WHITE DWARF · APRIL 2023
Angron rules and painting, the hungry mountains of Lendu, Jade Obelisk and Hunters of Huanchi quests, and a defence grid aboard the Herald of Misery.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
Readers describe developing non-metallic metal skills and how gaming supports a child’s maths, reading and imagination. Grombrindal explains how daemons can manifest in separate realities through a timeless Realm of Chaos. The accompanying galleries include a seasonal Lady of Vines and a nature-inspired Tyranid collection, while a reader question draws out Celennar’s fur and metal recipes.
Martyn Lyon’s Celennar starts from an overall brown base, with diluted dark washes deepening the fur and wing tips. Careful pale drybrushing follows the model’s fine textures and gives special attention to the belly and wings. Blue-green shaded silver links the spirit’s metallic ornaments to the rest of the Lumineth army.
Sergey Bel chooses spring and summer for a Lady of Vines within an army representing all four seasons. Drybrushed light browns build the bark’s fine texture, while wet blending gives the distinctive vines smoother colour transitions. Black Library portrayals helped shape his interest in the character and the seasonal identity of the collection.
Javier Del Rio uses patterns from nature to emphasise the alien anatomy of his hive fleet. Stippling and mottling add interest to flesh, sometimes disguising imperfect wash pooling. Each weapon receives a different palette because it is a distinct symbiotic organism, then blends gradually into its host so their physical union remains apparent.
The studio selection process moves from a single test miniature to a complete chosen unit, asking prospective warlords to demonstrate how their ideas scale. Judges consider painting, conversions and background, with plans ranging from mechanised mixed-regiment infantry to a new Fyreslayer lodge. Contributor recipes expose the practical methods behind the photographed entries.
Sam Pearson challenges the habitual evenly spaced grid of unrelated scenery. Varying density across the flanks creates different manoeuvring problems while preserving broad symmetry; combining two terrain themes makes convincing layouts attainable with an ordinary collection. Fountains, ruins aligned as streets and other small details give places identity and help explain why armies fight over them.
Ka-rokk’s stalled Waaagh! grows mutinous as Lendu’s living mountains repeatedly turn it back. Ogre hunger and rival Daggboy ambitions fuel a camp-wide brawl, while Targug’s separate pursuit of Tzeentchian enemies leaves the pirate strangely changed. Ka-rokk insists on waiting in the valley, claiming guidance from the Great Green.
The achievement-and-territory campaign reaches the Land of Living Peaks, where armies accumulate Antagonism Points by their presence and actions. Monsters, machines, reserves and close fighting increase the landscape’s anger, while casualties reduce it. A rising Defiance roll brings dangerous terrain, disrupted commands, grounded flyers, avalanches or chasms, giving the mountains an escalating role in battles over Lendu’s territories.
The second Orruk Warclans gallery links personal collections to very different realms and clan identities. Fast Contrast schemes sit beside faded Ulguan warriors, Kragnos worshippers and rivals whose red warpaint unifies several kinds of orruk. Individual centrepieces include a primitive shadow-realm Maw-krusha and a mercenary gargant carrying a Kruleboyz fighting platform, with recipes for each project indexed separately.
Kieran Milne targets less than an hour per rank-and-file Kruleboy by combining a brown undercoat with a white zenithal spray. Bright yellow shields and faces receive particular attention, while darker marsh bases keep them prominent. Contrast washes establish yellow plate, green skin and burgundy robes with relatively few stages.
Adam Taylor’s abandoned Ulgu orruks have pale skin, white eyes and washed-out armour adapted to a lightless existence. Lilac flesh and a final milky armour wash suggest dust or stone rather than healthy greenskin colour. Rusted weapons provide a warmer counterpoint to the otherwise subdued scheme.
Ant Saliba makes his Boltboyz look filthy through built-up brown rust and dark grime. Thin green washes oxidise brass at varying intensities, while a layered dark blue robe recipe separates cloth from the decaying weapons. The combination gives the shooters a neglected industrial texture without replacing their ordinary green skin.
Ant Saliba’s Kruleboyz believe themselves children of Kragnos and hunt around his former prison at Twinhorn Peak. Deep green shields honour the god’s magical weapons, contrasting with a brown vulture hide. The recipes build the shield colour through glazes and use warm brown highlights to clarify the large mount’s texture.
