GW: Warhammer 40.000, Necromunda und Horus Heresy Preview

In der fernen Zukunft gibt es nicht nur Krieg, sondern auch einen ganzen Schwung an Neuheiten für Necromunda, The Horus Heresy, Legiones Imperialis und natürlich Warhammer 40.000.

Warhammer Preview – Plunder the Haunted Depths of Necromunda: Hive Secundus

It’s been said before, and it’ll be said again: even in a setting predisposed to unfettered misery, the planet of Necromunda is one of a kind. The world’s surface is long-dead, witheringly toxic, and wracked with hostile mutant terrors. Its residents are packed by the billions into towering, unsanitary hive cities, breathing endlessly recycled air, eating reconstituted corpse starch, and scrapping for sustenance in their crumbling metal cocoons. And now there are Genestealers…

Necromunda: Hive Secundus is a new boxed supplement for Necromunda, a self-contained dungeon crawl through the worst city on the most unpleasant planet in an unmitigatedly vile galaxy.

Hive Secundus was once a centre of learning and enlightenment, a rare bright spot amid the ceaseless struggle of the far future, and the so-called jewel of Necromunda. Then a certain Tech-priest Biologis Hermiatus* decided it was the perfect spot for some unsanctioned Genestealer research. The plan, as these things do, went awry – and before long, the hive was riddled with xenos corruption.

House Helmawr first tried to retake the hive and then to contain the disaster – Necromunda being deemed too important for Exterminatus – with a giant perimeter wall and permanent surveillance from the Planetary Defense Forces. Even the Imperial Fists got involved at one point, but as the cult grew in power and audacity, the then-Lord Helmawr did what any reasonable ruler would do: he pummelled the hive from orbit with graviton missiles.

This collapsed the structure in on itself, the accumulated mass of millennia sinking deep into the ground. And yet the infection survived – albeit changed by such esoteric weaponry into something new and horrible: the Malstrain.

You may remember at the end of the last Necromunda campaign book, The Aranthian Succession Part 3: Ruins of Jardlan, when Lady Haera met a surviving brother in his Spyrer suit, and the pair of them then descended into the darkness of the Underhells.

This was, as we say in the trade, a clue. For Hive Secundus has become a happy hunting ground for Necromundan high society, young rousters who love nothing more than wiring themselves into high-tech battlesuits, enlisting gangs of meatshields from the lesser houses, and entering the Underhells to collect xenos heads. And now you can join them.

Necromunda: Hive Secundus is a full game in a box. It contains two complete gangs from three diverse factions: two Orrus Spyre Hunters, a Caryatid Prime, eight Van Saar Tek Hunters, six twisted Malstrain Genestealers, and four Malstrain Tyramites, all new in plastic. There’s also eight plastic Brood Scum, made using the existing Hive Scum in combination with new heads.

The two Orrus Spyre Hunters can be built with a range of top-tier weaponry,** while their Van Saar allies are a new type of specialist with access to additional guns, equipment, and specialist skills.

As for the Genestealers, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill Purestrains. From their Patriarch down, these guys have been changed by the destruction of Secundus – it’s not even clear that the Hive Mind would even want to pay them a visit by this point.

The game itself pits two players in a linked campaign as a Secundan Incursion gang, led by an imperious Spyrer and bulked out by House Van Saar Tek Hunters, infiltrate as far as they can into infested Hive Secundus. The Spyrers are on the hunt for glory, but the Van Saar seek to plunder datacores. As they get deeper, the environs become more hazardous – and the Genestealers hungrier.

In the box, you get a bulkhead terrain sprue containing barricades and doors, a 176-page softback rulebook, a token board, two double-sided paper gaming mats, range rulers, templates, 88 cards, and 16 dice in a suitably sickly hue.

We’ll have loads more to show you from Necromunda: Hive Secundus in due course – and more from both the Spyrers and the Malstrain, alongside new ruined Zone Mortalis terrain, and a new book.

* Remember him from White Dwarf 145?!

** And whose suits upgrade in an intensely satisfying fashion as their kill counts increase – more on that in later articles…

Warhammer Preview – The Mechanicum Turns Its Love of Metal to Plastic

The cogs are turning, and the battlefields of the Age of Darkness are about to churn with iron feet, as a renewed assault by the Cult Mechanicum sees their first range of plastic miniatures for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy.

Fans of the Priesthood of Mars have been able to marshal a force of clanking robots and arcane technological wonders in resin for some time, but the new Mechanicum Battle Group box is the first chance to deploy some of your favourite Martian cybernetics and robotics in plastic.

The core of the box is a cohort of six Thallax, armed with vicious lightning guns and a variety of special weapon options. They’re surprisingly nimble, pairing their durable chassis with a highly responsive Inculabulan jet pack.

Despite looking decidedly robotic, the Thallax are actually cyborgs. Their major organs, nervous system, and cerebrum are all encased within armour-bodies known as the Lorica Thallax – an agonising process that strips away pain centres and emotions, but leaves a measure of independent human thought not found in automata.

