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I, like many of you, have been looking forward to WarhammerFest this year. I fully admit that it’s very easy for marketers to wrap me around their little finger, and I was completely on board with taking an hour off in the middle of the day to watch the livestream.

I previously posted what I was hoping to get from WarhammerFest, and I partially got it. Specifically, I said that I wanted to see World Eaters and Squats, and we got World Eaters and Squats. Kinda.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Going back to the order in which things were revealed, let’s get to Chaos.

The first thing we saw was a pretty substantial new set of models for Chaos, which I’m sure made a lot of people very happy. I’m not particularly interested in Chaos, and these models really didn’t do it for me, but there’s no doubt they’ve been a long time coming.

For starters, the Possessed. These are pretty great sculpts, I’ll give them that. The Possessed all look really terrific and far better than the previous Possessed. They’re going a little over-the-top into the grossness of Chaos, but we’re going to see that that’s a theme for this entire range.

I’m not squeamish generally, but one thing I don’t like is body horror, and therefore you can imagine what I thought about Chaos. The Possessed aren’t bad. They’re good, decent demonic half-marine/half-monster sculpts that look great.

The Cultists also look pretty good, thought I would have liked to see Traitor Guard. (In the livestream they made a comment that these guys are essentially the same stats as Imperial Guard troops–or they fill that role at least–but there’s no honest-to-goodness Traitor Guard.

But here is one thing that I find very interesting and, to my way of thinking, very good. Last year at WarhammerFest we were given the Cadian Upgrade Sprue which had female Cadians and POC Cadians. And that was a pretty big deal, because there just hasn’t been good representation in the past. But in that year we’ve seen a LOT of representation, especially in Age of Sigmar, but in Warhammer 40k, too.

Anyway, the point is, this group of Chaos Cultists had at least two women in it, and more than one Cultist was painted as black. So, they may be Chaos, but they’re progressive.

Anyway, then we get onto the models that I’m starting to like a little bit less. Well, let me put that a different way. These are models that I love IN CONCEPT, but not models that I want to see on my tabletop. They are certainly not models that I would want to paint. And that’s because I do not like body horror.

Death Guard is about my limit when it comes to gross tentacles and gaping maws in someone’s belly. These Accursed Cultists are pushing it much further than that, and… it’s a little much. I don’t like it.

But I love the idea! I love that Chaos daemons are taking control of these Cultists–that they’ve given themselves over so fully to Chaos that it’s all over for them and they’re going to be mutants…for a while.

And then we come to the natural evolution of the Accursed Cultists, which are the Torments. These are Cultists who are in the final seconds of humanity and the daemon is just comin’ on out, leaving no human behind. Again, I love the concept. I even think that the sculpts are really well done, perfectly portraying what they’re supposed to portray. I just don’t like to look at them.

(It should be noted that the weird thing that we all were wondering what it could be–the silhouette in the thumbnail teasing WarhammerFest–is one of these Torments. And it makes sense now why no one could figure out what the heck it was going to be. Because it’s just so twisted and weird.)

Finally, we got the Dark Commune, and I apologize but I had to step out of the livestream to take a call during this reveal so I don’t even know what role they’re supposed to play. But I like the models. They have a very Nazgul vibe to them, a little. They also look like they could easily be Age of Sigmar models if you wanted them to be.

Anyway, that’s Chaos. Let’s move on (for a moment.)

We finally got our first look at the Squats, or Leagues of Votann, and I have to say that my initial reaction was a big sigh of relief. That’s because, despite what had been said, I had braced myself for the possibility that the Squats were going to be a Kill Team band and not a full army. But you don’t need hover trikes in Kill Team.

I am torn on whether I love the model or not. I mean, I love that it’s Squats, because I love everything Squats. I just wish it wasn’t hovering. I realize that the old designers had always been a little embarrassed that the Squats were blue-collar biker gangs. I also realize that the new version of Leagues of Votann are supposed to have very high technology. So hover trikes seems like the perfect homage to Squats without being Old Squats. I just wish it wasn’t hovering.

Other than the hovering, I love the whole model. It has a female Squat without a beard (which, after the outcry about the Lord of the Rings Amazon show I’m sure is going to have dumb people angry on the internet.) But I like that she is wearing a big long coat that seems to be some kind of cloth or leather, which is a little more Squat-like than the power armor that we saw in the original Squat teaser.

I also have to say that I love the gun. Not the gun on the bike–that seems surprisingly small–but the gun that she’s carrying. Some kind of beefed-up badass shotgun (though it’s a revolver). It just looks bananas and I love it.

Overall, it’s a good mix of kinda-Imperium/kinda-Xenos, and I think it walks that line pretty well.

The next thing we got was a new Chapter Approved and I really tried to get myself to care about it, but even the presenters of the livestream didn’t seem like they cared at all. I’m not a tournament player, and I think that Warhammer has too many rulebooks generally, so one more thing for me to ignore. So there’s that.

Then came something I was waiting for, although it was just a tease. The World Eaters are coming. And this is what I was hoping for, in my WarhammerFest predictions I wished for World Eaters to come (complete with Angron). They didn’t say anything about Angron, but the World Eaters will be getting their very own Codex, putting them into the same league as Thousand Sons and Death Guard, which really suggests that we’re going to see Angron, doesn’t it?

They also said that we’re for sure getting all-new Berserkers. And that’s been twenty years in the making.

Then we moved on to the last model: the Daemon Prince that had been leaked last week. I personally liked him when he was leaked last week, but a lot of people had issues with his head. I’m glad to see that they cleared that particular problem up with four heads, one for each Chaos god. And most of the heads look great.

We also got to see that the Daemon Prince could be built in a huge number of variations, with hoofed feet or clawed feet, with a sword or a power claw, with wings or with a power pack. So that is all terrific, and of all the Chaos models that were announced today, this is the only one that tempts me to buy it.

Finally, we got a teaser trailer for Angels of Death Origins, which I personally think looks pretty neat. I was disappointed to see that as it was being revealed the Twitch stream was filled with negative comments (even the occasional misogynistic one). I know that not everyone love Warhammer+, but I still think it’s worth the six bucks I pay for it per month. That’s hardly anything, and I enjoy the majority of the content.

Anyway, that’s it for WarhammerFest Day One! What did you think? Were you pleased? Anything tickle your fancy? Leave a comment!