It’s a good thing the Black Library is books and not movies, otherwise we might be having a conversation around “sequel fatigue” and how Games Workshop might be “running out of ideas.” Luckily, that sort of discourse has never really found purchase amongst book readers, where serial releases is very much the norm.

After all, just recently we’ve seen the sequel to Rob Young’s Longshot in Ghosts of Cadia (review), the follow-up to Robert Rath’s The Infinite and the Divine with The Wicked and the Warped (review), and this week we learned that Chris Wraight’s classic, Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame inductee The Lords of Silence is getting a follow-up book as well!

What, not enough sequels? What if I told you it looks like Rath’s Assassinorum: Kingmaker might be getting one soon as well?

You’ll never grow broke betting on fandom communities to detect even the smallest tremor in the force when it comes to the properties they love. When Games Workshop tried to bury the recently-announced Necromunda Roleplaying game by surreptitiously editing out all references to the game, the community noticed. Immediately.

And so it was that another eagle-eyed member of the Black Library subreddit, u/Responsible-Load1717, discovered a placeholder entry for a book entitled Assassinorum: Operation Vendetta written by Robert Rath on French retail site fnac.com.

It’s also highly suggestive that Rath’s first Assassinorum novel, 2022’s Assassinorum: Kingmaker, is one of the titles on sale on the Black Library app for November. It’s certainly tempting to scrutinize the on-sale books as “appetizers” for a heretofore-unknown main course. For instance, while not itself a sequel, Rich McCormick’s Renegades: Lord of Excess went on sale in June, with his Zardu Layak: The Crimson Apostle coming the next month in July.

Noah Van Nguyen’s Godeater’s Son went on sale in August, and the sequel Blood of the Godeater arrived at the end of that same month. And in a repeat of that same model, Blacktalon by Liane Merciel went on sale last month just before Gary Kloster’s series sequel Shadow of the Silver Wolf was released.

So if you enjoyed Assassinorum: Kingmaker, there may be some very exciting news in store for you soon.

Pretend to be surprised!

Missing in Action

For all you World Eaters out there, it was exciting news when we learned of the upcoming WarhammerTV animation Butcher’s Nails. First teased as part of June’s Big Summer Preview Show as a new Hammer & Bolter episode, it was originally slated for an August release but was later pushed back until October.

Well, October has come and gone and not a sign in sight.

Then, remember what I said earlier about fans being extraordinarily perceptive? u/Nervous_Ad_5698 in the Black Library subreddit noticed that when the next The Old World novel Blood of the Bastion was announced, it was mentioned that there would be a Special Edition:

However, when the book was announced as going up for preorder this past Saturday, there was not a trace to be found. While it’s certainly true that it may be available later on in a Special Edition, that’s a curiously irregular bit of scheduling. Unless it’s a reprint from a much earlier book (such as Ben Counter’s Grey Knights or Andy Clark’s Steel Tread), the deluxe editions typically release earlier than- or simultaneous to- the standard edition hardback.

Wordforge on Facebook

Before we jump into everything else, just a quick reminder that for those of you on Facebook, the Warhammer Wordforge now has its own page here. Stop by and say hello!

Arrivals & Departures

In this section I look at what’s coming up around the corner (Arrivals) and what’s landing on bookstore shelves (Departures).

Arrivals

After a great deal of wondering, the second book of The Scouring is finally touching down. Written by John French, Wrath of Terra picks right up where Ashes of the Imperium leaves off, and will be available this Saturday for preorder in standard hardcover.

There will also be a stunning Premium Edition available for Wrath of Terra. If you’re after this edition, make sure to note that it will be offered during the “Wednesday Window” at 3pm UK time on 11 November.

The UK had their Daylight Savings Time event just before we did here in the States. With the time differential now back to the usual five hours between UK time and EST, the window will open for me here in Kentucky at 10am. Plan accordingly, folks!

The Black Library has recently gotten into the habit of re-releasing older books in hardcover to accompany a sequel, and so alongside Realm of Silence will be a new, standard edition of The Lords of Silence. It wasn’t that long ago that the original hardcover was commanding around USD $200 on the secondary market1, so this is quite the reprint.

Departures

Gary Kloster’s new novel, Shadow of the Silver Wolf, the latest chapter in the story of the Blacktalons, is now on store shelves!

Cold Comforts (Three-dux)

The community love-in for author Peter Fehervari and his incredibly elaborate singature pages hasn’t slowed down. Over at the Black Library subreddit2, u/Le0ben shared some correspondence he’d had with Fehervari.

While yes, every author is different and not everyone can quite dedicate the time this certainly demanded, it has been quite the clinic in how to generate additional buzz around a book. Fehervari’s dedication- and openness to engagement with his readers- has been a real love letter to the community- and the community continues reflecting that right back.

Outstanding.

Black Library App Sales for November

You know what else turning of the month means? A new slate of sales on the Black Library app! Since the introduction of the new app, each month appears to be bringing with it a much larger number of eBook and audiobook releases at a discounted price (typically 50% off the eBook, 66% off the audio).

For November, the following are on sale:

• The Hollow King, by John French (audio, ebook)

• The Lords of Silence, by Chris Wraight (audio, ebook)

• Genefather, by Guy Haley (audio, ebook)

• Caves of Ice, by Sandy Mitchell (audio, ebook)

• Assassinorum: Kingmaker, by Robert Rath (audio, ebook)

• Queen of the Rose Throne, by Gary Kloster (audio, ebook)

• Lazarus: Emnity’s Edge, by Gary Kloster (audio, ebook)

• First Marshal, by Evan Dicken (audio, ebook)

• Red Tithe, by Robbie MacNiven (audio)

  ---

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Warhammer content!

Warhammer Wordforge

• This week’s Wednesday Feature was a new installment of Black Library Bibliophiles, the series dedicated to the collection and display of our beloved books. This time I dove into the Adeptus Custodes Limited Edition Codex and it’s treasure trove of goodies!

• In Warhammer RPG Weekly, we mourned the gone-too-soon loss of the Necromunda RPG.

• Then in Trench Crusade Weekly, we took a close look at the game’s first-ever painting competition, the Crimson Chalice!

Tabletop Battles

• For Lore Friday, I reviewed Ghosts of Cadia by Rob Young.

Warhammer Community

• Not Black Library related, but these Warhammer Day posters are chef’s kiss. Hey Warhammer Art, let’s get these up for sale!

WarhammerTV (paywalled)

• All three parts of the latest Age of Sigmar animation, Arkanaut, have now been released!

Around the Webway

• The Fluffenhammer pod continues its issue-by-issue walkthrough of Warhammer Monthly, this time tackling issue #33, from August of 2000.

• Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Day of Ascension gets a look by Arbitor Ian and Mira Manga as part of their Warhammer Book Club.

• Sorry, what’s that? Not enough Ian and Mira for you? Whoa buddy did you pick the right week, because they’ve also posted reviews of the Warhammer Crime classic Bloodlines by Chris Wraight, Anna Stephens’ Gothgull Hollow3, and Graham McNeill’s A Thousand Sons! And if that’s not enough, I don’t know what to tell you.

Cold Open Stories

• All month long Cold Open Stories has been releasing a weekly brand-new short story audiobook, and this week’s tale is False Harmony by A. D. Hamilton. “Tap into the noosphere, connect your cogitator to the God Machine, and dive into a song that has become something more.”

Quick Hits

• I noted recently the upcoming Fair Realms event in Nottingham next March, and Victoria Hayward (Deathworlder, Nightsider Imperialis) shared an updated lineup. Guy Haley, John French, Jude Reid, Gav Thorpe, and Victoria herself? Run, don’t walk, folks. It’s not every day you get so much Black Library talent under one roof for a day.

• Tim Waggoner (Skin Man) appeared on the Stark Reflections on Publishing pod to discuss writing tie-in fiction and novelizations.

• Black Library Hall of Famer Sarah Cawkwell (Valkia the Bloody, Silver Skulls: Portents) shared her wonderful answer to a question she gets asked often: what’s the best thing about writing for Warhammer?

Meme of the Week

Not necessarily a regular feature, but sometimes I find one that’s just too good not to share…

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming releases from the Black Library based on the available preorder information we have. As always, take all of this with a grain of salt unless it’s Games Workshop-confirmed.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, and anything in bold has been added (or updated) this week.

Upcoming but Undated

• Throne Questoris, by Victoria Hayward

• Cypher: Lord of the Fallen, by John French (Illustrated and Annotated Edition)

• Realm of Silence, by Chris Wraight (hardcover and Special Edition)

• The Lords of Silence, by Chris Wraight (hardcover)

Current PODs in Production

• Hive, by Dan Abnett (Special Edition, estimated deliver-by date of 11/26)

Upcoming in 2026

• Grey Knights, by Ben Counter (Special Edition, 11/7)

• Raptors: War and Shadow, by William Crowe (hardcover, 11/7)

• Crucible of Fire, by Tom R. Pike (hardcover, 11/7)

• Death Rider, by Rhuairidh James (paperback, 11/7)

• Ghost Legion, by Mike Brooks (paperback, 11/7)

• Armageddon: Season of Fire, by Jude Reid (paperback, 11/7)

• Treachery Unbound, by various (paperback, 11/7)

• Blood of the Bastion, by Evan Dicken (hardcover, 11/14)

• Whisperblade, by Hal Wilson (hardcover, 11/14)

• The Flight of the Eisenstein, by James Swallow (Horus Heresy Saga edition and standard hardcover, 11/14)

• Galaxy in Flames, by Ben Counter (Horus Heresy Saga edition paperback, 11/14)

• Wrath of Terra, by John French (hardcover and Premium Edition, 11/21)

• Chem Dog, by Callum Davis (paperback, 12/17)

• Ghazghkull Thraka: Warlord of Warlords, by Denny Flowers (paperback, 12/17)

• Ashes of the Imperium, by Chris Wraight (paperback, 12/17)

Thanks again for joining me for all the going’s on in the Black Library, and see you next week!

Founded in 1983 by Friedhelm Merz, the annual trade fair now known as SPIEL Essen occurs every October in Essen, Germany. The world’s largest fair for tabletop gaming, it’s long been a place for game publishers to showcase their latest games. It attracts over 200,000 souls, eager to explore and demo games from wargame, board game, and role-playing companies all over the world.

Naturally, this also makes it a great place for major events like the awarding of the Deutscher Spiele Preis and Games Workshop’s Golden Demon competition. This year, there was a new face at the fair: the Crimson Chalice, Trench Crusade’s signature painting contest.

From the company’s perspective it was a big success. If the odd “teething issue” was a learning moment for the next one, it can be little surprise given that the participant turnout for the event was about triple what they’d forecast. Nice problems to have, right?

The inaugural Crimson Chalice was deliberately designed to be a larger tent than most painting competitions tend to be, with plenty of awards to go around and a very open rules structure. No need to recap the full event as Trench Crusade has done that for you, but here are some notable entries- and the thoughts of the incredible painters who created them.

Ruben Martinez Arribas of Madrid had a very nice day at the office indeed, winning Best in Show alongside three Gold medals (Warband, Storytelling, and Large Figure). As he shared on Facebook,

Britain’s Bruce Rose took Open Gold. “I'm still processing my performance,” he noted,

Earlier this year, Frenchman Pierre Ribrag wasn’t feeling all that confident.

Clearly Ribrag wasn’t alone, as his entry took Bronze in Single Figure!

The Silver medalist for Single Figure, Baptiste Richebé of France, had this to say:

Stockholm’s Chrisopher Chan was the Bronze winner for Large Figure, the Matagot Hag. As he shared,

Walte Wollermann of Germany’s penchant for storytelling through miniatures earned him Bronze honors at Crimson Chalice, noting:

Another German artist, Thilo Marquardt, had this to say about his experience:

And finally, Warband Silver winner Gregor Straehle was delighted to show off his medal haul, adding:

Congratulations to all, both the worthy winners as well as those who stepped up and put themselves forward for consideration! Plans are already underway for the next Crimson Chalice, which Factory Fortress has just announced will be at Adepticon next April, held in the home of this year’s World Series champs, the Milwaukee Brewers!

Quick Site Update

Plenty more Trench Crusade to get to, so I’ll keep this one brief. As I discussed at length on Black Library Weekly this past Monday, I will be looking to turn on site monetization as early as next week. That’s entirely because Substack offers us writers more features to sites that have it enabled- but all articles will continue to be free. Nothing is changing!

Look at it like a “tip jar.” Always appreciated, never expected, and hopefully tucked away in some inobtrusive corner of the virtual countertop.

Also, as a head’s up if you’re on Facebook we have a page there now too. Come say hello!

Miniature of the Week

What, did you think I was gonna put one of the unit models up after devoting the column to the extraordinary work of the Crimson Chalice? Mama didn’t raise no fool.

Beyond the incredible, rust-and-weather look of the official image above, these are simple builds but wonderfully wicked-looking. Plus, I always have a soft sport for that unsung hero of the tabletop: terrain.

Don’t worry, I’ll have something more intricate to look at next week, when I don’t have such a tough act to follow!

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Trench Crusade content!

Trench Crusade Official

• The weekly lore drops are back! Graham McNeill’s words and Artem Demura’s art teamed up this week to being us a look at the Sword of God, that lost but legendary bombard of the Iron Sultanate.

• While Operation Leviathan saw the introduction of several weekly columns, now that it’s over many of them will be put into storage until (presumably) the next global campaign. That doesn’t mean, though, that we won’t continue to enjoy regular content, and this week Magnus Laursen’s First Strike column returned with a look at the Trench Pilgrims. A series aimed at beginners looking to build their first warband, a new installment has been dropping every other month1.

• Peter Hairston’s Mentioned in Despatches series found its origin in Operation Leviathan, but he enjoyed it so much that it’s going to be a regular series. This week’s piece looked at extraordinary tabletop visualizations of the Dragon Hunt scenario!

• Finally, the Arena Challenge came to an end this week. Here two teams representing Factory Fortress, The Baron of Dice, The Army Painter, Trench Titans, and Army Painter’s Factory Team compete in an escalation campaign of building and painting Trench Crusade miniatures.

Wargame Content Sites

• Tabletop Battles has a Trench Crusade article each week, with this week’s feature being a Warband Focus on the Black Klismos of Envy.

• Meanwhile, Wargamer’s editor Mollie Russell took in a Trench Crusade demo at Spiel Essen, and walked away tremendously impressed with how approachable the game is. “I may be a wargaming beginner,” she gushed, “but I'm ready to prostrate myself in worship at Trench Crusade's altar. It has that holy trinity I talked about: sick art, enticing storyelling, and rules that scream elegance.”

Community Content

• The Saints & Sevens podcast picked up where it left off with its deep dive into the Court of the Seven Headed Serpent, dropping Part Two this week. (Part one is here).

• The Trench Scribe podcast also took the opportunity to dive headfirst into the October Rules Review, looking at the changes to the Court as well as the rules review format overall.

• Over at Grimdark Fantasy, it’s all about the Black Grail this week! “Trench Crusade's Version of Nurgle's Plague is DISGUSTING!”

• Over at the Trench Crusade subreddit, u/SnooDoggos9469 has been keeping track of developer comments, keeping a running timeline of what lies ahead. Thank you for your service, u/SnooDoggos9469!

  ---

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases from Trench Crusade based on the available preorder information we have.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

• Trench Crusade Rulebook (hardcover, 11/30)

That’s it for this week, see you again in seven days’ time!

Sadly, this past week saw the strange, disappointingly short-lived saga of the Necromunda RPG come to an apparent end. In a mothership article entitled New for Necromunda in 2027, WarCom offered a peek at what the future held for Necromunda- and what it didn’t.

Let’s dive into that, shall we?

The news- which came right on the heels of last week’s Warhammer RPG Weekly, go figure- falls squarely in “disappointed, but not surprised” territory. After all, following the exciting announcement during the Big Autumn Preview Show on 18 September the claw-back of information around the product was very swift as Games Workshop sought to revise history in real time and remove any trace of Necromunda Roleplay from official communications.

Oh, there were hopes aplenty that this represented some temporary measure. Perhaps there was a warehouse mishap or some other unforeseeable calamity that necessitated some delay, but I think for the most part… we knew. There’s lots of ways to respond to those sorts of situations that don’t involve sending in the Alpha Legion to quietly make things disappear, and now the Officio Assassinorum has officially sanctioned the line altogether.

So what gives? Why go through all that trouble just to scrap it at the last minute with a last-minute proclamation that essentially reads, “on second thought, we’ve decided to stay in our lane.”

While we’re not privy to James Workshop’s business meetings, from the outside looking in we can try to make a few educated guesses. Let’s open with the question of taking the statement at face value.

A Change of Heart?

It’s certainly possible that Games Workshop got all the way to the end of product development and decided, “nah, let’s not.” But I don’t think it’s overly cynical to find that highly unlikely. After all, this was a product that was so far along in the pipeline that it appeared to have already had its production run. The preview video for it showed physical copies of the game, and they even showed off the first planned expansion book.

Not only that, but it had cleared every hurdle needed to be unveiled in the Big Autumn Preview, essentially one big infomercial for Games Workshop products expecting an imminent release. With last weekend’s Sunday Preview being heavily Necromunda-themed, it’s not at all unlikely that were it not scrapped, Necromunda Roleplay would be going up for preorder tomorrow (10/31).

