WHITE DWARF · SEPTEMBER 2022
Rising Tomb map campaign, Into the Dark design and terrain, Warcry’s new edition, Teclis painting and the first half of Barbarus.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
Lyle Lowery introduces a modular map campaign designed to fit inside the magazine while remaining easy to replay. The square tiles draw inspiration from Mighty Empires, and practical advice on trimming corners and storing the map in coin-pocket pages helps readers turn the paper components into a durable gaming aid.
Readers describe the personal value of returning to Warhammer, offer a sinister reworking of a familiar poem and share finished models. Painting advice breaks down the Flawless Host’s purple and pink scheme, while Juan Sanz’s Magnus uses glowing skin, contrasting feathers and a small conversion to emphasise the primarch’s sorcerous nature.
A tour of the setting’s principal factions examines why their own justifications do not make them moral heroes. Imperial oppression, Necron entitlement, T’au certainty and Aeldari self-preservation sit alongside more openly destructive forces, distinguishing sympathetic individuals and understandable motives from the terrible institutions and choices that define the wider galaxy.
The Silent King arrives in the Nephilim Anomaly and turns Szeras’s cautious experimentation into a coordinated campaign of destruction. Dynastic nobles continue their political manoeuvres beneath the appearance of unity, but Szarekh’s authority removes obstacles to mass attacks; even victories and setbacks become evidence of competing ambitions within his supposedly obedient empire.
Two to four players explore a modular city above an awakening Necron tomb, revealing districts with escalating hostility and dangerous radiation. Access protocols unlock vaults and useful abilities, while early looting and final challenge battles determine campaign standings; the same framework accommodates ordinary matched games or Crusade armies with persistent rewards and scars.
The lowest-hostility districts give combatants room to exploit speed and withdrawal before the tomb fully wakes. Associated stratagems allow an advance to become a charge or a retreat to retain shooting, making this early environment comparatively permissive while still tying movement choices to the campaign’s growing danger.
As the tomb’s defences spread, terrain and local energy effects make exposed movement increasingly risky. Players are encouraged to use remaining cover and defended objectives, while special stratagems improve resistance to mortal wounds or the damage of troops firing from a controlled site.
The most hostile districts are saturated with Necron guardian machines and destabilising energy. Annihilation protocols threaten gathered intruders, and interference changes how units endure attacks, while new stratagems let players influence a bombardment or strike at an enemy attempting to withdraw from combat.
Richard Butler considers how readable models and believable interactions help players make decisions without continually breaking their concentration. Examples of silhouettes, armour, movement, interventions and Overwatch connect battlefield rules to expectations, arguing that a comprehensible game can remain tactically rich while supporting the absorbed state described as flow.
The staff campaign reaches its first completed Spec Ops as familiarity with ploys and operatives improves everyone’s play. Experience also brings injuries and fatalities, especially among the vulnerable Guardsmen and disposable Bomb Squigs, while a preview of close-quarter fighting aboard the Gallowdark sets the next challenge for the five teams.
Lyle completes Blitz but also suffers his first defeat against Matt’s Warpcoven. The report reviews useful honours, a close contest in which several Orks cling to a single wound and varied green skin recipes, with the roster and requisition ledger preserving the consequences of the campaign rather than resetting after each game.
Sophie’s Void-dancers finish their Spec Op and show how carefully chosen roles help fragile Aeldari survive or threaten unexpected charges. She also develops a Blackstone Fortress-inspired killzone using raised hexagonal foam columns and game tiles, while her roster records the increasingly experienced troupe behind the new successes.
Matt leans further into psychic aggression, using concealment and sorcerous flexibility to surprise his opponents. New conversions add a third Sorcerer and a warpflamer gunner in anticipation of close corridors, while his duel with Lyle and the updated campaign sheet reveal how lethal attacks can still fail to deliver a decisive outcome.
Ben improves his Guardsmen’s equipment and early movement but finds the other teams learning just as quickly. Losses and replacement recruits remain part of the campaign, while damaged industrial buildings gain vines, branches and a green weathered finish to create a killzone reclaimed from the surrounding jungle.
