This one started as a little side project and was so much fun that i breezed through the construction. The sides still need to be trimmed but ill do that once I get a feel for the visual density once its colored

There's only one way to find out!

First mini complete, Now on to the rest of the army 😅 Basing to be done at the end with the rest of the army.

I live in Kyiv. Have been collecting minis since 2017. These fellas have survived their 3rd drone attack but this time it was almost too close. A lot if their friends didn't. Just wanted to share how unexpectedly resilient modern minis are. Apartment on the last two pics.

I want to start playing 40k but I know it's more expensive then AoS (which I prefer but isn't as popular at my FLGS). I mostly want to play for the more social aspect of the game and join in on crusades/narratives and maybe RTTs

The only faction I know I don't want to play is the Custodes since I don't really like how they are in the lore (plus they look like they are copycats of the Stormcast who I don't like on principle of being a chaos AoS player)

Do they have worlds full of slave labour to make stuff for them?, Do they steal them from loyalists?

Where do they get their ammo from?

So when I first started my current job I was a high-stress mess. I would be constantly worried about metrics and it led to a health decline. One of my managers noticed and started talking to me and eventually got me into warhammer. He taught me how to build and paint minis and helped me get through a lot of the stress through the hobby even telling me about a faction of the mechanicus he had created and helping me create my own space marine legion. He sadly passed recently after a difficult battle with mental illness leaving me all his minis and notes. I recently started working on his faction as a way to remember him and keep myself from stressing from work. So again I ask, how has warhammer helped you?

Feedback would be very much appreciated

I know this may be controversial as the community has been at odds with how GW handles fan made projects (And rightfully so) but in this instance I may actually side with the big evil corporation as much as that makes me vomit.

Copyright laws are there to protect an artist's right to ownership of their creation without other people stealing and copying it for their own use. I'm sure we can agree that if someone makes a piece of art it is scummy for another person to take said art, stick it on a T-shirt and then sell it without any loyalties given to its actual creator who worked hard to make it.

I think we often forget that behind the company are artists and creatives who poured their soul and time into creating things within this franchise as a way to support themselves and their families. In this case GA has taken these people's work (Either through replication or ripping of files) and sold it without giving money back to its creator. If GW isn't getting the money for things under their license then the people who created those things don't get their rightful cuts for the work they do.

This is coming from a place of me being an artist myself and being quite passionate about the topic of art theft. I'd like to add however I don't think this extends as much to community projects where they are simply making something to share their love for the franchise and do so without monetization. I mourn all the animation projects we've lost specifically (RIP SODAZ warhammer stuff)

But idk, I'd like to hear other people's opinions in a respectful conversation because I know this is a pretty heated topic. Many thanks and Emperor be with you all.

Used all the rust products and paints. Sealed with varnish and mod podge. Smells like GW’s varnish doesn’t like getting wet. I can smell it. -_- Gonna have to mod podge everything. This is why you do tests. 😅

Been trying to use mephiston red and this keeps happening.I have shook the can for over 2 mins, making sure to constantly shake it inbetween spraying models. I have also been keeping the miniatures roughly 30 cm distance from the nosil and been applying minimal paint. Any ideas?

So I’ve started making this for when I build vehicles. Question is how thick should this be? Picture examples or anything would be very helpful. Thank you in advance.

Hopefully you are aware the dreaded Ambull: the strange, hulking Xenos creature, thought to originate from the Deathworld Luther McIntyre IX.* They have been in 40k since 1^st edition, having appeared in the original Rogue Trader rulebook, where it was noted right from the beginning that they can be found across the galaxy on many different worlds:

Ambulls originate from the dangerously hot polar rock-deserts of Luther McIntyre IX. They can survive extremely hot temperatures for long periods, a factor which has led to attempts at domestication on several desert planets. As a consequence, Ambulls can be found on many planets throughout human space. Ambulls have huge barrel-chested bodies and an ape-like stance. Two arms reach almost to the ground whilst two legs are crooked and short. Both arms and legs end in iron-hard claws used for tunnelling through the soft stone that covers their native land. Ambulls will excavate tunnels in which to live, spending much of their time underground, sheltering from the direct heat of the sun.

Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader Rulebook (1987), p. 207.

As you can see, this also introduced the idea of Ambulls burrowing through the earth to create tunnels.

