Welcome to the June issue of the Month In Miniatures, your monthly Warhammer news roundup from Tiny Plastic People. I’m your host, Large Flesh Person Tom.
The biggest news this month was unquestionably the preorder of, and lead up to, the release of Age Of Sigmar’s 3rd Edition, including a core rulebook and the launch box, Dominion. In fact, that was so completely the biggest news that we’re going to dedicate an article to it, which you can perhaps expect some time later in the month. For your regular news this month, I’ve chosen to focus on the other news available, which means this article may be a little sparser than the others.
Warhammer+
Other than Age Of Sigmar 3, the big news this month – with a midweek evening stream dedicated to it and all – was the full unveiling of Warhammer+, Games Workshop’s new subscription service, launching on August 25th. It’s kind of hard to summarise as a service, but generally seems to provide access to a library of Warhammer Content, plus your choice of free model after a year. It’s also where the various Warhammer Animations will live.
The details from the reveal are available here. To go through the list in order:
- At the one-year anniversary of your subscription, you get a free model. The two choices are the Vindicare Assassin and Orruk Megaboss pictured above: you choose one, and can purchase the other. There will apparently be new exclusive models each year.
- The animations. At launch, the first episodes of Angels Of Death and Hammer And Bolter will be available, and new episodes – presumably of those two shows to start with – will arrive “almost every wednesday”.
- Citadel Colour Masterclass, advanced painting tutorials.
- Loremasters, “the official warhammer lore show, presented by experts”. Which seems an odd way of phrasing it to me. By “experts” do you mean “the people who decide what the lore is”? This isn’t history, I could just buy the primary source in a shop.
- Battle Reports. I love battle reports! If the battle reports are good, then personally I’m in. Apparently that will include both tournament and narrative-heavy games.
- The Warhammer Vault, a collection of out-of-print books and White Dwarf issues. It seems to start exclusively with relatively recent stuff, including the Sanctus Reach and Gathering Storm 40k books, the Realmgate Wars from AOS1, and the most recent year of White Dwarf: they promise to add more stuff every week, but if you’re hoping to have a look at some classic Second Edition armybooks, you might be disappointed (for now, at least).
- There’s some vague notes about VIP status at Warhammer events, including priority access. I can’t help but wonder if the “priority access” queue for “big Warhammer fans” at a Warhammer event will be longer than the queue for people who aren’t planning on paying for the service, but perhaps that’s not what they mean.
- And finally, the apps. Warhammer 40k’s app did not have a tremendously successful launch and hasn’t garnered itself a good reputation, so on the one hand, it’s good that you can now pay only a little more for access to it, and get a lot more as well. On the other… apparently the perfectly serviceable AOS App is getting replaced as well, which was previously free, and pretty good, so hopefully we won’t see a dip in quality because of that.
The release date is August 25th, and it’ll cost £4.99/$5.99 a month. I think the proof of the pudding will be in the eating on this one: is it going to mean less of the stuff they’re currently putting out for free? Back before Covid-19 the Warhammer Community team did battle reports on a weekly basis, free when live, on their Twitch stream – will that be gone, in exchange for the paid app? What about the painting videos? They’ve promised to keep making this stuff, but it would be surprising to see no loss of volume to the paywall. On the other hand: they’re making entertainment content, they should be paid for it. On the other other hand: we pay for this by buying the products it’s a very complicated advert for.
We’ll see. There’s plenty to get maybe excited for here, and while I would be remiss not to mention my caution, there’s the very real possibility this will be something of a golden age of Extra Warhammer Stuff.
Releases
Releases this month were mostly AOS-focussed as might be expected, but the other big drop was the Adepta Sororitas book, plus most of the new models that were previewed for them. (In particular the Castigator, their new tank, has not yet appeared on the scene).
It looks as if next up for Warhammer 40k is the second in the Charadon Campaign series, which will presumably come alongside any remaining sororitas things, and the first wave of the new Orks. This is conjecture, to clarify, but the 40k-based Warhammer Community articles have of late been focussed on stuff that’s been confirmed to be in the book – Be’Lakor, The Order of Our Martyred Lady, and their regular series on the Orks, which this month has revealed a new kind of Ork Psyker, and what absolutely looks like a squig-riding special character – plus, a confirmation that the aging Ork Boyz kit (their basic line infantry) is getting a big update.
The rest of the releases, and the pre-orders for next week, are mostly assorted small things. Gaunt’s Ghosts have come out, and are accompanied by the new Sabbat Worlds books that were previewed last month. Next up is the impressive new model for Maloghurst The Twisted for the Horus Heresy game – Horus’s own personal second-in-command.
Mini Mini’s News
- The regular FAQs for Warhammer 40k came out, along with the Chapter Approved. Nobody knows if they made the game better because nobody’s playing the game. Well, that’s an exaggeration – they do seem to have tidied things up a bit.
- Five new 40k action figures have been released – a painted Primaris Lieutenant, and painted and unpainted versions of a Hellblaster and a Sister of Battle.
- The Sisters of Battle are getting their own comic. The Marneus Calgar comic was pretty good – though a lot of that may have been down to the writer, Kieron Gillen.
- Some models are cycling in and out of the Middle-Earth range – some assorted things leaving, and a range of Wood Elf stuff cycling back in. Have I ever mentioned how much I like how the Middle Earth range cycles its massive backlog in and out? Seems logistically sensible, and keeps older models accessible. I will miss that Golfimbul model though. A real Goblin’s Goblin, if you get me.
- Some of the weirdest models yet for Necromunda have been released: the water guild. They manage the water in the hive, and can suck all the liquid out of your body. Feel free to write your own innuendo.
And there we go! All the news that’s fit to print, if your criteria for fitness is “not the biggest, most important piece of news”. Which seems like a poor criteria, but the article’s over now so there’s nothing to be done about it. Goodbye.
(There’ll be a separate article about AOS3 Soon(™))
