WHITE DWARF · FEBRUARY 2026
Operation Skirmish: Tomb World encounters, Night Lords and Necron scenery painting, Sanctuary 101, Space Marine Operations, Gaunt’s Ghosts, Necromunda campaigns, Blood Bowl, Darkwater Lumineth heroes and Blighted Wilds campaign additions.
COVER TO COVER
In printed page order
The editorial makes small encounters the organising theme of the issue: not every Warhammer story needs armies and a planetary invasion. Blood Bowl, Kill Team, Necromunda, Warhammer Quest and Space Marine Operations provide different ways of concentrating attention on a handful of characters, alongside inspiration for collecting their models.
Optional narrative rules turn Killzone: Tomb World into an unpredictable Necron complex. Unexplored rooms acquire persistent environmental effects when first entered or opened, while objectives reveal their own mechanisms when first contested or controlled. Separate instructions adapt the same discoveries to head-to-head games or solo and cooperative missions without letting non-player operatives prematurely reveal the surprises.
Collapsed ceilings, darkness, corrosive leaks and energy ruptures make the safest route through a tomb difficult to predict. Other results interfere with specialised actions, alter activation order or exchange movement speed for melee strength. The room table remains relevant after discovery, rewarding players who reconsider positioning rather than merely treating an opened door as cleared terrain.
Objective devices range from defensive shields and dangerous Tesla equipment to teleportation links, command resources and temporal manipulation. Others improve close-combat lethality, offer a last chance at survival or let an operative overcharge a weapon. Because a carried objective retains its feature, the rules can transform both a location and the operative transporting it.
Amber demonstrates the Night Lords’ characteristic contrast between dark blue armour, warm metallic trim and sinister red details. The lightning is built as progressively thinner lines inside an initial pattern, with the brightest white reserved for forks and tips; practicing on a spare shoulder pad makes mistakes easier to correct before tackling the finished miniature.
A dark blue foundation is shaded with black before a blue glaze restores the raised surfaces. Successively brighter edge highlights define the plates without sacrificing the deep shadows that make the lightning and metallic trim stand out.
The trim begins as a pale brass and gains warmth through a brown Contrast wash. Additional recess shading separates it from the armour, while a restrained silver edge brings definition to the small raised details.
The lightning recipe layers narrowing blue marks over a lightly established branching design. A dark blue wash ties the lines into the armour, after which small white accents make the junctions and ends appear especially bright.
Cool blue-grey edge highlights give the black components their shape. Keeping these marks narrow maintains a recognisably black surface while relating its colour temperature to the neighbouring blue armour.
Dark iron receives a grey Contrast shade and a deeper black recess wash. The final silver edges pick out the wear surfaces and sharpen the machinery while leaving the bulk of the metal suitably subdued.
Pale skin is stained with brown and violet before a red glaze supplies an unpleasant raw quality. The last pale highlights recover the edges, making the trophies readable beside the dark armour without making them look healthy.
A deep red base is shaded with a cool dark colour, then brought back through brighter red glazes and edge highlights. Small orange finishing marks give the strongest accents to the red equipment and details.
Dan separates the scenery into living metal, fallen stone cladding, gold inscriptions and glowing energy. Drybrushing quickly develops the large wall sections, while layered glazes make the energy appear to illuminate the surrounding surfaces. The tutorial explains how these different textures can belong to one coherent alien structure.
Dark green walls are lightly drybrushed with a cooler green and then khaki, with the same khaki carefully applied to the upper edges. Removing most of the paint from the brush preserves the base colour and stops the relief becoming uniformly pale.
The stone cladding starts with an equal mixture of green and pale flesh, giving the masonry a subtle green cast. A darker wash sits in the recesses before pale drybrushes restore the raised surfaces and complement the surrounding metal.
A pale undercoat makes the yellow-green energy wash luminous. Several increasingly focused green glazes spread light onto the wall, followed by green-and-white mixtures that brighten the source more strongly than its surroundings.