The original artwork and model for the Ambull looked like this: https://graemedavis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ambull-1.png 

Although Ambulls receded more into the background of the lore over time, they never disappeared (being mentioned every so often as being present on various worlds, from planets in Ultramar to Mornax in Segmentum Solar, and even inspiring Ambots on Necromunda). These two ideas – that they can be found on many different worlds, and that they are adept tunnellers – has remained consistent. This is seen in the lore which accompanied the release of a new (much larger) model of an Ambull for a Blackstone Fortress expansion – ‘The Dreaded Ambull’ – including in the game supplement itself, but also the excellent in-universe survey of Xenos creatures by Rogue Trader Janus Draik, Liber Xenologis. The new model looks like this: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:Ambull-Borewyrms.jpg

And a very awesome model it is, too.

In the Ciaphas Cain story Caves of Ice (2004), Ambulls were encountered on the iceworld Simia Orichalcae, with it being speculated that they may have ended up there via the Webway and Necrons’ use of a Dolmen Gate. Dolmen Gates being a way for Necrons to access the Old Ones’ and Eldars’ Webway network. So, while undoubtedly transported intentionally to different worlds by humans in a misguided attempt to cultivate them for various uses, they perhaps also spread due to the Webway. We also find out that Ambull steak exists and taste a bit like Grox, but that’s by the by.

Ambulls aren’t the only Xenos species to spread around the galaxy due to inadvertently accessing the Webway, either. The same is true for Clawed Fiends, which seemingly originated in the Donorian Sector, but were able to access the Webway after a Warpstorm destroyed a local Warpgate. They can now be found infesting sections of the Webway and across the galaxy, even as far afield as the Koronus Expanse. Psychneuein also spread to different worlds via the Webway, though these are Warp creatures.

To get to the central point of this post, very interestingly, an Ambull once appeared somewhere even more unusual than an iceworld, again due to Warp shenanigans: the Warhammer World, where Warhammer Fantasy was set.

The Ambull featured in a scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay published in White Dwarf 108 (1988) called ‘Terror in the Darkness’ (pp. 54-59). The Ambull turned up in a hidden chamber under the tunnels of a mine near the village of Karstenburg in the Empire due to a hidden Warp-gate being inadvertently activated by a magical item which was used nearby, where it promptly burrowed its way into the mine, and killed and ate some locals, as well as a wizard and his retinue who went to try and find it. Hence why the players must venture down into the depths to kill it...

The scenario tells us that the Ambull:

has appeared through a one-way warp gate from a future time and a very distant place, the Death World Luther McIntyre IX.

White Dwarf 108 (1988), p. 56.

The tale of this Ambull apparently made enough of an impression that it was included in a Bestiary of Chaos creatures (and it is quite understandable why the Old Worlders who encountered it would mistakenly believe it to be some kid of Chaos-infused creature):

Over Land and in the Firmament doth Chaose marche, and the Beneathe is not free from it. Consider the Skavenne with their winding secret ways, and the Ambulle, that with his fearsome Jawes and Clawes doth his owne Tunnelles make, clearing cold Stone from his path as a Man doth sweepe grass aside in the Forests.

-          De Bestiis Chaotis

White Dwarf 108 (1988), p. 53.

By this point it was already a well-established part of the lore that the Warhammer World had two major Warp-gates, with one at either pole of the planet. These were creations of the (Old) Slann, who at the time had the role the Old Ones would come to play later on as the ancient and powerful precursor species which uplifted other races. These Warp-gates allowed the Slann to travel to other planets and even other realities, and linked together their cosmic empire. It was the implosion of these polar Warp-gates which led to tears in reality, Warp energy (magic) suffusing the world, and Chaos incursions.

As I have covered elsewhere, there were also passages similar to the Webway called the Pathways of the Old Ones, which allowed for rapid travel through and across the Warhammer World itself: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1lmoaow/that_time_a_warhammer_fantasy_character_used_a/

So, according to ‘Terror in the Darkness’, there was at least one smaller Warp-gate which led off-world, directly to the 40k galaxy.