Given that, I’m highly skeptical this was a last-minute change of heart. Which means that if it wasn’t voluntary, it would have to be involuntary, right?

The Incubation Tank

With a week’s sober reflection, the most widely-accepted theory in the community appears to be that the product was internally killed at the executive/board level. To understand how this could happen, it helps to pull back for a moment and look at what we understand about how Games Workshop operates.

When it comes to GW’s core products, there are two main segments that oversee their design and development. The Main Games Studio (MGS) handles the larger product lines like Warhammer 40,000 (including Kill Team) and Age of Sigmar (including Warcry and Underworlds). These are the bread-and-butter properties of the company, and typically operate in three-year design cycles.

The more peripheral/niche properties like Blood Bowl, The Old World, and- importantly- Necromunda are nestled within the Specialist Design Studio (SDS). It’s generally understood that the MGS has a might higher level of visibility and scrutiny given the centrality of those product lines to the property overall, while the SDS gets to enjoy a little more experimental freedom.

It was just this freedom that led to the development of Necromunda Roleplay, and with the benefit of hindsight it’s assumed that the recent rebrand of the Necromunda game as “Necromunda Skirmish” with the latest edition launch (this past August) was intended to make it distinct from the upcoming Necromunda Roleplay.

This was a significant expansion of the Necromunda property, turning it into an umbrella property that would support two different game lines (Skirmish and Roleplay).

SDS has in the past enjoyed a certain freedom when it comes to designing narrative play expansions for its properties, such as Hive Secundus (2024) and Ash Wastes (2022). It seems credible that this liberty is what gave rise to Necromunda Roleplay. The Necromunda game system has always hewn fairly close to role-playing games as it is, and this was in many ways a logical next step,

It cleared all the internal regulatory hurdles within SDS, then entered the product release pipeline along with everything else being unveiled at the Big Autumn Preview Show.

And that’s when the problem started.

The Corporate Spike

Necromunda Ropleplay was now free of the SDS nest which had enabled it to get as far as it did. And here it’s believed to have risen to the level of scrutiny by the Games Workshop board, leading to the decision to kill the game entirely. This theory comes in two flavors:

#1: It was seen as too far outside the “core product” roster.

In the most recent company annual report, GW notes its operational mission thusly:

While it’s true that he Necromunda Roleplay starter came packed with eighteen new miniatures, RPG’s aren’t ideal vectors for generating a high level of miniature support. It’s a book business that has some overlap with minis, of course, but it’s a feature and not a bug for players that they can game for years off of a handful of books and (optionally) a small number of figures. There’s a reason that the RPG equivalent of the “pile of shame1” is a hoard of dice.

Under this theory, an RPG product was seen as straying too far outside of core principles and operational boundaries once subjected to the board-level scrutiny that arose after its unveiling in the Preview Show.

#2: It was seen as devaluing the role-playing game license.

This one’s interesting, and a shout out to Adventurous Dad & Daughters for a terrific breakdown. In short, when the community’s response to the announcement of Necrominda Roleplay was, “wait a minute, what about Cubicle 7?”, it forced GW to consider that this product might be perceived as competing with one of their licenseholders. After all, Cubicle 7 has their own d100 Warhammer game, Imperium Maledictum.

While the line between Warhammer 40,000 and Necromunda is a bit murky, from a licensing standpoint it seems to be a separate entity altogether, as this exchange illuminates:

But from a business perspective, that may be a distinction without a difference. As Adventurous Dad & Daughters suggests:

This isn’t just a matter of corporate reputation, either. Businesses by necessity avoid risk, and risk is typically priced into everything a business does. A licensor who is perceived as a risky partner- as in, one willing to compete with their own licensees- will likely see that risk priced into the revenue they can expect from any licensing agreements.

In other words, they’d make less money.

While we’ll almost certainly never know the “real” reason- and likely, it was a confluence of factors- sadly it seems Necromunda Roleplay is no more, an entry in the Museum of Might-Have-Beens alongside Warhammer Quest: Cursed City and Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus.

Proof in the Pudding

Last week I talked about Cubicle 7’s impressive mea culpa they posted on their blog, as well as the encouraging appointment of ex-Wargamer Editor Alex Evans as the Head of Marketing.

We didn’t have long to wait, did we.

Two weeks after the initial promise to improve, a follow-up flag was raised up the mast. “The old saying that mistakes are inevitable,” noted CEO Dom McDowall in his lead-in to the update, “and it’s dealing with them that counts, has been pointed out by a few people, and I guarantee that the team and I are absolutely committed to fixing them.”

This was followed by several updates, first on the upcoming print releases followed by their games in development. Notably, the Horus Heresy RPG was amongst them, and even if it was essentially a “no-update update” it’s important to keep the game front and center.

In addition, Cubicle 7’s new communication schedule was unveiled, which encompasses a monthly website briefing on the state of their products as well as a quarterly production update video.

It’s well worth a full read, and it’s doing exactly what it’s intended to do- helping shore up consumer confidence in Cubicle 7’s ability to deliver.

Meanwhile, it’s also worth pointing out that the site is having a Halloween Sale that includes a number of Warhammer RPG products. Trick or treat!

Important Site Update

This week’s column is already running long, so I’ll keep this one brief. As I discussed at length this past Monday, I will be looking to turn on site monetization as early as next week. That’s entirely because Substack offers us writers more features to sites that have it enabled- all articles will continue to be free. Nothing is changing!

Look at it like a “tip jar.” Always appreciated, never expected, and hopefully tucked away in some inobtrusive corner of the virtual countertop.

Also, as a head’s up if you’re on Facebook we have a page there now too. Come say hello!

RPG Bestsellers

Warhammer RPG Titles in the Top 200:

• #3 (-1, Platinum) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Fifth Edition Core Rulebook

• #4 (-1, Silver): Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Wrecker’s Point

• #6 (+1, Electrum) Imperium Maledictum: Macharian Adversary Guide

• #93 (+1, Gold). Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Sylvania: The Cursed County

• #155 (-5, Mithral). Imperium Maledictum: Core Rulebook

Total Books in Top 200: 5 (-1)

This is the week we finally see Cubicle 7’s dominance of the Top 10 start to slip, as both the Fifth Edition Core Rulebook as well as Wrecker’s Point drop down a notch. That said, Macharian Adversary Guide moving back up one was a pleasant surprise.

Sadly, we bid adieu to the Wrath & Glory Core Rulebook, which fell just outside the Top 200 this week (landing at 201). Still, in the grand scheme of things a positional change in the single-digits isn’t reflective of much beyond the fact that sales data is always in flux.

If I sell 50 copies this week and 50 copies next week, but next week someone else sells 51 and I drop down a rank… is that truly indicative of my position weakening? Probably not. So all of this should always be looked at through a broad, fish-eye lens with an eye on the bigger picture.

ICYMI

• Careless Conjuration had a review of WFRP’s 4E adventure A Day at the Trials, as well as some insights on how to integrate it into a Rough Nights mini-campaign.

• It Always Rains in Nuln shared a wonderful story about an unexpected encounter with a Warhammer artist- and the incredible gift that resulted.

• Ill Met by Morrslieb jumped in the time machine to bring us a terrific look at Death’s Dark Shadow, a WFRP adventure from the game’s first edition published in 1991!

• Finally, if you’re disappointed by the Necromunda Roleplay news, Chaosbunker’s piece on the subject also has a helpful look at suitable alternatives.

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases based on the available preorder information we have. Note that Cubicle 7’s own delivery estimates appear to be just that- estimates- which is why many products have an upcoming delivery listed for Q1 while we’re already past that.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

Shipping Q4

• Limited Edition Warhammer Fantasy Map Bundle 1 (Nov)

• Limited Edition Warhammer Fantasy Map Bundle 2 (Nov)

Shipping January 2027

• Temple of Spite

Shipping Spring 2027

• Fifth Edition: Core Rulebook (standard hardcover)

• Fifth Edition: Core Rulebook (collector’s edition)

• Fifth Edition: Character Sheets

• Fifth Edition: Reikland Dice Set

• Fifth Edition: Monsters & Adversaries Deck

• Fifth Edition: Conditions & Injuries Deck

Shipping 2027

• Sylvania: The Cursed County

• Wrecker’s Point

• Fifth Edition: Reikland Map

Shipping November

• Starter Set

• Gamemaster’s Screen

Shipping 2027

• Talagaad Adventures

Shipping November

• Limited Edition Age of Sigmar Map Bundle

Shipping Q1 2027

• Champions of Chaos: Carngrad Adventures

• Champions of Chaos: Dark Gifts Card Pack

• Champions of Chaos: Spells Lore Card Pack

• Champions of Chaos: Artefacts & Wargear Card Pack

• Champions of Chaos: Core Rulebook (Standard and Collector’s Edition)

• Champions of Chaos: Bloodwind Spoil Map

Undated

• (Nothing at this time)

Shipping Q3

• Macharian Sector Map (September 2026)

Shipping Spring 2027

• Macharian Adversary Guide

• Adeptus Mechanicus Collector’s Edition

• Adeptus Mechanicus Player’s Guide

• Adeptus Mechanicus Gamemaster’s Guide

• Adeptus Mechanicus Character Sheet Pad (Q4)

Undated

• (Nothing at this time)

Thanks for reading this week, and happy gaming!

Black Library Bibliophiles is our occasional series on the collection and display of Black Library books. From diving between the covers of deluxe editions to chasing rare treatments and notable misprints… from collectors’ well-stocked personal libraries to the curated display of trinkets, curios, and other Warhammer memorabilia… we go beyond the pages to celebrate the love of the books themselves.

While at time of writing the woefully-priced Space Marines Codex Limited Edition still appears to be in stock on the webstore, the successively-released Adeptus Custodes one- with its significantly lower sticker- had no such issues. Games Workshop adjusted to to the market, and the market delivered a sellout.

It’s certainly not for everyone, but if you’re after some extraordinary shelf candy for the Custodes wing of your library or museum, there’s a lot to appreciate here.

I recorded a brief wakthrough of the contents of the box, and will take a closer look at some of the items included within.

As I noted in the video, this is a fairly hefty box in terms of weight, and much of that is from the metal Vexilla. Drop it into a sock and you’ve got a lethal weapon in your hands.

It’s solid metal- there’s no negative space in the back where they skimped on the construction. Here’s a look at how thick the thing is.

By comparison, the lapel pin is almost an afterthought, though it’s a very nice piece in its own right.

If there was anything I was disappointed in, it’s probably the dice box. Don’t get me wrong, it looks nice, but the quality tells the moment you handle it.

These kind of inexpensive, decorative enclosures are typically crafted from paulownia, white pine, or even veneered plywood or fiberboard. My guess here is pine, though my brother’s the woodworker, not me.

Still, this is a decorative library piece, not a family heirloom, and it manages the job nicely.

Finally, these are the art prints within. The envelope they’re contained in is sealed, but I tend to be a bit ambivalent on these sorts of inclusions. Prints are nice, but don’t always go well inside of my museum displays.

Still, this is the kind of single-release product that can make a decoratively-themed shelf all by itself- and that’s exactly what it will be doing in mine.

Now, let’s see what other goodies have been decorating shelves this month!

September’s Deluxe Offerings

Those who have champagne wishes and caviar dreams for their personal libraries at home had several reasons to enjoy what hit the shelves in September.

I’m sticking with the video format here, because I’ve frequently found that the deluxe edition treatments don’t always translate well into still photography. Since it can be difficult to make out the full range of textures and hues that are used to make them pop on the shelf, a visual look shows off quite a bit more.

They’ll be a little rough while I get the hang of it, so consider it a work in progress!

Blackheart: Claws of the Maelstrom, by Marc Collins

Deathwatch, by Steve Parker

Raldoron: Revenant, by Guy Haley

Community Shelfies

I first saw these photos of Arthur Van Marcke’s magnificent collection a year ago, and asked if I could feature them in an upcoming Black Library Bibliophiles piece. I lost track of the post, though, until I recently chanced upon it again!

This is a beautiful library, filled with both books as well as decorative accents (note the Mordheim shelf, for instance), and I love how he’s kept the shelving standardized. While there’s nothing wrong with using what you have to hand, there’s a certain aesthetic that comes from letting the books shine in a uniform display. Terrific work, Arthur!

Speaking of decorative flourishes, what is it about the Blood Angels that seems to bring out the flair? This impressive display belongs to Andy Shiels, and is a treat for the eyes when you look close. For example, note the Horus Lupercal bookends containing two of the most beautiful deluxe editions the Black Library has ever produced: Dan Abnett’s Penitent and Pariah.

I also love the purity seals throughout. I’m guessing Andy house isn’t blessed with cats.

Here’s Daniel Chrichton’s Horus Heresy display. What caught my eye here was the glass fronting on the cabinets, which I’m a huge fan of for their anti-dust attributes (plus a nice glass frontage looks classy as hell). Plus, I’m always delighted to see folks display their books and miniatures together, since when it comes to Warhammer paper and plastic go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

Another thing I’m a big fan of when it comes to Black Library displays is shelf lighting. It can get pretty dark, particularly in the deeper shelves, and we all know the fading hell that sunlight can subject books to.

Here, Will Lucnik shows off how much a bit of lighting can add to a collection!

One of Magic lead designer Mark Rosewater’s signature quotations is, “restrictions breed creativity.” What to do when your available space is somewhat limited? u/Stevo1765 put together a terrific collection in his loft, one that’s full of personality!

Finally, here’s u//vonongbong’s setup- including a beautifully-fronted array of a number of deluxe edition books (which I featured at the top of this section, too!). Note also the JOYTOY action figures standing sentinel on the right shelf.

That’s it for this month’s Black Library Bibliophiles! Next time we’ll be looking at October’s deluxe edition books, more display inspirations from around the community, and plenty more!

Alright folks, today we’re gonna take a slight detour and pull back the curtain a bit on the business end of the Warhammer Wordforge. We’ll get to the books in a moment, but there’s a couple of important things I’d like to talk about first that involve the future direction of the site.

Nothing seismic, I promise!

First, let’s talk money. I’ve talked a bit before on Substack and monetization. In short, Substack makes its money from writers charging money for subscriptions, so naturally enough Substack tries to steer us towards charging money for our articles. Fair enough, but let me be absolutely, abundantly clear:

But1 in order to get the full features from Substack, I at least have to have monetization “enabled.” That doesn’t mean that I have to charge any money. Think of it this way: imagine I set two subscription levels.

Basic: Free!

Advanced: $5000 per month

Now obviously, nobody’s gonna go for Advanced2. But if I make all of my content available to folks at the Basic level (as opposed to gatekeeping select articles for Advanced subscribers3), then what you get is essentially what we have now with everyone reading for free- and Substack is happy that I’ve “monetized” the Wordforge.

Does that make sense? So the takeaway is this: please don’t be alarmed if you see a subscription offer in the next week or so when I turn on monetization. I’m just doing it to get the full range of functionality Substack provides for its platform when the monetization option is turned “on.”

All articles will be available to all tiers, so think of upgrading to a paid subscription as a ‘tip jar.’ It’s gratefully appreciated, but not required to get all of the same content multiple times a week here at the Wordforge.

Depth Charges

Finally, let’s talk metrics!

As a Substack author, there are several different ways I can measure the “success” of the Wordforge. Number of subscribers is obviously one of them, and so is number of views each article gets. Since subscribers get articles sent to their email, Substack also lets me know the “open rate” for each piece. In other words, what percentage of subscribers opened each email?

This week I did some poking around the backend and found another fascinating metric, this one called “scroll depth.” This one measures how far down the page each reader got when reading an article. If only 5% of readers are reading the last 25% of an article, it may be a good sign that your article is too long.

Let’s just say it was very insightful.

I’ve felt for awhile that the word count of Black Library Weekly (in particular) has been creeping up. They routinely now are as long as two “regular” 1500-word pieces, and not infrequently longer (10/5’s Marking a Milestone piece was just shy of 4,500 words).

So let’s just say as a result of looking at my scroll depth performance I’m going to make an effort to streamline these a little, making them more readable and giving your eyes a break4!

Cold Comforts (Redux)

I learned something interesting about Peter Fehervari this week that’s too cool not to share. In covering his signature pages from the Cold Covenant Special Edition, I had this to say last week:

Well, it turns out I was wrong. And not only that, but the truth is even cooler!

Jesse Bommersbach noted in the Black Library Nutters group that while the various inscriptions weren’t entirely unique, Fehervari was even more deliberate about them than I’d understood. Fehervari himself had responded to one of Bommersbach’s Facebook posts on the subject a couple years ago, and Bommersbach shared some screenshots.

This is wonderful insight as to what Fehervari is up to with these- and it’s definitely even more intricate (and awesome) than I’d thought. Fehervari remains one of the most unique presences in the Black Library- and it’s not hard to see why.

Wordforge on Facebook

Before we jump into everything else, just a quick reminder that for those of you on Facebook, the Warhammer Wordforge now has its own page here. Stop by and say hello!

Caveat Emptor

u/Trooper1911 shared a picture on r/BlackLibrary of some Horus Heresy books he’d come across in the wild. If you don’t recognize the cover art, don’t worry, there’s good reason.

