WHITE DWARF · FEBRUARY 2024
Stealthy Tyranid and Scout patrols, a Crusade campaign, Lumineth painting and the first Old World battle report.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
Lyle welcomes the Insidious Infiltrators, an eleven-model Tyranid patrol built around fast Lictor-type creatures. Its small size makes it appealing as both a new Combat Patrol and the core of a Crusade force. The editorial connects collecting, painting, campaign participation and Bunker achievements as several ways the same modest project can develop.
A reader takes White Dwarf to Antarctica, while another celebrates the Aranthian Succession’s narrative view of Necromunda. Toni Garcia explains Lyrior Uthralle’s luminous green and yellow palette, a painting answer gives the studio Gryph-chargers’ natural markings, and Grombrindal describes lasgun focusing crystals and rechargeable power packs. The gallery adds reader models from several settings.
Phil Kelly explores the Realm of Life beyond the assumption that it is uniformly green and idyllic. Nurgle’s corruption coexists with sacred waters, huge insects and fiercely defended settlements; Hammerhal Ghyra controls growth with imported lava and purifying steam. Accounts of Decrepita, the Shimmerfalls, Cursewood, the Living City, Mosscairn and Slicston reveal contrasting forms of abundance, decay and everyday danger.
The Bunker launches a three-team Crusade campaign using either Tyrannic War or Pariah Nexus. Additional rules let Combat Patrol games support the wider struggle, award campaign points for building and painting units, and prevent friendly infighting from improving a team’s standing. Individual awards for slain warlords, accumulated victory points and wins grant rare relics, giving different kinds of participation their own goals.
February’s painting challenge concentrates on leaders and heroes, with a timetable for later themes and a monthly achievement journal. Games, painted event units and challenge entries all contribute to a continuing Bunker rank. The article explains transferring the previous total onto the next portable record card so that club progress continues across issues.
Every unit can shoot and charge after falling back, making the mission a fluid contest rather than a struggle to lock opponents in place. Each player nominates a Prime objective every round, and choosing the same site doubles its value. Destroying enemies around these priorities can generate command points, but control of the wider battlefield still earns a separate reward.
An attacker searches a defended stronghold for a hidden treasure while the defender secretly assigns different goods to four stashes. Investigating may reveal the prize, concealing fog, healing unguents or an explosive store of blastwood. The winner is whoever holds the discovered treasure after five rounds; if it remains hidden, the defender’s protection has succeeded. The plan can accompany issue 496’s siege pack or stand alone.
This alternative Underworlds format removes the decks and power step, replacing card objectives with shared rewards for territory, surviving fighters and enemy casualties. Fighters on objectives gain new actions for aiming, increasing damage, digging in, healing or inspiring, while a follow-up reaction sustains close combat pressure. A short league framework includes catch-up options so newcomers or less frequent players can remain involved.
Jimbo Warth explains how noble deeds power the Flesh-eater Courts’ regeneration, returned units and attack bonuses. The counterplay focuses on vulnerable heroes, disrupting prayers and spells where possible, denying landing space to flying reinforcements and avoiding wasteful fights with renewable infantry. Ushoran, the Gorewarden and the Royal Decapitator receive particular attention before a Cities of Sigmar objective puzzle tests these lessons.
Dan Harden shows how several base colours can share one wash when their shading needs are compatible. Studio examples compare blue silver, red and gold, flesh and hair, then his own wintery Soulblight force demonstrates a cold blue-grey wash across bones, cloth and metal. Subsequent drybrushing and selective highlights recover definition quickly while preserving a common atmosphere across the army.
A grey undercoat, silver equipment and blue cloth all receive the same Space Wolves Grey wash to suggest warriors rising from a frozen lake. White drybrushing restores the bones, brighter metal edges sharpen the armour and two blue highlights define the cloth. Dark wood and straps are finished afterwards, preventing their colours from interrupting the efficient shared shading stage.
A diluted blue-grey wash over pale grey gives the Dire Wolves the same cold tone as Dan’s skeletons without making them look identical. Two quick drybrushes produce striking white fur, while exposed muscles, glossy blood and blue eyes add small points of contrast. The article also suggests other Contrast colours for changing the mood of an army-wide wash.
Joseph Pascarella describes Long Island Wargames, whose busy Combat Patrol league sits alongside painting competitions, hobby swaps and narrative events. Studio leaders include a Deep-scorch marshal, a red-helmed Chaplain, a converted Custodes captain, an Emperor’s Children swordsman and an Iron Warriors Warpsmith built from Tor Garadon. Short paint notes and the readers’ hero gallery show the breadth of the monthly challenge.
Scholar-Captain Sannon Cordriss turns from Chaos and undead fortresses to the bastions of Order and Destruction. The Perspicarium combines a protected realmgate with a military city, Vostargi Mont houses several Fyreslayer lodges around a sacred volcano, and the Meatfist Gutfort is both a crude castle and a vast feeding ground. Skrappa Spill completes the survey as Skragrott’s scrap-built, fungal stronghold, whose horrors belie the writer’s confident civilised perspective.
