Over the past couple of weeks, with Age of $igmar Dominion still on the shelves, we asked the question if this release had failed. Well today, the Age of $igmar Dominion boxed set went into Last Chance to Buy - probably the first time a box of this size and "importance" has done so.

Do you like your exclusive hero minis? Well this week both Warhammer 4oK and Age of $igmar get a pretty nifty release, with the Necron Lord Hasmoteph the Resplendent (he of the squashed head) and the Stormcast Knight-Questor Dacian Anvil on their way.
With Dominion ushering in a new version of Age of $igmar, the starter sets are upon us - Warhammer Age of Sigmar Extremis Starter Set, Warhammer Age of Sigmar Harbinger Starter Set, and the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Warrior Starter Set, all offering different levels to get involved in. If you're new to Age of $igmar, then the Getting Started With Warhammer Age of Sigmar magazine and mini set is fun and a great gift for any kids or a mate you want to get involved in the hobby. There's new paint sets too - the Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Paint + Tools Set, the Stormcast Eternals Vindictors + Paints Set and the Orruk Warclans Gutrippaz + Paints Set.
If terrain is more your thing, then this brand new Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Extremis Edition – Realmscape Expansion Set is a really interesting addition with some cool pieces that take it away from some of the tolder sets. There's also the Penumbral Engine if you'd like a bit of an older fave atop something you've constructed.
There's also two magical sets, the combined Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Malign Sorcery and Nagash-themed Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Forbidden Power.
In books we have the Thunderstrike & Other Stories in paperback and the paperback version of ​Indomitus.

​It's been a bit quiet on the mini front for a while, but that's because we bought a new 3D printer - the Anycubic Mono X - and have been hard at work on some large models. Not to give too much away, but here's a sneak peak!

Overnight the new Age of $igmar set, Dominion was previewed - ushering in a "new era" with updated rules and background for all factions (in the 350 page book included in the set), plus a new expanded narrative campaign system and different ways to play. For most, Dominion will mostly be about the miniatures, which GW say we will be able to buy at a 'significant saving' from when they are released individually later on - no time frame announced on this though unfortunately.
So with miniatures in mind, lets take a look and then discuss... 

As is often the way, there was also a sneak peak of the new minis coming for this Dominion line, and they're all pretty impressive; the Knight-Judicator with Gryph-hounds is a new elite archer unit, and the Stormstrike Chariot drawn by Gryph-chargers is a really impressive light chariot with some new design features, including a very Classical Greece looking helmet on the archer.
The Beast-skewer Killbow is a heavy weapon for the Kruleboyz designed to take out line infantry and monsters - which the Kruleboyz also employ in the form of the ​Breaka-boss on Mirebrute Troggoth, a truly impressive model and probably one of the real standouts in this range.

Right, so what can we glean from this new preview? Well if we take this week's pre-orders, then look at the recent Behemoth release plus Bel'akor, plus this preview's Annihilators, the multiple Gryph-hounds, the Beast-skewer Killbow and Breaka-boss on Mirebrute Troggoth, it's pretty obvious we are going to have a new meta of "bigger is better" with giants and beasties of all descriptions coming out of the woodwork. In fact maybe that's what the little cute insectoid is on the new Warsong Revenant - it's the Sylvaneth's new beastie still to be released.
As for the box, it's pretty cool. For us the Orcs don't really work as any kind of real selling point - the look is a bit too different, but also seems cobbled together from LoTR. The old shield is cool though! The Stormcast are again a further evolution which improve the look of these pretty bland miniatures greatly. Both heroes in the sets are interesting, and the comparison between Yndrsata and Sanguinus from WH30K is pretty fun. It should be pointed out the number of female models in the Stormcast range. This is huge and a great addition for inclusion for all hobbyists in the game. It will be interesting to see if this carries across to any Empire faction infantry forces that may come along in the future. Shieldmaidens in Vikings have opened up the idea in many people's minds of how women in ancient times did fight and die in battle, and this happened across multiple civilisations across the world at various points.
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So, is this box on the shopping list? We'll probably give it a miss, unless some splits turn up on FB.
Let us know what you think.