They’re bootlegs!

Yes, piracy still impacts the physical world and not just the digital one, even in the world of books. Someone had printed these out from the eBook files, whipped up some seemingly-AI cover art, and bound them up in paperback form.

Forewarned is forearmed, and remember- the Emperor protects.

Arrivals & Departures

In this section I look at what’s coming up around the corner (Arrivals) and what’s landing on bookstore shelves (Departures).

Arrivals

The next installment of the Horus Heresy Saga is here with James Swallow’s The Flight of the Eisenstein. As usual, it will be offered in both standard hardcover as well as a Premium Edition, with the latter going up on the Wednesday Window of 4 November.

Ben Counter’s Galaxy in Flames arrives in paperback as book three of the Horus Heresy Saga. I do like the quick turnaround between hardcover and paperback on these (helped, no doubt, by them all being reprints).

Fans of fantasy are in for a two-fer this week, with Age of Sigmar’s Whisperblade by Hal Wilson arriving alongside Evan Dicken’s Old World, Cathay-based tale Blood of the Bastion. For Wilson, this marks his Black Library novel debut!

While not up for preorder, announced this week- at last!- was the second book in the Scouring series, Wrath of Terra, with John French behind the quill! While he’ll be picking up where Chris Wraight left off with Ashes of the Imperium, he noted in a short interview on the mothership that he’s very accustomed to that type of storytelling.

No timeline yet for release, but we’re definitely heading in the right direction.

Departures

Nothing new this week hitting the bookstore shelves, take a breather!

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Warhammer content!

Warhammer Wordforge

• It was a Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame weekend, and we welcomed the Hall to its new home. A remarkable ten books from the Class of 2019 made their way in, including two new authors!

• This week we were very excited to sit down for a chat with Russell Zimmerman, author of the new Auxilia. We talked at length about the experience of writing IP tie-in fiction and the writer’s craft.

• In Warhammer RPG Weekly, we looked at Chaosium’s efforts in the war against AI.

• Then in Trench Crusade Weekly, Operation Leviathan- the game’s first-ever global event- came to a close!

Tabletop Battles

• Lore Friday offered up a review of Godeater’s Son by Noah Van Nguyen by Saelfe!

Warhammer Community

• Here’s the official Scouring update from this past week, and it’s worth the read as well for French’s mini-interview.

WarhammerTV (paywalled)

• The latest three-part animation, Arkanaut, is set in Age of Sigmar and the second episode arrived this week. Look for the conclusion coming up this Friday!

Around the Webway

• Happy Orktober! Concilium Historica Imperialis dropped a very in-character look at Justin Woolley’s Da Freebooterz Code.

• Friend of the Wordforge Mira Manga sat down with Chris Wraight to discuss his Hall-of-Fame Horus Heresy novel, Scars! Mira- whose interviews are absolute delights- was kind enough to mention yer man here and even ask a question for me, which you can see at 47:425.

• Mira also teamed up with Arbitor Ian for the latest installment of their Warhammer Book Club. The entree at the table this week? None other than William King’s legendary Trollslayer!

• Not enough Mira and Ian? Howabout a video review of Tales of Heresy over at Arbitor Ian's Precinct House?

• Or maybe you were looking for a little more Fantasy coverage? Matt Dillon at Hammerblow Reviews has got you covered with a look at Gav Thorpe’s Hall of Fame book, Grudge Bearer6.

• It can be a lot of fun to jump into the time machine and look at the incredible works from the early days of Warhammer. This week the Fluffenhammer gang took a look at Space Marine, that seminal (and controversial) book by the late Ian Watson.

• The Unseen Library took a look at Richard Swan’s terrific Voice of Command and came to a similar conclusion as I did: it evokes the Gaunt’s Ghosts saga in the best possible way!

• Over at the WH40K Book Club, Jen and Keri reviewed Bjorn, the Fell-Handed by Justin D. Hill. “What we liked, we LIKED. What we didn’t like, well…”

• Jen of the WH40K Book Club also penned 12 Warhammer 40k Books That Have No Business Being This Good. It’s a terrific listpiece7, and the inclusion of David Annandale’s sublime (and underappreciated) The House of Night and Chain was spot-on.

• Finally, while not directly Black Library related, this art insight piece by Delphin Druelle on John Blanche’s depiction of the Emperor was just too good not to share!

Cold Open Stories

• No Warhammer content this week, but a very creepy audio version of What She Did to the Moon by Morgan Wodring is certainly worth a listen as we approach Halloween!

Quick Hits

• Rob J. Hayes (Anarchy’s End, No Quarter) teased the upcoming Kickstarter for the next phase of his GodEater Saga. “Fantasy in a world where humans steal magic and immortality by devouring angels!”

• Robert Rath (The Wicked and the Warped, Assassinorum: Kingmaker) is part of the Extra History team, and this week they dropped a new vid on Eleanor of Aquitaine! “Absolutely loved learning about this fascinating woman,” he shared, “and her horrible family (that keeps dying in weird ways).”

• Finally, Secret Passages #4 is now on Kickstarter! Billed as a “Retro TTRPG and Warhammer Zine,” it looks at Gorkamorka, the art of John Blanche, and features a piece by Jonathan Green (Necromancer, Magestorm)!

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming releases from the Black Library based on the available preorder information we have. As always, take all of this with a grain of salt unless it’s Games Workshop-confirmed.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, and anything in bold has been added (or updated) this week.

Upcoming but Undated

• Throne Questoris, by Victoria Hayward

• Cypher: Lord of the Fallen, by John French (Illustrated and Annotated Edition)

• Wrath of Terra, by John French

Current PODs in Production

• Hive, by Dan Abnett (Special Edition, estimated deliver-by date of 11/26)

Upcoming in 2026

• Shadow of the Silver Wolf, by Gary Kloster (hardcover, 10/31)

• Grey Knights, by Ben Counter (Special Edition, 11/7)

• Raptors: War and Shadow, by William Crowe (hardcover, 11/7)

• Crucible of Fire, by Tom R. Pike (hardcover, 11/7)

• Death Rider, by Rhuairidh James (paperback, 11/7)

• Ghost Legion, by Mike Brooks (paperback, 11/7)

• Armageddon: Season of Fire, by Jude Reid (paperback, 11/7)

• Treachery Unbound, by various (paperback, 11/7)

• Blood of the Bastion, by Evan Dicken (hardcover, 11/14)

• Whisperblade, by Hal Wilson (hardcover, 11/14)

• The Flight of the Eisenstein, by James Swallow (Horus Heresy Saga edition and standard hardcover, 11/14)

• Galaxy in Flames, by Ben Counter (Horus Heresy Saga edition paperback, 11/14)

• Chem Dog, by Callum Davis (paperback, 12/17)

• Ghazghkull Thraka: Warlord of Warlords, by Denny Flowers (paperback, 12/17)

• Ashes of the Imperium, by Chris Wraight (paperback, 12/17)

Thanks again for joining me for all the going’s on in the Black Library, and see you next week!

The Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame is the long-term, reader-participation initiative to recognize those novels that have “cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance” to the Black Library. Through the votes of readers as well as our community panel of community voices, we’ll examine the entire history of the Black Library, induct the latest winners, and vote for the next round’s candidates every other week.

Hello and welcome to the latest installment of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame- and the first one to be hosted here on the Wordforge!

As I shared in Black Library Weekly, Tabletop Battles has carried the ball this far, and are leaving it up to us here to get to the finish line.

We’re almost there, with 2022 being the last of the “catch-up years” before we switch to an annual format for the 2023 books and beyond.

Today we’re unveiling the ten winners of the Class of 2019, an incredible year that offered readers some of the best work the Black Library’s ever offered. The Horus Heresy wound down, giving rise to the Siege of Terra. Meanwhile, Age of Sigmar continued to get its legs beneath it as its fiction really started coming together.

Also, for those of you who enjoyed the Top Twenty lists I shared in The Hall Monitor, my “director’s commentary” companion piece to the Tabletop Battles articles, you’ve got a few less clicks today! Going forward, The Hall Monitor is being merged into the main Hall of Fame article, so once you get to the end of the ten inductees keep on scrolling to find the list of top-performing books in all four categories (40K, Horus Heresy, Fantasy, and Age of Sigmar) across the full range of the Hall project, as well as the “author leaderboard” for most inducted books!

Vote for the Class of 2020

Before we jump into 2019’s winners, a note that the ballot for the Class of 2020 is now live!

Remember, you may vote for as many (or as few) books as you think are worthy of being inducted!

Now, let’s see those winners!

The Envelope Please

Here are the ten books inducted into the Class of 2019.

Michael, Track of Words: “The fifteenth (!) Gaunt’s Ghosts novel, and the fourth and final instalment in the long-running The Victory arc, Dan Abnett’s Anarch picks up almost immediately after the conclusion to The Warmaster. This might just be the darkest place Abnett’s taken the Ghosts to yet.

“It’s not just dark in the violent sense either – for all that the series is very much about war stories, it’s also always featured personal dramas and tragedies, both of which are present and correct in this book. While the explosive action is undoubtedly great fun, the real reason you want to keep turning the page – and boy is this a page turner – is to understand where the characters go and what happens to them, and Abnett’s great success here is in seeing through so many characters’ journeys to their logical, (largely) satisfying conclusions.”

Michael, Track of Words: “Prolific Black Library author Guy Haley continues to explore the ‘Dark Imperium’ era of Warhammer 40,000 with Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, tackling not just the titular Archmagos Dominus and his idiosyncratic adventures but also the fate of the remaining Scythes of the Emperor.

“Never one to take the easy option, Haley draws together threads from his Dark Imperium series and his Horus Heresy novels Pharos and Wolfsbane, plus the Scythes of the Emperor arc created by Richard Williams and LJ Goulding, cleverly bridging the Heresy, pre-Dark Imperium 40k and the ‘current’ timeline.

“All told this achieves the impressive feat of being a pacy, compelling read in its own right while balancing multiple existing story arcs in a cleverly constructed narrative packed full of creativity and character.”

Michael, Track of Words: “An Age of Sigmar novel released under Black Library’s Warhammer Horror imprint, Josh Reynolds’ Dark Harvest is a sinister, atmospheric tale of old gods and lost faith in the grey swamps of Ghyran. It’s a perfect backdrop to a slow-burn story about the weight of unhappy history, mortals trying to coexist alongside unfathomable, rage-filled nature, and questions of contrasting faith which hark back to the pantheon of the Old World. Old-school, atmospheric, and properly grim!”

Michael, Track of Words: “Andy Clark’s Age of Sigmar novel Gloomspite is straight-up disturbing…and the best thing he’d written yet. It’s crammed full of insects, spiders, lurking horrors and stomach-churning fungus-based disgustingness. The Gloomspite Gitz themselves are largely kept as distant antagonists but that gives them a real sense of danger and avoids any chance of them coming across as comedic. These are not cheeky little goblins – they’re murderous, insane monsters that bring with them fear and pain and death, and the toll they take on Draconium’s defenders is appalling.

“As Age of Sigmar stories go this is dark and disturbing and comfortably up there with the best.”

Gus, Black Library Subreddit: “Another story that cuts against the grain, it’s an Age of Sigmar story- but one of the most unsetting ones. While the novel Bad Loon Rising paints the Gloomspite Gitz as the gremlins of AoS, Andy Clark turns them into an unholy mash up of Cronenberg’s body horror and Del Toro’s unsettling environments.

“This novel is messed up, in the best way. The genius is that the entire novel is from the point of view of the poor souls of a border city of Sigmar. The horror is slow burning, misterous and the Gloomspite are this dread in the air that is like all around you but not present. Andy really gets the imagination going and by the time you’re done reading you feel sick, uneasy (well I did, since I don’t enjoy body horror, but the novel does with a purpose, not just for gratification). It was definitively worthy of the recent reprint.”

Michael, Track of Words: “Rachel Harrison’s debut Black Library novel, Honourbound follows on from several excellent short stories and features Commissar Severina Raine serving with the 11th Antari Rifles as part of the decades-long Bale Stars Crusade.

“Honourbound goes above and beyond expectations, delivering a complex, characterful, brilliantly plotted and beautifully written narrative that does everything a 40k story should do and then some. ‘I have always been keen to write a story that takes in the scope of a massive conflict,’ she shared in an interview, ‘with big battles (as befits the Astra Militarum), but that has very personal stakes as well as the crusade-scale ones.’”

Gus, Black Library Subreddit: “An underrated gem. Rachel gives us a female commissar who cares without slacking or compromising her beliefs. The book is long, chaotic, and a little bit of a hard read at first, but once it gets going, wow, it never stops. It’s violent, kinetic, the antagonists are extremely capable, and well developed. It is a “deep 40k’ story, in the style of Deathwatch by Steve Parker, where everything that makes this sense grimdark gets pushed further and to a place no one had thought it could go, but there you are, enjoying every second of it.”

Michael, Track of Words: “A twitchy, jittery collection of characters and plot threads, it sees Curze – twisted, haunted, damaged – spending the final hours of his life reliving some of the key events which led him inevitably to a moment he’d long foreseen.

“As Guy Haley said in our interview, ‘Curze’s story is totally messed up, just like him. My main question about his character always is how much of his madness is the result of his own choices.’ It’s not a book which provides straight answers, but instead it offers a sharp, insightful representation of a complex character which actively encourages the reader to draw their own conclusions.”

Michael, Track of Words: “Book two in Black Library’s Siege of Terra mini-series concluding the Horus Heresy, Guy Haley’s The Lost and the Damned picks up where The Solar War left off as Horus Lupercal launches his assault on Terra itself. Overall Haley has done a fantastic job of maintaining the tone and illustrating the complexity and ferocity of these first stages on Terra, while moving the narrative on, setting the scene for the siege to ramp up in intensity, and simply telling a compelling story.”

Michael, Track of Words: “Peter Fehervari has a unique perspective on the dark heart of the 40k setting, a mind-bending balancing act which takes familiar 40k elements and explores them in wildly different ways. It’s deeply unconventional and won’t appeal to everyone; readers who want to see bombastic, adrenaline-fuelled action bringing the familiar aspects of the setting to life might well find this impenetrable and unfamiliar.

“For those looking for a story which goes way beyond the battlefield and explores Fehervari’s intriguing corner of the 40k universe, this is an incredibly rewarding read which starts to consolidate much of what’s been written before about the Dark Coil. It’s perhaps the most developed and fully-realised example of his writing yet, and feels like a distillation of everything that’s gone before into a single story which – as you might expect – doesn’t provide any concrete answers…but does set the imagination aflame.”

Michael, Track of Words: “This is a complex book. It’s bold and brave, a single coherent narrative which manages to be both action-packed and deeply characterful, with the trademark Heresy achievement of fulfilling expectations and answering key questions while throwing in a few surprises along the way. It’s the sort of book which demonstrates just how painstakingly well planned it must have been by virtue of just…working.

“After a slightly slow start while characters are (re)introduced and arcs established, it quickly develops into a fascinating exploration of a war taking place on multiple planes – the physical and metaphysical, body and mind, the void and Terra – as seen through largely human eyes, featuring numerous viewpoint characters both established and brand new, bringing together plot threads from across the breadth of the (50+ book strong) series…and it simply feels effortless.”

Jay, Warhammer Wordforge and Tabletop Battles: “Although comparatively slender in page count, Chris Wraight manages to use every word to craft one of the greatest pieces of historical lore present in the Black Library. The wordbuilding here is extraordinary, offering a look at the early Imperium we rarely get. It’s not only the novelty aspect of a largely unexplored era of the setting, but Wraight’s masterful depiction of Constantin Valdor that makes this one such a page-turner. An essential read.”

Gus, Black Library Subreddit: “Historically significant, narratively glorious. A novel that finally give the Custodes the depth they’ve been missing. Chris Wraight is great at giving us immersion without fatigue (looking at you Dan).

“What I love about this book is how we get to ride shotgun with Valdor while exploring the nascent imperium, a very different one from the megalithic, rotten institution we’ve come to know and love. If we make a must list for 30k and 40k, Valdor is the first stop in chronological order (parts of Master of Mankind intertwine before and during, same with The Last Church). And what a first stop it is.

“The Emperor has just finished the Unification Wars and taken over Terra, everything in flux, chaos, everyone is questioning everything. Also, you will never see another Custodian be interrogated by the Adeptus Arbites, so for that alone, this is a must read.”

Congratulations to all, and especially to first-time winners Andy Clark and Rachel Harrison!

The Leaderboards

As promised, here are the updated leaderboards. We’ll start with the list of authors, ranked by the number of books they have had inducted into the Hall.

With three books in the Class of 2019, Guy Haley is having a moment as he leaps up the table into a top-three position. It’s always great to see new names get added, and we had two first-time winners this week.

Now, here are the top twenty books that got the highest level of support in the public voting. While not every book had enough votes to be inducted, this kind of acclaim is an accomplishment all its own!

Warhammer 40,000

No changes to the 40K leaderboard. 75% support has remained a fairly challenging barrier to entry. On the other hand…

Horus Heresy

Three of this week’s books landed on the Top Twenty for the Heresy, while four books were knocked off their perch at the bottom. We bid aideu to Graham McNeill’s Vengeful Spirit, Guy Haley’s Titandeath and Pharos, and Slaves to Darkness by John French.