Behind these Ordo Reductor shock troops is a shambling covenant of 20 Adsecularis Tech-thralls. These augmented once-humans are often the result of punishments for a Tech-Priest’s menial labourers – unlike servitors, their personalities and thoughts are not removed entirely, merely overridden by implants – but when war looms, they are refitted as expendable troops in hasty musters.

Although they lack much in the way of skill or advanced equipment, these ghoulish puppet-conscripts are utterly indefatigable and often overwhelm far superior troops through mindless determination and weight of numbers.

A Triaros Armoured Conveyor is a beast of a transport that can ferry either of your two core units around, with a huge capacity of 22 – so even your Thallax, with their Bulky (2) special rule, can fit inside. The armoured prow protects the front from all but the worst anti-tank weapons, and doubles up as a destructive shock ram for smashing straight into targets too big for your mounted volkite and bolt weapons. Factor in the built-in flare shield, and your cargo will be making it to the front lines intact.

Finally, a pair of lumbering Castellax Battle-automata bring up the rear, offering plenty of heavyweight ranged and close combat power in a highly resistant package. Each one of these robust robots has a range of weapons to choose from – including power blades or shock chargers with built-in bolters or flamers, plus a shoulder-mounted bolt cannon, multi-melta, or sinister darklight cannon. They’re a mainstay of the Legio Cybernetica, with particularly aggressive machine spirits that lend them well to blunt front-line attacks and shock assaults.

The Mechanicum Battle Group comes with two new Mechanicum Constructs transfer sheets, each with loads of useful markings and decals for your smaller units, as well as a new Macro Construct sheet full of extra-large transfers for your vehicles.

That’s not everything coming to the Mechanicum range – shortly after the Battle Group is released, two more units will also make their plastic debut. The thunderous Thanatar-Cavas Siege-automata mounts a giant plasma mortar to lob blazing spheres of destructive energy over walls and fortifications, and at twice the height of a Castellax it’s a truly terrifying figure to behold.

All of these cyborgs and automata might be powerful fighters, but they lack the intelligence – nay, genius – for the mantle of Mechanicum leadership. Luckily, the Archmagos Prime has such mental acuity in spades, and they’ve brought a conversion beamer, a volkite serpenta, and a corposant stave to disintegrate anyone foolish enough to get between them and a cache of juicy tech.

That’s still not everything you can expect to see in the coming months, and we’ll have more announcements soon.

The Warhammer Preview Show – Bring Ruin To Tallarn With a New Legions Imperialis Supplement

If you want to relieve the biggest and most devastating battles of the Horus Heresy, then there is no better game than Legions Imperials, where entire tank squadrons unleash barrages on hunkered-down infantry companies, squadrons of aircraft buzz overhead, and entire maniples of Titans stomp into battle with weapons blazing.

As far as colossal battles go, the Devastation of Tallarn is right up there, and the next Legions Imperialis supplement lets you take part in the battles that turned this verdant agri-world into a rad-scored desert.

Legions Imperialis: The Devastation of Tallarn opens with a 40-page section on lore that documents the transformation of Tallarn at the hands of the invading Iron Hands force, the battle for the Sapphire City, and explanations of the Legions’ approach to armoured warfare.

It also contains a complete section on how to run Legions Imperialis campaigns, with rules for running a Warfront Campaign, which sequences battles together, or a more advanced Breakthrough Campaign, these represent Traitor and Loyalist forces battling across multiple fronts to destroy strongholds, capped off with a climactic Breach the Stronghold mission.

This provides the framework for the Northern Desolation campaign, recreating the pitched battle between the forces of the Sightless Warren and Rachab Fortress. There’s a new mechanism for Fog of War to recreate the thick mists that would mask approaches, and the unnatural virus storms of Tallarn, while Spearhead Assault battles allow for the deployment of entire armies of armoured vehicles across three new missions.

On top of all of that, there are new Battle Honours to purchase for Veteran Detachments. As well as these stalwarts, you can also field Formations of Legend who represent the lore-accurate forces present on Tallarn, as well as further new Formations and Detachments for the Legiones Astartes and Solar Auxilia, including the Legion Subterranean Assault and the Solar Auxilia Titan Hunter Company.

That’s before we get to the new units. Some of these we’ve previewed before, like the Termite Assault Drills and Solar Auxilia super-heavy tanks, but there are more!

Joining the battle for the Legiones Astartes are the Sabre Strike Tank, the missile-armed Sicaran Arcus, and the Sicaran Punisher, with its intimidating rotary cannon.

The forces of the Solar Auxilia are diversifying their portfolio of tanks with four new Leman Russ variants – the Exterminator with a twin-linked autocannon turret, the Annihilator with a twin-linked lascannon turret, the Executioner with a massive plasma destroyer, and the Demolisher with – you guessed it – a demolisher cannon.