Back in 2017 - aaaaah, simpler times - I set about doing an Enforcer gang for the then-brand new incarnation of Necromunda. At the time there were no minis or rules for Enforcers, so I made them up!
Combining Imperial Guard and Genestealer Cult parts, they came up pretty well and suited how I saw a unit of private security forces tasked to the Merchant Guild, outside the formal law and order structure. 
Since then Games Workshop has been fleshed out the Merchant Guild and the Enforcers, but still this little unit of hardened private security operators are one of the favourite things I've painted.
When the new 'Jotunn' H-Grade Industrial Servitor Ogryns for Necromunda came out I saw the perfect opportunity to make a hulking brute to escort the Merchant Guild Emissary I'd made. With a tonne of both Green and Brown Stuff moulded to look like a larger version of the Imperial Guard armour I'd used on the Enforcers, he was set to go. I could have added more weapons, but unsure of the game loadout I settled on a fluffy power maul which seemed suited to smashing his way through almost anything.

When it came to painting the Brute. he sticks very closely to the Enforcers, but adds the bling to parts of his uniform that a bodyguard of such a rich Guild would have. I was concerned about the gold with the orange, being to warm tones, but the cold steel between seems to work. The cool greys and white also break it up a bit. The paint job isn't perfect, and I do wish I was an amazing painter, but he stands out on the field and overall I'm really happy with him. Orange is a bit of a pain to keep clean while painting, so I recommend a surgical glove to keep your hand oils from making the orange too dirty or dulling down the overall finish.

It's not until you put this guy next to the other minis you see how huge he actually is! He does look like he would take good care of his emissary though, and the Merchant Guild Enforcers would surely be happy to have their back.
Overall not the best shots - I'll work out this LED photobox thingy one day - but you get the idea. He looks much better in real life and away from the harsh lights and tight closeups!

What's better than a 10-man Heavy Support squad wielding Volkite Culverins?
A 10-man Heavy Support squad wielding mastercrafted Volkite Culverin!!
Meet the Legion Consul Armistos, a backrow leader and heavy hitter who can do just that to your Heavy Support squads. This miniature was a bit of a modelling challenge - not only a senior character with a big gun but the first attempt at working out what mastercrafted weapons would look like.
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More on the War Hounds Legion Consul Armistos on the Project: War Hounds page 

If you've been following us for a whole, you will know our love for Slaanesh and the hopes of one day getting human acolytes for the ranks of She Who Thirsts. The dreams first started when Tzeentch got their excellent acolytes, then Khorne (who has multiple layers of them), and Nurgle - but Slaanesh was left out in the cold, which is not a good place to be with that many piercings.
When the Hedonites of Slaanesh was released, we were very excited, expecting to see our acolytes, but it was not meant to be.  But last night finally they were announced...

... and I have to say, it was not the acolytes were were expecting! Looking more like corrupted Stormcast Eternals, or spikey Slaves To Darkness, these acolytes are missing any real crossover with the Hedonites of Slaanesh or any real trace of the 'pleasure' element to the 'pleasure and pain' that is Slaanesh. We get lots of bulky armour with big swords and long smooth metallic surfaces, but where's the skin, the straps, the studs and lithe toned bodies? Maybe in a different paint scheme they will seem more Slaaneshi, but they look almost entirely different to the Hedonites of Slaanesh range.
It is interesting to note that Games Workshop did produce a set that was so close to being the perfect Slaaneshi acolytes - the Cypher Lords (below) for Warcry. I'm sure these will be the basis for many people's Slaaneshi acolytes, they are for mine, as are the Tzeentch Kairic Acolytes.

In closing, maybe this new release is actually the Slannesh version of Slaves to Darkness, not actually acolytes. If so, then that's fair enough and Slaanesh now has heavy armour in their ranks - but it would have been great to have human Slaaneshi acolytes that match the theme that has been set for over 30 years and was so nicely teased for us in the Cypher Lords. Glad I bought some of those and have already converted them up, it's a fun project and well worth a try if you too would like a more traditional feel.

