained by defeat and rivalry, where professed loyalty conceals careful calculation about the next struggle for power.
A tour of Blight City establishes the paranoia, filth and competing ambitions that shape skaven society. Scavenged equipment, crowded tunnels, muted cloth and the sickly illumination of warpstone become modelling themes for armies whose apparent disorder still contains distinctive clan identities.
A Clan Morskrit Stormfiend supplies recipes for flesh, mangy fur, dirty metal and bright warpstone. Neutral materials make the red clan armour stand out, while separate advice on blue Clan Fang colours shows how the same methods can support another heraldic scheme.
Maxime Pastourel’s Shyishian skaven combine sinister conversions with a pale, cold finish. Heroes and monsters borrow unusual components to emphasise Skryre machinery and Moulder experimentation, with shared washes and red details maintaining a coherent army despite the extensive individual alterations.
A gallery demonstrates bruised monster flesh, metallic poisoning, improvised machinery and elemental colour schemes. Contributions explain how spared artillery components become infantry conversions and how forgiving Contrast methods can help a painter with hand tremors produce a characterful orange army.
Dave Sanders explores a variant where fighters from different warbands serve a powerful Grand Avatar. Alliance abilities and unusual victory conditions change army construction, with four example teams demonstrating objective control, aggression, undead numbers and an enthusiastic concentration of squigs.
John Bracken explains the four hero classes and the distinct strengths of all eight Ulfenkarn adventurers. Combat specialists, ranged executioners, magical support and resilient stalwarts offer different ways to survive journeys, with equipment, inspiration and levelling encouraging players to choose characters whose abilities complement one another.
Sam Jeffery adapts priority, heroic actions, shooting and combat for three independent armies. A Good-to-Evil ranking resolves tied disputes, while The Treasure Hoard provides a purpose-built scenario in which every side competes for valuables and must watch both opponents.
Gotrek, Maleneth and a human wizard encounter a white-bearded duardin while investigating ancient waystones and restless dead. Disagreement over whether forgotten ancestors deserve destruction or release exposes Gotrek’s own longing for rest, turning a dangerous expedition into a confrontation with promises and memory.
Hobby bingo continues as staff display Nurgle’s Rotters, Hive Guard and further additions to Peter McMullin’s Raven Guard Crusade. Conversion notes and colour recipes show how new kits and seconded successor-Chapter characters expand an established force while preserving its campaign identity.