Dan completes the Kauyon stage of his Pathfinder operation and begins preparing for Mont’ka. A hard game against Kommandos emphasises both point-blank firepower and the cost of falling behind early on objectives, while new drones, a repair concept and T’au barricades extend the team’s developing narrative.
Elliot Hamer explains how modular walls, hatchways and cramped rooms reshape Kill Team aboard the Gallowdark. Restricted sight lines reward area control, support operatives and appropriate weapons, while the Guard action interrupts familiar activation habits by letting an operative reserve a response to later enemy movement or combat.
A kill team’s small size offers unusual freedom to personalise fighters, equipment and background. Names, sub-faction identity and the intended killzone inform colour choices, with Theta-7 Acquisitus demonstrating how a coherent brief can connect a leader’s goals, battlefield environment and the appearance of every operative.
Harvey paints Death Korps to accompany his Knights of Byzantium, linking the forces through purple greatcoats and cream fatigues. Pale gas masks draw attention to faces and a white-helmeted medic adds a readable battlefield role, while the concise recipes make the personal allied-regiment concept straightforward to repeat.
Piotr adopts the Midnight Sorrow’s red and blue diamonds but introduces brighter accent colours to personalise the troupe. A carefully constructed grid keeps the pattern consistent, while extensive glazing gives each diamond its own transition, turning a recognisable masque scheme into a demanding small-scale painting exercise.
Adam imagines Deathwatch specialists equipped for dangerous close-range operations aboard space hulks. Experimental weapons, targeting systems and modified armour distinguish the operatives under a Tome Keepers sergeant, while black armour and a cool metallic arm provide a consistent painting recipe beneath the highly individual equipment.
Timothée makes his Death Guard look like veterans of millennia of warfare through chipped pale armour and corroded trim. An abused brush stipples damage where wear and rust would naturally collect, with dirty washes and selective highlights preserving definition rather than letting the weathering obscure the models.
Andy uses the Legionary upgrade frame to begin a new Chaos collection around a tested brass-armour scheme. Warm red pauldrons and cool dark details balance the metal, while shade mixtures and metallic drybrushing offer a practical route from a characterful kill team to a future larger army.
Piotr converts Phobos-armoured Deathwatch to suggest a covert team operating behind enemy lines. A medic, sniper and communications specialist tell individual stories even when represented by ordinary Veteran rules, while abundant equipment, black armour and red weapons make the operatives read as a unified special-operations force.
Luke’s Corsairs occupy a visual and cultural middle ground between darker Drukhari and bright craftworld armies. Teal armour and red tabards support a small relic-hunting group, with pale edge highlights and controlled recess shading maintaining the chosen balance between sleek elegance and the uncertainty of pirate allegiance.
James combines mustard-brown coats with deep blue armour for a Death Korps team inspired partly by the Kill Team books’ graphic palette. Orange glazes on reflective details and energy weapons add a further accent, while the principal recipes keep the greatcoats and armour distinct enough to recognise individual gear.
Pete’s Pathfinders are nicknamed the Mirror for their ability to follow enemy movements. Mostly standard models gain a few carefully chosen head swaps and a running Blooded operative, while green armour and contrasting blue-grey skin give the team an independent identity within a familiar T’au silhouette.
Wade evokes Boss Snikrot’s famous mob through repeated red skull glyphs on equipment and masks. Patchwork military greens and sandy boots provide a grounded camouflage setting for bright skin, with the red accents tying varied Ork gear together without making every piece of clothing identical.
Stu’s Iron Warriors kill team centres on a physically imposing Havoc Champion, making dominance visible in the leader’s stature as well as rank. Straightforward metal and gold recipes retain the Legion’s appeal, while planned Nachmund additions provide a path to expand the squad’s specialist character.
Piotr converts each member of an all-female raiding band with a distinct head, then unifies them through black-and-white outfits and red hair. Glossy undersuits contrast with clean pale armour, while red and brass spot colours prevent the striking light-dark scheme from becoming visually flat.
Pete combines Catachan and Cadian command components to give each operative a recognisable job. A banner-bearing zealot and shovel-wielding bruiser provide character beneath Lieutenant Franklin’s leadership, while green armour and fatigues keep the varied bodies and equipment looking like a coherent veteran regiment.