The year was 1989, the Space Marine Paint Set had just been released, and having tried to paint a Space Wolf using the instructions with limited success, and a Blood Angel with even more limited success (the ability to paint red still confounds me), I set about on a journey to invent my own Space Marine Chapter!
​Heavily influenced by a photo of a Lamenters Space Marine in one of the Golden Demon books, a path was set to try something new - and only partly derivative...
Adapting the symbol from Conan, the Twin Serpents were born!

The first iteration saw many beaky MK VI Twin Serpents plus Terminators, then metal MK VII Assault Marines, some characters and even some OOP Scouts with shiruken catapults!
After a hiatus in the late 90s to the early 2000s nothing much happened until the new plastic Space Marines came along and the Twin Serpents were reborn, this time the green aquila was gone, replaced with the yellow aquila on a black torso - and the painting was much neater.
Since then they have sat in a dark display cabinet as other projects have come and gone, but as the much-improved Primaris in the Indomitus set were introduced, what better time to bring these guys back to life? 

Bringing together the elements of the previous incarnations, plus adding some more black and more shadows and layering, the Primaris version of the Twins Serpents looks very much more updated.

It seems that each time the Space Marines make a generational change, the Twin Serpents make a leap with them - from the original MKVI plastics, to the metal MKVIIs, then the plastic MKVIIs and now the Primaris. Lets see where this goes, but having struck on an idea, it's sticking! 

Warhammer 40K 9th Edition is packing a punch with a very large - and one would expect - expensive launch set boasting a metric tonne of new models. Revealed late last night Australian/NZ time and at a vaguely reasonable time elsewhere, there's a lot to see! Lets have a look at a few of the videos...

With thanks to Steven, we have these great sprue shots form the Twitch stream too. This looks like some fine sculpting, even if they are just push fit models for the most part!

What would a boxed set be without Ultramarines? Probably more interesting, but these minis are great and absolutely packed with character! Be very interested to see how they will come up as other Chapters.

The Necrons rise! It's about bloody time - talk about fashionably late. The new started box is full of brand new minis, including TWO units of Warriors and some big beasties too.

It's not just the launch box that has new minis, there's some other things on the way too. Not sure about these Space Marines ones, but the Necron ones are insane!!

After days of blurry photo leaks of what is almost an entirely new revamped Necron army, Games Workshop relented and released that clearer version - all be it with some humorous captions!
This revamp is a huge leap forward for an aging Necron range, with the Doom Scythe and Triarch Stalker staying alongside the elite bodyguard units, but everything else getting a buff. New Destroyers, new Warriors, new much-improved big floaty pyramid plus brand new units including the Skorpekh Lord which seems to be the poster boy for this release. The massive Silent King model is certainly going to steal the show and attract every piece of heavy artillery towards it in-game! There's some really unusual new shapes and styles of Necron, but they all fit in with the current look at feel, keeping the psuedo-Tomb Kings in space motif going on.
We've got some closeups below of some of the new things, including a mini not a lot of people seem to have spotted lurking in the shadows, plus what looks like some scenery.
This is an exciting new release, assumed to be released alongside the new 9th Edition 40K, so we will see if that's late this year or early next year - either way, we really need to work out a colour scheme for Necrons.

The plan was big - build that army that's been in mothballs, and at the end of lockdown there will be a shiny new army to look back on. It didn't work out that way. Probably like a lot of hobbyists who were working from home, the whole lockdown has been exhausting. It was hard to be motivated, but like JP said in our chat on Hobby In Lockdown, don't expect too much. Don't let it become a burden.
The projects may not have been huge, but they have been varied - finally making headway on the War Hounds Assault Squad, working on the Victoria Miniatures Heavy Mortar (Super-Size), another Slaaneshi Chaos Warrior added to the ranks, a kitbashed Dark Eldar Grotesque that started as an experiment and became something super fluffy and theme-y, and a Fireforge Games Northmen.
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Hopefully in the next little while I can show you more of these projects as they were fun to try - which is what the hobby is all about, having fun and trying new things!