Age of Sigmar

This table is still in a good amount of flux, with the Age of Sigmar property only recently having been founded. Nagash the Undying King by Josh Reynolds, Matt Westbrook’s Bladestorm, and The Tainted Heart by C L Werner all depart the table, with this week’s inductees taking the top two spots and setting a high bar!

Warhammer Fantasy

No changes here. We won’t see a new Fantasy book for a few years to come yet, when McNeill’s Lords of the Lance arrives in 2024.

The Hall of Glory

That’s all for this week! Congrats to the winners, thanks for reading and don’t forget to vote!

And that’s a wrap!

This week, Trench Crusade’s first-ever global campaign, Operation Leviathan, came to its exciting conclusion as the forces of the Faithful pushed the Fallen back from the Carcass Front.

Each week thanks to the Trench Wire we’ve been able to monitor the campaign’s progress, which was the result of over 8,000 submitted games of Trench Crusade played all over the world. To give you a sense of what that looks like, imagine just over 91,000 miniatures laying on their sides representing the casualties from those matches.

I know, easy, right? Let’s just say it’s a lot.

While the Faithful marched triumphant, it was hardly a rout. Both the UK (Northern Sector) and the online community (the Aerial Raiding Columns) managed a Minor Fallen victory, while Gabriel’s Sword Straits (Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific) saw the Faithful onslaught brought to a standstill. Only one Sector managed a Major Fallen Victory, though, and it was the United States. Make of that what you will.

At the outset, Factory Fortress promised that the outcome of the campaign would have real consequences for the world and its players, and sure enough while there were significant lore implications the Faithful reaped an addition fruit of victory: a new warband Patron in Scaled Saint Bartolomeo.

And then there were these…

The Roll of Honour

As an additional reward for the many who helped make this event a success, Factory Fortress commissioned a series of awards to be given out by Observers. As gamers, we’re long accustomed to recognition for competitive excellence, and here was no exception.

But the success of this event hinged on a lot more than just tabletop tactical nous, and I loved to see that the Observers bestowed this award for a wide range of contributions. For instance, some were awarded to those who helped make the events themselves a success:

Others to those who have helped build up a Trench Crusade community in their area:

Strange Days Comics and Games has promoted Trench Crusade since its opening day, and deserves recognition for the amazing support of the community. Stop by if you’re ever in Port Townsend, Washington!

And of course, sometimes all it took to stand out was memorably spitting in the eye of adversity:

As a former friendly, local game store owner myself, I know well the importance of both rewarding achievement as well as contribution when it comes to building a community around a game. The Wizards Play Network featured my little store three times in retailer-facing articles about how to create exciting, dynamic prerelease events for Magic: the Gathering, and this is a crucial part of building for success1.

In the days and weeks ahead, Factory Fortress will surely be reviewing the information and lessons they’ve gathered from the past few weeks with an eye on what worked and what might need improvement for the next go-round. But almost certainly this won’t be the last global event we see between the Faithful and the Fallen.

Miniature of the Week

This week’s build is a Heretic Raider from Carcass Front.

Ol’ Nahash here comes in two variants in the Carcass Front box, and I opted for variant A with the serrated bayonet. With all the kids sports I was ferrying them to this week build time was at a premium, so it was nice to be able to squeeze in a simpler build, yet rich in detail. The aquatic theme to these models is terrific, making them aesthetically one of my favorite factions visually.

I couldn’t quite get Nahash’s left leg to line up as nicely as I wanted with his body, but otherwise he was a very straightforward build.

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Trench Crusade content!

Trench Crusade Official

• Aside from the announcement of victory and Roll of Honor (both covered above), there was no other official news this week. Take a breather, it’s been a wild ride!

Wargame Content Sites

• Wargamer’s own Mollie Russell interviewed Tuomas Pirinen in a terrific feature, “How Trench Crusade tells some of the most exciting stories in miniature wargames”

• Tabletop Battles updated its Faction Focus on the Court of the Seven Headed Serpent, taking account all of the rule updates from the October Rule Review.

Community Content

• Grimdark Fantasy dropped a lore overview of the different locations central to the Carcass Front. If you wanted to get a sense of place for the campaign, this is a fine place to start!

• The Last Scribe walked through “whole life of an ordinary soldier of 1914, from the day they are chosen to long after they are dead” in this nicely narrated and scored longform video.

• Real Alpharius shared some progress on a Trench Crusade animation, Lost Ground, on the official Discord. “Open to feedback and collaborators for the project,” they noted as well!

• scannerbarkly rang in the Faithful victory this week with a look at some of the lore repercussions.

• Finally, if the Fallen’s defeat in Operation Leviathan has been keeping you up at night, The Sleepy Hollow has you covered with a long lore compilation video, “3+ Hours of Trench Crusade Lore to Fall Asleep To (No AI)”

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases from Trench Crusade based on the available preorder information we have.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

• Trench Crusade Rulebook (hardcover, 11/30)

That’s it for this week, see you again in seven days’ time!

Funnily enough, the most interesting RPG news this week had nothing to do with Warhammer. But while Chaosium’s housecleaning on DriveThruRPG was restricted to their own properties, it pertains to an issue firmly in frame for all role-playing game designers and other creatives: the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in content creation.

As shared on their blog, Chaosium triggered the removal of more than two dozen titles from DriveThruRPG that were community-created, due to suspected use of AI in their production. While they chose not to disclose the names of the titles and/or creators of the removed releases, they did give an overview of their detection process as well as what they’re looking for:

In one sense, this is a headache Cubicle 7 doesn’t necessarily have to contend with. Since it doesn’t offer an open gaming license through which community works are permitted1, it preempts having to police such content for violations of its own policy.

On the other hand, Cubicle 7 is in a creative industry, and the use of AI is still very much a developing concern.

Component Upgrade

One of the things I’ve been paying attention to in Trench Crusade Weekly is what the personnel acquisitions Factory Fortress has undertaken say about its ambition for the property and their place in the gaming space. For example, they’ve secured the services of Marc Gascoigne- one of the three godfathers of the Black Library- to head up licensing opportunities. Furthermore, they’ve started to build up their body of fiction with a trio of Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame authors (Gav Thorpe, Graham McNeill, and Josh Reynolds).

In a similar vein, I was delighted to note that Cubicle 7 had recently landed Alex Evans, former Editor-in-Chief of Wargamer. I’ve spoken before about my perception of Cubicle 7 as “the little engine that could,” a company that has heavily focused on delivering its core products at the expense of some of its essential business functions like order fulfillment and corporate communications- as well as some of the community frustration that that has engendered.

Evans was at the helm of Wargamer since 2021, when Network N brought him in to help spearhead the site’s overhaul and relaunch. Under his watch Wargamer moved from being a niche, PC-gaming site to a more broad-based news and opinion platform covering the hobby from digital to tabletop. And while sure, he couldn’t resist the occasional cheeky (yet self-aware) hot take, I appreciated how Wargamer tended to avoid the easy engagement farming rife in the segment and instead focused on more substantive coverage.

Asked for comment, Evans had this to say:

While of course the proof is always in the pudding, I think this represents a real statement of intent from Cubicle 7 and should be seen as an encouraging sign of what’s ahead. Last week’s blog post acknowledging some of the community’s frustrations and pledging improvement seemed to be positively received, and if followed by action will go a long way towards bringing the company’s business side up to par with its gaming development talent.

RPG Bestsellers

Warhammer RPG Titles in the Top 200:

• #2 ( - , Platinum) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Fifth Edition Core Rulebook

• #3 ( - , Silver): Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Wrecker’s Point

• #7 (-3, Electrum) Imperium Maledictum: Macharian Adversary Guide

• #94 (-13, Gold). Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Sylvania: The Cursed County

• #150 (+42, Mithral). Imperium Maledictum: Core Rulebook

• #194 (-21, Adamantine). Wrath & Glory: Core Rulebook

Total Books in Top 200: 6 (+1)

This was a terrific week for Cubicle 7. Sure, Sylvania continued its natural, life-cycle descent and the Wrath & Glory Core Rulebook nearly fell off the table, but WFRP’s Fifth Edition Core Rulebook has continued to enjoy a terrific run.

Remember, the Wrath & Glory Core Rulebook was originally released in 2020. For it to see any time on the Top 200 six years later is a win.

Wrecker’s Point, meanwhile, had a splashy, top-five debut, and the recently-released Macharian Adversary Guide is holding quite steady.

With the inclusion of metallic tier sales data, we now have a better picture of how each book is performing. For instance, the WFRP 5E’s book is currently at Platinum, meaning it has sold a minimum of 1,001 copies but less than the 2,501 copies needed for Mithral.

It’s important to note when considering this that it is only a reflection of how many copies have been sold on DriveThruRPG. It does not account for hard-copy sales at a game store, for instance, or even the full amount of how many copies have been ordered or preordered on Cubicle 7’s webstore (since unredeemed codes are a thing).

ICYMI

• Geek Origins released a terrific little history of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay this week: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The Grimdark RPG That Refused to Die for 40 Years. “This video tells the story of how a schoolboy wargame in Lincoln became Warhammer,” it notes, “how Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and The Enemy Within were born, and how the game was handed from Flame to an Italian publisher, to Hogshead, Black Industries, Fantasy Flight and finally Cubicle 7, outliving three of the companies that published it, right up to its fifth edition and its fortieth anniversary.” All in less than 30 minutes, too!

• The Lorebeards recently held a livestream with WFRP/The Old World writer/developer Vera Simila, whose credits include the High Elf Player's Guide and Sea Wardens of Cothique. While not specifically Warhammer-focused, the topic was a relevant one: how to create memorable villains for your players in role-playing.

• A good conversation on the u/warhammerfantsyrpg Subreddit this week occurred after a WFRP 2E “greybeard” asked if 5E was worth trying.

• Getting into the Spooky Season spirit, Ill Met by Morrslieb reviewed the WFRP 4e scenario, Something Knocking.

• 1Shot Adventures shared five tips for GM’s looking to run Power Behind the Throne.

• Finally, if you’re looking for a point of entry for a The Old World watch-it-played video series, Glory of Golden State Gaming kicked their latest season off this week!

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases based on the available preorder information we have. Note that Cubicle 7’s own delivery estimates appear to be just that- estimates- which is why many products have an upcoming delivery listed for Q1 while we’re already past that.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

Undated (and now Uncertain)

• Necromunda Roleplay Core Set

Shipping Q3

• Limited Edition Warhammer Fantasy Map Bundle 1 (July 2026)

• Limited Edition Warhammer Fantasy Map Bundle 2 (July 2026)

Shipping Q4

• Temple of Spite (Q4)

Shipping Spring 2027

• Fifth Edition: Core Rulebook (standard hardcover)

• Fifth Edition: Core Rulebook (collector’s edition)

• Fifth Edition: Character Sheets

• Fifth Edition: Reikland Dice Set

• Fifth Edition: Monsters & Adversaries Deck

• Fifth Edition: Conditions & Injuries Deck

Shipping 2027

• Sylvania: The Cursed County

• Wrecker’s Point

• Fifth Edition: Reikland Map

Shipping Q4

• Starter Set (Sept/Oct)

• Gamemaster’s Screen (Sept/Oct)

Shipping 2027

• Talagaad Adventures

Shipping Q1

• Champions of Chaos: Dark Gifts Card Pack (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Spells Lore Card Pack (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Artefacts & Wargear Card Pack (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Core Rulebook (Standard and Collector’s Edition) (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Bloodwind Spoil Map (Q1)

Shipping Q3

• Limited Edition Age of Sigmar Map Bundle (July 2026)

Shipping Q1 2027

• Champions of Chaos: Carngrad Adventures

Undated

• (Nothing at this time)

Shipping Q3

• Macharian Sector Map (September 2026)

Shipping Q4

• Adeptus Mechanicus Collector’s Edition

• Adeptus Mechanicus Player’s Guide

• Adeptus Mechanicus Gamemaster’s Guide

• Adeptus Mechanicus Character Sheet Pad (Q4)

Shipping Spring 2027

• Macharian Adversary Guide

Undated

• (Nothing at this time)

Thanks for reading this week, and happy gaming!

Amongst the books hitting store shelves this week was Auxilia, the debut Black Library novel from author Russell Zimmerman. While he’d probably scoff at the assertion, Auxilia to me had something of an air of inevitability to it. After all, we’ve seen a number of authors traverse the short-story-to-longform pipeline, and Zimmerman’s Warhammer ascent has been about as by-the-numbers as they come.

The steps have evolved over time; from the pages of Inferno! we’ve progressed into digital shorts and then eShort Theme Weeks1, and it was one of the latter that first brought Zimmerman to writing Warhammer. Released as part of April 2025’s Heretic Astartes Week (review), Seven Ships offered up a tale of the Death Guard’s slow but inexorable spread of rot and contagion. That year also brought us his second piece, Resounding, which was included in November’s Death and Duty: An Astra Militarum Anthology (review).

Three more stories awaited us in 2026, first Answered Prayers in the pages of White Dwarf #525, followed by Swift Resolution. The latter story was interesting in that it was quietly published as part of the Warhammer Alliance website, a program aimed at helping Warhammer hobby groups get established in schools. While the site’s story content also included Born of the Storm by Edoardo Albert and Noah Van Nguyen’s Monster, those stories had been published before; Swift Resolution represented something new.

Finally, Burden of Excellence is the only brand-new story anchoring a collection of digital shorts getting the paper treatment in Treachery Unbound, the latest 40K anthology going up for preorder this coming Saturday (10/24).

Not only has Zimmerman been fairly prolific, but he’s also highly accessible, active in the different communities he writes for and enjoys (such as discussing BattleTech here at Tabletop Battles). He graciously agreed to an interview for the Warhammer Wordforge.

RZ: I’m still getting a handle on that, in part because of the different scale of the operations, and in part because the majority of that Shadowrun and BattleTech fiction went through essentially one or two editors, a couple dudes I’ve been working with for ages now, and we’ve gotten very comfortable and confident.

With Black Library there’s a much more conservative, professional approach, with a lot more steps in the process and a lot more editorial input. There are novels I’ve gotten green-lit for Shadowrun after just a fact to face conversation hanging out in a hotel lobby at Gen Con or AdeptiCon. Black Library prefers a bit more structure and they want to make sure your idea’s solid before things progress.

RZ: Storytelling-wise, one adjustment is absolutely a matter of scale. Most of my Shadowrun yarns are about a hard-boiled noir private eye, and while Jimmy’s got a pretty sprawling group of supporting characters – ‘you are who you know,’ as the Shadowrun idiom goes – and that cast of characters includes his neighborhood, it’s still a jump to go from his stories, or other first-person narratives with Dash Red Clay or Kenji, from other Shadowrun stories… to a BattleMech company, with a dozen MechWarriors and all their supporting technicians and pilots… and then to an Imperial Guard regiment!

So that difference, zooming out to a bigger picture, juggling a larger cast of characters, still trying to make it all feel lived in and grounded and to make characters matter, that’s definitely a different idea.

I go hard on whatever it is when I’m mentally switching from one genre to another. I watch movies that get me in the right headspace, I change up the video games I’m playing, and – of course – I hobby, working up kit-bashes and doing some painting for one army or another. Whatever I can do to get in the zone and stay locked in, I just bust out all that geeky stuff and focus.

RZ: Different game worlds definitely run on their own, to think of it in video game terms a little bit, ‘game engines,’ that’s for sure, and that’s definitely where familiarity with these games comes in, having it ahead of time.

I didn’t stumble across Black Library on accident; I knew about Warhammer fiction because I grew up reading Warhammer fiction, just like with Shadowrun, BattleTech, Vampire, and everything else I’ve done.

RZ: I think instead of focusing on the tropes, I try to reach past each trope and find the humanity, the common ground that readers might have with these characters. That’s the important part to me, telling stories about characters folks are going to care about, are going to be able to – on some level – empathize with. Most of us aren’t super-soldiers or elven ninjas or driving giant robots for a living, so for me the important thing is to go past that surface level and find the things we do have in common with these characters; we all know what it’s like to work under a middle manager we don’t get along with, or we’ve all been new at a job and struggled to feel like we fit in.

As a historian, I’ve sometimes defaulted, with a shrug, mid-lecture, to a phrase like “people are gonna people,” as I tell students about young historical figures falling in love, or grieving the loss of a family member, or carving graffiti of dick jokes on ancient Roman walls. I think “people are gonna people” applies to Warhammer and Shadowrun and stuff, too. A lot of the trappings are very different, and the scale and nature of many of the problems they face, but at the end of the day, we’re writing stories about people, and that’s what can shine through.

RZ: So far, no, but that’s partially down to the fact I tend to not pitch for a faction I’m not pretty comfortable with to begin with, and that comfort comes from being interested in them already, and staying pretty abreast of their fiction/lore. No one’s slung me a curveball just yet, or pushed anything through that’s required major rewrites or changes.

I write in big enough settings that I’ve so far been pretty able to just carve out my own little corner and play in it, not really upsetting the apple cart for anyone else, and not having my precious apple cart tipped over, either.