Krystal Tooker imagines a more primitive Ironjawz boss from Ulgu during the Age of Myth. Bare metal armour communicates an earlier clan culture, while blood-red eyes become a repeating accent across rider and mount. Deep purple hide places the Maw-krusha in its shadowy mystical environment, with pale highlights keeping its forms readable.
James Karch tests Ironjawz Yellow Contrast on a fresh force of Ironsunz, seeking a vivid result through a simple pale base and recess shading. Cool blue-tinted black panels oppose the warm yellow armour. Green skin receives a darker blue-green recess mix and pale highlights, keeping the force bright while preserving distinctions between its surfaces.
Dave Scammell unifies several kinds of orruk with the red warpaint of a successful fight. Two competing warbosses lead the Ghurish force, each trying to prove their power; paint on skin, plate and weapons is imagined to channel Waaagh! energy. Straightforward skin, red pigment and red metal recipes aim for a striking Battle Ready collection.
Jes Bickham takes the Big Yellers’ bright shields as the centre of a deliberately colourful swamp force. Burgundy clothing offsets yellow while familiar green skin keeps the army recognisably Kruleboyz. Bracken and sickly puddles connect the bases to the Drench in Thondia, reinforcing the clan’s home rather than serving as unrelated decoration.
Dom Cockburn turns a hired gargant into a raised firing position for the Big Yellers. Varanite Syphon structures and a Sloggoth howdah carry a Killbow crew on his shoulders, while armour plates from large Kruleboyz kits suggest payment in clan equipment. Warmly stained metal and layered flesh recipes tie the outsized conversion together.
The Gnarlwood’s invaders and guardians receive parallel narrative expansions: the icon-breaking Jade Obelisk and Talaxis’s Hunters of Huanchi. Each gains three quests, themed relics, heroic traits, a special encampment and background tables. The contrast sets up campaigns of sacrificial desecration on one side and ambushes against trespassers on the other.
The besieged stoneworkers of Nephricar accept the Speaker in the Stone’s promise of protection and become powerful enough to repel daemons. Its reward proves a curse: flesh hardens and faces crumble unless sacrifices sustain the pact. Now they carve weapons and armour from petrified victims, destroy rival religious monuments and seek to overthrow the Ravening Ruin itself.
A Jade Obelisk warband earns a chosen relic by breaching the Gnarlwood through victories, destructive abilities and risky scouting. The six rewards alter reactions, resilience, reach or offensive power, often at a cost: near-total petrification prevents movement, while the Burrowing Mask grants speed and attacks but bars abilities and worsens injury risks. Relics reflect the same dangerous bargain as the faction’s background.
A nominated Jade Obelisk hero earns a trait by defeating an enemy hero or a particularly robust foe. Options emphasise critical damage, hunting strong opponents, recovering near an obelisk and moving towards objectives or religious targets. Several depend on the icon bearer’s position or visibility, making the cult’s central monument a practical organising point for its champions.
Destroying important enemies, carrying treasure and claiming objectives build the cult’s iconoclast score. Sufficient progress unlocks a four-round assault on a rival place of worship, where objective control and a special defiling attack accumulate the required desecration. Winning allows the warband to relocate to the Palace of Jade without paying the normal glory cost.
A circle of nine corrupting obelisks improves heroic renown and sends fighters searching for treasures. The resulting lesser artefacts range from jade oil and a sacrificial dagger to captured heroes and shattered rival icons, supporting abilities and disrupting opponents. Name and origin tables then frame the warband as exiles, sculptors or unwilling servants whose petrification prevents rebellion; the closing photographs stage both factions in the Gnarlwood.
Chameleon Skinks protect temple-ship territories through concealment, ambushes and poisons that can kill intruders or simply drive away potential allies. Talaxis’s guardians were spawned after the Eye of Chotec crashed and its slann died, leaving unusually feral Coalesced defenders. They preserve Motzlpota’s remains in a sacred monument and claim his voice still guides their ruthless protection of the ruins.
Using Slippery, winning battles and sending a fighter to search build progress towards a chosen Talaxis relic. The rewards enhance disengagement, melee venom, defensive reactions, movement or ability dice, including a dartpipe toxin that forces the victim to accept damage or reduced toughness. The quest reinforces the hunters’ evasive style while offering ways to threaten stronger enemies.
A Skink hero proves its hunting skill by taking down an enemy hero or a foe with sufficient wounds. Earned traits permit redeployment, free defensive reactions, improved toxins or stronger attacks against tougher opponents. Some reward stealth and caution while others emphasise the aggression of Coalesced skinks, allowing a campaign leader to develop along either theme.
