WHITE DWARF · MARCH 2022
Astra Militarum inspiration, Harlequin kill teams, Khorne’s challenge in Chamon and solo Middle-earth.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
A young collector’s rapidly growing Waaagh! brings an online community together, while reader dioramas and painted models demonstrate varied hobby ambitions. Questions about the Adeptus Mechanicus and T’au armour sit beside a carefully observed Skink Starpriest, connecting narrative inspiration with practical painting choices.
James Wilson draws on the muted colours of a red-eyed crocodile skink to give his Starpriest a natural appearance. Sketched highlights and progressively refined glazing create a restrained non-metallic shine, balancing the subdued skin against small bright details.
The ’Eavy Metal team explains the rich red armour and contrasting details of a Farsight Enclaves battlesuit. Separate shading and highlighting sequences distinguish bright and deep reds, enabling a consistent finish across large armour panels and smaller accent areas.
Phil Kelly revisits pronunciation through phonetic examples for names from the Mortal Realms. Soulblight antiquity, deliberately unfamiliar Lumineth terms and more direct Stormcast names illustrate how sound contributes to a culture’s identity, while the guidance helps readers confidently discuss characters and places.
Crowded aboard a damaged troop hauler, Major Hesper confronts the anger and exhaustion of the survivors from Aq’arus. Reports of mutation force him to weigh loyalty to his soldiers against Commissar Qalo’s demand for a purge, exposing how sacrifice and apparent betrayal can erode once-unquestioned faith.
Regimental origins, equipment and campaign environments offer starting points for creating an Astra Militarum collection. Alternative uniforms and camouflage show that familiar kits need not use their best-known colours, allowing a force’s home world and particular duties to guide its appearance.
Eight examples provide contrasting uniforms for Cadians, Catachans, Krieg, Tanith, Armageddon Ork Hunters, Miasman Redcowls, Ventrillian Nobles and Mordians. Recipes distinguish cloth, armour and skin, showing how restrained colour changes can make familiar infantry communicate very different regimental identities.
Further recipes cover Indigan Praefects, Savlar Chem-Dogs, Vresh Grenadiers, Faeburn Vanquishers, Truskan Snowhounds and Tempestus Scions alongside alternative Cadian and Krieg uniforms. Cool blue armour, pale clothing and dark skin recipes expand the possibilities for personal forces without changing their underlying models.
Martin Morrin creates a platoon commander by combining Sentinel and vehicle-kit parts, then adds foliage for a scout appearance. The accompanying converted infantry use kit mixtures and sculpted headscarves, demonstrating how shared details can tie unusual models into a recognisable regiment.
Desert camouflage and pale highlights connect a Tallarn Chimera to its infantry, with thinned brown shading preserving the sandy finish. Elsewhere, oversized looted weapons and a transport assembled from Taurox and Ork components turn regimental improvisation into a visible part of the collection.
Luke Blick uses airbrushed greys for soft camouflage before adding chips, oil weathering and dust. The sequence gives the impression of crew-applied concealment and long service, with dirt concentrated around the tracks and lower hull rather than distributed uniformly over the super-heavy tank.
Skitarii, Scion and Neophyte parts create distinctive Indigan infantry and snipers. A separately described veteran officer gains a sculpted face, beard and hat, with warm brown-red colours and faded antique gold carrying his age and status through both clothing and artificial limbs.
Transparent blue and red over silver provide the Iotan Dragoons with bright metallic armour while black details remain restrained. A contrasting jungle force uses kit combinations and earthy Contrast colours, illustrating how equipment and paint together can suggest a specialised role.
A red cockpit taken from the regiment’s artwork distinguishes Adam Cooper’s grey Valkyrie. Gloss varnish assists controlled panel lining, then drybrushing and sponged damage sharpen its structure and give the aircraft the wear expected of a frequently deployed transport.
Lu Bowen’s Vulture supports a Planetary Defence Force while its wing markings acknowledge occasional Inquisitorial service. Dull greys, grime and chips suggest an aircraft regularly hovering close to troops, with its restrained finish helping it belong beside the same collection’s infantry.
Kit combinations give each veteran an individual silhouette, while mostly transparent paint preserves a worn campaign appearance. Pale tank armour and weathering products establish colours later repeated on the Guardsmen, demonstrating how a successful vehicle experiment can define a wider regiment.