RZ: By enjoying the gig, at its heart. I don’t regret or resent playing in someone else’s sandbox, I get to play with sand, y’know?

I’ve joked for a long time that I think like a player, not a GM, and for those that maybe aren’t as into RPGs, lemme break that down a bit. In a tabletop RPG, the game master is the one that designs the whole world, and populates it, and creates a framework to challenge the players, and handles all of the monsters, and threats, and the repercussions of the players’ actions. What the players do is look at the information the GM gives them, look at the existing lore when they bust open a book to make a character, and they focus on making one dude, who fits into all that.

That’s still the headspace I’m in, when I’m writing a novel – I look at what’s already there, I look at the plot hooks in the existing lore, I look at the friction points and the things that would make a good tie-in spot, I look at the existing history… and that’s how I get my characters, my story ideas, my narrative structure. Writing Answered Prayers wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t already had the War for Armageddon, and that canonical, existing, Armageddon Steel Legion, and their canonical, existing, push across open ground, etc, etc.

The stuff that’s already there, it’s not limitations that hem me in, it’s a framework for me to hang my story on, and it’s where I get my story ideas in the first place! It’s great, it’s like someone else does half the job for me, handles all the big picture stuff, and then I get to just look for neat spots and zoom in and fill in the cracks.

RZ: I mean, more than anything else I think it just kind of shines a spotlight on the emotional stakes that are already there. It’s not like there wasn’t any romance in BattleTech until Valentine’s Day 2025 or whatever, when that first one came out, you know? The first thing Grayson Carlyle does when he sees an enemy MechWarrior in Willian Keith’s Decision at Thunder Rift is think about how hot she is, and then they fall in love and start a family. Mike Stackpole’s old stuff went on and on about this character’s chest hair and that character’s makeup and they had all sorts of forbidden romances and secret affairs and meet hates that turn from enemies to lovers. The foundational fiction of the setting is full of romances, and all the stompy robots and lasers and hex maps don’t take that away.

And I think the same’s true in Warhammer, honestly.

And that means sometimes finding love, or at least lust, even under stressful circumstances and in a grimdark setting. There’s always been room for romance in Warhammer fiction, and I think we’re hitting a cool era, with a fan base that’s getting a little older and a little more grounded on average than maybe it used to be, that’s more and more okay with that.

RZ: On that one, I lean on editorial a little more than normal. I’m not afraid to ask them, ‘hey, what is this story for, again?’ Writing something for White Dwarf or Warhammer Academy, you have a different set of assumptions about faction familiarity (of course you also have different assumptions about available word count, too!). But yeah, exposition is…tricky. It might be the trickiest part of this whole gig, honestly.

But I think the answer is that it really comes down to each project, and to each lore question you might have – how much room do I have to explain it, how common is the knowledge, how crucial is the knowledge to getting the story, to understanding the stakes, the twist, the threat? It’s different every time, and sometimes you nail it and, I know some folks will point out, sometimes you don’t.

But you’ve got to weigh a lot of different qualifiers when you’re deciding on explanations and exposition. It’s definitely an art, not a science, and I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule, I’m afraid.

RZ: Well, first off, thanks for thinking it was the right way! That means it worked okay. I wanted that sort of slow, crawling, dread, rather than quick staccato action, specifically because that’s how the Death Guard are, and how they should feel, I think. It’s kind of an extension of their tabletop vibe, right? Low movement speed, but a slowly expanding aura of oppressive dread? It’s kind of their thing, this inexorable, crawling, threat.

So there, I took the risk and I wanted the pacing of the story to match the pacing of the characters in the story, basically, and I’m glad to hear that, for you at least, it worked out!

RZ: I worked really hard at it, and I still wasn’t sure how I managed it. It’s definitely a harder balancing act than most, it feels like. I know I did multiple editing passes just looking at adjectives, just looking at describing monstrosities, just making it all worse. It was something I really wanted to nail, and it came down to really trying to make the grotesque so absolutely common that it was kind of taken for granted by our narrator, showing how twisted he was getting on the inside (as much as others were on the outside).

RZ: Uhh…everything? It meant everything, honestly, being in good company just being picked and listed at all, but then being neck and neck with Avalon, being neck and neck with Bryan, it was just really fantastic.

Avalon has turned into a really cool person to chat with as we’ve both moved from project to project and we excitedly bounce ideas off each other, and Bryan and I hang out every chance we get, we’ve been friends for years at this point, and knowing how hard working they both are, and how absolutely great at this job they are, it was really something sharing the pedestal(s) with those two.

The fan response has been fantastic, not least of which because it felt like Seven Ships was hard to write, like I said. I managed to start with a real uphill climb as my first Black Library work, but when other folks thought I nailed the landing, that was when I really felt like I’d nailed that landing.

One of the coolest things anyone said over on Reddit was that they thought Seven Ships was part of Chris Wraight’s Death Guard stuff – that was when I really, really, felt like I must have done okay with it, and treated the Legion well.

RZ: I think the trick I pulled there was just making myself do it. Not over-explaining it, not dragging the moment out, just yanking the tooth very matter-of-factly. A squad of Death Company against half a unit of Guardsmen? It’s over in no time flat, right?

Most game tables, you wouldn’t even necessarily have to roll the dice, odds are your opponent would just say “ugh, you want me to just pull my Guardsmen?” And I wanted that to hit, I wanted it to hit that fast and that hard. And that meant not giving myself the time to slow down and explain it, just to make it happen, and move past it, and then take time after the carnage to feel a little shock, and then… to hit home the universe, to basically make our survivor just shrug and have no choice but to keep going.

Because what else is there for him to do? The unit’s not even a footnote, the attack itself is probably not even a footnote, in the grand history of the planet. What’s another half-dozen deaths, in the middle of Armageddon?

So I didn’t want to dwell on it while it was happening, and in a way I couldn’t overdo dwelling on it after the fact, either. The war had to keep on churning. The world had to keep on turning.

RZ: Because I don’t think any of this should be a secret. Because I don’t want anyone to think they can’t do it, too. Some of my favorite panels I’ve ever done are when there’s multiple writers, and we’d all break down our process for a novel, and they’d all be so different… and I loved that, because the take-home was always “so find what works for you.”

My buddy RL King treats writing like work, sits down at 9:00 am, writes until 5:00 pm, you know, that type of schedule, sticks with a really disciplined regimen. That’s what works for her, and her output is awesome, and her content is fantastic, and it’s all great. I…don’t do that. She’s a ‘damage over time’ writer, I’m a ‘burst damage’ writer, I have a whole different process, that sounds insane to her, but is what works for me.

And I love when we tell people that, when a group of writers tells people that, because you can kind of see a little lightbulb go on, and there’s this ding, and people realize there’s no one way to do this gig, there’s no one right way, and I hope that’s really liberating for them.

So yeah, I’m just not afraid to be honest about the process, about how there’s not one way to do it, there’s not one answer, and that I’m not special, that we’re not special, for doing it.

But it’s not magic, it’s not impossible. We’re just geeks, too. And we’re all just geeks that found a method that worked for us, and that put in the time to get better at it.

One of the fun little Black Library mysteries that has recently popped up is the curious case of a leaked copy (or perhaps copies) of James Swallow’s The Flight of the Eisenstein (Horus Heresy Saga edition).

First it appeared on Vinted, where some lucky punter managed to nab it for the princely sum of £3. A week later, a copy sold on eBay for £49.55. The question, of course, was whether this was a legit copy or something else entirely, and given that we hadn’t by that point seen the cover art for the book it was anyone’s guess.

Well, when the mothership posted this week and revealed the cover art, it seemed to confirm the provenance of that leaked copy. How it escaped into the wild and ended up on Vinted to begin with remains an unsolved mystery, but that makes the auctioned copy one of the rarer oddities out there from the Black Library.

Of course, unlike a physical copy of Umbra Sumus, the value of the “fell off a truck” Flight of the Eisenstein will almost certainly evaporate once the official copies of the book are released. After all, how can you prove that any particular copy is the copy, right?

If I’m the person holding one of those copies right now, you’d better believe I’d be looking into how to get it slabbed and dated- if for no other reason than as a historical oddity. But for others, perhaps just having possession of it is story enough- and that’s perfectly fine, too.

Getting By with a Little Help from His Friends

It’s not often you’ll find a feature I can put in all three of the Weeklies here on the Wordforge, but the news this week about an upcoming campaign to help artist Karl Kopinski certainly hits the trifecta. That shows the incredible reach and influence he’s had over the length of his career.

Beyond being a studio illustrator for Games Workshop from 1998-2005, Kopinski’s art was a mainstay in the Black Library’s foundational Inferno! magazine, helping bring the worlds of Warhammer to visual life each month. His work also has graced role-playing game books from Rogue Trader’s Lure of the Expanse to Deathwatch’s Mark of the Xenos, and he’s illustrated more than two hundred Magic: the Gathering cards over the years.

Sadly, Kopinski’s health in recent years has been deteriorating. He’s been battling myeloma for several years before strokes and a heart attack left him unable to work for a time, and the road to recovery has been long and difficult.

Now, Factory Fortress is spearheading a campaign to help. “Karl is my friend as well as my housemate during my GW days,” noted Tuomas Pironen, “so I am so glad we can help him and his family.”

Joining them is MyMiniFactory and a large roster of contributing STL creators for a campaign that is preparing to launch. Amongst the other goodies you can receive in return for your support is a brand-new and exclusive Trench Crusade model, making this one of the best kinds of offers: one where you can do well by doing good.

Cold Comforts

When it comes to signing the autograph pages for deluxe editions, I’m not sure any Black Library author takes their mission quite as seriously as Cold Covenant’s Peter Fehervari.

Fehervari, you see, makes each autograph page a completely unique item, adding not only his John Hancock but also a one-of-a-kind message and/or glyph-like illustration. For instance, here’s what greeted me when I unboxed mine:

Sam Schwartz in the Black Library Nutters community on Facebook has started up an effort to collect all of the different ones. If you picked up a Special Edition of Cold Covenant, make sure to drop on by to leave a picture of yours- and enjoy images of the ones others have received!

Bulk Discount (Redux)

Last week I talked a bit about the wave of order cancellations we saw in the wake of the Cold Covenant Special Edition. Given that these appeared to be from folks who disclosed that they had ordered multiple copies, it seemed possible that Games Workshop was clamping down a bit on the practice.

Since then, a new possibility has emerged over at the Black Library subreddit.

If you subscribe to Hanlon’s Razor (“never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, error, or carelessness”), then the wonky credit card system seems likelier than this being due to anti-scalper countermeasures. Since none of us (that I’m aware of) are inside GW’s IT department, all we can do is continue to observe, consider, and speculate.

As I said last week,

Whether its system issues or aggressive consumer protection, a little acknowledgement goes a long way.

If nothing else, this seems like a good time to remind everyone that I strongly recommend using vouchers on the Warhammer site. I’ll typically buy mine a couple of days in advance of the preorder window, so that when it comes time to execute I’m ready to go.

Wordforge on Facebook

Before we jump into everything else, just a quick reminder that for those of you on Facebook, the Warhammer Wordforge now has its own page here. Stop by and say hello!

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Earlier this year, my editors at Tabletop Battles (TTB) let me know that they were discontinuing their hosting of Black Library Weekly. With the first one having run on 03 March, 2025 (I’ll link it here as an item of historical curiosity), it had a run of over a year but wasn’t quite doing what the editors had hoped. It generated immediate traffic, but not the “long-tail” readership that they need to see for a return on their investment.

That makes complete sense. After all, how many people do you think are going back and reading the “back issues” of Black Library Weekly? But there were two important takeaways for me from that.

First, if it wasn’t for their support, Black Library Weekly would never have come to be. I was hugely grateful for TTB taking a chance on the column- to that point, I was just an occasional series writer- and I’m still proud to be writing for TTB today.

Second, if they hadn’t ended it, the Warhammer Wordforge itself would never have happened, either. Longtime readers will recall that I started this site as a way to continue running Black Library Weekly- and since then its grown into so much more.

And so it is in a similar spirit of gratitude that I share with you that TTB’s hosting of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame has reached its conclusion too- and not for entirely dissimilar reasons. Each biweekly installment generates a lot of excitement, but as the drumbeat goes on and we move from year to year, those older articles don’t continue to generate as much traffic- the lifeblood of any content engine.

So what does this mean for the Hall? Three things.

First, it will be continuing without interruption. Just as Black Library Weekly made a seamless transition from TTB to here, so too will the Hall. Because Trench Crusade Weekly has the Saturday slot, we’ll be running the Hall every other Sunday beginning this coming one, 10/25!

Second, for those who have been enjoying the companion “director’s commentary” piece I’ve run concurrently here on the Wordforge, The Hall Monitor will be merging into the main feature! You’ll get everything all in one go rather than having to read two articles.

Finally, we’ll be able to expand the Readers’ Hall of Fame project itself. I’ve talked before about the potential for doing for novellas and even short stories what we’ve been doing for novels, and why we ultimately didn’t. Running the Hall here on the Wordforge means that those considerations will certainly be getting a rethink. We’re coming up on the end of the Hall of Fame coverage for novels (what I’ve called “maturity,” meaning we are current with the present time and then will revisit the Hall of Fame annually for a new class of books).

So please join me in thanking Tabletop Battles for the tremendous support they’ve extended since this whole initiative kicked off last November, and here’s to an exciting future of the project!

Arrivals & Departures

In this section I look at what’s coming up around the corner (Arrivals) and what’s landing on bookstore shelves (Departures).

Arrivals

It’s that time of year again. With Games Workshop already putting Christmas ornaments and festive seasonals up for order, you knew Da Red Gobbo wasn’t far behind. This year’s installment is Da Red Gobbo’s Reckoning, penned by Chem Dog author Callum Davis.

Next, there’s the official announcement of James Swallow’s Flight of the Eisenstein. As the fourth installment of the Horus Heresy Saga, we knew it was coming up- and not just because of the aforementioned book leak- but it’s great to see the Premium Edition we’ll get to grace our shelves with.

Then for this week’s goodies in the Sunday Preview, first up is the Special Edition of Ben Counter’s Grey Knights. In addition to the deluxe treatment, it will also contain a bonus short story1.

We mentioned Da Red Gobbo earlier, but two more hardbacks are going up for preorder this week. William Crowe’s Raptors: War and Shadow joins Crucible of Fire by Tom R. Pike in standard hardcover.

It’s a bumper crop of books this week, with Jude Reid’s Armageddon: Season of Fire arriving in paperback. While we usually expect to wait longer between the hardcover and paperback editions of a book, I suspect the novel’s tie-in role for 11th Edition of the tabletop game put it on the fast track.

Then Rhuairidh James’ Death Rider (review) arrives alongside Ghost Legion by Mike Brooks.

Finally, almost burying the lede here is a brand new anthology collection, Treachery Unbound! A look at the cover reveals the names Jude Reid, Peter Fehervari, Jonathan Beer, and Mike Vincent, but no news yet as to whether these are reprinted tales, brand new ones, or a mix of both.

My guess is that it will have at least some previously-released stories for two reasons. First, because it’s in paperback, and the last new-story -driven anthology, May’s World Ablaze (review), was a hardcover release.

And second, earlier this year when I reviewed the anthology No Peace Among Stars I noted the conspicuous absence of Jonathan Beer’s Opportunity Cost. It was conspicuous because that anthology consisted of Theme Week eShort reprints, and while the other four stories from Cult Mechanics Week were present, that one was omitted.

Just a guess, but we’ll know soon enough!

Departures

This week saw us get our grubby mitts on two new releases: Peter Fehervari’s Cold Covenant, alongside Russel Zimmerman’s Auxilia. In addition, both Apostle by David Annandale (review) and John French’s Dropsite Massacre (review) were released in paperback. Plenty to read ahead!

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Warhammer content!

Warhammer Wordforge

• This week’s feature was an audiobook review of Brutal Kunnin’, by Mike Brooks. Lots of orks, and lots of orky voices thanks to Tom Allenby’s narration!

• In Warhammer RPG Weekly, I examined the strong accountability statement that Cubicle 7 Games posted last week, promising to do better as a company. Powerful stuff!

• Then in Trench Crusade Weekly, it’s an in-person look at the incredible canvas map from Jared Blando- plus a new model release!

Tabletop Battles

• No Black Library content this week.

Warhammer Community

• So this isn’t specifically Black Library, but I join a number of folks in wishing that it could be! The lore around this year’s Grand Narrative Event dropped this week, and it’s incredible stuff. Hey James Workshop, a Kaelen Voss novel when?

• With the Khazalite Holds Army Set making its way into the wild, that means we get a new bit of flash fiction on the mothership as part of the Chronicles of Run series!

WarhammerTV (paywalled)

• This past week saw the first episode of Arkanaut land. The latest three-part animation, this one’s set in Age of Sigmar and the next episode drops this Friday!

Around the Webway

• Showrunner Mike Flanagan, who is part of the team bringing the Warhammer 40,000 series to Amazon, recently sat down for an interview with The Process Unlocked. While the interview was wide-ranging across Flanagan’s other projects as well, Mars Garrett of Bell of Lost Souls kindly excerpted the Warhammer-relevant bits here.