Gold recessed panels provide focal points among the green walls; laying the piece flat prevents the reddish wash running out of them. A silver drybrush reveals the writing, while the lower armoured cables receive a separate steel-and-black-wash treatment.
Dan shares four quick effects used to make scenery agree with his existing boards and miniature bases. Stippled yellow implies flaking markings, a medium-diluted brown wash supplies grime, watery orange creates rust, and a grey drybrush establishes a consistent dusty finish.
A photographic narrative reconstructs the destruction of an isolated convent of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. Canoness Purity attempts to buy time for an astropathic warning, but reanimating Necron infantry, Destroyers and a Monolith steadily overwhelm the defence. Imotekh defeats Purity in single combat, and the astropath dies before completing the message. An inquisitorial recovery team later finds only corrupted servo-skull footage, explaining why the attackers remain a mystery.
The cooperative mini-game gains two Tyranid enemies, revised spawning tables, two missions adapted from Space Marine 2 and alternative perks for all six Marine classes. These are extensions to the previously published core game, using Boarding Actions terrain and existing miniature collections rather than the normal army-scale rules.
The squad must reactivate a fortress lascannon battery and fire it repeatedly to bring down a Hierophant on Kadaku. Charging and firing require work at different controls, while increasing enemy waves, overheating stations and retaliatory fire make each successful shot harder to follow up. Three firings win outright; partial progress at the time limit offers a lesser success.
A retrieval mission on Avarax becomes a flight from an underground Trygon and continuing Tyranid reinforcements. Hardened ground provides sanctuary from the burrowing monster and opportunities to recover injured Marines. Success depends on how many brothers reach the extraction area before the deadline, encouraging movement and mutual protection rather than attempting to clear the board.
Each of the six Marine classes can exchange its usual perk for one of two alternatives. The choices reshape battlefield roles: Tactical Marines can spread their scan or combine attacks, Vanguards exploit grapnel assaults, Assault Marines improve dodging, Bulwarks cross hostile squares or intercept attacks, Heavies enhance firepower and Snipers counter cover or slow targets.
Printable enemy cards add a ranged Biovore and a two-stage Trygon to the cooperative game. The Biovore can project danger without the usual dependence on visibility, while the Trygon repeatedly disappears below the board and erupts near the Marines. Its tougher stage also interacts with lesser Tyranid groups, making its arrival a changing tactical problem.
The Tanith First and Only emerge from the destruction of their home world as specialists in reconnaissance, infiltration and difficult missions. Their forest skills, cameleoline cloaks and carefully maintained straight-silver knives preserve a shared culture even as later casualties require recruits from other worlds. The overview connects the regiment’s improbable victories to its command relationships and distinctive individual soldiers.
Gaunt’s unusual combined appointment follows Warmaster Slaydo’s death and places him at the head of Tanith’s surviving regiment. He leads through example as well as discipline, accepting dangerous and politically dirty missions against the Archonate while repeatedly returning from injuries others assume fatal.
A former militia soldier promoted after Tanith’s senior officers are lost, Corbec becomes Gaunt’s closest confidant. His informal manners and disregard for parade-ground expectations conceal a natural commander, trusted by the troops and resourceful enough to destroy a daemonic enemy by calling in orbital support.
Rawne begins with a hatred of Gaunt for abandoning Tanith and even attempts to kill him. His illicit dealings and calculating temperament make him a difficult subordinate, yet his expertise with explosives and covert violence proves indispensable. Gaunt’s restraint gradually turns the relationship into grudging respect.
The regiment’s finest sniper lives with hallucinations, migraines and private rituals, including a conviction that his weapon’s scope reveals the truth. High-pressure infiltration and assassination missions paradoxically focus him, and Gaunt repeatedly selects him for dangerous operations where his marksmanship can decide the outcome.
Bragg’s immense strength allows him to carry heavy weapons that normally demand support, though his inaccurate shooting earns the nickname Try Again. His value extends beyond firepower: comrades recognise his warmth and loyalty, while Gaunt prizes the morale he brings to the regiment and includes him on important missions.
