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Finally! After a lackluster couple of days we got a bunch of announcements that were almost entirely great. Even the least of them was good (if unnecessary).

The first thing we got was Kill Team: Moroch, which pits Traitor Guard against Vanguard Space Marines. I have to say that I love the current Kill Team kits a ton. They have done such an excellent job adding character to each and every model. (I’m not a fan of the fact that there’s no central book for all of the rules. But that’s another story.)

The Traitor Guard were something that I had put on my wish list for WarhammerFest. I have been wanting good Traitor Guard for a long time–they’re my personal favorite incarnation of Chaos. And these don’t disappoint. They do reuse two models from Blackstone Fortress, but that’s fine with me because those models are still relatively recent, and they’re simply really good models.

One of the things that I like about these Traitor Guard are that you can see that they all have origins in some of the Imperial Guard regiments. There’s someone who is clearly wearing a Cadian helmet, and someone else (a couple) who are very Death Korps of Krieg. These really do look like Imperial Guard gone wrong.

What I’m really hoping for is that these guys come with rules for adding them to 40k, not just Kill Team. I would love to see entire Traitor Guard armies.

The Vanguard Space Marines are good, but they’re not AS good. They all look really great for a collection of Vanguard Space Marines–the models are all crisp and nice. They just don’t have the same level of personality and individuality that the Kill Team kits typically have. Several of them look relatively generic and you have to really scour the details to tell the difference between the medic and sniper and the demolitions guy.

That said, I still love them, and I’ll still be picking up this kit. I don’t know if I’ll be buying the actual Kill Team: Moroch box, but I’ll be buying the models for both sides (the terrain is not particularly enticing.)

Next in the reveals was Grimbeorn, chieftain of the Beornings from Lord of the Rings. This is the kit I was referring to when I said that it felt a little unnecessary. I really love the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, and these models are great, but sometimes it feels like they’re trying to squeeze blood from a stone. They’ve been making models of Lord of the Rings for twenty years and it seems like they’re really stretching to find something new and interesting to reveal. Still, cool bear.

In what was my favorite reveal of the day (and a very unexpected reveal): Necromunda is getting a full box of Squats!

There is so much to love about this. For starters, I love the fact that these are not Leagues of Votann–they’re Squats, pure and simple. They’re called Squat Prospectors, and they’re unrelated, lore-wise, to the Votann. This seems like a very nice bridge between old lore and new lore, and I’m interested to see more of it.

I also love the look of these guys. These are the first Squat units that really look, to me, like Squats. They’re obviously an updated and enhanced set of models, with modern armor, but they have throwbacks to the first edition Squats–particularly with those silly helmets. The Squats of old had big bulky round helmets with mirror-like visors, and while these guys lack the quilted armor, those funny helmets remain. And I LOVE them.

This is a little thing, but I really love their weapons. Each gun, whether it is a pistol or a drum-fed machine gun, has double barrels. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of mechanical sense in a lot of cases, but I love that they ALL have it that way. It gives me more hope that the Squats will remain a very shooty army.

Anyway, even if the other Leagues of Votann boxes disappoint (I really am on the fence about the hover trike) at least we’ll have this great box to build from.

I’m new to Warcry, only buying Warcry: Red Harvest a couple months ago, but I like everything that I’ve seen about the game. And I like the new Horns of Hashut. All of the Warcry warbands, almost without exception, as really excellent. And these guys continue in the tradition of being chaotic and weird, but in a unique way. I love the helmets, the weapons, and the armor. I love that there appear to be heavily armored bosses and the poorly equipped grunts (that may be slaves?)

There have been rumblings that we might see a Warcry 2.0 coming out, and I know that some people have been worried that the new release might ruin the game. (There is a sentiment among many–myself included–that the change to the new Kill Team rules was a big step backwards.) I find it interesting that they released a new logo for Warcry. Does that mean the new version is coming soon? Or would they release the new logo with new release, so this means we’re not actually getting a new version? I don’t know.

Finally, also for Warcry, we got the Centaurion Marshal. This is just more evidence that the Warcry team is doing a great job with models. If I have one complaint with this four-armed Centaur it’s that he’s a little busy. (Also: four arms, four legs–does that make him a spider?)

Still a really awesome model. And this caps off the best day of WarhammerFest so far. Crossing my fingers for tomorrow.