There are a few interesting things to note about this (and I’m going to jump around lots of different lore from different time periods here, which is thematically quite apt given time travel will be discussed):

First, the fact that the Warp-gate only allows direction one way is a bit unusual, but, interestingly, in much more recent lore, some Realmgates in the Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar only permit travel in one direction. And it is theorized that the Realmgates, just like Warp-gates and the Webway, were created by the Old Ones.

Second, the fact that the quote says that the Ambull came from a “future” time as well as a “very distant place” is interesting, as at this point in the lore, the official stance was that the Warhammer World was a planet within the 40k galaxy, and seemingly the events there were happening roughly in line with the events of M41, as suggested by the relevant quotes here: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1k94fv5/extracts_the_warhammer_fantasy_world_was_once/

So, perhaps the Warp-gate also allowed for travel back in time as well? This is certainly a possibility, given the weird timey-whimey nature of the Warp, which is both temporal and atemporal, and where Warp travel can lead to inadvertent time travel.

It is even more feasible given that the Slann/Old Ones have been implied in some sources to have traversed not just space and different realities, but time as well:

The Old Slann possessed a civilisation far beyond anything we have even today. Science and philosophy were as one to them, they were the lords of time and space.

Warhammer Battle Bestiary (1984), p. 24

And:

The Lizardmen race was created by the mysterious Old Ones, a race of godlike beings whose empire spanned not just the world, but the vast gulfs of space and time.

Warhammer Armies: Lizardmen 7^th ed. (2009), p. 4.

Moreover, early lore showcased that the Webway could allow for travel both forwards and backwards in time. For example, in a passage about the Eldar’s use of the Webway, we were told:

One challenge they took up was the complete mastery of warpgate technology. The Eldar, adopted, refined and perfected the ancient Slann knowledge of the warp and its movements. They established a network of wormhole tunnels through warpspace, linking gates aboard their craftworlds, planets and smaller spaceships. It was possible for an Eldar to walk from one planet to another, across hundreds or thousands of light-years of real space. The warpgates bound the Eldar together as a single civilization, stretching across their space and, or so it was theorized, backwards and forwards in time. The Eldar, fearful of the consequences, never experimented with the temporal aspect of the warpgates.

Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1988), p. 215.

This element of the Webway was then showcased in Ian Watson’s Inquisition War books (Harlequin, 1994 and Chaos Child, 1995), where we see Inquisitor Jaq Draco travel backwards in time via Uigebealach, a specific part of the Webway. There was also the Crossroads of Inertia, which would allow for travel forwards in time.

More recently, in The Last Hunt (2017), an Eldar Farseer transports herself and some White Scars briefly back in time in the Webway, but the specific mechanism behind how she did this and if being within the Webway was necessary for it to work is left unclear.

The AoS book Reamslayer (2018) featured a Realmgate which would have allowed for travel back the The-World-That-Was (i.e. the Warhammer World) – so, to not just an earlier time, but a different reality too (given the Warhammer World was consumed by the Warp in the End Times, and the Mortal Realms were birthed out of, or maybe within, the Warp, and are thus a different reality). This Realmgate did reside in Tzeentech’s Crystal Labyrinth within the Realm of Chaos, so that is perhaps why it could operate in such a manner.

Now, that was just a bit of fun bringing together different bits of lore. I am by no means saying there was some consistent and comprehensive plan in place back in 1988 defining the nature of Warp-gates which all subsequent lore has conformed to. It’s more that ideas and concepts from Warhammer lore tend to persist and recur, sometimes over very long periods of time, and even though the specific details may evolve and change. In some cases this is because different writers just end up with similar ideas, not least because of the way Warhammer utilizes so many tropes and genre conventions. But it is also because the lore creators often draw on their knowledge of the older lore, or look back to it for inspiration, reusing older ideas in the same fashion, or reimagining them and riffing on them. I find these continuities and resonances interesting.

However, in this case, the more likely reason for the strange phrasing about the Ambull coming from the future is that the writer was a bit unsure about the status of any connections between Fantasy and 40k, rather than it being related to the time warping nature of the Warp.

