WHITE DWARF · AUGUST 2023
Bunker leagues and Terminator painting accompany Hammerhal politics, Seraphon artwork, Warcry quests, T’au inspiration, Inductii heraldry and the Forge Bowl final.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
The editorial reflects on the first month of the White Dwarf Bunker and invites readers to share what their own satellite clubs are doing. Studio league progress supplies an example of the shared activity the section hopes to generate. Feedback, results and photographs are presented as ways for readers’ local hobby lives to shape the magazine.
Readers describe arriving at Warhammer through fiction, building an original Necron dynasty with family and expanding a Crusade campaign into several subsectors. Andy Muscarello’s Orks, Harry Spry’s Karmon Dynasty and a competition Contemptor illustrate different starting points. Replies also explain Realmscape stone and bronze recipes and why Yvraine’s bond to Ynnead cannot simply be taught as a psychic technique.
Grombrindal explains that Yvraine’s ability to bind Aeldari souls to Ynnead comes from her unique connection to the death god. A fragment of its power entered her during Eldrad’s failed awakening ritual, making her a conduit rather than a teacher of a conventional psychic discipline. The answer connects her present role to that exceptional origin.
Nathan Trolley explains the studio Realmscape buildings’ pale stone and bronze cladding. Diluted washes over Grey Seer shade the masonry before drybrushing and matching edge highlights restore definition. Bronze receives layered recess colour and bright metallic highlights; the answer specifies heavily diluted paint-medium washes, with the cladding glaze instead feathered out using water.
Michał Gmitrasiuk’s competition Contemptor develops smooth blue armour through successively paler glazes over Kantor Blue. Warm washes weather the silver machinery, with bright edges restoring its metallic appearance. A red helmet shaded blue and highlighted flesh-coloured supplies a contrasting focal point, while unnamed orange paint strengthens selected rust stains.
Andy Clark explores collecting a complete gaming experience: several comparable forces, terrain, rules and peripherals that friends can use together. Starting with manageable goals permits variety without requiring every opponent to invest in a new system, and can eventually grow a gaming group. His Kill Zone Arktorion exemplifies the idea with four finished kill teams and several thematic battlefields, while custom scenery and objective markers tie collections to their stories.
Lyle Lowery explains how the studio sustains Combat Patrol enthusiasm between games. Chat groups, regular newsletters, opponent matrices and visible leaderboards keep players connected and make different routes to achievement apparent. Modest trophies or certificates add a final incentive, and the examples show that participation can keep a player competitive even with a low win rate.
The monthly challenge turns to leaders and heroes while continuing the Bunker’s cumulative achievement system. Players track scenario games, league involvement and painting on a card that carries their total and rank forward. The repeated theme calendar and journal area encourage both planning future entries and keeping a record of completed hobby work.
The league enters its second month with an invitation for late arrivals to join using a Combat Patrol and its faction rules. The scoring system rewards games, wins, painted forces and different opponents, while category titles give players more than one goal. Shared spreadsheets and printed tables make fluctuating results visible without requiring a large or complicated event structure.
Another 45 games reshape the studio leaderboard, with John Bracken and Rhuairidh James still prominent and Paul Foulkes climbing rapidly through participation. Paul describes learning his Astra Militarum gradually, introducing stratagems after mastering the basics and accepting early losses as practice. Pete McMullin’s painted successor Chapter provides a contrasting hobby story: an unsuccessful Four Warlords audition still became a completed patrol for the league.
Pete McMullin expands his own Dark Angels successor into a playable patrol after developing its scheme for a Four Warlords selection. Quartered bone and purple armour provides its identity, while green robes acknowledge its parent Chapter. The two main recipes use simple shaded bases and highlights that can be repeated across the whole force.
A warp storm makes armies unusually dependent on their characters: leaders resist its horrors better, while losing a warlord forces widespread Battle-shock tests. Players score for occupying several objectives and for destroying enemy characters, with a further reward for leaving none on the battlefield. The mission turns the protection and elimination of command figures into a parallel contest alongside ordinary territorial control.