Mkoll’s years hunting in Tanith’s moving forests make him an exceptional tracker even among a regiment of stealth specialists. His perception reveals hidden entrances and an Aeldari Webway gate, while his survival after a downed drop-ship enables a decisive assassination. His story connects the regiment’s forest heritage to the quiet, precise actions that change entire campaigns.
Practical camouflage matters more to the Tanith than identical uniforms. The guide examines cloaks, lascarbines, dwindling nalwood stocks, tattoos and regimental insignia; the two broken blades on many badges commemorate the two regiments lost with their world. New recruits adopt these customs, keeping Tanith’s identity alive beyond its original survivors.
Dan recounts two campaigns fought by a twelve-player group in the industrial district of Near Steel. What begins as a chance to resume face-to-face gaming develops into a struggle over stimms, Ghast and fortified trade gates. Accidental deaths, notorious champions, player-made scenery and a deliberately story-driven finale show how the shared narrative becomes more memorable than a simple league table.
Dan’s gang becomes a collection of memorable survivors and casualties rather than an optimised roster. Street Peanut gains an unfortunate reputation for falling over, a repeatedly injured ganger barely moves at all, and even low-ranking fighters acquire stories that carry significance into later campaigns.
Paul’s retro science-fiction Enforcers use opposed fluorescent lighting effects to suggest a neon-lit underhive. Their campaign history is less immaculate than their law-enforcement image: one sniper loses an eye immediately, while a flash grenade rebounds into its own squad. The gang eventually brings Dan’s notorious leader to justice.
Luke’s Orlocks are led by a gambler whose need for protection explains his gang-building. Individual equipment choices become running jokes: a frightening arc hammer proves unreliable, while a previously unarmed Juve acquires One Punch and makes his unlikely bare-handed approach a celebrated part of the campaign.
The sequel campaign replaces the captured Goliath leader and sends the gangs hunting abandoned Ghast stores, while beloved old characters can return as hired guns. For the next season Dan plans a contracts board and a game-master role. Everyday scenery details, dispensers, terminals and a dubious doctor become opportunities for interactive objectives and unexpected encounters.
Barry exchanges his secretive Delaque gang for Corpse Grinders in the second campaign. Jakhal parts and a Kharadron harpoon gun help distinguish the conversions, while their terrifying masks disrupt enemy gangs long enough for the cultists to close and exploit their brutal melee skills.
Danny’s Brionne Barons face Jay’s Nehekhara Nightmares in a tense match narrated by Jim Johnson and Bob Bifford. The Bretonnians exploit their faster players to score first, then break a cage around a ball-carrying Tomb Guardian. In the second half repeated desperate tackles delay the advancing Tomb Kings despite mounting Bretonnian casualties, but a final recovery produces a last-minute touchdown and a 1–1 draw.
Four Lumineth adventurers can join the struggle against Gelgus Pust in the Jade Abbey, either as an entirely aelven company or alongside the existing heroes. The article introduces the accompanying character and equipment cards rather than adding an additional rules subsystem, and playfully considers whether Teclis anticipated the abbey’s fall.
Grombrindal recalls survivors of the End Times and distinguishes their different routes into the Mortal Realms. Gotrek endures the Realm of Chaos, Thanquol survives his patron’s displeasure, Nagash restores vampire servants, Chaos preserves useful champions and Sigmar reforges fragments of ancient human souls. The account retains Grombrindal’s grudges and uncertainty rather than claiming every old identity is known.
Gotrek’s inability to find a worthy death outlasts the destruction of his world. Grombrindal describes his passage through Chaos and return to the realms, recalling their own meeting under a borrowed identity. Despite the Slayer’s temper and stubbornness, he sees a decent soul and an unfinished role in the fate of the duardin.
Thanquol’s long history of catastrophes does not prevent his escape from the end of the world or his return to meddling. Boneripper survives as an repeatedly reconstructed companion, and Grombrindal suspects that neither failure nor even cosmic disaster will ever quite dispose of the pair.