Bright red armour receives progressively sharper highlights and a unifying red glaze, deliberately stretching the painter’s skills. Another efficient method applies base colours before a shared wash, showing how collectors can balance ambitious armour finishes with practical repetition across a squad.
Sculpted coats and hats adapt Bullgryns to the appearance of the Vostroyan Firstborn. Further abhuman conversions use Ork trophies and glyphs to suggest warriors shaped by long conflict with greenskins, making regimental culture visible even on models outside the standard infantry range.
Elliot Hamer explains missions built around movement, actions and interaction with the killzone rather than a single destructive goal. Scoring limits and varied objectives reduce runaway leads and reward flexible rosters, while activation order becomes a continuous decision about pressure, safety and the opponent’s remaining options.
Harlequin performances preserve Aeldari history while their small warbands manipulate events through raids, assassinations and seemingly inexplicable interventions. Their service to Cegorach, care of the webway and psychologically overwhelming equipment explain why a Void-dancer mission can appear like capricious violence while following an elaborate hidden design.
Dramatic mantles and ritual personae generate names linked to Aeldari mythology and theatrical roles. Troupe titles, demeanours and origins extend that symbolism to a whole kill team, allowing a collection to be defined by its performance and obligations as well as individual fighters.
Complete faction rules turn a Harlequin team’s chosen allegory into a performance with a pivotal role. Mobile Players, a Shadowseer and a Death Jester combine unusual ploys and psychic powers, while campaign honours, assets and Spec Ops extend the troupe’s manipulation of fate beyond a single encounter.
Cream clothing and orange hair distinguish a Silent Shroud Player, with transparent paint establishing quick initial shading. Opaque highlights, green gems and separate recipes for the white mask, red scarf and metals refine the miniature while keeping its warm overall scheme consistent.
Parallel lines crossed by another set form a guide for evenly spaced diamonds on curved clothing. Filling alternating shapes and highlighting them individually completes the pattern, while the accompanying Light, Twilight and Dark symbols explain how small heraldic marks identify a Player’s troupe.
Blue highlights keep the black suit cool and reflective against red-blue diamonds and yellow armour. Carefully angled guide lines prevent the pattern becoming square, while diluted blue shading and white layers give the mask a smooth, almost pearlescent finish.
Duncan Waugh considers how the number of available decisions affects enjoyment, drama and analysis paralysis. Distinguishing choices made during a timed battle from those made while building an army explains why designers limit some options, organise others and consider the diminishing number of units across successive turns.
Martin Jones’s Deathskulls combine lucky blue armour, heavily weathered vehicles and a strong commitment to regular painting. Efficient transparent colours and deliberately pooled washes produce convincing grime, while converted leaders and stories from Knights-versus-Stompas battles give the busy collection a recognisably Orky identity.
Large McFarlane action figures offer miniature painters broader surfaces and new opportunities for texture. Seven examples demonstrate how methods from small models can be adjusted to the larger scale, whether repainting a finished figure or beginning with a blank artist’s proof.
Louise Sugden enhances a pre-painted Intercessor with stronger shadows, weathering and carefully repainted details. Existing colours make the initial work approachable, while added grime and scratches transform the factory finish into a more individual and heavily used warrior.
Nick Bayton fixes the pose but paints major components separately for access. Layered blue glazes deepen the broad armour panels, while scratches, fine highlights and earth-coloured lower legs supply details that make the larger figure feel finished rather than merely enlarged.
Drew Palies adapts his army’s colours to a larger Sister with more realistic metallic textures. Glazing, stippling and polished highlights vary the silver armour, while removable weathering powder creates dirt accumulated in recesses instead of a uniform wash across every exposed surface.
Mark Bedford disassembles the Flayed One to reach its complicated parts before applying dark metal and bright chrome accents. The larger figure’s physical shadows support a more natural finish, while transparent greens, pallid flesh and fresh gore distinguish its mechanical body from stolen skin.
A Tsarakura Dynasty scheme combines a dark skeleton, pale face and teal shoulder panels. Grimy weathering uses the sculpted damage as a starting point, while carefully linked luminous details shift attention toward the head and make the sinister larger figure readable.
Chris Peach follows the Tome Keepers palette with parchment-coloured armour and dark details, adapting drybrushing and edge highlights to the larger figure. Brown chips, black scripture and a glazed red chest emblem preserve the Chapter’s identity while adding interest to its broad armour panels.