• The Poorhammer Podcast dropped their take on Robert Rath’s The Wicked and the Warped, “the third best “From Enemies to Lovers” story that I watched recently, right behind Bridgerton Season 2 and Malfoid memes.”

• The Fluffenhammer gang is back with their issue-by-issue crawl of Warhammer Monthly! This week they examined issue 32 and the return of Ehprael Stern!

• Fans of Gaunt’s Ghosts- or those keen to explore the series- can check out Arbitor Ian’s latest lore video, all about the Tanith First & Only.

• One of my favorite Black Library communities online is the Black Library subreddit, and this thread by u/OWN_SD, “Let’s talk about the unfinished/cancelled novel series of Warhammer part 2” is a great example of why. Seriously, this would make for a fantastic blog article, and here it is as a Reddit post.

Cold Open Stories

• All this month Cold Open Stories is releasing brand-new audiobooks specially-selected short stories, and it’s another 40K one this week! The Shaking is by Jared Lollar and performed by Robb Conlon, and was originally included as part of the ‘Enemy Within’ series.

Quick Hits

• Zeo Genesis rolled out a new short story by Robbie MacNiven (Oaths of Damnation, Vagabond Squadron). A sci-fi miniatures wargame, MacNiven joins fellow Black Library writers Gav Thorpe (Kill Team, Angels of Darkness) and Alec Worley (The Wraithbone Phoenix, The Martyrdom of Sister Ishani) who have written stories for the property.

• Josh Reynolds (Deathstorm, Dark Harvest) penned a quick reader-question piece on the subject of ‘lady space warriors’ and its contribution towards getting him fired from the Black Library (spoiler: it didn’t, and he wasn’t. “It’s stupid that I have to say that, in this, the year of our lord 2026,” he notes, “but here we are.”)

• Gareth Hanrahan (Rites of Binding, Grit in the Wheels) appeared on the Ludonarrative Dissidents livestream to talk about game design and some of the projects he’s worked on. You can find the recording here!

• And finally, Victoria Hayward (Deathworlder, The Feast of St. Luthera) standing on a base brandishing a warhammer is exactly what my kids would call “aura.” Enjoy!

Free Goodies!

As part of my Warhammer+ membership, I get bonus goodies sent to my inbox each month- most of which I don’t necessarily have a use for (but are nice to get all the same). If you play Tacticus, here’s a one-use code for some Requisition Orders, Blackstone, and Coins: 000HLBFTJRQW8U1

All I ask is that if you use the code, please comment below so everyone knows it’s been redeemed and is no longer valid.

Enjoy!

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming releases from the Black Library based on the available preorder information we have. As always, take all of this with a grain of salt unless it’s Games Workshop-confirmed.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, and anything in bold has been added (or updated) this week.

Upcoming but Undated

• Blood of the Bastion, by Evan Dicken

• Whisperblade, by Hal Wilson

• Throne Questoris, by Victoria Hayward

• Cypher: Lord of the Fallen, by John French (Illustrated and Annotated Edition)

Current PODs in Production

• Hive, by Dan Abnett (Special Edition, estimated deliver-by date of 11/26)

Upcoming in 2026

• Shadow of the Silver Wolf, by Gary Kloster (hardcover, 10/31)

• Grey Knights, by Ben Counter (Special Edition, 11/7)

• Raptors: War and Shadow, by William Crowe (hardcover, 11/7)

• Crucible of Fire, by Tom R. Pike (hardcover, 11/7)

• Death Rider, by Rhuairidh James (paperback, 11/7)

• Ghost Legion, by Mike Brooks (paperback, 11/7)

• Armageddon: Season of Fire, by Jude Reid (paperback, 11/7)

• Treachery Unbound, by various (paperback, 11/7)

• Chem Dog, by Callum Davis (paperback, 12/17)

• Ghazghkull Thraka: Warlord of Warlords, by Denny Flowers (paperback, 12/17)

• Ashes of the Imperium, by Chris Wraight (paperback, 12/17)

Thanks again for joining me for all the going’s on in the Black Library, and see you next week!

With the Carcass Front box having dropped, the world event Operation Leviathan in its closing stages, and the October Rules Review breathing new life into the Court of the Seven Headed Serpent, it’s about the right time to start looking at the next round of product releases right around the bend.

This week Factory Fortress unveiled the first of these, the Prussian Yeomen.

“These fearless fighters are the backbone of Warbands from the Free State of Prussia, holding objectives, providing covering fire, and generally supporting their brutally efficient allies.”

This is a new, plastic release that looks to be arriving on November 2nd (EU and UK) and one week later for those of us in the rest of the world.

Not only that, but the announcement also offered a small teaser for Heretic Naval Raiders and Procession of the Sacred Affliction players, exhorting them to “hold yourselves ready for next month.” Given that these are the two warbands represented by the Carcass Front box, it remains to be seen whether this will simply be Carcass Front units made available independently, or if new miniatures will be rolling out to augment and supplement the existing ones.

Or perhaps…

Here’s to hoping!

Mapping it All Out (Redux)

Two weeks ago, you may recall I spent a little time looking at the cartography of Jared Blando, whose Embattled World: A Map of Trench Crusade is one the (presently) small number of officially licensed, non-miniature products for Trench Crusade.

Well, I couldn’t resist getting one for my study wall. As I mention in the video, sometimes still images just don’t do justice to how something looks in real life, so despite not being a “video person,” I’m sharing a look at it here.

Enjoy!

Getting By with a Little Help from His Friends

It’s not often you’ll find a feature I can put in all three of the Weeklies here on the Wordforge, but the news this week about an upcoming campaign to help artist Karl Kopinski certainly hits the trifecta. That shows the incredible reach and influence he’s had over the length of his career.

Beyond being a studio illustrator for Games Workshop from 1998-2005, Kopinski’s art was a mainstay in the Black Library’s foundational Inferno! magazine, helping bring the worlds of Warhammer to visual life each month. His work also has graced role-playing game books from Rogue Trader’s Lure of the Expanse to Deathwatch’s Mark of the Xenos, and he’s illustrated more than two hundred Magic: the Gathering cards over the years.

Sadly, Kopinski’s health in recent years has been deteriorating. He’s been battling myeloma for several years before strokes and a heart attack left him unable to work for a time, and the road to recovery has been long and difficult.

Now, Factory Fortress is spearheading a campaign to help. “Karl is my friend as well as my housemate during my GW days,” noted Tuomas Pironen, “so I am so glad we can help him and his family.”

Joining them is MyMiniFactory and a large roster of contributing STL creators for a campaign that is preparing to launch. Amongst the other goodies you can receive in return for your support is a brand-new and exclusive Trench Crusade model, making this one of the best kinds of offers: one where you can do well by doing good.

Miniature of the Week

This week’s build is a pair of Sniper Priests, both from the Sniper Priests box.

As you can see this was another detour from Carcass Front, as I opted instead to build both miniatures from the Sniper Priests box. I had a lot of fun with these; the multiple options and modularity of the two models gave me a nice array of choices- plus lots of little leftover goodies for the nascent Trench Crusade bits box.

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Trench Crusade content!

Trench Crusade Official

• Each Friday during the worldwide campaign, the Trench Wire has been bringing reports from Decisive Battles from games all over the world. This week’s- the last one (for now) with Operation Leviathan drawing to a close- included conflicts from Devon to Bavaria.

• Results from Operation Leviathan are also being reported by Andy Chambers and Sammie Dae. The latest dispatch saw the Faithful on the verge of victory, but as they say you can never count the devil out. The full results will be out next week.

• Mentioned in Despatches has been running every week throughout the duration of Operation Leviathan. Curated by Peter Hairston, MiD the column brings you some of the most striking Trench Crusade miniatures, terrain, and tables that have been shared across social media. Here’s this week’s, and for those who have particularly enjoyed this slice of community life there’s even more good news- it looks like this feature will be continuing beyond Operation Leviathan and become an evergreen staple!

• Don’t forget, the game’s first-ever worldwide campaign Operation Leviathan will run until 19 October, and will leave its mark on the world forever. Make sure to get your results in while you still can!

Wargame Content Sites

• Tabletop Battles does an amazing job covering the game, with a new feature every week. “We are diving headfirst into the moshpit that is The Drowned Choir,” noted this week’s installment. “Prepare for the battle onstage as these Choristers gaslight and gatekeep their way to stardom.”

Community Content

• We were hardly the only one to take note of the upcoming Kopinski fundraiser, and Tim Linward of Wargamer had a particularly good writeup with a bit more context and insight. While I hit the main beats above, I’m never going to miss the opportunity to highlight good journalism in the gaming space. Simon Berman of Bell of Lost Souls also did a nice job here as well, and it’s great to see this worthy cause getting so much attention.

• Podcast Saints and Sevens offered up a deep dive this week, delving into the Court of the Seven Headed Serpent. With the October Rules Review (with its Court revamp) just a week in the rearview, the timing couldn’t be better!

• Meanwhile, Trench Scribe Podcast went in on the Heretic Naval Raiders this week with a look at how they perform on the tabletop. From the warband list to strategy, tips, and more, it’s a nicely crunchy half-hour.

• You might recall from last week that HeresyBrush was featured on the Trench Crusade site for its Observer painting tutorial. This week they’ve got a follow-up piece focusing on painting true-metallic metal!

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases from Trench Crusade based on the available preorder information we have.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

• Trench Crusade Rulebook (hardcover, 11/30)

That’s it for this week, see you again in seven days’ time!

The term “Friday news dump” refers to the practice of releasing unpleasant, unfavorable, or potentially controversial news items to the public towards the end of the day on Fridays. Also popularized as “Take Out the Trash Day” on The West Wing, the thought is that journalists wrapping up their week- and everyday folks already focusing on the weekend- have little appetite for a breaking news story.

Now I’m not so cynical as to suggest Cubicle 7 Games was actually employing this tactic last week, but I did take a moment’s amusement that there was indeed an end-of-week mea culpa posted on their blog, entitled Production Update: Your maps are on the way, and more production updates are too.

So let’s dive in!

Gleaming the Cube

First off, let’s start with a tip of the cap to them for even posting something like this in the first place. This kind of vulnerability can’t be easy- especially while questions continue to linger around the missed deliverables on the Horus Heresy RPG- but there is no substitute for communication and transparency when attempting to restore the faith of frustrated or disillusioned customers.

To me, Cubicle 7 has long been “the little engine that could” with a cheeky dash of “fake it ‘til you make it.” They seem to run a very lean operation, with the lion’s share of talent being concentrated in product design and development. Marketing and fulfillment seem much lower on the list.

While being gamers first and businesspeople second isn’t necessarily a bad place to be, from TSR1 to Palladium, Chaosium to West End Games the annals of gaming history are filled with cautionary tales around the pitfalls of this approach.

Well, that bill has come due.

This is undeniably true. Customer service inquiries- even simple informational ones- have experienced considerable delays. In recent months I’ve had two exchanges myself.

On 18 May I emailed Cubicle 7 after receiving duplicate physical items in my Warhammer: The Old World RPG shipment. “I suspect mailing them back from the US would be absurdly costly,” I said, “but I'll let you all make that call.” As an alternate solution, I offered to give them away.

Two days later, I received a response. “Thank you for reaching out,” it read in part, “we really appreciate you letting us know about the duplicate order. Please know it was a mistake, and we would greatly appreciate your co-operation in finding a solution to this.”

So far so good, but after reiterating my willingness to give them away it seemed to fall off their radar. I followed up three weeks later, advising that if I didn’t hear back within 48 hours I would proceed with the giveaway. I didn’t get a response, so I gave them away on 09 June.

Funnily enough, a week later I heard back. “The team has decided not to retrieve them, so all good!”

Then last month I had a question about my preorder for the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 5th Edition. The initial outreach was on the 4th, I followed up on the 9th, and had my question answered… on the 20th.

To be clear, none of this impacts my enjoyment and appreciation of the company’s products, nor my willingness to continue to give them my custom. As “the little engine that could,” I recognize they’re understaffed on the service end due to focusing their resources on new product development, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to learn that Dominic McDowall himself is logging in to help work some of the backlog over afternoon tea.

But it’s clearly an opportunity for improvement.

This is terrific. As someone who writes weekly product updates for three different product lines (Warhammer’s Black Library, Cubicle 7’s Warhammer RPG’s, and Factory Fortress’s Trench Crusade), I must by necessity keep my fingers firmly on the pulse of their corporate communications.

Of the three, Cubicle 7 has the most work to do here. As we recently saw with the Sylvania: The Cursed County, communications feed product expectations, and product expectations directly impact consumer reception. When what appeared to be one book was instead actualized as three, the reception of that first book suffered as a result.

But for all that, Sylvania’s communications were still significantly better than the Horus Heresy RPG.

For all intents and purposes, the game remains MIA. What little information or acknowledgment we’ve received about the game has come not from official communications, but rather from McDowall mentioning it (or being asked about it) at various game conventions (such as Gen Con or Pyrkon).

A month ago, I engaged in a fun little thought exercise called, “If I Were Dom for a Day.” Amongst the improvements I focused on was in the realm of company communications, recommending that the leads for each of the six Warhammer RPG lines (WFRP, The Old World, Soulbound, Wrath & Glory, Imperium Maledictum, and Horus Heresy) provide rolling, public-facing updates a minimum of once every six weeks. This would allow a steady drumbeat of content that could be dripped out through weekly Cubicle 7 blog updates.

Each game would have an update at least once every six weeks, or about nine updates throughout the year. With quality content, the regularity would start to build a steady base of anticipation (such as the kind Games Workshop enjoys with its Preview shows or Warhammer Community reveals) that will keep players more engaged with both the games as well as the company itself.

That seems an easy layup, but we’ll have to see what Cubicle 7 comes up with in the next few weeks.

And if you need a hand, Dom, hit me up! I’d welcome the gig.

The post from Cubicle 7 sparked some interesting discussion over on Reddit, with this post from u/Magallian standing out in particular as being an excellent take:

u/Magallian certainly echoes my concern that the company is lopsidedly game-heavy and business-light (again, talking about their infrastructure here, not their acumen. They didn’t land these licenses by accident). Remember, Cubicle 7 is no fly-by-night operation but rather one that cracked the upper 20% of the Financial Times/Statista FT list of 1000 fastest-growing companies in Europe.

This is as good a time as any to start bringing that infrastructure up to the same level as the product. This week’s post from Cubicle 7 is a great first step in the right direction.

Adventures in Gilead Ships

I received my notification this week that the physical copy of Wrath & Glory’s Adventures in Gilead shipped this week.

If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on the book in paper, well, it looks like the wait is over!

Getting By with a Little Help from His Friends

It’s not often you’ll find a feature I can put in all three of the Weeklies here on the Wordforge, but the news this week about an upcoming campaign to help artist Karl Kopinski certainly hits the trifecta. That shows the incredible reach and influence he’s had over the length of his career.

Beyond being a studio illustrator for Games Workshop from 1998-2005, Kopinski’s art was a mainstay in the Black Library’s foundational Inferno! magazine, helping bring the worlds of Warhammer to visual life each month. His work also has graced role-playing game books from Rogue Trader’s Lure of the Expanse to Deathwatch’s Mark of the Xenos, and he’s illustrated more than two hundred Magic: the Gathering cards over the years.

Sadly, Kopinski’s health in recent years has been deteriorating. He’s been battling myeloma for several years before strokes and a heart attack left him unable to work for a time, and the road to recovery has been long and difficult.

Now, Factory Fortress is spearheading a campaign to help. “Karl is my friend as well as my housemate during my GW days,” noted Tuomas Pironen, “so I am so glad we can help him and his family.”

Joining them is MyMiniFactory and a large roster of contributing STL creators for a campaign that is preparing to launch. Amongst the other goodies you can receive in return for your support is a brand-new and exclusive Trench Crusade model, making this one of the best kinds of offers: one where you can do well by doing good.

Our Giveaway Winner!

Last week we kicked off the latest2 giveaway on the RPG side of the site, a gorgeous Collector’s Edition of the Imperium Maledictum Inquisition Guides. To enter, subscribers just needed to leave a comment answering this question:

We received some terrific responses! Ordo Xenos was by miles the most common option:

Ordo Malleus got a nod from one lover of epicurean delights:

While Hereticus was also represented…

Finally, Mark Nold gave me a good laugh:

Sadly, there’s only one prize to give out, so harnessing the powers of Tzeentch Random.org, we arrive at… Fraser Valley Tabletop Games! Congrats, Fraser Valley, make sure to check your Messages so we’ll know where to send it.

More Kibbles! More Bits!

One of the perks of ordering physical books from Cubicle 7 directly online is that you immediately get sent a PDF file of the book for free. Indeed, when you preorder unreleased books that’s the only way you’ll have to access that content for awhile, given the lag time between preorder windows and physical delivery.

Thanks to C7’s social media rep I learned about the Bits and Mortar program this week and wanted to make sure to spread the word. In this program, participating retailers can offer their customers the same deal. Buy, say, the Imperium Maledictum Core Rulebook at your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS), and not only do you walk out with the book tucked under your arm but you also get a code for the PDF.

You can use their retailer locator to see if your FLGS is in the network. If it’s not, it might be a good conversation to have with them!