The gallery explores how to give a Lumineth force its own homeland, leadership, purpose and colour scheme. A brief introduction to the Great Nations leads into collections built around travel, holy fire, rainbows, wooded metaliths and the Alarith temples. Individual painters explain how their themes shape recipes, basing and conversions, including an unusually enthusiastic Mega-Gargant who has adopted discarded aelven armour.
A travelling bodyguard unites the teal of Ymetrica and burgundy of Syar. Stippled cloth changes the usual texture of aelven robes, while grass, broken masonry and crystals cut from flying stands place the warriors on a long journey between nations. Brass-toned ornaments and sharply contrasting dark details give the mixed palette a consistent finish.
These Ymetrican travellers settle in Aqshy after discovering another source of the light they revere. Rich red cloth acknowledges their adopted realm, while pale armour and crystalline blades retain their Hyshian origins. Layered reds, translucent pink and blue blade colours and carefully mixed metallics translate that background into a tightly controlled painting scheme.
Iliatha artwork inspires sky-blue armour above sunset-orange robes. Wet blending Contrast colours both removes some darker paint and deposits the lighter shade, producing a quick transition in the cloth. Cool blades and bases offset the warmth, and pale gold details connect the strongly contrasted areas without competing with them.
Kalaedus lies between Alumnia and Zaitrec, combining Teclian and Tyrionic traditions in one city. Joel uses the light theme as permission for rainbow banners, supported by clean white armour and dark blue cloth. Mixed intermediate colours build a sequence across the banner, making the decorative spectrum the collection’s principal identifying feature.
Blossom-like pinks and purples contrast with the shrine’s white stone and clear blue water. Stef deliberately relies on accessible layering, shading and drybrushing while learning to paint, using pale drybrushes to retain the monument’s detail. Warm sandstone provides a quieter foundation beneath the bright magical and floral colours.
Saturated orange fur and a green-to-blue hurricane exaggerate the Wind Spirit’s magical character. Contrast paints make the transitions vivid, while subdued grey armour and a dark mask provide a visual anchor among the brighter forms. The recipe distinguishes the different sections of the wind rather than colouring the entire swirl uniformly.
Emily imagines this Lord Regent in a forest and pairs lime-green armour with unfamiliar but complementary orange cloth. Repeated glazes refine the transition between colours, while silver armour gives the mount a separate material identity. The carefully painted fur and spotted pink nose turn small animal details into the model’s personal focal points.
Wundo has followed the Lumineth into Hysh and become obsessed with their appearance. His outfit consists of scavenged aelven armour painted in deliberately different whites, while sunburnt skin suggests the consequences of his new bright home. Pink gemstones and reddened flesh retain the light theme without pretending that this enormous admirer is actually an aelf.
The Verdant Host comes from a wooded metalith in Helon and echoes the elusive fox spirits of its homeland. Green cloth in two values, rose gold, bone and conventional gold create a richly varied force without abandoning the forest theme. Numerous Hurakan warriors and masked champions support a background centred on sudden strikes and retreat into the branches.
A clean Ymetrican scheme with orange accents emphasises the Alarith temple while keeping army painting manageable. An unexpected pale-skin drybrush over blue armour speeds the stony surfaces, and controlled Contrast fades supply smooth gradients on cloth. The method wets the lower area with medium before drawing concentrated colour down from above, reducing the amount of conventional blending required.
Logna joins Be’lakor’s covert followers in murdering a marked warrior beneath the Varanspire, hoping to avenge her bond-mate’s dishonourable death. Their Varanguard guide leads them towards an armoury, but a loyal marshal has anticipated the betrayal. Her spear transforms the rebels into agonised masses of flesh, denying Logna even the honourable blade-death she begs for.
The heroes confront the Flesh-eater court entrenched in Ulfenkarn’s gore-choked Clot district. A level-five sidequest pauses the main campaign and begins with defending Haven’s gates before a sortie against the baron’s banners. New hostile cards and optional delusions make the court’s imaginary chivalry mechanically dangerous, while quick-start rules let a fresh party undertake the challenge without first completing a long campaign.
The first journey turns Haven’s closed gates into targets for advancing Cryptguard while flying harriers hunt the heroes. The defenders must preserve enough gates until dawn, facing replenishing infantry but only one Royal Decapitator and Infernal Courtier. Event results can aid the militia or accelerate the assault, making the party divide its attention between rescuing companions and stopping the breach.
Leaving Haven, the heroes attack the baron’s gruesome standards to break his siege position. Each banner must be destroyed by damage rather than an ordinary search, and its presence strengthens nearby Cryptguard and reinforces arriving hostiles. Removing every standard completes the journey, but doing so can provoke another surge of defenders before the heroes can withdraw.
Inquisitor Coteaz gathers evidence that Vashtorr’s influence extends far beyond openly declared Chaos worship. Reports connect the daemon world Wyrmwood, self-altering factories, violent servitor uprisings and machines turning against their users across Imperial and alien societies. Testimony from a devastated manufactorum and intercepted Kin and T’au accounts suggest that technical confidence itself can conceal the Arkifane’s foothold, while his search for a mysterious Lock remains unexplained.
