Are you tired of the same old battlefields? Those flat plains, wrecked buildings - they're pretty same-old same-old, right? Well there is another way to play, especially in the Horus Heresy, and it's called Zone Mortalis! Contested inside starship corridors, breached fortresses or even packed urban settings, Zone Mortalis is urban warfare on a new level, and has been a mainstay of the Horus Heresy community for decades. Well this week the new Journal Tactica: Zone Mortalis goes up for pre-order and is packed with core and special rules for how to play on and around the terrain that personifies Zone Mortalis, plus rules for Zone Mortalis Reserves, Advanced Reactions, and Cogitator Terminals. There's also six new missions along with new Primary and Secondary Objectives, Primary Detachments, and maps, and - most excitingly - new profiles for Veteran Breacher Squads, Veteran Despoiler Squads, Veletaris Raider Sections, Auxilia Combat Technician Sections, and the Castellax Infernus Maniple. A great new addition to this edition of Horus Heresy and a must-have for those who enjoy making terrain! To accompany the new Journal Tactica, there is also a brand new Legiones Astartes: Maximus Battle Group, and by "Maximus" we mean Mk IV Space Marines! Returning after being slightly reconfigured for the larger scale of Horus Heresy, this box gives you 20 x Mk IV Tactical Legionaries, 10 x Mk IV Assault Legionaries (yes that's right, JUMP PACKS!), a Sicaran Battle Tank and a Contemptor Dreadnought. Talk about reinforcements, this is a very exciting box! The other new Horus Heresy treasure this week is the much-awaited Whirlwind Missile Tank, and happily it's in it's original White Dwarf 118 boxed launcher configuration. Awesome to see!!  
Moving onto Warhammer 40K, we have some Imperial Guard reinforcements on pre-order this week too, with Ciaphas Cain back on the battlefield! Packed with character, Ciaphas Cain and his trusty pal Jurgen, are both brilliant miniatures and sure to be popular. The other exciting Imperial Guard releases this week are the Hippogriff AFV and Centaur RSV - ripped straight from the pages of World War 2, these vehicles add extra light armour and transport to your Guard units. Are they original designs? NO! Should they be? Probably yes! The Centaur comes with crew and some configuration options, while the Hippogriff has op0tions for the main gun, including a vigilator cannon, Chiron gatling cannon, melta cannon, or heavy lascannon. 
This week also sees four new Battleforces on pre-order, with the Battleforce: Astra Militarum Platoon sporting a Commissar, 5 x Cadian Command Squad miniatures, 2 x Field Ordnance Teams, a Rogal Dorn Battle Tank, a Basilisk (God this model is old!) and 10 x Cadian Shock Troops. The Battleforce: Chaos Space Marines Warband includes a Lord Discordant on Helstalker, 2 x Obliterators, a Venomcrawler, 10 x Legionaries and 20 x Chaos Cultists. The Battleforce: Necron Host is an interesting one and well worth your attention, with a Catacomb Command Barge/ Annihilation Barge, a Canoptek Doomstalker, 3 x Ophydian Destroyers, 5 x Flayed Ones, 20 x Necron Warriors and 6 x Canoptek Scarab Swarms. The Battleforce: Tyranid Swarm is a nightmare on legs, with a Hive Tyrant/ Winged Hive Tyrant/ Swarmlord, a Lictor, 3 x Tyranid Warriors, 3 x Von Ryan's Leapers, 10 x Hormagaunts, 10 x Termagants and 2 x Ripper Swarms.
In books this week we once again have the The Sabbat Worlds Crusade (is this V.20?), the original Space Marines vs Orks battle but in narrative form with the Rynn's World Special Edition, the Illustrated and Annotated Edition Hardback of For the Emperor, plus Vagabond Squadron, Krakenblood, and Starseer's Ruin all in paperback. 
There's some merch this week with the Valhallan Regimental Banner. It's 42cm x 60cm so it's not going to take up too much room, but probably neat for Guard players.
It's also a White Dwarf week with Issue 525 coming to your local store very soon.