​Who doesn't love a good half-man, half-serpent? Well the good folks at HeroForge have very nicely made all our dreams come true with this absolute beauty.
Of course, like all things HeroForge is it entirely customisable for Fantasy of Scifi, with a tonne of posing, weapon and even body shape options.
HeroForge also offer a printer version of an STL for those of us with 3D printers.
Have a look at the base figure below and you'll get an idea of how easy it would be to swap torsos, or arms, weapons and accessories.
We're working on an idea for some elite infantry for Tomb Kings, or maybe some guards for Cobra Commander. Go have a look at all the other minis you can make too - you'll spend ages customising! 

Although the updates have been few and far between, there has actually been a lot of movement on the War Hounds Legion force. It may just be one or two minis a week, but slowly it's getting bigger all the time with new units forming and a more cohesive look to the markings and feel of the army. Today I was very happy to finish the Tactical Support squad, with their super-fluffy Volkite weaponry. This unit spans a bit of time - actually having the very first War Hound I ever painted amongst its ranks.

For more pics and detailed write up, go to the Project: War Hounds section

Well not literally of course - technically skeletons live forever - BUT the point is, these new Chaos Warriors have us so exited and they really only seems to register a blip on the Community radar.
Apart from the same upside down shields the Mortek Guard have, these miniatures are such a generational leap beyond the now-iconic Chaos Warriors that have stalked the battlefields for decades now. Even if they are mono-pose, the dynamic nature of the poses really sets them into the area that the art for these miniatures has existed in for a long long time. 
A close look will actually show you a melding of the current Chaos Warriors and the ones that came before it - who frankly look pretty squat and sad these days but were once amazing!! The Chaos Knights are a huge improvement to the current range, who do have amazing horses, but the riders aren't that great.
One of the big winners here is the leader of this foul band of brigands who has obviously been pose a a dark reflection of the Astreia Solbright or Vandus Hammerhand or a Lord-Aquilor.
All of it is just clever stuff and although releases come and go, this one is really one to look forward to!

Man these Thallax are a pain in the butt to make!! If they weren't so damn fiddly, we'd definitely have more. The latest addition is the quasi-leader so I decided to go with a more human pose. These are entirely sentient machines after all - robots with thinking, feeling human brains - who will kill you!

Who doesn't love Thallax? Apart from the poor sods you have to build these incredibly fiddly bloody models of course. The Thallax look amazing - the super soldiers of the Mechanicus, these are how the Space Marines would have been in they were human-augmented robots and not robot-augmented humans. During the Great Crusade and through the Horus Heresy, the Mechanicum would task out these powerful sentient robots to the Adeptus Astartes Legions, so surely the XIIth Legion War Hounds would have had some, right? They certainly used Praevians, and Praevians need robots!

Who said sticking to one project was a good idea. Having been going full steam ahead with the War hounds Project, I got a little distracted - and by all things, Goblins. Have no idea why, maybe some moon-powered magic. This project was really about updating the old Stabbas/ Shootas kit and making a more Brian Froud looking Goblin force. Brian Froud is the visionary behind The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, with a particular style to Goblins - a style Games Workshop have obviously been influences by for their latest Gloomspite Gitz faction for Age of $igmar. Really I just wanted to experiment with infantry, so this was a good place to start. Taking the standard Stabbas/ Shootas kit I cut the heads off and replaced with with the heads from the Squigg Hoppers kit. They don't kit perfectly, so there's a bit of trimming, but they are a big improvement on the original heads. Then I went about sculpting different types of armour on the hands and arms with Green Stuff. This was meant to look haphazard and old, worn out. Then it struck me that a form of spiky or chitinous armour on their backs would be cool, so I bought some Grey Stuff due to it's harder and sharper consistency. This works better for armour plates that Green Stuff as it will give you sharp edges. It also dries a lot harder so you can sand or scrape it into shape. Small balls were then added to make rivets. Overall quite happy with them. The standard bearer has more armour as an experiment for the leader's look, which I haven't quite worked out yet...
Painting has begun, and you will be happy to know that this project will get done before I start another - no matter how much I can hear the War Hounds calling to me.. .and maybe the Dark Angels again too.

