In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, There's a Pretty Mixed Bag...

So, the contents of the forthcoming Dark Imperium boxed set for the new Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition was just revealed.

I can't help but notice that the plague-infested mutant hordes that are making up the numbers in the Nurgle-worshipping Death Guard force are called Poxwalkers... the same name as my own shambling demonic hordes. In fairness, a bit of research just now revealed the existence of a Chaos artifact called the Poxwalker Hive that uses insects to create zombies (or something), so I guess Gee-Dub wins this round!

Going from the fluff, a zombie-type creature that's essentially a walking hive for demonic insects would be great... a 40K version of Mushizo from Ninja Scroll. Unfortunately these just look like they've taken the "Nurgle = bone spikes" motif from the Putrid Blightkings (elements I all but removed entirely from my own Plaguetouched), turned it up to 11, and crammed it into human-sized figures. In fact, the whole Death Guard figure range here seems to have gone that same way. Still, the actual Chaos Marines are more ornate anyway, and seem to weather the over-detailed storm better than the mutants (especially the guy with the tentacle-jester-hat and bionic arm, and the one bursting out of his gimp suit).

The flipside to that, in other, more positive, news, is that the new Space Marines have gone the other way! They seem more military and less ornate than many of their predecessors (it helps, not doubt, that the base set will be the 'vanilla' Ultramarines (or whatever other orthodox Chapter one wishes) rather than the more gimmicky Dark/Blood Angels, Space Wolves etc. I'm FINALLY getting the Marines I always wanted: bad asses that actually look like super-soldiers! This guy especially.

So, I guess... in the grim darkness of the far future, there's a pretty mixed bag...