​First up it should be stated that pretty much all this week’s pre-orders are delayed in Japan and South Korea.
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It’s a sad day when a God falls from grace – their once perfect visage marred, their brilliant sheen tainted, but alas it has happened. Slaanesh has fallen!
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This week Slaanesh, The Dark Prince, She Who Thirsts, gets their new Battletome for Age of $igmar. With updated unit profiles, the odd new character and probably less lore than last time, the Chaos Battletome: Hedonites of Slaanesh is available in Glitter and Blades Gamer's Edition or Buff Me Up, it’s Party Time Standard Editon. The Gamer’s Edition includes a bonus of 28 Warscroll cards, 12 x Spearhead cards, 4 x Army of Renown cards, 2 x Regiment of Renown cards and 5 x Faction Rules cards. Unfortunately it’s at this point where we hit a bump in the road, and the afore-mentioned glory of Slaanesh meets the Lord of Hysteria. Is it called the Lord of Hysteria because it’s so dumb looking? Because this miniature is anything but perfect – confused, lost, ungainly, impossible – yes!! There’s some nice elements here but they just don’t meld. Now when it comes to the rest of the release they are pretty sad rehashes, with the Battleforce: Hedonites of Slaanesh – The Decadent Host featuring Sigvald, the perky-butted Prince of Slaanesh, 5 x Slickblade Seekers/ Blissbarb Seekers, 5 x Myrmidesh Painbringers/ Symbaresh Twinsouls (great lore but not at all explored), 11 x Blissbarb Archers (with accompanying Blissbrew Homonculus) and 3 x Slaangor Fiendbloods. The new Spearhead: Hedonites of Slaanesh – Epicurean Revellers is the Thricefold Discord, 3 x Fiends, 20 x Daemonettes and 5 x Seekers. Regiment of Renown: The Accursed Reflection is a series of magical constructs, including the Contorted Epitome, Wheels of Excruciation, Mesmerising Mirror and Dreadful Visage. Meanwhile the Thricefold Discord is once again around, maybe because no one wants them, featuring three demonic entities ( I do wonder if these guys were split and sold as generals if they would do better. I like two of them!). As per a new release for a new edition, there are the Warscroll Cards: Hedonites of Slaanesh and the Hedonites of Slaanesh Dice.
We’ve also got a couple of nice Skaven units this weekend – both excellent example of the Skaven diaspora, with Deathmaster Crixxit and the Gutter Runners up for pre-order. These are both quintessential Skaven units, dynamically rendered.
Apart from Slaanesh, the big release this week would be the General's Handbook 2026-27 which comes in two editions - Warlord and Standard – and is the official way to play competitive games of Age of $igmar, using the current meta in the current narrative. The core of the set is the 72 page book, bringing you the latest narrative events in Warhammer Age of Sigmar, the Matched Play Battlepack 2026-27 including a campaign system, Rules for Battle Tactics, blank army rosters and tournament scoring sheets, and 12 x brand-new Matched Play battleplans. There’s also the Age of $igmar Core Rules, plus Advanced Rules for applying to Matched Play battlepacks, including Commands, Terrain, Magic, Army Composition, and Command Models. There’s also 1 x deck of battlepack cards and 6 x “objective mats”. The Warlord Edition includes all the above, plus a cardboard game tracker board, 25 tokens for the game tracker, and a wee bag. 
The last miniature related item today is the Spearhead: City of Ash Gaming Pack (honestly, these names are getting out of control), which includes – the Spearhead: City of Ash booklet (it’s only 24-pages) for the rules to Spearhead, a Double-sided game board, 2 x Multipart plastic pieces of terrain (the main drawcard as this is really nicely detailed) and 5 x Relic objectives. There’s also 36 x Spearhead cards. 
For some reason, we are republishing the Horus Heresy series of books, starting with Horus Rising in paperback and the second book, False Gods in hardback and the once fought-for 
Premium Edition. Will they do all 50+ books? Who knows…
The hardback version of Gloomspite is also on pre-order this week, and probably sold out!