James matches his established Alpha Legion with a quick metallic blue scheme whose trim shares the underlying metal recipe. Older weapons and armour details suggest veteran Legionaries, and a conspicuously leader-like figure deliberately conceals the real command structure in keeping with the faction’s reputation.
A pale undercoat and picked-out details are covered with medium before a brown Contrast wash settles into the recesses. Sponged dark chips and orange-lit screens finish a cream interior, with the process emphasising a quick consistent result across a large quantity of modular Gallowdark walls.
A black-to-grey zenithal undercoat and white drybrush establish the wall’s light and detail before a thin orange glaze tints the entire surface. Pale lights and terminals then receive green or yellow glazes, producing strong colour separation without individually layering every panel of the scenery.
Grey sprayed walls receive a dark wash and drybrush before the metals, cables and skulls are picked out. Lower grime, orange rust streaks and yellowed lights age the interior, while practical advice to keep doors open during washes prevents the painting process from compromising the scenery’s moving parts.
Stormcast Eternals try to halt the orruk advance across Thondia by killing leaders before the hordes combine. Background explores the strengths and costs of this offensive policy, and a Lord-Imperatant’s battle against Kruleboyz shows the determination, repeated sacrifice and hardening personalities behind the supposedly immortal reinforcements.
A two-player campaign follows an orruk push towards the Coast of Tusks and the Stormcast effort to stop it. Secretly ranked defensive positions influence the route and the advantages gained from earlier victories, with options for open, matched or Path to Glory games and advice for adapting the story to other forces.
A strategically vital mountain crossing frames the campaign’s opening battle, with suggested scenarios for three different ways to play. Victorious orruks gain an early movement advantage next time, while successful Stormcast defenders receive an additional Holy Command, making the narrow pass relevant beyond its immediate encounter.
Orruks attack the wreckage-strewn plains and surviving Dawnbringer outposts using a scenario suited to the players’ chosen battlepack. An attacking victory grants a further enhancement for the following game, while Stormcast success lets surviving Redeemer formations receive reinforcement from returned models.
Stormcast seek to contain the greenskins gathering in swampy hill country before they surge into wider Thondia. Scenario options support open, narrative or matched play, and the winner earns a once-per-battle combat advantage: striking first for an orruk unit or a stronger death-burst for the defending Stormcast.
The campaign finale pits an attacker trying to ransack four terrain features against a determined defender. The coastline erodes as the game progresses and increasingly restricts ground movement, making both the order of attacks and the risk of losing access to remaining objectives central to victory.
Ka-rokk interprets visions and the gathering power of Ghur as a summons to destroy Everquake City. His exchange with Doggrok turns frustration at settled greenskins into a renewed mission, while a war-zone map and a Dawnbringer warning broaden the story into a regional threat that other armies must prepare to face.
The column shows how players can tailor the third edition’s numbered rules and battlepacks to their experience and available time. Removing or gradually reintroducing heroic actions, terrain effects, rampages and scoring layers creates a learning path, with sample sequences encouraging agreed experiments rather than assuming every game needs maximum complexity.
Sam Pearson introduces Warcry’s move to Ghur and the changes built around reactions, flexible quests and short linked campaign arcs. The development account explains revised resilience, damage, mobility and points calculations across the Compendium, showing how individual fighter adjustments and stronger original warbands aim to make old collections useful in the new setting.
Niccolò begins a full set of Beastgrave warbands during lockdown and uses the separate projects to explore colour and surface texture. Rusty armour, individually highlighted scales and carefully balanced focal colours give each group its own character, while maintaining the painter’s preference for bright, striking models.
Philipp adapts a studio tutorial with extra skin highlights and thinned layers to achieve smooth blends. Bright hair and the glowing rune in Theddra’s hand punctuate more natural colours, demonstrating how a few focal accents can make individual fighters stand out within a small warband.
Anthony imagines Sylvaneth living beside Nurgle’s gardens, using dark matt bark and fleshy spites to suggest the unsettling proximity. Blue-grey bodies tinted with spectral colour contrast with the wood, while increasingly pale highlights and heartwood-like weapons separate the supernatural warriors from their surroundings.