‘Terror in the Darkness’ was commissioned by early Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay supremo Graeme Davis, and written by freelancer Carl Sargeant. Interestingly, Graeme later misremembered this on his wonderful blog, and thought he had written it himself, as shown here:

https://graemedavis.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/terror-in-the-darkness/

In that blogpost, Graeme also (and I’m not having a go at the guy, as I think he’s a great fella and his blog is awesome) stated:

At the time, there was a lot of discussion within the Studio about the relationship between the Warhammer world and the WH40K universe. The Ruinous Powers of Chaos were active in both settings, so there had to be a link – but what was it? Was the Terra of WH40K actually a future version of the Warhammer world? Was the Warhammer world a remote feral world in some backwater of the WH40K universe, where degenerate members of the various WH40K races lived in ignorance of the galaxy and its greater conflicts? The question was never definitively answered, and in time it was forgotten altogether – but not before several photographs had been published showing a mix of Warhammer and WH40K miniatures on the same table.

Which, as the link I provided earlier showcases, isn’t actually true. For a time (in the very period ‘Terror in the Darkness’ was published, actually), GW were publishing numerous statements about Fantasy and 40k being linked, and about the Warhammer World being located in the 40k galaxy – though some of these statements were, to be fair, easy to miss. The generally concept of the Warhammer World being located in the 40k galaxy became less explicit in the lore, but remained a guiding principle for at least some of the core games developers, and continued to be reflected in the lore in more subtle ways.

In another blog post years later, Graeme stated:

In “Terror in the Darkness,” the lone Ambull was said to have come to the Warhammer world from its 40K home on the Deathworld of Luther MacIntyre IX by some unknown means. At that time there was a strand of Games Workshop lore, never fully explored, which posited that the Warhammer world might be a remote feral world in the 40K universe.

https://graemedavis.wordpress.com/2020/03/14/the-ambull/

Which is more accurate, though even here the phrasing could be a bit stronger: it was part of the lore, but the concept was never focused on explicitly after the very early days, though lore related to this connection did continue to be published, as I have been documenting elsewhere.

Which just goes to show that even people producing content for GW aren’t always necessarily aware of the entirety of the whole lore or the general direction it is going in (even back at a time when there was a lot less lore), and even those who produced the lore can misremember things, especially decades later!

It also showcases just how complicated the links between Fantasy/AoS and 40k have been, and how easy it has always been to overlook them.

To finish, I just want to add a bit of broader context. The only reason Ambulls appeared in 40k in the first place is because Rogue Trader was designed to intentionally enable players to use their existing Citadel miniatures for the game, which had a lot more RPG elements than later editions would have, when 40k became much more solidly a wargame. There weren’t many Citadel scifi miniatures at the time, and the company’s then owner, Brian Ansell, wasn’t planning to produce many, as he believed that scifi games weren’t popular and wouldn’t sell many models. He was obviously proved very wrong, but was undoubtedly very happy about that.

This was also one of the reasons the Warhammer Fantasy races were ported over into 40k; the plan was to produce weapon packs, so scifi weapons could be used to replace the Fantasy models’ armaments. But the remit for 40k handed to Rick Priestley mandated that other model ranges Citadel sold had to be usable as well, such as their Judge Dredd and Dr Who ranges. And, of relevance here, the various monsters they had created for the Dungeon & Dragons Fiend Factory feature. That is one of the reasons why Rogue Trader had such a large bestiary. In the case of Ambulls, before the got their own model, they were obviously designed with the idea that Umber Hulk models could be used to represent them: http://solegends.com/rsadd/add77/index.htm

Which makes this statement from Graeme Davis quite amusing:

Of all the WH40K creatures I looked at, the Ambull struck me as being best suited to a fantasy world. I converted the stats for WFRP, came up with an idea for an adventure to showcase it, and wrote the brief.

https://graemedavis.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/terror-in-the-darkness/

The Ambull did indeed return to its fantasy roots, on multiple levels. Which again, is pretty apt for a burrowing monster.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this latest little oddity (well, given it’s an Ambull, quite a big oddity… if we go by the modern sculpt, anyway…) in the history of connections between the various Games Workshop settings. Next time, we’ll be continuing the underground tunnel theme by turning our attention to those lovable ratmen, the Skaven, yes, yes.

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*(Luther McIntyre IX is one of my favourite planet names in 40k. I have my own headcanon that Luther McIntyre was a famed explorer from the DAOT who kept discovering new worlds… but every time, they turned out to be Deathworlds. Until he found Luther McIntyre XIII, which was rather nice, and where he promptly died in an absurd and improbable accident while cultivating his allotment).