WHITE DWARF · NOVEMBER 2025
An anniversary issue exploring Games Workshop’s history, classic Warhammer 40,000 forces, chariot racing and the Helsmiths of Hashut.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
The editor introduces an anniversary issue built around Games Workshop’s first fifty years. Conversations with long-serving staff supply both the historical perspective and the affectionate, sometimes unprintable anecdotes behind the company’s evolution from a London flat to a major miniatures manufacturer.
This oral history follows Games Workshop from the handmade games and mail-order work of its London beginnings through Citadel Miniatures, Warhammer’s arrival and the move to Nottingham. Staff recollections explain how miniature production became the centre of the business, how the two companies united, and how Rogue Trader emerged from a studio where people routinely wrote, drew and sculpted across job boundaries.
Designers trace the technical and creative changes from lead figures with integral bases to slotta-bases, multipart plastic kits and digital sculpting. Their memories show how mould constraints shaped familiar designs, why plastic demanded new skills, and how the transition to computers opened up finer detail, larger models and closer collaboration.
Phil describes the relationship between miniatures, fictional worlds and game rules as a collaborative act of storytelling. The article recalls an earlier, more generalist studio, explains why models became the starting point for new projects, and shows how rules turn a collection into characters whose actions generate memorable stories at the table.
Artists Alex and Paul explore the visual character of Warhammer, combining classical artistic influences with the dirt, rebellion and unease of late twentieth-century British punk. The accompanying gallery supports their argument that a convincing image needs an emotional connection to its inhabitants: technical polish, grotesque details and skulls alone cannot make an imagined world feel dangerous. They also explain why digital tools should preserve the scratchy, tangible quality associated with the company’s older art.
This short history tracks the changing ways Warhammer hobbyists find one another and engage with the worlds they enjoy. It moves from White Dwarf small ads and store gaming nights to internet forums, the What’s New Today? blog and Warhammer Community, presenting novels, computer games, animations and online hobby resources as further doors into a community once defined mainly by local opponents.
Tony closes the anniversary retrospective by distinguishing technological change from the continuity of the people behind the hobby. Better organisation, computers and manufacturing tools have replaced much of the improvisation of the early years, but he argues that the company’s real inheritance is the combined work of many generations of skilled, enthusiastic staff rather than a single founding personality.
Reader letters and a model gallery mix anniversary nostalgia with current hobby projects, including a return to collecting Troggoths and a Hearthkyn kill team painted using different approaches. Lewis Cairns’s Gotrek display is the featured model: a raised scenic base, painted storm backdrop and lightning crossing behind the Slayer’s gem aim to capture the drama of classic fantasy book covers. Other photographed work ranges from a Warlord Titan and Horus to Gaunt’s Ghosts, Teclis and Ghazghkull.
The article examines the boltgun as both a weapon and a sacred emblem of Imperial power. A cutaway explains the fictional construction and firing sequence of a mass-reactive bolt, before the history of Space Marine patterns moves from Great Crusade designs to Godwyn-pattern guns and the bolt rifles introduced with the Ultima Founding.
Classic starter-box collections are translated into small games using contemporary Warhammer 40,000 datasheets. Six forces based on the second-, third- and fourth-edition boxes receive their own objectives, Enhancements and Stratagems; normal army rules and Detachments are omitted, and an optional specialist-support Stratagem brings blast and flame templates back to the table.
This urban mission evokes the second-edition starter set with ruins, barricades and a fight over a route into a city. Its terrain rules reward troops for holding cover: units in area terrain improve their Leadership, Battleline models gain Objective Control, and Overwatch becomes more accurate when fired at a unit in that terrain. Scoring still comes from each force’s objectives in the parent Battle Through the Ages rules.
The third-edition-inspired scenario turns a dense jungle into an obstacle and a refuge. Moving through area terrain costs extra movement, while a unit wholly within that terrain gains Toughness, forcing players to weigh speed against the protection of foliage. A deployment map and recommended density of woodland complete the mission, with army-specific scoring supplied by Battle Through the Ages.