An artist’s proof becomes a heavily weathered Rainbow Warrior through a dark-to-light blue scheme and abundant small markings. Checks, kill tallies and slogans deliberately recall Rogue Trader-era aesthetics, allowing the large modern action figure to celebrate a much older visual tradition.
Chamon’s transmuting continents and the history of the Spiral Crux reveal a realm where invention and instability are inseparable. The lode-griffon’s catastrophe, Tzeentch’s invasion and the rise of Kharadron skyports connect its strange geography to the societies struggling to remain masters of their own forms.
Khorne offers physical power and freedom through violence, but endless hunger for slaughter consumes most followers’ identities. The Bloodbound and their daemonic allies adapt to the Era of the Beast, finding new recruits and seeking to wound the realms themselves where magical power gathers.
An official update adds magic-resistant Murderlust and revises the Skull Altar alongside new scoring and open-play material. Path to Glory gives Khorne’s daemonic forces appropriate roster treatment, then links quests, territories and heroic upgrades to the collection of skulls and continuing martial success.
Khorne’s warriors challenge Tzeentch across the Vulcharc Peaks in a three-battle campaign. A sorcery gauge changes the region’s magical strength as victories accumulate, and the final Battle of Gods measures divine ascendancy as the armies fight over the flux-cairn at the heart of the conflict.
Louis Aguilar connects each tide to the units, rituals and scoring options that can exploit it. Defensive setup, advancing firepower, a decisive first-strike turn and feigned retreats require different plans, while abilities that alter the tide sequence offer alternatives to waiting for the usual third-round climax.
The Auric Flamekeeper and Akhelian Thrallmaster receive fighter profiles and distinctive leader abilities. The first turns fallen allies into stronger nearby attacks, while the second strengthens Namarti followers; both can also lead the new quests described in the feature or join existing warbands.
A Fyreslayer warband searches for the remains and ur-gold of a missing force. Two convergence battles move from tracing the vanished warriors to confronting scavengers at the site of their fall, giving the quest a clear duty beyond looting and a lasting reward for its successful champion.
An Idoneth expedition seeks souls in unfamiliar dry lands, first silencing alerted scouts and later escaping with its harvest. Territory benefits, artefacts and convergence battles tie the campaign to the warband’s predatory purpose, ending with a reward that extends its champion’s threatening reach.
Mystic hexes replace familiar lethal and cover spaces with a wide selection of magical effects. Some alter attacks or defence, while others move fighters, consume glory or root them in place; duality and random variants increase the combinations available for casual games.
The ancient opposition between Aeldari and Necrons continues in aerial battles shaped by precision, prophecy and relentless machinery. The introduction establishes three scenarios that move from contested webway access to raids on a tomb world and dangerous flight within the awakening complex itself.
Aeldari aircraft defend webway portals from Necron destruction and can travel through them using handling checks. The changing entry points make movement and portal survival central to the battle, with the attackers trying to sever the defenders’ access to the maiden world.
An Asuryani strike attacks the defensive structures of a Necron tomb world. Tesla-armed ground defences and the need to damage the installation add a concrete purpose to aerial combat, making successful target selection as important as destroying opposing aircraft.
A rolling engagement carries Aeldari aircraft into an awakening subterranean complex. Reinforcements and newly powered sections continually change the threat, while ground generators provide targets whose destruction can cripple the tomb’s infrastructure before the raiders are overwhelmed.
A solo adaptation of Ambush at Amon Hen gives the Uruk-hai priorities for movement, shooting and choosing targets. The player directs the Fellowship through the escape, with additional achievements rewarding later attempts and encouraging variations that test different heroes and approaches.
Lornax’s Incursors hunt insurrectionists through empty buildings and tunnels, trusting sensors that prove dangerously misleading. Fallen companions and missing personal records turn a failed pursuit into an intimate crisis of responsibility, as a carefully prepared ambush leaves the sergeant struggling to protect both survivors and the Chapter’s memory.
A friendly Captain-painting challenge produces Ultramarines and Tome Keepers leaders alongside converted sorcerers and new Blood Angels. The first Carcass Donse campaign games introduce personal forces to one another, with terrain exploration and aftermath losses continuing the stories after the battles themselves have ended.