Jesús chooses turquoise skin as the foundation for a highly colourful Wurmspat. Complementary yellow and orange armour and cloth gain depth from layered washes and non-metallic-metal treatment, showing how unusual colour choices can preserve contrast and material character even on Nurgle’s distorted followers.
Stahly treats the skeleton warband as a manageable self-contained project, starting with traditional yellowed bone. Purple cloth, highlighted black and warm brass supply controlled spot colours, with separate named recipes showing how the palette creates contrast without overwhelming the skeletal forms.
Adam contrasts clean shining Stormcast with filthy Wurmspat and spectral Nighthaunt. Metallic lacquer, bright cloth, oxidised brass and airbrushed ghostly transitions provide distinct surfaces across the three warbands, with each method chosen to reinforce the characters of the models rather than impose a single uniform finish.
Jonathan develops pale green Ork skin through an airbrushed warm base, cool zenithal highlights and controlled shading. Contrast paints simplify secondary materials while damaged metal receives freer sponging and corrosion, creating a deliberately varied texture and leaving red accents and blood to define the dangerous weapons.
David speeds the armoured warband by spraying the trim’s metallic base first and ageing it with washes, drybrushing and local patina. Dark inner panels, cool highlights and rusty bases provide contrast to the warm brass, retaining a high finish without a lengthy paint sequence on every surface.
Michał uses conversions, bases and colour schemes to communicate stories before a viewer reads any background. Bright purples and turquoise meet rust, chips and pigments, while reference photographs and painted textures add the worn materials that connect spectacular fantasy models to a believable environment.
Sergey gives the Wild Hunt bright focal hair and skin, contrasts them with grungy Despoilers and experiments with wet blending on Hrothgorn’s group. For the cat Thrafnir, smooth underpainting and short diluted brushstrokes develop the fur, extending the material-specific approach used across the three warbands.
Tom explains how Teclis’ established high-elven colours informed the studio Lumineth palette, with different blues distinguishing their magical traditions. Close views and detailed recipes follow the direction of light across the headdress, cloth, skin and metallics, while Celennar and the scenic base provide opportunities to explore complementary materials and balance the composition.
Six three-thousand-point Legion forces meet on the toxic Plains of Orthrya, with the Lion and Russ leading the Loyalist assault. Russ’ early failed charge invites a fierce Death Guard response, but the Primarchs survive to retaliate; destructive fire, reactions and reserve arrivals leave the battle poised for its concluding stages in the following issue.
Multiplayer Age of Darkness rules combine allied forces into opposing armies while defining force limits, unique units and a Supreme Warlord. Shared turns and a controlled reaction allowance keep large games manageable, with guidance on reserves, assaults and Legion-specific abilities preventing additional players from multiplying every benefit without restriction.
Attackers and defenders contest five strategically placed objectives on Barbarus, with different values according to their position in enemy or friendly territory. Fixed reserves and a subterranean detonation at the start of the third turn create a deliberate battle rhythm, while casualties, commanders and surviving forces add secondary scoring pressures.
Warlock master Zeek Frazzleclaw leads a scheming expedition into a lost duardin holding in search of a powerful weapon. Betrayal and terror leave him trapped among the dead until Grombrindal explains the white-bearded guardian’s legend, sparing the rat only so that his frightened story will keep another generation of intruders away.
The studio’s twenty-five-player Carcass Donse campaign ends with Erik Niemz’s Fyreslayers leading the field and Order holding the greatest share of territory. Gareth Etherington shares cinematic photographic staging, while staff Hobby Bingo reports show ongoing collections and individual character projects alongside their progress scores.
Matt adds the Lady of Vines to his autumnal Gnarlroot collection with reddish bark and restrained green details. Separate dark and pale wood recipes create variety on the large figure, while sage scattered over the base supplies a simple natural texture that connects it to the existing army.
Josh masks jetbike panels over a bronze base before applying a green upper coat, creating crisp metallic stripes when the tape is removed. Dark recesses and progressively brighter teal highlights define the shapes, making the new Windriders match his existing Aeldari force with a distinct layered finish.