When the Chaos Knights were released, their little cousins - the Armigers - were oddly missing from the release schedule. We'd seen them in pictures in banner ads across the GW site (see below) but not on offer to buy. Well it seems that they did appear, but only in New Zealand and in a not entirely finalised and confused write up on their webstore. The entries mention both Imperial Armigers and War Dogs, in fact even the box art are the Imperial versions. Be curious to see when we do get these, but now at least we do know what they will look like! The Knight Armigers aren't the only ones - by the way - their much larger cousins the Chaos Knight Tyrants are also on the GW NZ Webstore! Like the War Dogs, these don't have an extra Chaos Upgrade Sprue with spikes and the like, it's just a different colour scheme and again a confused partially done write up which doesn't show Chaos decals or the box art.
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EDIT - And then without any warning or fanfare, they've turned up, a day later, on the Australian webstore

For some weeks now I've been tooling around with a Chaos chariot, wanting it to fit into a Slaanesh force. Having never painted pink, this was interesting as it's such an overpowering colour. Thing is, pink is just one aspect of Slaanesh, there are purples and especially blacks, so when it came to the driver it was time for more experimentation using a dark pink and a new skin tone to have a more dusky look. My vampires and Dark Eldar have a warm grey tone, so this needed to be different and was Flayed One Flesh with a wash of a warm grey and a touch of purple, then working the highlights up with the base and white. The miniature itself is a Kairic Acolyte sliced and diced with a Slaanesh Daemonette head. The straps across the body are Green Stuff and the shoulder armour is from the Hellstriders kit.
There's no real rush on this model, so will tinker away at it and see what works!

So here's a story - the very first time Apocalypse came around Games Workshop released a Space Marine Company box. 106 multi-part Space Marines and 9 Rhinos - it's a beast of a set! Full of excitement I bought this box. Yes well... Suffice to say - who doesn't like a big army box? 
The preview of these sets buzzed through Beardy Hammer HQ as we zoomed in on images to see the contents, slavering madly in excitement.
These sets are split up across most of the factions (interestingly missing Drukhari so far) and then into role, so you will see Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines get Battalion Detachments, Mechanicus (OMG a box of Kastelans!!), Tau and Eldar get Vanguard Detachments, Imperial Guard, Orks and Tyranids get Spearhead Detachments, Necrons get an Outrider Detachment (guess this is what the Drukhari would get too) and then there's a Super-Heavy Detachment for Imperial Knights (and you would assume the Chaos Knights would get released for Apocalypse so there's probably one for them too).
The Space Marines ones seem to be a mix of multi-part and snap-fit minis, giving you a tonne of dudes. The Mechanicus one, depending on the price-point could be a solid saving on what is, in Australia at least, a pricey kit, while the Tau one is a flavour we've seen in various incarnations - swapping out the Ghostkeel for a Riptide. The Eldar Detachment, like the Mechanicus, could be a good cost saving too - also a great set which could look striking on the field. The Imperial Guard Detachment is the only one with a transport in it which makes sense with all the tanks, while the Ork walkers and Tyranids are great force builders is nothing else BUT it is curious not seeing a horde option for Tyranids in here. The Necron Outrider Detachment will likely outflank anything and if the Drukhari get a set like this, it would make perfect sense. The Imperial Knights sets speaks for itself, but curious if there are weapons options for the Helverins to make the Warglaives.
Now we've seen these, but I wonder if there might be a Space Marine Spearhead one coming with Predators or Land Raiders, or a Craftworld Outrider with Jetbikes (or maybe that will be a Harlequin allied set?), or an Ork Battallion set with Nobz and Boyz galore. Lots of possibilites, either way a good way to army build and save some money.
We'll leave you with this observation though - that Apocalypse Space Marine Company set I got back in 2007 I told you about earlier was to build an Apocalypse force - how do you think that went? Spend wisely.