This historical battleplan recreates Archaon’s confrontation with Nagash outside Nagashizzar. When the two leaders engage, lesser units must clear their duel or be destroyed, while Shyish damages non-Death forces and slaughter strengthens the attackers. Victory ultimately requires killing the opposing supreme commander, making the huge personalities at the battle’s centre more decisive than ordinary objective play.
A short Underworlds league plays out Wyrdhollow’s increasingly unstable final chapter. The guide covers duration, prizes, win-draw-loss scoring and optional underdog measures, allowing organisers to balance structured competition with narrative goals. Double-sided hazards introduce changing environmental dangers, while best-result scoring, catch-up bonuses and extra spent glory can help players with less time remain involved.
Hazard cards are selected at specified points during setup and later rounds, with both the card and its facing normally determined randomly. The timing table groups effects such as wyrdlights, rootquakes and winter’s chill as the environment changes. Optional catch-up rules let a trailing player influence a hazard, begin with extra spent glory or earn double league points, while limiting weekly results offers a separate way to balance attendance.
Jimbo Warth uses Geomantic Pulse from the 2023–24 General’s Handbook to show how pre-game analysis changes deployment and movement. Mapping the moving pulse’s scoring reveals the central objectives’ importance, then examples consider fast or slower armies, turn order, reserves, blocking access and carefully chosen charges. The aim is a reusable habit of studying when and where points can be earned before committing units.
A Stormcast force must take an objective from ten Brutes without exposing itself to unnecessary risk. The puzzle supplies a Knight-Relictor, Vindictors, Dracoline Evocators, reserve Retributors and one command point, and notes that only four enemy models currently contest the marker. Readers must distinguish defeating the whole unit from simply placing enough friendly models within scoring range.
Lewis Collins explores methods for finishing a coherent Space Marine army quickly, using Terminators to compare drybrushing, Contrast colours and battle damage. A simple Ultramarines sequence is followed by Black Templars, Imperial Fists, Howling Griffons and Tome Keepers alternatives. The discussion judges results at normal tabletop distance and uses contrasting bases and chipped edges to create atmosphere without labour-intensive armour highlights.
Macragge Blue spray and a restrained blue drybrush establish the Terminator’s armour before black and metallic details are added. An all-over Nuln Oil wash unifies the model, with excess lifted from flat areas rather than allowed to pool. Flesh and parchment finish the Battle Ready stage; additional shading, metallic drybrushing and a textured neutral base supply a straightforward more finished version.
Four weathered Terminators use different shortcuts to a striking finish. Bright Contrast yellow and dark sponge damage define the Imperial Fist, metallic underpainting gives the Howling Griffon lustre, and silver chips act as natural highlights on black armour. The Tome Keeper instead uses pale priming, grime washes and fixed chalk dust, with a coloured helmet drawing attention to the face.
Lewis compares three environments beneath the same Tome Keepers Terminator, favouring green marble for its contrast with cream armour. A separate illustrated hack uses a torn sponge to add sparse Rhinox Hide damage over pale shaded armour, concentrating marks at vulnerable edges. Museum curator Lise Ward also recommends soft makeup brushes for removing dust from finished miniatures and displays.
Chris McKenna describes a school Warhammer club that grows from six students to around fifteen with a deliberately welcoming atmosphere. A hobby library encourages reading, volunteering supports Duke of Edinburgh awards and students develop painting confidence and Battle Honours progress. Support from Warhammer Alliance and local shops supplies materials, while a planned teacher-painting competition gives students the judging role.
The studio gallery ranges from a freehand-robed Fungoid Cave Shaman to a Dark Krakens Captain wearing a sculpted sea-creature pelt. John Bracken’s fiery Chaos blade, Leila Craven’s iridescent Ephrael Stern and Andrew King’s red-and-black Knight of Shrouds show different ways to create character. A converted Apothecary supports Pete McMullin’s patrol, while Jes Bickham gives his Bloodpelt Hunter a dark skin recipe to broaden his ogor army’s palette.