RPG Bestsellers

Warhammer RPG Titles in the Top 200:

• #2 (-1) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Fifth Edition Core Rulebook

• #4 (-2) Imperium Maledictum: Macharian Adversary Guide

• #81 (-1). Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Sylvania: The Cursed County

• #173 (-10). Wrath & Glory: Core Rulebook

• #192 ( - ). Imperium Maledictum: Core Rulebook

Total Books in Top 200: 5 (+1)

Well, it was an incredible run, but all good things must come to an end. This week saw Cubicle 7’s stranglehold on the top of the table slip- though it didn’t slip much! WFRP and Imperium Maledictum’s most recent releases are still holding in the top five, Sylvania barely moved, and IM’s Core Rulebook saw a nice bump bring it back within the Top 200!

ICYMI

• Jacek Miloszewski announced that Hammergen, his free Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay character generator, had been updated and was now 5th Edition compatible. Not only that, but there was a number of other quality-of-life improvements as well!

• Careless Conjuration’s running series The GM’s Guide to the Enemy Within dropped its latest this week, covering some odds and ends as we pause after Death on the Reik.

• Over at It Always Rains in Nuln, they reviewed Monuments of the Reikland. This WFRP 4th Edition supplement showcases five unique and unusual statues that can add some unexpected spice to any campaign.

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases based on the available preorder information we have. Note that Cubicle 7’s own delivery estimates appear to be just that- estimates- which is why many products have an upcoming delivery listed for Q1 while we’re already past that.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

Undated (and now Uncertain)

• Necromunda Roleplay Core Set

Shipping Q3

• Limited Edition Warhammer Fantasy Map Bundle 1 (July 2026)

• Limited Edition Warhammer Fantasy Map Bundle 2 (July 2026)

Shipping Q4

• Temple of Spite (Q4)

Shipping Spring 2027

• Fifth Edition: Core Rulebook (standard hardcover)

• Fifth Edition: Core Rulebook (collector’s edition)

• Fifth Edition: Character Sheets

• Fifth Edition: Reikland Dice Set

• Fifth Edition: Monsters & Adversaries Deck

• Fifth Edition: Conditions & Injuries Deck

• Fifth Edition: Reikland Map

Shipping 2027

• Sylvania: The Cursed County

• Wrecker’s Point

Shipping Q4

• Starter Set (Q4)

• Gamemaster’s Screen (Q4)

Shipping 2027

• Talagaad Adventures

Shipping Q1

• Champions of Chaos: Dark Gifts Card Pack (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Spells Lore Card Pack (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Artefacts & Wargear Card Pack (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Core Rulebook (Standard and Collector’s Edition) (Q1)

• Champions of Chaos: Bloodwind Spoil Map (Q1)

Shipping Q3

• Limited Edition Age of Sigmar Map Bundle (July 2026)

Shipping Q1 2027

• Champions of Chaos: Carngrad Adventures

Undated

• (Nothing at this time)

Undated

• Macharian Adversary Guide

Shipping Q3

• Macharian Sector Map (July 2026)

Shipping Q4

• Adeptus Mechanicus Collector’s Edition

• Adeptus Mechanicus Player’s Guide

• Adeptus Mechanicus Gamemaster’s Guide

• Adeptus Mechanicus Character Sheet Pad (Q4)

Undated

• (Nothing at this time)

Thanks for reading this week, and happy gaming!

While Denny Flowers has probably done the most heavy lifting in my year-long change of heart regarding Ork stories, first blood definitely went to Mike Brooks, author of today’s audiobook Brutal Kunnin’.

It’s not that I hated tales featuring the greenskins, nor stories with a more lighthearted tone. After all, I’m a big fan of Sandy Mitchell’s Ciaphas Cain tales, even if they have become increasingly derivative the further into the series I’ve gone1. But while I think Orks have made terrific villains when they’re faceless and savage, this particular brand of humor has struggled to land for me2.

This started to change when I read Brooks’s Painboyz, the opening story of the terrific Blood of the Imperium anthology (review). I found this one to be side-splittingly funny, with an easy humor that never felt forced for laughs.

As I read more such stories, first Grotsnik: Da Mad Dok (review) then Ghazhgkull Thraka: Warlord of Warlords (review), I found my original antipathy rapidly thawing, and by the time I finished Justin Woolley’s Da Freebooterz Code (review) I had to admint I was all in. The conversion was complete.

Of course, there’s a lot of classic Ork tales out there I’ve never given much attention to, and it seemed a good time to mix one of them into my audiobook rotation.

The Story

Brutal Kunnin’ tells the story of Ufthak Blackheart’s plundering of an Adeptus Mechanicus forge world, Hephaesto, as part of the Tekwaaagh! led by his Warboss, Da Meklord. Hepahesto is a planet made mostly of metal and tech, an irresistible prize to the covetous greenskins.

Of course, what one Ork wants another Ork wants too, and in this case that ‘other Ork’ is the Freebooter, Kaptin Badrukk. He warps in with his Flash Gitz with eyes on the same prize, and the two Ork leaders manage to set aside their differences and agree to a friendly competition to see who can loot the most goods.

Blackheart, a newly-elevated Nob of the Bad Moons, sets out to make a name for himself and outdo the hated Flash Gitz of Dadrukk. Backed by his second, Mogrot Redtoof, as well as gretchin Nizkwik and squig named Princess, the race is on.

Meanwhile, things are in a state of disarray with the planet’s AdMech squabbling leaders. The Tech-Priest Dominus seems to downplay the threat of the primitive Orks, while Lexico Arcanus Zaefa Varaz, recognizing the threat to the planet, races to back up their most valuable data and get it safely off-planet. Things go from bad to worse when they find there’s a Warpsmith of the Iron Warriors at work on the planet- and that their own Forge Lord is in league with him to animate a massive dameon engine.

All of these elements bounce and carom off of one another over the course of the tale, one which sees Blackhawk and his merry band- though that mix of random absurdity and dumb luck so particular to Orkish acts of derring-do- go from adventure to misadventure and back again in their efforts to get one over on Captain Badrukk and gain Da Meklord’s favor.

The Voice

Brutal Kunnin’ was narrated by Tom Allenby, one of three audiobooks he’s recorded for Warhammer with the other two being Mitchel Scanlon’s Fifteen Hours and some of the stories in Death and Duty: An Astra Militarum Anthology (review)3.

Interestingly, he’s also lent his voice to the Warhammer 40,000: Darktide game as a Groaner, one of the hive’s many enemies. I’d imagine that’s a pretty bit part, but for Brutal Kunnin’ Allenby threw himself in with reckless abandon.

It’s difficult to imagine what some of the more patrician and elocutionary narrators like Jonathan Keeble or Gareth Armstrong might make of a book like this, filled to the brim with a gaggle of bombastic, larger-than-life soccer-hooligan Orks. This makes Allenby the man for the moment, and while the execution was a little uneven- I found myself more than once wishing the presentation came with subtitles, particularly for the voicing of Mogrot Redtoof- it lent the story no shortage of kinetic enthusiasm that matched its energy perfectly.

Thoughts

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the Ork books written by Denny Flowers is that he doesn’t rely on the humor to make the book, but rather makes it just one of several well-blended ingredients. With his Mad Dok Grotsnik, there’s a certain unsettling sense of menace that is woven into the character, like there’s something more to him than what you can see, and whatever that is is surely worse. Da Mad Dok, put simply, creeps me out- and that’s a real credit to the writer.

With Brooks, there’s a different element at work here, but one no less effective. There you’d be, listening to this zany, absurd story of Orks doing Ork things, and then you’d get a passage like this once it flashed back the point of view of the Adeptus Mechanicus:

Or here, a moment’s lingering on the Iron Warrior Warpsmith:

Brooks can write, and moments like these sprinkled throughout the tale not only gave us some pacing breaks from the Orks, but themselves made the story that much richer. Indeed, the non-Orks were every bit as interesting and entertaining as the Orks were in their own way, from diving into lore on the construction of daemon engines to the very understated humor of the tech priests (“please refer to my most recent noospheric upload”, which, if you change that to “email” is exactly the kind of petty, corporate- office barb it sounds like).

Up next in this series will be Da Big Dakka, which will be interesting in that Harry Myers steps in for narrative duties. I’ve heard complaints that a change in voice can really throw off listeners (most notably in the Gaunt’s Ghosts series), so I may let this one fade in the memory a bit so I can give Harry a fair go.

Until then, keep on listening!

Okay, so let’s rip the band-aid off and deliver the bad news first. I know two weeks ago I promised to talk about the Black Library’s preorder process and compare it to some innovations other hobby companies have implemented, and then last week given how much content was already in the hopper I punted it to this week. But I’ve been working on that and expanding it, so I’ll probably end up doing a standalone piece with it rather than fold it into Black Library Weekly.

So if you cracked into the column today hoping to see that, I apologize, bear with me just a little longer. But on the upside, as we continue to monitor the “Wednesday Windows” of deluxe edition releases there was one rather intereting possible development that emerged this past week as Peter Fehervari’s Cold Covenant finally arrived. As to whether or not it’s a positive development, well, like the rest of them it rather depends.

Bulk Discount

In this case, it started with an early round of order cancelations.

Now, that’s nothing new on its own. Every preorder cycle for as long as I can remember, folks have occasionally (if somewhat inexplicably) received notification that their order has been canceled.

What made this round interesting is that some of those reporting a cancelation were folks who, for one reason or another, ordered multiple copies of Cold Covenant.

Now, there’s certainly a conversation to be had around the ethics and impact of this practice. On the rare occasion I’ve ordered an additional copy of a deluxe edition (such as, for instance, the book giveaway I ran last week), I’ll admit I feel a little twinge of what you might call ethical unease1.

Proponents will note that every copy they secure keeps one out of the hands of scalpers. Critics will note that it also keeps one out of the hands of legitimate buyers, and even if later sold at retail price still adds a potential layer of cost (shipping, which would normally be free to stores).

I’m going to sidestep that for today and focus on the cancelation of orders itself, because that’s the part that’s relevant to the anti-scalper initiative it seems that Games Workshop has been undertaking. Now of course, I don’t have any special insight here; like most of you, I’m on the outside looking in to see if I can make upstream sense of our downstream experiences. But it does seem to me that throttling multiple orders- in effect a post-facto enforcement of a “limit one per customer” stricture- isn’t an entirely unreasonable position to take. After all, if you’re going to hard-cap the number of products you’re going to offer, it makes sense to want to get them into as many different hands as possible (with the natural corollary being to disappoint as few people as possible).

The problem, as always, lies in communication, which in my experience is the element that companies tend to struggle with the most. In the absence of guidance and clarity, you’re relying on the community to read the tea leaves. You know how astropaths don’t send messages in the form of words and statements, but rather of psychic dreams and visions which require interpretation and discernment? It’s a bit like that.

Which is unfortunate, because clear statements of purpose and intent have the effect of reassuring a customer base that their concerns are being addressed. It’s free goodwill, just sitting there in a pile on the table. We’ve now (more or less) managed to figure out that the move to Wednesday Windows is to allow Games Workshop employees to monitor traffic and take necessary action during normal business hours. While yes, many customers worldwide have found the time inconvenient (and fairly so, it’s a big world), having official confirmation that this is being done to safeguard our interests could go some way towards mitigating the frustration that’s resulted.

By the same token, making a clear statement around quantity ordering would go even further, because if people knew that ordering more than one copy risked order cancellation, they might opt to simply be content with ordering one.

The problem with this- and here’s where we’ll park it for today- is that this can also open up a can of worms all its own. There’s no downside to letting the public know that preordering is moved to Wednesdays in order to more effectively fight bot traffic. But if you declare that orders in excess of two copies will be subject to cancellation, for instance, you’re in effect incentivizing the buying of two (an example of perverse incentive).

Ultimately, with all information being anecdotal it’s difficult to discern the signal from the noise2, but the scenario on the ground seems to be:

1. Games Workshop is taking more aggressive measures to combat scalper/bot ordering.

2. These measures are having unintended consequences to the community.

3. Games Workshop has chosen to remain opaque about what is happening.

So until #3 changes, all we can do is report on #2 and speculate on #1.

Wordforge on Facebook

Before we jump into everything else, just a quick reminder that for those of you on Facebook, the Warhammer Wordforge now has its own page here. Stop by and say hello!

Trick or Treat: October’s Black Library Giveaway

To ring in this year’s Spooky Season and celebrate hitting 500 subscribers on Substack, this month’s Black Library book giveaway offered you the opportunity to nab either the Galaxy in Flames Premium Edition or the Deathwatch Special Edition!

Congratulations to GDAR, selected through the magic of Random.org! GDAR was hoping for Steve Parker’s Deathwatch, so we’ll get that headed their way!

Arrivals & Departures

In this section I look at what’s coming up around the corner (Arrivals) and what’s landing on bookstore shelves (Departures).

Arrivals

Lots of goodies in the pipeline this week, as we not only have a book coming up for preorder this Saturday but also a Warhammer Community preview piece detailing three more!

Age of Sigmar has been playing catch-up nicely, with a first-half drought seeing some wonderful rainfall as we play into the back nine. Available for preordering this Saturday is Shadow of the Silver Wolf, the latest Neave Blacktalon book from Gary Kloster (Skaventide, The Last Volari). This will be available in standard hardcover only.

Next, there’s another Special Edition reprint headed our way with Ben Counter’s Grey Knights. Grey Knights was inducted into the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2004, and as HoF Committee AJ of The Paladin Journal noted:

Then, we have the next installment of the tremendously successful Illustrated and Annotated Edition series with John French’s Cypher: Lord of the Fallen. Originally from 2023, this is an interesting choice (I personally might have preferred Ahriman: Exile myself, but that’s just me). A first-person story with a notoriously unreliable narrator, this will be a fascinating opportunity to get into French’s thoughts in crafting the tale, and I’ll be very excited to crack into this one.

Finally, a question I’ve had for awhile gets a delightfully affirmative answer in Throne Questoris!

Victoria Hayward’s Deathworlder was my 2024 Black Library Book of the Year. Wonderfully gripping characters thrust into deliciously grotesque Tyranid body horror as the planet melts down around them, I couldn’t put the book down. Since then, though, I’d been surprised that we hadn’t seen another longform story from her.

It wasn’t like she’d left the hobby. She often shares her visits to Warhammer World on social media, and she’d appeared on WarhammerTV’s Scribes & Scriveners at the start of last year. But the last time she was published in the Black Library was in 2024’s Advent Subscription, with The Feast of St. Luthera.

Well, look who’s back! Not only that, but with Throne Questoris we’re getting a proper novel follow-up to Feast!

No word yet on a release date or whether a deluxe edition will be on offer, but we should find out relatively soon.

Departures

Nothing! All of our wallets and purses marked themselves safe from new Black Library releases this week.

Right on Track (Redux)

One of the great things about being a part of a creative community is that a creative community likes to, well, create things. From book trackers to eBay agents to RPG character and scenario generators, I’ve enjoyed shining a little spotlight on these whenever they bubble up from love’s labors in the code mines.

The latest comes to us by way of Marton Holmos, who has created the site Ordo Canonicus as a way to track books and lists. “I have been getting deeper and deeper into the Warhammer 40k lore in the last few years and have compiled a pretty exhaustive catalog of relevant publications in order to track my progress through them,” notes Holmos, “including cross-references between anthologies and omnibuses and the works contained within them. It felt weird to just keep this database to myself and not publish it in some way.”

Holmos stresses that he’s “an enthusiast, not a developer,” but the site has all the basics covered: your books (and ways to denote whether you simply own them or have already read them), ratings (both individual and community), and ways to create custom lists. Its database is nicely interconnected too; mark an anthology as Finished, and it will also do the same for all of the individual short stories.

As with all such projects, the more it’s used by readers the greater its value becomes. As it’s still in early soft launch mode, things like community ratings haven’t been fully fleshed out yet but as more readers jump aboard and rate their books, the better the star ratings will be. The site is completely free to use, and Holmos is keen to hear from users what they’d like to see.

The combination of a simple, useful layout and deep catalogue makes Ordo Canonicus worth a look, and it joins other user-generated apps in enriching the options available for getting the most out of our passion and hobby!

No Books, Just Awesome

Okay, a slight detour here to highlight a couple of articles this week that aren’t Black Library related, but just too cool not to share.

First, Gav Thorpe (Luther: First of the Fallen, Kill Team) wrote about a recent interaction he had with a trio of fans. Instead, he accepted an invitation to be Guest of Honor to a small event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Inquisitor game, and what they pulled together has to be seen to be believed. Incredible!

Then there’s this piece by Timothy Linward over at Wargamer, about an American Custodes player who has tracked his units’ every performance for the past four years.

This kind of ridiculousness only resonates with a certain kind of person, I suspect, but as it happens I’m one of those people. I remember tacking a baseball-like level of metrics in my games of BattleTech way back in the day, and even now I sometimes give in to the compulsion to track every military unit each city produces in games of Civilization, renaming them in-game to be 5th Berlin or 8th Washington (and then giving then official nicknames after particularly noteworthy battles).

Enjoy!

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Warhammer content!