Mannfred’s destructive ambition is set against Neferata’s patient web of influence. Grombrindal links their present domains and servitude under Nagash to their older crimes, judging their mutual hatred one of the few fortunate obstacles to the combined power of two ancient schemers.
Sigvald and Festus return because the Chaos gods retain servants they find useful, even after apparently final deaths. Their stories show different forms of corruption: a warrior’s appetite for excess and a once selfless physician’s perversion into a source of disease.
Some of the Old World’s strongest human souls endure only as fragmented remnants, later becoming early Stormcast Eternals. The text stresses that reforging is not simple resurrection and leaves the Celestant-Prime’s identity unconfirmed, even while describing his origin in an exceptional defender of humanity.
Travelling scholar Erasmus Zonn records wonders and troubling curiosities encountered across the Mortal Realms. His journal combines observations about ancient magical engineering and modern institutions with darker rumours of hidden cities, illicit substances and unpredictable spirits, making it a collection of possible story seeds as well as a portrait of an inquisitive narrator.
Zonn reflects on the surviving achievements of Aqshy’s authoritarian magical empire, including its emberstone research, Titanworks and enormous solar apparatus. Its ruined infrastructure still informs present knowledge, while the disappearance of archives and cities leaves the full extent of its accomplishments tantalisingly uncertain.
The Katophranes’ attempt to preserve souls in refined Shyishan realmstone ends in Nagash’s punishment of Shadespire. Zonn notes that pieces had already escaped through trade, leaving black-market objects and even ordinary weapons that might still contain the trapped remnants of ancient souls.
An apparently indestructible ogor throne bears traces of scorching and unsettling Azyrite magic. From its strange sheen and energy Zonn proposes a meteoric origin older than the familiar civilising powers of the heavens, offering a scholarly hypothesis rather than a confirmed explanation.
The Gorwood horse looks like an animal but is a mobile and aggressive stage of a plant’s life cycle. Its smell, tough hide and claws protect it from predators, while local people still put it to work as a draft beast; the journal also records a rumoured connection to ancient Ghyranite flora.
The Ironweld Arsenal contains rival scholarly and engineering traditions rooted in the Great Maker’s Geometric Law. Combustion specialists, master cannon founders and researchers into mysterious magical power sources each pull the institution in different directions, linking practical weapon-building to intellectual competition.
A remote Hyshian city survives the Spirefall but seems increasingly disturbing under scrutiny. Shifting impressions, potent Dreamvint and contradictory rulings by secluded authorities undermine its enlightened reputation. Zonn’s missing correspondent and the sinister objects sent in his place make investigation itself feel dangerous.
Reports from the Eightpoints describe a silent city that swallows would-be conquerors amid strange cold, altered time and haunted districts. Zonn has not visited it himself, but gathers testimony about its library, industrial warrens and looming central tower as others attempt to recover its lost knowledge.
Misthavn’s Market of Mists offers exotic goods and covert trade in magical narcotics. Zonn describes substances that enhance magic, produce languid healing or loosen gravity, maintaining a suspiciously knowledgeable familiarity while denying personal experience of the students’ more adventurous uses.
Neos teems with capricious nature spirits whose motives resist mortal understanding. Zonn records rumours of powerful seelie rulers, shape-changing heralds and vanishings among settlers, while distinguishing friendly protection from certainty that the forests or their inhabitants are safe.
Optional additions to Path to Glory: Blighted Wilds let armies exploit Ghyran’s plants, craft potions and develop heroes suited to its wilderness. The supplement explains collecting and spending ingredients, the dangers of buying substitutes, two complete advancement paths and name generators for local characters, regiments and landmarks.
Between battles an army can spend glory to forage for ordinary or exotic ingredients and combine them into single-use potions for heroes. The recipes provide healing, movement, damage, magic and concealment benefits, but purchasing a ready-made concoction trades convenience for a risk of harmful side effects. Ingredients and potions are campaign resources, not Citadel paint names.