A burning orbital crash site supplies the setting for this fourth-edition-inspired Battle Through the Ages mission. Units sheltering near the debris cannot be shot from long range through its billowing fumes, while searching a piece of wreckage can yield a Command Point before its salvage is exhausted. The deployment map and recommended aircraft debris create a compact battlefield, with scoring still determined by the parent feature’s faction objectives.
Dan commands the Cadian defenders and Adam leads Abaddon’s Black Legion in a large recreation of the fighting for Cadia. Infantry, artillery and armoured columns share the battlefield with a Warhound Titan on each side; victory depends on controlling sectors and destroying key commanders and the towering war engines. Photographs and turn commentary follow both the manoeuvring armies and the increasingly violent contest around the Cadian line.
This four-player racing game sends customised chariots around a lethal course in Aqshy. Speed determines both distance and steering freedom, so accelerating trades control for progress; braking can repair damage, while collisions trigger a ram table and uncontrolled careening. The basic rules explain laps, turn order, relative race positions and movement, providing the engine for the custom racers, power-ups and track described on later pages.
The Workshop turns a stock racing warscroll into a personalised vehicle and pilot. Players spend rig points on a limited selection of abilities, balancing armour, speed, steering and spectacular tricks against drawbacks that refund points. Options range from slime trails and warning lookouts to recklessly accumulating speed boosts, giving each chariot an identity and a different tolerance for the game’s collision hazards.
Collectible artefacts add unpredictable catch-up tools to the chariot race. A racer crosses a token to claim it, then rolls for a power whose possibilities improve when that racer is behind others. Effects include sudden movement, repairs, invulnerability and attacks on the leader; after use, another player places the token back on the course, keeping both the route and the rivals’ positions important.
The accompanying battleplan lays out an obstacle-filled race through the Great Parch, with a mapped circuit, starting procedure and locations for artefacts of power. Impassable terrain and battlefield edges make steering a serious constraint. A once-per-race environmental twist offers the trailing racer a chance either to surge ahead or to send the leader careening, reinforcing the contest’s deliberately chaotic finish.
A survey of chariots in the Mortal Realms describes the tactical mixture of speed, missile fire and devastating impact that makes them so dangerous. It also stresses their risks: momentum must be maintained, crews are exposed, and a failed charge can leave an expensive vehicle surrounded or battered by stronger monsters.
The miniatures designers explain how the Helsmiths of Hashut translate classic Chaos Dwarf imagery into a new duardin culture. Ringleted beards, tall helms, tusks and bull icons remain, but geometric armour, weighted clothing and meticulous decoration communicate oppressive order, wealth and contempt. Hobgrots provide a deliberately ragged contrast to their carefully equipped masters.
Emily paints an Infernal Cohort warrior with a clean, richly ornamented finish suited to the Helsmiths’ meticulous self-image. Starting from black, she works outward through cloth, mail, purple-toned armour and bright trim, using careful edge highlights to define the miniature. The illustrated recipes also cover skin, tusks, beard and red gems.
A short publishing history connects Inferno!, Warhammer Monthly and the growth of Black Library to the fictional worlds that underpin the hobby. It recalls the Horus Heresy series’ expansion from a small piece of background into a vast shared narrative, and notes how literary characters can eventually return to the tabletop as miniatures.
The Bunker update introduces a studio Path to Glory campaign about the missing Kharadron vessel Emberwing and a chariot-building contest inspired by Wasteland Death Race. It also sets up the anniversary display of classic miniatures. The regular challenge calendar and achievement tracker explain how games, painted units and club events earn progress through the Bunker ranks.
Studio hobbyists celebrate the anniversary with older miniatures that carry personal meaning, including classic Space Wolves and Deathwing, Aeldari seers, a Saturnine Terminator, Chaos characters and Skaven. Their notes explain the appeal of revisiting childhood collections, recreating older colour schemes with current skills and preserving the character of distinctive sculpts.
Dan’s long-unpainted Spirit Hosts finally receive a spectral scheme, while the magazine team reports progress on painting and gaming bingo cards. The surrounding notes connect those scores to real projects: Adeptus Titanicus games, growing Genestealer collections, a Kharadron chariot conversion and the mounted Gloomspite Gitz being painted for A Tale of Four Warlords.