Ten reader characters answer the Bunker theme with heroes from both principal Warhammer settings. Mounted and supernatural figures sit alongside Guilliman, an Aeldari Autarch, Necron nobles and an Emperor’s Champion, illustrating how a shared challenge accommodates very different visual identities. The gallery credits each painter without providing colour recipes for the photographed finishes.
Adjutant-Malleate Ignice Van’s in-world report explains how Hammerhal’s Grand Conclave works through smaller sessions, voting customs and competing civic interests. Its ideal of 244 delegates derives from Azyrheim, but city-specific posts and tensions between Azyrites, Reclaimed Aqshians and Ghyranites complicate the machinery of government. Descriptions of the fortified Stormrift Palace and leading officials show how military command, harvests, engineering, espionage and religion all contend within a functioning but imperfect institution.
Louis Aguilar explains translating narrative into an evocative army mechanic, using Tzeentch’s Destiny Dice as a benchmark. For Slaanesh he develops, tests and discards versions of a tempting dice pool before giving the Hedonites player control over when an offer is made. Showing an abandoned prototype alongside the finished Temptations of Slaanesh illustrates why emotional impact, opponent choice and practical playtesting matter more than attachment to a clever first idea.
Studio artists describe depicting Seraphon as convincing reptilian warriors whose emotions must be communicated through poses, magic and surroundings rather than human expressions. Warm mounts and gold contrast cool skin and celestial spell colours, while immense temples and ruined foregrounds convey ancient grandeur under constant threat. Individual works explore readable rider-and-mount silhouettes, slann mysticism, star-faring temple vessels and Kroxigor physical power.
The designers explain four harbingers through composition and small narrative details. The Grimhold Exile’s upward motion and ember-bearing hammers express an avenging survivor; the Harbinger of Decay uses drooping weight and stillness for menace. A Marrowscroll Herald mistakes bones and flayed skin for noble regalia, while the Rabble-Rowza’s oversized skull armour, cave growths and Bat Squigs make a small grot an ominous messenger.
Letters from a Hammerhal crusader begin with proud descriptions of the army and unease at the fanatical Disciples of the Great Wheel. Exhausting marches, brutal fighting and the wheel-cult’s insistence on suffering gradually erode his confidence. A damaged supply wagon leaves him crushed under its steam engine, after which he embraces pain as revelation and announces that he will abandon his unit to follow the cult, ending his correspondence with his mother.
Questor Soulsworn and Royal Beastflayers receive parallel narrative expansions that contrast genuine Stormcast errantry with ghoul delusions of chivalry. Each warband gains three quests, artefact and trait rewards, a new encampment and background generators. Additional Realmshaper Engine rules complete the feature, giving the Gnarlwood’s architecture both a dangerous summit and a power that certain Seraphon can wield more safely.
The background traces Soulsworn to Sigmar’s respect for individual heroism beyond the normal Stormcast chamber structure. Fate, divine visions or a recruiting champion can assemble specialists from different chambers or even Stormhosts for missions whose true significance they may not know. Their leader must turn rivalries and different experience into unity, producing travelling heroes whose deeds become mortal songs and legends.
Heroes All adjusts warband construction to suit a faction composed entirely of exceptional champions. Soulsworn with both their own faction and Hero runemarks can be included without the normal hero limit, while heroes brought from other factions remain restricted. The same principle carries into narrative rosters, with the first eligible champion designated as leader.
A quest score measures the warband’s success at varied battlefield duties, including holding objectives, removing leaders and clearing territory. Completing the decree awards a chosen Questor artefact, with six options that provide protection, celestial attacks, exceptional actions or a return from defeat. The structure turns general mission performance into progress towards a specific narrative reward.