This hero path grows from gathering ingredients or stealing an enemy’s potion into battlefield brewing and increasingly potent chemical tricks. Higher ranks allow emergency mixtures, more dangerous concoctions and chances to conserve used potions, turning a character’s campaign progress into a distinct support and disruption role.
An infantry hero on this path learns to guide allies and exploit hostile terrain. Early abilities improve local control or protection, while later developments offer faster travel, terrain-crossing equipment, redeployment and bonds with the landscape that can protect a wider force.
Paired naming tables provide components for Ghyranite people, Nurgle-corrupted characters, regiments and landmarks. Players can roll or select elements that fit a faction, using the combinations as regional inspiration rather than assuming one culture’s naming conventions apply to every army in Thyria.
The four collectors expand their Spearhead forces to roughly a thousand points and begin their Blighted Wilds campaign. Their next goals combine painted units with games and advancement milestones, while the first battles already produce heroics, narrow reversals and the beginnings of individual army histories.
Amber adds a mounted Wight Lord and his guard, imagining the mounted and foot leaders as a son and father whose oasis kingdom died in a plague. In her first campaign battle the general survives a reckless unsupported charge, recovers and helps his cavalry and infantry destroy Dan’s fortress. Careful hero positioning proves essential to the army’s resurrection-based resilience.
Andrew builds the army around infantry, a conspicuous banner and a suitably mysterious wizard. A Vanquisher carries a larger Knight-Vexillor standard, while a Stormcoven miniature becomes Knight-Arcanum Aimsir Greatstorm. Weather-inspired names and Arthurian relationships help give the growing Hallowed Knights a shared identity.
Dan adds twenty infantry and a collection of individually characterised command figures to the survivors of his ruined township. Subtle head and weapon swaps distinguish them, while a converted Genestealer Magus becomes a frustrated Chamonite wizard stranded in Ghyran. A metallic staff, levitating shapes and a Sister of Battle head turn that frustration into visible character.
Matt adds a chariot-riding shaman, Snarlfang Riders and a centrepiece Doom Diver to his fast-moving Gitmob. Against Andrew he wins a close objective game in which lone Stormcast champions nearly overcome his numerical and shooting advantages. Painting the enormous catapult in many subassemblies makes the complex mixture of wood, flesh, metal and machinery manageable.
A demolition task on Ancar Majoris traps Elias Bain beneath a collapsed drilling machine when an ammunition stockpile conceals promethium bombs. His damaged augmetic hand helps him wrest a rifle from an equally trapped ork, but the broken stairs, freezing quarry and dead vox leave him without an escape. As hunger and isolation erode his faith, he survives by eating the corpse of the enemy he killed.
The Bunker returns to its regular mix of reader models, club activity and monthly scenarios after the previous issue’s chariot theme. Leaders and Heroes is the painting challenge, and the rank tracker rewards a mixture of playing, attending club events and painting rather than prescribing a single way to take part.
Reader correspondence includes Gyulai Galler’s Defenders of Ultramar diorama, a honeymoon photograph taken with White Dwarf on a Maine mountain and a correction about the historical offer for a protective knitted jumper. The diorama combines several character kits into an Ultramar Defence Auxilia command group intended to stand in for Lord Solar Leontus.
Grombrindal explains the cancelled 2489 championship through the corrupt tenure of Nikk Threehorn. Dubious honours, self-interested astrogranite promotion and eventual flight with the NAF treasury bring the season to chaos, while the old dwarf adds his own shameless beard-care promotion to the account.
A skirmish-themed reader gallery places Morgwaeth’s Blade-coven, a Goliath gang, a Snotling team and an Iron Warriors kill team together. The selection celebrates the different scales and visual identities available when a hobbyist concentrates on a compact group of models rather than an entire army.
The monthly reader challenge gathers distinctive commanders and monsters, from an Aeldari Autarch and Typhus to a Vengorian Lord and Skulltaker. Toni Garcia’s Gobsprakk is singled out as model of the month, with a detailed explanation of how the rider and great bird fit the wider Kruleboyz army.