Repeated kills unlock a quest battle against treasure-laden trespassers fleeing Talaxis. Three defender fighters carry stolen relics, and the Hunters must prevent at least two from reaching the forest edge with their burdens by the end of four rounds. A successful ambush earns relocation to the Heavenly Pool, converting the faction’s defensive mission into a concrete campaign reward.
Wreckage from the Eye of Chotec empowers a healing pool that improves heroic renown and provides opportunities to search the forest. Lesser rewards include restorative grubs, stunning bolas, venomous creatures and celestial brands, linking practical game effects to the Gnarlwood’s ecology. Spawn names, Terrawing names and background tables give the guardians identities as watchers, feral survivors or followers of their dead slann.
Vurnok the Grey herds the loyalist boarding party into a kill-box by manipulating the Ark’s energy barriers. Blood Angels and Tome Keepers make a costly stand while their Techmarine sabotages the field controls. A Librarian traps Vurnok in a perceptual fugue long enough for the loyalists to escape; humiliated, he warns Czagra that their target is probably the warp portal and demands renewed pursuit.
Czagra spreads his invasion across Lume IV to let slave psykers locate Abaddon’s Key-fragment without risking its destruction by indiscriminate bombardment. Accounts of tunnel warfare and a failed Mechanicus radiological counterattack show the systematic reduction of resistance. At Uranic Lumensprawl, coordinated reserves, aerial assaults and a final concentrated strike exhaust the defenders; with the prize located, Czagra turns back towards the loyalists approaching his Ark’s portal.
Temporary barrier tiles add three kinds of energy hazard to Boarding Actions. Solid Security fields block sight and movement, forcing straddling units to jump clear when activated; Burning Plasma risks killing models that cross or remain inside it. Reactive Haze instead obscures targets and rebounds some shots at the attacker, letting different missions use energy fields to reshape both movement and firing decisions.
A damaged fleshmetal network powers six Solid Security barriers unevenly, with three randomly failing each round while the rest reactivate. Players score by controlling the exposed network’s objectives and gain a final bonus for killing the opposing commander. Shifting routes can isolate a warlord or divide a patrol, so maintaining access is central to holding several points at once.
Reactor fissures alternate dangerous plasma barriers between the battlefield’s two halves. Objectives on the active side score twice as much, and the player with more squads there at the finish earns another bonus. Optional flanking deployment helps patrols choose their approach, but the changing reward forces them to balance exposure to incinerating corridors against a stronger score.
Patrols secure power cells around a Geller node while Reactive Haze distorts their shooting. Progressive points reward multiple objectives and paired Alpha or Delta positions, with the central Omega node reserved for a significant final bonus. The mission encourages a broad network of control before a late concentration on the safest remaining chamber.
Each side nominates a squad carrying codes that can switch off nearby Solid Security barriers as it moves. That unit opens routes to scoring positions but also becomes a valuable target, since its destruction gives the enemy a final bonus. Players must keep the key specialists useful without exposing them while contesting the wider field of objectives.
A hostile presence fills the area with shot-rebounding haze and unstable caches. A rebound near an objective may destroy it, raising the value of every surviving objective until a single remaining cache becomes extremely lucrative. The final survival bonus rewards the player with more points of troops left, complicating the temptation to fire recklessly into contested positions.
Units at objectives can hack numbered plasma barriers, with repeated successful dice expanding their control over the network. Failure wounds the hacker and lets the opponent alter a barrier group instead. Random Alpha or Delta data surges add round-end points to ordinary objective control, so hacking choices must support both safe passage and the terminals currently offering the best intelligence.
Bhakir’s Tome Keepers Boarding Patrol uses only Primaris models and limits non-characters to Troops. Enhancements improve psychic denial or Overwatch, while stratagems emphasise bolter discipline, organised hatchway assaults, resilience and objective presence. A limited pre-battle reconnaissance move complements the force’s deliberate search for the Ark’s secrets.
An annotated four-way Blood Vendetta position shows how target assignments interact with ordinary objectives. Daemons try to contain Mechanicus melee troops while attacking the Necrons; the Mechanicus combine an objective firebase with early aggression. Death Guard accept a slower counterpunch, while the Necrons use Lychguard to block a junction and retain Destroyers as a flexible supporting threat.