The warband chooses a different vision after deployment in each battle, with tasks ranging from attacking consistently to holding a hostile quarter or the highest platform. Three fulfilled visions grant a hero a trait, while completing all six can offer a stronger reward. Champion of Azyr traits specialise fighters in aggression, resilience, suppressing nearby abilities or manipulating ability dice.
The Soulsworn develop an outpost through battlefield achievements, then unlock a six-round defence against attackers whose non-hero fighters repeatedly return. Winning requires surviving near the centre while inflicting substantial losses, earning a Dawnbringer Outpost as a free relocation. Its improved campaign capacity and minor-quest table let individual heroes find glory, charms and other temporary rewards between battles.
Names, deed-names and narrative tables help explain why a group of Stormcast champions has been drawn together. Shared lost homelands, past failures, forgotten identities and rivalries give the warband a history before its first game. Leader prompts range from a charismatic veteran or unlikely rising star to a Redeemed warrior concealing an old allegiance, supplying tensions to develop during its quest.
The Royal Beastflayers preserve a grotesque version of courtly hunts under the Flesh-eater curse. They imagine honourable expeditions, noble armouries and trophies, while actually wielding carrion weapons and flaying their prey. Although they sometimes kill real dangers, their attacks on scouts and mystical guardians more often leave settlements lost and lands vulnerable, and feasting on beasts makes the hunters increasingly bestial themselves.
The Beastflayers interpret their campaign as pursuit of the dreadful Calcodrax, gaining progress through objectives, treasure and killing marked enemies, beasts or monsters. The resulting Relic of the Realm can sharpen attacks, restrict escape, inspire allies or protect its bearer. Its grandiose descriptions and grisly physical forms sustain the faction’s split between imagined nobility and actual scavenging.
Recovering a supposedly priceless family relic becomes a tracking quest built from defeating treasure carriers and important enemies. Once enough progress is made, a dedicated retrieval battle can earn the chosen fighter a Knightly Virtue. These traits reward the ghouls’ imagined chivalry through extra wild dice, punishing attacks, movement or damage near enemies.
The questing Beastflayers spring an enemy ambush in their attempt to recover a treasured scrap of remains. A single designated defender carries the object, and the attackers must finish the fourth round with a fighter carrying it. The scenario gives the adversary a renown incentive and turns the quest’s imagined heroic recovery into a focused, asymmetric treasure hunt.
Four possible labours test the warband’s leader through duels, movement and even restraint towards a nominated foe. Completing three different labours ends a supposed witch’s curse and grants a free move to the Hunting Encampment. That location raises campaign capacity and sends fighters on hunts for glory, grisly consumables or temporary equipment, giving the quest an ongoing reward beyond its final battle.
The Beastflayers’ names and extravagant titles borrow from knightly legend while their origins reveal boastfulness, failed service and increasingly animal behaviour. Prompts suggest hunters obsessed with revenge, clever traps or a mythical heraldic creature they have already eaten. Leader details add showmanship, inherited legends, strange visions and uneasy generosity, supporting a campaign told through unreliable ghoul pageantry.
A Realmshaper Engine becomes a difficult elevated position whose walls and stairs cannot safely hold a fighter at the end of an activation. Its highest platform increases falling risk, but a lone occupant can unleash destructive power against a visible terrain feature and those nearby. Seraphon and Hunters of Huanchi suffer less backlash, with suitably marked priests or mystics able to control it without harming themselves.
All four collectors finish their initial Combat Patrol challenge, with bonus points secured and the first games shaping future plans. Rhuairidh James’s participation in the Bunker league gives his Death Guard a strong lead, while Joe Naber wins two close games and Andy Barlow develops his mixed Guard force. The next challenge rewards playing another warlord, shifting attention from completing collections to bringing them together on the table.
James Ashbey carries his test scheme across twenty Berzerkers, then uses Jakhals to practise skin tones and quieter versions of the army’s colours. His Lord on Juggernaut separates rider and mount through red and black areas, while bloodied skull bases evoke Nuceria and taunt a rival collector’s Cadians. Detailed gore and skin recipes support the force’s new breadth without losing its dark, violent identity.