Warhammer Wordforge

• Last week’s Black Library feature was the second installment of The Writer Files, a companion series to WarhammerTV’s Scribes & Scriveners. Under the lens this time was Mike Vincent, who discussed his Night Lords work for The Remnant Blade!

• It’s another Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame weekend, which means a new installment of the companion series, The Hall Monitor. This one was a lot of fun, as we broke out the Top Twenty best-performing books (based on public voting data) for each of the four lines (Horus Heresy, 40K, Fantasy, and Age of Sigmar).

• Less of an article and more of a resource, I added a page on the site to keep track of the honor roll of Hall of Fame winners. The ‘Banner of Glory’ graphics at the bottom of the main articles were looking a little tired.

• In Warhammer RPG Weekly, we looked at the curious case of the vanishing Necromunda RPG which was revealed only three weeks ago as part of the Big Autumn Preview, plus the first book giveaway for the RPG side will see one lucky reader score a stunning Collector’s Edition of Imperium Maledictum’s Inquisition Guides.

• Finally, in Trench Crusade Weekly, this week was all about the October Rules Review- but we also checked out the officially-licensed coins from Baron of Dice.

Tabletop Battles

• Our Lore Friday review this week was my look at Richard Swan’s Voice of Command- one of this year’s surprise hits. If you enjoyed Gaunt’s Ghosts, make sure to check it out.

• Want to see who was inducted for the Class of 2018 for the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame? Here’s the main feature, and make sure to vote for the books of 2019 while you’re over there!

Warhammer Community

• No Black Library-related content this week, aside from the new book announcement. I mean, three new books, who could complain?

WarhammerTV (paywalled)

• This week sees the next Scribes & Scriveners episode drop, this time featuring Noah Van Nguyen (Elemental Council, Blood of the Godeater). Look for a new installment of The Writer Files soon, which is our Scribes & Scriveners companion series (you can see the most recent one here).

Around the Webway

• Hall of Fame Committee Member Aasa Timonen dropped a review of Robert Rath’s The Wicked and the Warped over at The Warhammer Scholar this week.

• Want another look at The Wicked and the Warped? Jen and Keri of the WH40K Book Club have got you covered!

Cold Open Stories

• No new Warhammer content here this week (though a new non-Warhammer audiobook just dropped!).

Quick Hits

• Missing some spooky in your Spooky Season? Make sure to check out Sci-Frights, a pair of sci-fi/horror short novels by Paul Kane (Triggers).

• Richard Swan (Voice of Command, Tears of Raphaela) shared that he’d been signed to do another four novels in his Empire of the Wolf saga. Congratulations, Richard, just make sure to squeeze some more Black Library in there too if you can!

• Nottingham Library is hosting a Fantasy Festival event next March, and take a gander at some of the folks on the guest list: Dan Abnett, Jude Reid, John French, and Gav Thorpe? If you’re anywhere near Nottingham, it sounds like time very well spent!

• Can’t wait that long? Howabout seeing Victoria Hayward, Gav Thorpe, and Jude Reid this Sunday (10/18) at The Dukes in Lancaster for Litfest: Fair Realms: World-building in fantasy?

• On the other hand, if you happen instead to be in Hong Kong later this month, make sure to check out the Fireside Chat event with Robert Rath (Assassinorum: Kingmaker, The Infinite and the Divine). Tickets are HKD $200 (about twenty-five bucks in USD) and 100% of that is going to Read the Room’s children’s literacy programs.

• Maria Haskins (The Jagged Edge) shared that her story, Highway 1, Past Hope (originally published in The Deadlands) will be included in the upcoming Year's Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 4!

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming releases from the Black Library based on the available preorder information we have. As always, take all of this with a grain of salt unless it’s Games Workshop-confirmed.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, and anything in bold has been added (or updated) this week.

Upcoming but Undated

• Crucible of Fire, by Tom R. Pike

• Raptors: War and Shadow, by William Crowe

• Blood of the Bastion, by Evan Dicken

• Whisperblade, by Hal Wilson

• Throne Questoris, by Victoria Hayward

• Cypher: Lord of the Fallen, by John French (Illustrated and Annotated Edition)

• Grey Knights, by Ben Counter (Special Edition)

Current PODs in Production

• Hive, by Dan Abnett (Special Edition, estimated deliver-by date of 11/26)

Upcoming in 2026

• Cold Covenant, by Peter Fehervari (hardcover, Special Edition, 10/17)

• Auxilia, by Russell Zimmerman (paperback, 10/17)

• Dropsite Massacre, by John French (paperback, 10/17)

• Apostle, by David Annandale (paperback, 10/17)

• Shadow of the Silver Wolf, by Gary Kloster (hardcover, 10/31)

• Death Rider, by Rhuairidh James (paperback, 11/19)

• Ghost Legion, by Mike Brooks (paperback, 11/19)

• Chem Dog, by Callum Davis (paperback, 12/17)

• Ghazghkull Thraka: Warlord of Warlords, by Denny Flowers (paperback, 12/17)

• Ashes of the Imperium, by Chris Wraight (paperback, 12/17)

Thanks again for joining me for all the going’s on in the Black Library, and see you next week!

Well, we knew it was coming, didn’t we? The biannual rules assessment dropped this week, and if you’re a Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent player I hope you were sitting down when it did.

Turns out the Court didn’t get a review so much as a complete overhaul, with a number of changes and adjustments, including:

• For core mechanics, the Court now generates Sin Markers to fuel its Goetic Powers.

• Each of the seven Sins gets its own defining set of powers and abilities, and changes to list-building, giving them more definition and diversity than ever before.

• Significant changes to units, from Praetors generating Sin Markers to new auras for the Desecrated Saint.

Here’s what DGMP had to say about it over on Tabletop Battles:

And of course, there was tremendous discussion around the update over on the Trench Crusade subreddit. Some lamented Envy’s loss of access to Praetors and Sorcerers (though there was a gag that it was very on-brand for Envy to be jealous of the units others retained access to), while others saw significant changes to Goetic strategies prior to the update.

All the same, sweeping changes like this are a good sign that the developers aren’t afraid to make big moves in the game, and I’m already looking forward to what the next six months brings!

A Baron Field

Last week I talked about my love for officially licensed merchandise, highlighting the beautiful cartography work of Jared Blando. And while there isn’t a lot of licensed merch yet (Marc Gascoigne, Head of Special Ops, is no doubt hard at work on that front), as I noted before “not a lot” isn’t quite the same thing as none.

Enter Baron of Dice.

Baron of Dice started, as such things do, in a basement. Back in 2020, Steven Long had a vision of a dice company whose goal “wasn’t small or modest—no, the mission was simple but bold: bring tabletop gamers a better-quality product than anything the industry had settled for,” he shared in an interview last year with VoyageBaltimore.

Less a company than a “a passion project that got wildly out of hand in the best possible way,” Long sees them as “gamers first, creators second, and businesspeople somewhere after that.”

Since that time the company has grown both in scope and in scale. They’ve expanded their range of offerings to include tabletop wargaming and RPG supplies as well as entered into licensing agreements with the companies behind games like Infinity and Conquest.

Then in 2024 alongside Trench Crusade’s Kickstarter kickoff, Baron of Dice added the game to its stable of official licensing partners.

In addition to the official dice sets (such as the one pictured above), Baron of Dice also has a line of Trench Crusade coins (or “objective markers",” if you prefer). While they use these to enhance other products such as tape measures, the coins themselves are perfectly good collectibles in their own right. In fact, I’ve got a thing for coins- here’s a Black Library Bibliophiles piece focusing on Warhammer coins. Small in size, they nevertheless make terrific decorative pieces for any library or museum.

For example, here’s the Heretic Naval Raider Captain alongside the official Baron of Dice faction coin.

A Stoßtruppen Feldkaplan (my Miniature of the Week, below).

And when you can combine them with other things, like this Sacred Affliction insert from the Carcass Front box, you really start cookin’ with grease.

Baron of Dice have nine faction coins currently available. If I have a knock on them it’s that the icon designs are a bit simplified from the official artwork. But it’s a minor criticism that fades further into irrelevance when you note that these coins on the official site go for USD $6.95 apiece.

That’s… not a typo.

As someone long accustomed to paying up to five times that much for Warhammer collectible coins (not kidding), this is pinch-me-I’m-dreaming pricing. And yes, these Baron of Dice coins are one-sided, but who cares? As displayed in the above images, you can only display one side at a time anyway.

So with the harvest of the nine Baron’s Coins, the dream of a Trench Crusade Museum moves ever more into being.

Now, we just need a few novels- preferably with Limited Editions!

Miniature of the Week

This week’s build is the Feldkaplan from the Prussian Stoßtruppen Warband box.

What, did you think they were just going to be from Carcass Front? For as long as I’ve played RPG’s I’ve always loved the Cleric class the most, so naturally this was the one I went straight for when I cracked open the box.

One of the feathers on his wings was brittle, breaking off the moment I touched it. Luckily, some divine inspiration must have guided my hands as I was able to glue it back together with very minimal difficulty. I love this model, it’s a stunning sculpt that was a lot of fun to build. I’d have liked a little more sharpness in the definition in some areas, but ol’ Padre here will do quite nicely!

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Trench Crusade content!

Trench Crusade Official

• There was no lore drop this week- the October Rules Review was the elm that shaded out the garden. Still, well worth it for those who have been waiting, and we’ve had no shortage of lore to enjoy regardless!

• The official YouTube channel has been quiet for a bit, but dropped an interview with Vanguard Tactics featuring Jervis Johnson, Andy Chambers and Thomas Elliott talking about what it was like to design Carcass Front.

• Each Friday during the worldwide campaign, the Trench Wire has been bringing reports from Decisive Battles from games all over the world. This week’s included conflicts from California to Stuttgart- and included one on Tabletop Simulator as well!

• Rubén Torregrosa of HeresyBrush (and New Antioch Cross for Cultural Merit winner) brought us a nicely detailed painting tutorial for the Observer model. As someone who has yet to dip their toes into that side of the hobby, I love seeing content like this that is both beginner-friendly but veteran-useful.

• Results from Operation Leviathan are also being reported by Andy Chambers and Sammie Dae. The latest dispatch saw the Fallen rocked back on their heels, with the Faithful pushing in five sectors and the remaining two locked in stalemate. Spaceballs may have taught us back in ‘87 that evil always wins because good is dumb, but it looks like it’s learned a few lessons since then.

• Mentioned in Despatches has been running every week throughout the duration of Operation Leviathan. Curated by Peter Hairston, MiD the column brings you some of the most striking Trench Crusade miniatures, terrain, and tables that have been shared across social media. Here’s this week’s, which showed off a lot of glorious Heretic Naval Raiders!

• Don’t forget, the game’s first-ever worldwide campaign Operation Leviathan will run until 19 October, and will leave its mark on the world forever. Make sure to get your results in while you still can!

Wargame Content Sites

• Tabletop Battles does an amazing job covering the game, with a new feature every week. This time around it’s a reaction roundtable to the October rules update!

Community Content

• While last week was a huge week for community content, this week it was quite a bit quieter. Still, Custom Wargame has a painting contest on their Kickstarter campaign, with over €300 in prizes. It ends on 31 October, so plenty of time ahead and no purchase is necessary!

• Moskito Games, meanwhile, sat down to interview Tuomas Pironen in a livestream format, replete with audience questions!

• The Hobby Hotel dove into the lore surrounding “Hell’s Greatest Problem,” War Priest Charon.

• Finally, I wanted to ‘like’ this video from The Last Scribe, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. As any hiker or outdoorsman will tell you, sometimes it’s best to just leave things as you found them:

Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases from Trench Crusade based on the available preorder information we have.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

• Trench Crusade Rulebook (hardcover, 11/30)

That’s it for this week, see you again in seven days’ time!

The Hall Monitor is published every other week, the same day as the latest installment of the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame drops on Tabletop Battles. A cross between a director’s cut and a backstage pass, it’s a look behind the scenes at the Hall of Fame project.

This week, I’m dedicating The Hall Monitor to the mighty leaderboard. “What are the best books?” is a perpetual subject of conversation around Black Library community watercoolers, and the entire Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame project itself came about in part as a way to try and definitively answer that question.

But of course, that’s not the only way we can examine it. Another metric I’ve had fun keeping an eye on is the voting data from all of the polling we’ve done over the course of the Hall. Just as in boxing, a unanimous decision and a split decision may mean something to some folks, but in the end a win’s a win- so too is it with the Hall. If a book gets enough votes between the reading public and Hall of Fame Committee, they’re in regardless of whether they got 60% of the votes or 90% of them.

But it’s also fun to see just how positively the voting public has responded to a particular book’s candidacy, and I’ve used that metric- the percentage of public voters voting in favor of induction for a particular book- to populate the leaderboards I’ve shared with everyone here in this companion series.

Today, we’re gonna double down on that- go all in on the fun- but first, a word from our sponsor.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled program!

What’s new this week is that I’ve broken out the leaderboards. Previously, we just had one side for fantasy and the other for 30K/40K, but it’s been increasingly clear- particularly on the fantasy side of things- that some books are getting ‘shaded out.’

Sure it’s interesting to know what the “Top 20 fantasy books” are, but with no Age of Sigmar title able to crack the list it seems the old fantasy books have a bit of a stranglehold on it. Putting them in their own categories offers a bit more nuance in examining how books are performing- and also reveals some interesting insights about popularity and readership.

So let’s start with the Horus Heresy:

The Horus Heresy

Little surprise that Dan Abnett and Aaron Dembski-Bowden have the strong showing here we’ve seen in the past, but opening the table up to more Horus Heresy books that would have been knocked off by mainline 40K stories presents a much more interesting picture. Graham McNeill, in particular, comes out strong here- not as flashy, perhaps, as the other two gentlemen at the top of the table, but a consistently strong presence in the canon.

What I found particularly interesting here is the lack of books with an ‘approval rating’ in the 60’s. We go right from The Path of Heaven at 59% to Mechanicum at 71%. Not concerning, but simply curious.

Warhammer 40,000

Last time we updated the table (for the books of 2017), the cutoff approval rate to make the Top Twenty was 78%. This is clearly the most competitive field, with the new cutoff only dropping to 75%.

This table really demonstrates the dominance of Abnett and Dembski-Bowden. Outside of two books (For the Emperor by Sandy Mitchell, and Chris Wraight’s The Carrion Throne) 40K is theirs at the top.

Warhammer Fantasy

Since Warhammer Fantasy already owned the fantasy side of things before, there are no changes here. And unless they release an Old World novel that charts highly, this one’s likely fully baked.

It’s a great list of some amazing stories, though, and I’d always recommend a visit for those wanting to see what the ‘world that was’ was like.

Age of Sigmar

That lack of a 20th book is not a typo, but just a result of not (yet) having twenty books in the Age of Sigmar line to rank. This one will have the most volatility for the remainder of the project, since there’s lots of room to grow here. Books with a single-digit approval rating today will be tomorrow’s casualties as Age of Sigmar fiction continues to expand.

That leads me to the second thing that’s interesting here. Those approval ratings are low across the board- Soul Wars is the undisputed king of the hill, here, with just 27%. That’s about half of what the lowest-rated Fantasy book scored in the Fantasy Top Twenty.

What gives?

A closer look tells the tale. Here’s how Soul Wars looked in the polling:

With just a 12.5% vote against induction, Soul Wars actually did quite well in polling… but the overwhelming majority of readers simply had no opinion of it.

This is the biggest driver of why the Fantasy books scored so much lower than the 30K/40K ones. It’s not that they’re worse books, it’s just that they appeal to a much smaller population of Warhammer readers.

This shouldn’t be all that surprising, and is the reason why in the modern era you’re seeing Age of Sigmar account for only about a third of Black Library releases. It just doesn’t have the same level of readership.

The takeaway here is that one shouldn’t look at these low numbers and draw the wrong conclusions. You can still have masterpiece-level books that simply enjoy a smaller target audience, and that doesn’t necessarily prejudice them against successful induction into the Hall of Fame.

And- thus far, at least- it seems like Age of Sigmar has been given its due.

The Author Leaderboard

Finally, here’s the updated author leaderboard, to round out today’s statistical journey through the Hall.

Hall Winners by Number of Books

First off, congratulations to first-time winner Nick Horth, who made it in thanks to the grizzled Age of Sigmar duo Hanniver Toll and Armand Callis!

For the rest of the table, Abnett and Dembski-Bowden continued to keep space between themselves and the rest of the pack, but veterans Chris Wraight, Josh Reynolds, Guy Haley, and John French continue to climb.

With 2020 being the last year of Black Library production for Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: Manflayer was released in June of that year), his tally for the Hall will soon be locked in place- barring, of course, any future return.

That’s all for this time, thanks for reading!

Over on Tabletop Battles, we’ve been running the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame project going year by year identifying- through a combination of public and committee voting- which books have “historical, aesthetic, and/or cultural significance” to the Black Library.

This page serves as a simple repository for the list of inductees.

The Class of 1989-1998

The Class of 1999-2000

The Class of 2001

The Class of 2002

The Class of 2003

The Class of 2004

The Class of 2005

The Class of 2006

The Class of 2007

The Class of 2008

The Class of 2009

The Class of 2010

The Class of 2011

The Class of 2012

The Class of 2013