Captain Alimand Gelvin leads a Black Consuls infiltration team towards Kaseena Flamberg’s beacon through a city paralysed by the Stilling. A dead Scion’s emptied skull indicates a further predator beyond the cultists they expected. Meanwhile Kaseena’s dwindling retinue cannot withstand another assault, so she gambles that the cult wants prisoners and surrenders in the hope of buying time for extraction.
The penultimate collecting challenge brings converted heroes and substantial reinforcements to four increasingly large projects. James and Joe concentrate on vehicles, Rhuairidh adds an exceptional number of Death Guard units, and Andy unexpectedly paints Leviathan’s Tyranids alongside his Imperial collections. The progress table records games and finished units before the final challenge brings their forces together.
James adds a Lord of Skulls, another Land Raider, a Rhino and Berzerkers before building a hooded Master of Executions from a Lord Discordant and Chosen. Two Spawn made with Possessed and Accursed Cultist parts capture the instant armour is betrayed by uncontrolled mutation. A narrowly lost Combat Patrol game contrasts these ambitious additions with the continuing need to contest objectives.
Joe equips the Ingeniators’ vehicles with revised canopies, communications arrays and a heavily modified Gladiator turret. Airbrushed orange followed by overbrushing creates a useful industrial texture, but a spilled metallic paint pot forces a lesson in calmly repairing finished work. Their games demonstrate both the limits of concentrated fire against a monster-heavy Tyranid force and the strength of coordinated anti-tank shooting.
Rhuairidh’s enormous batch of Death Guard reinforcements includes a converted Chaos Lord whose confident pose suggests a recent renegade rather than a Barbarus veteran. Ammar earns his place by ringing and breaking an increasingly formidable ceremonial bell, with failure promising a grisly fate. Helmet, backpack and fly details bring the model into the army’s appearance before its background develops from the finished conversion.
Andy’s distraction becomes a complete new Tyranid patrol and additional Leviathan organisms, linked in background to an Inquisitor investigating a jungle world. A pale foundation, controlled washes and a broad final drybrush make the creatures efficient to paint as a group, with more vivid claws, carapaces and eyes restored afterwards. His converted Inquisitor borrows a witch-hunter silhouette and a palette inspired by an older codex cover.
A Neurolictor and Lictor direct three groups of Von Ryan’s Leapers in an entirely melee Tyranid Combat Patrol. Infiltration, stealth and battle-shock manipulation support rapid character hunting, with alternative scoring rewarding either an early warlord kill or saving the leader until last. Securing abandoned objectives and escaping difficult engagements keep the patrol mobile, but the tactical notes warn that concentrated shooting can rapidly destroy exposed leapers.
A veteran Sergeant leads eight Scouts selected from specialists and adaptable Warriors. Forward Scouting choices prepare traps, alarms, redeployment, reconnaissance and designated targets before the battle, while the specialists provide grapnel assaults, silent sniping and target tracking. The complete package includes Tac Ops, ploys, equipment, operative cards and narrative progression, including a route for a proven Scout to join another Astartes kill team.
Scout campaign rules turn training into a continuing story: a Sergeant can share accumulated experience, failure can teach a surviving recruit, and a worthy neophyte can graduate into another Astartes team. Battle honours, rare equipment and reconnaissance assets develop their stealth and mobility. Covert Engagement rewards repeated preparation followed by a killing strike, while In the Wake of Heroes asks the squad to demonstrate broader mission competence.
Dan’s Bretonnians meet Jonathan’s Tomb Kings in a roughly 2,000-point Open Battle on the border of Brionne. The Tomb King kills Duke Gastille and the undead grind into the peasant centre, but flanking knights eliminate the supporting units and Pegasus Knights reach the crucial Hierophant. With the army beginning to crumble, converging Bretonnian charges finally destroy the king and his Bone Dragon for a 1,990–955 victory.
Ushizar’s psychic interrogation supplies the title Liturgarch but little explanation of the Word Bearers’ attack. Ilum finds a similar phrase in a veteran’s account of Thyriar, where a young Ushizar fought orks and their grotesquely confined psykers during his first campaign. Reading the old journal brings both pride and grief, while the matching syllables suggest a connection spanning centuries that the Librarian still cannot explain.
The studio tries the issue’s cardless Underworlds format and quickly turns it into a small league. Matt’s Exiled Dead use their numbers and unusual movement to claim objectives, defeating Blackpowder’s Buccaneers and Skittershank’s Clawpack on the way to first place. The report shows how the simplified scoring encourages frequent short games and makes board position immediately important.
The recommended Cities of Sigmar response attacks the Cryptguard from the flank while first shooting them and then prioritising the Courtier in melee. Careful casualty removal stops the Flesh-eater support from fighting back effectively, and the Marshal attempts to unbind the Archregent’s spell. Even if reinforcements return, keeping the Steelhelms near the objective denies the enemy room to deploy them in a winning position.