Bone-coloured chainblade panels make fresh and dried blood conspicuous. James stipples Skrag Brown beneath Blood for the Blood God, leaving some of the brown visible, then darkens the deepest gore with a little black. Pale edge marks and highlighted scratches restore the blade’s shape beneath the mess, making the blood effect deliberate rather than an indiscriminate covering.
Three skin recipes give James’s Jakhals variation while fitting the same army. Pale skin receives a flesh-and-violet shade; dark skin starts from Dryad Bark with brown highlights; a middle tone combines Baneblade Brown, deeper shading and Karak Stone. The small set of recipes treats exposed flesh as an opportunity to vary a unit rather than repeating one finish on every warrior.
Joe Naber completes a rugged pale-armoured patrol by blocking in dark details and red accents before applying a diluted Skeleton Horde wash. Two narrow victories demonstrate the value of focusing on objectives while the Kahl and Beserks provide unexpectedly strong close combat. The report also notes repeated Pioneer losses and plans for Thunderkyn, support characters and a Land Fortress to develop a mixed-arms force.
Rhuairidh James makes his Plague Marines less ornate and overtly mutated through Heresy heads and Mark III backpacks, heightening the contrast with a mass of Poxwalkers. Yellow accents and repeated bone and rust treatments tie the units together, while Aggaros Dunes over zenithal grey gives the horde unhealthy greenish flesh. Selective gloss distinguishes biological textures and helps the completed patrol read as a diseased whole.
Finishing early gives Rhuairidh time to convert a Daemon Prince for the plague fleet. A broken official chainaxe key ring becomes its weapon, Tech-Priest vials suggest toxic stores, and undead and Blightking shields add scavenged detail. Its painting combines elements of the Marines and Poxwalkers, making the character a visual bridge between the army’s armoured and rotting bodies.
Andy Barlow completes his patrol with Cadian infantry, a Sentinel and Krieg-crewed field guns, establishing the campaign force’s mixed-regiment structure. Initial games bring hard lessons from Chaos Legionaries and a narrow Votann defeat after a missed home objective, despite the Krieg infantry’s determined fighting. His next stage aims for a mechanised company through Chimeras, specialist tanks and an Enginseer.
Andy converts wheeled Chimeras to evoke unusual Guard vehicles described in fiction and older hobby publications. Plasticard closes the spaces normally occupied by tracks, while Cargo-8 Ridgehauler Trailer components supply axles, wheels and mudguards. Stowage from the transport and other Imperial kits gives the new hull a practical campaign appearance while keeping the Chimera chassis recognisable.
The introduction explains how autonomous septs give the T’au Empire regional identities within its expanding civilisation. A guide to creating a colony connects names, expansion spheres, alien relationships, commanders and environmental camouflage to the constant sept markings used for rank and squad recognition. Sa’cea demonstrates the framework through its crowded home world, martial honour and contrasting orange heraldry.
Ashley Reid’s army grows from Phil Kelly’s novels and imagines the Enclaves aiding an Empire that still distrusts them. Dusty Agrellan bases establish the campaign setting beneath red armour and subdued tan cloth. The recipes balance the saturated armour with warm neutral surfaces, retaining the faction’s identity while giving the collection a specific place in the setting.
Dan Harden chooses neighbouring cool colours to suggest a T’au army fighting beneath a night world’s ultraviolet light. Purple armour, cool black fatigues and blue and green accents form an analogous palette rather than sharp warm contrasts. Snow bases reinforce the cold atmosphere, with the armour and cloth recipes showing how pale highlights keep the dark force readable.
Steven Copp translates the appearance of cel-shaded games and comics into a T’au army. Crisp battlesuit and weapon edges provide surfaces for bold black outlines around ochre armour, red accents and metal details. The project makes edge control central to its distinctive illustrated appearance and gives a simple set of colours that can be repeated across the force.