With the  Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon boxed set going on pre-order last week, and a lot of material going up on the Warhammer Community website, this week we get the officially branded physical rule tools to get your lads and lasses on the tabletop.
First up we have the Warhammer 40,000: Core Rules which is only 88-pages and just in softcover (for now I bet), but does contain the new rules, the various game phases, tools, plus "an introduction to the reference materials found in the Warhammer 40,000 App" - no clue what that means!
The Warhammer 40,000: Combat Patrol Companion
takes you through the skirmish version of 40K, Combat Patrol, and aims at your more beginner hobbyist with some hobby material, playing Combat Patrol, some lore, etc etc. We see this each edition, this is just the newer one.
We also have two decks - the Dominatus – Narrative Campaign Deck which allows you to field larger narrative missions and the Chapter Approved 2026-27: Mission Deck which is a set of cards based around a wider mission set sequence to follow, from Deployment, Force Disposition, Primary Mission, Secondary Mission, etc etc. Plus six cardboard Operation Markers... party time!
New this year, and getting a bit of side-eye is the Warhammer 40,000: Terrain Area Set, a series of cardboard terrain footprints that are designed to match building types and the look of the the game boards you'll find in the Warhammer 40,000 Starter Set and Combat Patrol Terrain Set Battlezone. I am constantly blown away that people buy these - and they're sold out!
In books this week we have the Special Edition version of Armageddon: Season of Fire, and some much-anticipated paperbacks of The Remnant Blade, Tomb World, and Voidscarred.

It only seems like last week we had Indomitus, then Leviathan, and now Armageddon - Games Workshop seem to be dropping new editions of Warhammer 40,000 like it's going out of style! So much so that we're up to Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition, and this week sees the launch by Games Workshop of the Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon box, following what has been a fairly lacklustre build-up, mainly involving some of the most boring videos ever created - absolutely zero enthusiasm from anyone involved!     
SO what's in this Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon box you ask? We have sixty one new multipart (YAY!) plastic (YAY!) push-fit (urgh, yuck!!) miniatures, giving you 23 x Space Marines
led by a Captain with Relic Shield, a Librarian, a Chaplain with Jump Pack and a new dynamic Ancient with banner. Your troops are 10 x new Intercessors who, despite promises, look exactly like every other boring Primaris model - which is a huge shame because the tweaks that have been made to Primaris (see the Space Wolves set) were really interesting! It's also very disappointing to have these constantly pushed forward as being amazing - me thinks they are overselling something they know is pretty poor. On the other end of the spectrum we have the 5 x new Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs, excitingly sporting the Crux Terminatus for the first time on power armour in many years. These are dynamic and great additions to anyone's force. We also have 3 x Eradicators with Heavy Bolters in suitably strong poses, though not really exciting. The vehicle is a newly reimagined Land Speeder with a multi-melta, onslaught gatling cannon/ heavy flamer, and a stormfury missile launcher, which is nice to see this in a smaller format than the previous one. On the other end of the battlefield there are thirty eight Orks led by a large Warboss, a Bannernob, a Bigboss, Painboy and a Weirdboy - something for all the Ork players there! Your troops are 20 x Ork Boyz, and 10 x Gretchin, and these aren't your traditional push-fit single option minis, there is some customisability with torsos and head swaps possible. The Orks have two vehicles - the Wartrakk and a very cool Big Mek Dakkarig! 
Aside from miniatures we also have the hardcover Armageddon: Operation Imperator book which gives you the forces at play and what's going on, plus we have the softcover Core Rules booklet, the Chapter Approved 2026-27: Mission Deck, the Dominatus Narrative Campaign Deck, Armageddon Datasheet Cards for every unit contained within this box, and the Armageddon Transfer Sheet with markings for both Marines and Orks. 
That's it - that's the launch box. What do you think? We're pretty underwhelmed, but there are some good bits, just not $500 AUD worth!
In books we have the Armageddon: Season of Fire narrative novel in hardback, plus next week sees the release of White Dwarf 524.