With Codex: Drukhari only days away from being in the hands of the denizens of Commorragh, every single Warhammer 40,000 Codex will very soon be available. There’s still loads to come, with the Crux Terminatus box on the horizon, and now you’ve got seven Battleforces to look forward to. Each one makes a great start to an army, will help round out a collection, or provides a brilliant stepping stone from a Combat Patrol box.
Blissbound Warband
The Emperor’s Children roam the galaxy in pursuit of sensations beyond imagination, always seeking excess in battle and slaughtering their foes with ever more depraved methods. Fulgrim, Daemon Primarch of Slaanesh, leads the Blissbound Warband into combat, a preening duellist who confounds his enemies with perfumes and poisons.
Joining him are six Flawless Blades, supremely arrogant Heretic Astartes who have welcomed daemonic power in order to enhance their already peerless skills in swordplay. Six Noise Marines provide ranged support, playing torturous threnodies with sonic weapons that shatter psyches and rattle flesh and armour to pieces. This box also contains an Emperor’s Children transfer sheet.
Cthonian Prospect
The galaxy is full of resources to be claimed, and the Leagues of Votann dispatch their Kinhosts to harvest them for the continued survival of their ancestor cores. A Cthonian Prospect is the name given to a delegation of Kin from the Cthonian Mining Guilds sent out to find and extract these resources, often while fending off vicious enemies. A Brôkhyr Iron-master with Ironkin Assistant and three E-COGs leads the band, which contains a unit of three Brôkhyr Thunderkyn and two Cthonian Earthshakers that use their ranged weapons as effective deterrents.
10 Cthonian Beserks provide the Prospect with some literal muscle, and a Kapricus Defender (which can alternatively be built as Kapricus Carrier transport) armed with a heavy weapon acts as mobile fire support. This box also contains two Leagues of Votann transfer sheets.
Crusher Stampede
Hive fleets drift silently through the stars, seeking their latest planet-sized meal as they incubate a vast horde of Tyranid broods within them. When a target is identified, they begin to launch spores full of bioforms at the planet to subjugate its defenders. When encountering particularly tough prey, the Hive Mind will unleash a horde of its largest monsters to utterly annihilate them – a collection of creatures referred to by distraught survivors as a Crusher Stampede.
A Neurotyrant with two Neuroloids provides a synaptic core for this bestial menagerie. The Screamer-Killer – so called for the earsplitting shriek it makes as it hurls gouts of burning bio-plasma – leads the charge, accompanied by a Tyrannofex, which carries a huge living weapon, an unfathomably ravenous Haruspex, and a Maleceptor, which obliterates foes with powerful psychic energy blasts. These monsters also have alternative builds: the Tyrannofex can be built as a Termagant-birthing Tervigon, the Haruspex as a sentient artillery piece known as an Exocrine, and the Maleceptor as a miasma-generating Toxicrene.
Farsight Cadre
Considered relative newcomers on the galactic stage, the T’au Empire are nevertheless big players in the 41st Millennium, their technological prowess letting them fight against ancient civilizations and warp horrors alike. Commander Farsight is an exemplary warrior of the Mont’ka, but also a separatist rebel, and the Farsight Cadre puts him in control of a surgical strike force comprising powerful battlesuits.
He is joined by a Riptide Battlesuit that uses a powerful nova reactor to overcharge the suits’ already advanced systems, allowing it to wipe out tough enemies. A Broadside Battlesuit brings to bear powerful ranged weaponry – either a devastating armour-penetrating heavy rail rifle or a series of high-yield missile pods – while a team of three Crisis Battlesuits can be outfitted as one of three different units to take out specific enemy formations. The box also contains eight drones, and a T’au Infantry transfer sheet.
Iron Halo Strike Force
Space Marines are the foremost bulwark of the Imperium, deployed to tackle the most extreme threats to the decaying sprawl of Humanity’s empire. The Iron Halo Strike Force pairs venerable elite warriors with plenty of firepower, led by a mighty Captain and joined by a contingent of Company Heroes and five Sternguard Veterans.
A unit of five Hellblasters armed with plasma incinerators eradicate enemies in a hail of incandescent energy, while a Ballistus Dreadnought provides formidable ranged support and a Redemptor Dreadnought wades into the fray to smash aside armoured targets. This box also contains a set of the just-revealed Space Marine heads, two Space Marine transfer sheets, and two Space Marine vehicle transfer sheets.
Hellforged Warband
A dark mirror of the Emperor’s Space Marines, Heretic Astartes are the remnants of the forces that allied with the Warmaster in the Horus Heresy, mixed with more modern renegades. Millennia living in the warp has twisted them and granted them dark power that they use to strike back at their foes. A Lord Discordant leads a Hellforged Warband from atop a powerful Helstalker, commanding an arachnoid Venomcrawler, two Obliterators, who transform to manifest a variety of heavy ordnance, and five Havocs, who train powerful weapons on their foes.
A unit of 10 Legionaries act as a dependable and flexible core for these specialised units to act around, and a Chaos Rhino provides them with armoured conveyance across the battlefield. This box also contains two Chaos Space Marine transfer sheets.
Krieg Siege Platoon
The Astra Militarum is a vast war machine made up of billions willing to sacrifice themselves in service to the Imperium. It draws its regiments from countless worlds all over the galaxy, and some have become notorious for their specialist troops, like Krieg – home to the grim and brutal siegemasters called the Death Korps.
A Lord Commissar and a Krieg Command Squad take charge of 20 Death Korps of Krieg troopers who excel in gruelling conditions. A squad of Combat Engineers, expert sappers and close-quarters trench fighters, range ahead of the force, while two Artillery Teams pummel the enemy with powerful ordinance – each able to pick from a heavy mortar, siege cannon, heavy quad launcher, or multiple rocket launcher as their main weapon. This box also contains a Death Korps of Krieg transfer sheet.
Each Battleforce box gets you the miniatures within at a lower price than buying them separately, and they will be available to pre-order later in the year.