Chris Drew’s enthusiasm for the T’au campaign in Dark Crusade becomes an army in polygonal green camouflage. He imagines deployment to a savanna world, giving the geometric pattern a practical purpose while restrained ochre sept markings remain compatible with it. Separate recipes cover neutral fatigues, green armour and grey patches, demonstrating how a familiar military palette can suit a futuristic force.
The gallery explores T’au identity through altered silhouettes, camouflage and carefully chosen environments. A reconfigured jungle Piranha, hairspray-weathered Fire Warriors, a Sa’cea patrol, stealth suits emerging inside an Ork stronghold and a diplomatic meeting inspired by old artwork demonstrate varied modelling stories. Several Ghostkeels use darker reconnaissance palettes, while a shoreline model makes active camouflage visible through a dramatic colour transition and resin waves.
A reverent Mechanicus treatise surveys Tactical Dreadnought Armour through surviving records, technical interpretation and battlefield testimony. It covers development and patterns, the rarity and maintenance of suits, protective systems, sensors, teleportation and the weapons suited to close boarding actions. Discussion of specialist armour, the Crux Terminatus and veteran training leads to remembered deeds such as Macragge’s final stand, while the narrator’s dogma and uncertain evidence expose the limits of Imperial historical knowledge.
Inductii arise from the Legions’ need to replace catastrophic losses faster than traditional recruitment permits. Accelerated implantation and indoctrination produce warriors treated as lesser than their predecessors, often identified through altered colours, markings or withheld Legion symbols. The introduction encourages using this fractured heraldry to personalise squads, including subtle hints of the successors and warbands that will emerge after the Heresy.
Nine studio squads distinguish hastily raised recruits through restrained ornament, serial markings, borrowed equipment and altered helmets. Examples include green-tinted Dark Angels, ragged Iron Warriors with narrow hazard stripes, impersonal metallic-yellow Imperial Fists and Night Lords made luminous through clear colours over silver. Other contributors simplify White Scars and Blood Angels heraldry or suggest Iron Hands bionics, with exact paint names and modelling choices showing several ways to express the same recruitment story.
Jay Clare concludes the 25-coach league with knockout games full of casualties, hired stars and late recoveries. Early favourites Doofas of Doom fall to the Red Maw Raiders, while the Saphery Skyhawks survive an all-Elven quarter-final and a brutal Black Orc semi-final. Their final against the Blood Marsh Skulltakers reaches extra time and penalties, where Akhorne succeeds and Scyla attacks the ball, delivering the title to the Skyhawks.
Apothecary Biologis Luco Vultis examines Tyranid specimens aboard an embattled pilgrim vessel while Brother Baraca protects him. A preacher condemns his interest in alien biology, insisting faith supplies all necessary knowledge, but Vultis argues that accumulated research allowed the Ultramarines to recognise the ship’s danger. His concentration delays their withdrawal until a much larger swarm converges on the embarkation deck.
John Bracken’s newly painted Ossiarch Bonereapers face Jimbo Warth’s Sylvaneth led by Alarielle. Despite killing the Everqueen twice and retaining most of his own units, John loses to careful strike-and-fade play, turn priority and planned Grand Strategy scoring. His reflections distinguish preserving and killing models from using them well enough to win, identifying deployment and battle-tactic choices as improvements for future games.
The answer compares fighting through Brutes, circling them and using a risky Translocation prayer with reserve deployment. Retributors can claim the objective without a dice roll by arriving behind the orruks while respecting the required separation. The key warning is sequencing: moving another unit too close first permits Redeploy, allowing the opponent to close the carefully calculated gap.
Studio updates track a forthcoming Necromunda campaign, finished Combat Patrols and several continuing collections. Lyle Lowery gives a Cadian Sentinel weathered green armour and oily metal through stippling, drybrushing and washes; Andrew King keeps Iron Warriors quick so effort can go into important accents. Matt Hutson’s blue-grey Dark Reapers use orange to mark their Telennar shrine and connect them with the wider craftworld army.