New Beastmen; Empire scenery

Lock your doors, ready you handguns and for goodness sake stay out of the forests: the Beastmen are here! That might seem a bit melodramatic, but once you've read through the Beastmen army book, learnt all about their Primal Fury and other new rules, and caught sight of the frightful new artwork, you'll be equally hysterical. That is of course unless you plan on leading the Beastmen on the battlefield, in which case you'll be grinning wickedly at the new monsters you'll have to unleash upon your foe. Take a look at the Doombull below and you'll see what I mean:

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  The new metal Doombull, sculpted by Mark Harrison, is a massive metal model and possibly the most eye-catching of the new Beastmen releases. Mark also sculpted the new plastic Minotaurs, and said 'the Doombull is basically a larger, more muscular Minotaur. I wanted to make sure he was still humanoid in appearance'. The Doombull was a labour of love for Mark (he sculpted it in his free time), which I think shows through on the finished model.

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  Paul Dainton painted this great piece of art for the Doombull's bestiary page in the new army book, which I think perfectly, captures the hulking power of the Doombull. This was something that took Paul a couple of attempts to get right. He said that 'without featuring another figure in the artwork, to provide a sense of scale, it was challenging to convey the size and bulk of the Doombull'.

The Beastmen are in stores from tomorrow but if you can't make it down to your local Hobby Centre over the weekend, then you can order them below and we'll ship them to you Monday.

Also released tomorrow are three new metal character models, including: two brand-new special characters; Ghorros Warhoof who confers +1 Weapon Skill on any unit of Centigor he leads, and Malagor, the Dark Omen a flying Bray-Shaman.

As well as all of the new Beastmen products released tomorrow, there are a host of current Beastmen models that feature in the new army book. I had a quick chat with Ed, the office's resident Beastmen expert, and he reckoned you might need some of these:

Remember a couple of weeks ago I showed you some pictures of the Warhammer board that Ray from the Warhammer World scenery team was working on? Well he's all but finished it now - just in time for his beautifully crafted Empire town to get overrun by a frothing Beastmen horde.

Ray wanted the board to have a warm feel to it and basecoated it in a mix of Khemri Brown and Tausept Ochre. He then added Dheneb Stone to the mix for highlighting the 'earth' areas and Astronomican Grey to it when highlighting the rocky areas.

Ray's board presents plenty of gaming challenges: the size of the gaps between buildings vary, some are wide enough for ranked units while others can only be traversed by skirmishing units.

Before texturing an entire board, Ray tests out his chosen approach, in this case a mix of dead grass and scorched grass, on a small area. When I spoke to him this morning he was happy with the effect and plans to finish the board by the end of the day.

Finally today, there's some extra good news if you live in the Baltimore are of the US. We've just opened a new store in Owing Mills, bringing the total in the area up to 13. If you're in the area then pop down and see what exciting stuff manager Nathan Carrol has in store for the local gaming community.