Warhammer Preview – The Genestealer Cults Get a Big-Brained New Benefictus

With the renewed might of Hive Fleet Leviathan chewing hungrily on the Galactic East, there’s no better time to be a worshipper of the Four-Armed Emperor, a survivalist of the Rusted Claw, or a devotee of the Pauper Princes. The Imperium treats its teeming billions of citizens as grist for the endless war machine, but there are promises of a better future – and the Genestealer Cults are expanding their seditious operations with a new Codex and miniature.

Through careful selection of psi-capable gene-stock, the Broodminds of the Genestealer Cults have cultivated a brand new mutation, a high-minded vector for its inhuman influence – the Benefictus.

With its grossly swollen brain, the Benefictus is able to focus the dispersed psychic energies of the Broodmind into beams of raw telekinetic force that rival a lascannon for sheer destructive power. The shockwaves from these impacts carry echoes of the Broodmind’s alien telepathy, forcing nearby enemies to recoil from waves of psychic horror and hallucination.

Rules for the Benefictus will be found in Codex: Genestealer Cults, a tome of utmost heresy that is filled from cover to cover with delicious promises and surprisingly compelling information on cults both major and minor – it certainly won us over. We’re signing up for the insurrection today!

On top of the background information and datasheets for the Genestealer Cults, this Codex contains five separate Detachments. One of these, the Biosantic Broodsurge, focuses on monstrous Purestrains and Aberrants, and lends its name to the new Genestealer Cults Battleforce.

The Biosantic Broodsurge box packs in the new Benefictus alongside 10 Neophyte Hybrids, a Goliath Rockgrinder, 10 Purestrain Genestealers, a hulking Abominant (accompanied by its Mindwyrm Familiar), and five Aberrants ready and willing to tear their foes limb from raggedy limb.

For fans of small-scale combat, a new Combat Patrol leans into the fast-moving elements of the Genestealer Cults with plenty of motorised mayhem surging amongst its xenos hybrids.

Known as the Claw of Ascension, this warband combines the pack-hunting firepower of five Atalan Jackals – with four on bikes and one on the fearsome Wolfquad – with two units of five Hybrid Metamorphs and a durable Achilles Rockrunner. It’s all led by the Jackal Alpha known as Shanus Daskovian, who lays out exposed Characters with accurate sniper fire and supports the rest of the team from the rear.

We’ll have plenty more information about the Genestealer Cults as they emerge from the shadows later this year.

The Warhammer Preview Show – The New Flying Canoness Rains Faith and Fire From the Heavens

In these dark and gloomy times, the Imperium calls for salvation – and their faith has been rewarded as the Adepta Sororitas swoop down with a new character kit, a new Combat Patrol box, a soaring Battleforce box, and a flaming hot Codex.

The new Canoness with Jump Pack is equipped (as you might expect) with a jump pack, soaring into battle alongside a flight of elite Zephyrim or Seraphim. This gives Adepta Sororitas armies a new leader who can take command of their angelic airborne assaults, inspiring her troops and chopping up her foes.

The new Canoness comes equipped with a hand flamer and a power weapon, but can swap them both for a terrifying two-handed weapon – either a blessed halberd or a holy eviscerator. She also comes with three different head options – hooded, with a respirator, or with the wind whipping through her hair – so you can really make her stand out from the rest of your flying brigade.

She touches down first in the new Army of Faith Battleforce box, which is packed with winged elites to follow their new leader into battle. A total of fifteen Seraphim or Zephyrim soar through the skies, laying down a storm of close range fire with their pistols or following the Canoness into melee with gleaming power swords – you can build each model for either squad type.

Backing them up is a majestic Exorcist tank, one of the purest expressions of the Adepta Sororitas vibe. For the uninitiated, this incredible vehicle takes the chassis of a regular Rhino APC and mounts a missile-firing, hymnal-playing pipe organ on the back to create a holy instrument of divine destruction that sits at the very pinnacle of Warhammer 40,000 design. It’s flawless.

Codex: Adepta Sororitas will arrive alongside the new Battleforce, and expands your options for the Emperor’s evangelical warriors with four Detachments, revised Crusade rules that follow your characters on their path to become a Living Saint, and updated datasheets – including a new one for the Canoness with Jump Pack. It’s also packed with suitably effulgent background lore and miniature galleries showing the Battle Sisters at their best, and full rules for their new Combat Patrol.

The new Combat Patrol: Adepta Sororitas is a versatile and powerful infantry force with loads of mobile firepower and a heavy close combat punch thanks to its five Celestian Sacresanvts and ten frenzied Arco-flagellants. The Canoness who leads the force can get stuck into the melee by joining the Celestians, or stand back with the squad of 10 Battle Sisters to better guide their gunfire.

These reinforcements for the Adepta Sororitas will be coming out later this year, so stick with Warhammer Community to learn more about the Codex and their release dates as we get closer.

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Quelle: Warhammer Community