Toni Garcia balances Killabeak’s pink skin and red feathers against pale plumage and a pale, purple-tinted rider. Gradual flesh highlights and yellow glazes brighten the monster, while selected green details connect the striking centrepiece to the rest of the Kruleboyz collection.
Studio colleagues share their own challenge models, including a trio of Stormcast heroes, Commander Dante, Ripper Bolgrot and several Imperial commanders. The range spans sombre character painting and exuberant sporting personality, extending the Leaders and Heroes theme beyond the reader gallery.
Ivan Laureado revisits the Spanish-speaking online community first featured in issue 490. Its more than 3,800 members discuss play, hobby projects and rules, while monthly painting challenges encourage personal progress rather than competition. A gallery of warbands and kill teams illustrates the breadth of this international virtual club.
The team reports its early 2026 progress in painting and gaming, with Matt and Dan setting the pace. Other projects include Iron Warriors for Age of Darkness, Death Guard and prospective Cawdor and Revilers forces. Small showcase panels explain finished units and expand the issue’s skirmish focus.
Dan creates deliberately unadorned Iron Warriors by combining Intercessor bodies with Mark III heads, hands and bolters, then adding Chaos backpacks and carefully trimmed arrow details. Their battlefield outing earns both painting and favourite-army recognition alongside allied Death Guard, showing how restrained conversions can establish a distinct renegade identity.
Matt returns to the Imperial Fists after finishing his Warlords targets and paints a second Eliminator unit. Angular grey and black camouflage on the cloaks uses the next lighter grey to highlight each patch, preserving separate geometric shapes while giving the overall cloth a coherent urban palette.
An unusual pink scheme makes Dan’s spider-worshipping warband stand apart. Bright Contrast areas and pale highlights oppose heavily washed dark cloth, while all of the human skin receives the same dark treatment to support his idea of the brood as one closely related family.
Matt gives his Hernkyn Yaegirs a dedicated showcase after their brief appearance in issue 500’s large battle report. Their Trans-Hyperian Alliance orange armour is developed through a fleshshade wash, renewed orange and a yellow glaze before pale final highlights, establishing continuity with his slowly growing Votann collection.
The Vanari Lord Regent generates inspiration as attacks miss him, then uses that resource to inspire another hero. His equipment extends an ally’s reach, with the upgraded version helping several aspects of combat. He rewards fighting visibly on the front line while supporting the rest of the party.
This Scinari Enlightener manipulates her rune to provide both defensive protection and enhanced movement. Her elemental focus can apply the rune’s two benefits together, and the upgraded equipment strengthens the defensive side, letting her support a threatened ally without abandoning the party’s advance.
The Loreseeker turns enemy takedowns into opportunities to obtain reward cards and discover arcane knowledge. His equipment can enhance the next attack or improve critical results, with an upgraded form supporting more simultaneous benefits. The design links proactive fighting to the party’s growing equipment resources.
The Cathallar turns hostile despair into an advantage: enemy attacks targeting her become less accurate. Her aetherquartz vessel slows a chosen non-boss enemy’s next activation, and its upgraded form can force that enemy to reposition instead of taking a different action, creating space for other heroes.
Progressively vanishing sections of the battlefield force players to judge when holding an objective becomes too dangerous. Earlier endangered caches offer more points, but units left in a consumed zone are destroyed outright. Extra scoring for controlling more markers rewards an orderly retreat that still denies the opponent territory.
A magically saturated battlefield rewards objective control and the destruction of enemy wizards or priests, but their deaths cause damaging feedback nearby. The underdog can supercharge a casting or chanting attempt at the risk of killing the caster on a catastrophic result. The battleplan uses the 2025–26 General’s Handbook modules and explains how older battle-tactic scoring differs.
February 2026 features and all supplied game cards are indexed. The Bunker tracker and scenario cards carry March labels while the cover and imprint establish February. Covers, contents, advertising and decorative dividers are excluded; incomplete text recognition in the fiction and illustrated recipes was resolved through visual inspection.