Rich Butler explains how Angron’s new rules express a demigod of slaughter without removing the opponent’s tactical choices. Speed and two melee profiles make him devastating once engaged, but screens and distractions can delay his preferred targets. Resurrection through Blood Tithe, a choice of nearby effects and the removal of enemy Objective Secured all matter alongside his raw killing power; the complete datasheet accompanies the commentary.
A collage of Imperial reports records the spreading madness around the Red Angel: former allies turn murderous, fleet survivors cannot explain accusations of heresy, and observers struggle to classify the corruption. Inquisitorial agents connect repeated manifestations to historic massacres, while another investigator finds the same eight-week, eight-day, eight-hour interval despite incompatible chronologies. Fragmentary omens and vox records make the threat visible through frightened and unreliable witnesses.
Martin Peterson describes the references and colour decisions behind the studio Angron. Red skin echoes World Eaters armour but shifts from bruised extremities to a fiery face, using very deep shadows and harsh vein highlights. Bronze plate and distinct brass trim preserve the history of the Armour of Mars beneath accumulated blood, oil and dirt.
Jamie Farquhar’s Iron Warriors invade Lume IV against Dan Harden’s Metalica battle convocation in a 1,500-point narrative fight over five objectives. Long-ranged Mechanicus fire and repeated repairs slow the assault, while the Iron Warriors attempt to surround the defenders with daemon engines, transports and teleporting Obliterators. Failed charges keep several decisive combats out of reach during the middle turns.
Battle Doctrines missions isolate specific battlefield problems in compact narrative games, replacing ordinary army charts with restricted unit selections. This instalment centres on the Cerberus, whose powerful neutron battery justifies a dangerous reactor and punishing effects on its own crew. Its three scenarios test defensive endurance, infantry-supported breakthrough and armoured hunting rather than a standard all-purpose army contest.
A Cerberus squadron holds the centre against an attacker bringing selected infantry and lighter tanks from reserve. The defender needs only one surviving vehicle at the end of five turns, while the attacker must destroy the whole squadron. Restricted terrain placement and an initial limit on arriving enemy units make the exercise about sustained armoured defence against an accumulating assault.
A Cerberus-supported infantry force attempts to penetrate a fortified Legion line. The attacker scores for intact units reaching the opposing deployment zone, while defenders score for units and fortifications still holding it. Fixed selections, a points difference and a five-turn limit force players to judge how much firepower to spend clearing the route versus preserving units able to complete the breakthrough.
Matched armoured patrols each contain one Cerberus with Predators or Sicarans as support. Initial Night Fighting makes early detection and positioning consequential before conditions improve, while destroying the enemy Cerberus is worth more than eliminating a supporting tank. The scenario concentrates the game on seizing the first decisive anti-armour opportunity without sacrificing the main weapon in return.
Subcouncillor Anki Thayne investigates why Guildmaster Durkar left his estate to the human gardener Sivarn Trell. An open enquiry becomes a wake, then a struggle over inheritance as Riggen Bolk presents an ancestral axe and Myrddi Wutten claims ties to lost Karak Thorga. Thayne’s research confirms the karak’s connection to Durkar, but Rigo exposes the young claimants’ improvised story and magical spying.
Boarding Actions prompt the team to assemble small forces and try an early game that ends in a hard-fought draw between Thousand Sons and Skitarii. Contributor rosters contrast six elite Custodes, Terminator-heavy sorcerers and numerous Mechanicus infantry. Hobby bingo follows league games, a converted Rogal Dorn tank, Gossamid Archers and a newly inspired World Eaters project.
Lyle Lowery’s Custodes patrol trades numbers for shields and elite combatants; Matt Hutson fits two Scarab Occult units and an Infernal Master into his Thousand Sons force. Dan Harden chooses the opposite approach, using cheap Skitarii to hold ground with specialist melee support. Their discussion recognises the objective-control weaknesses of tiny patrols, and the introductory game illustrates how an early advantage can become a draw.
Dan Harden adds a converted Rogal Dorn to the Athonian Tank Corps with red-and-black markings matching its Stygies VIII allies. Matt Hutson’s Gossamid Archers continue his Gnarlroot colours, using pink zephyrspites and white hair to connect older units. Adam Barnes kitbashes World Eaters Rampagers from Mark III armour and several melee kits, then uses a pale, weathered scheme; brief league and collection updates accompany these finished projects.