Upcoming BL Stuff 2025

[DarkChaplain]

2 hours ago, darkhorse0607 said:

There's also the fact that according to the stream yesterday, Saturnine was around during the Crusade, then Vulkan gave it out to all of the other legions after engineering it, even though in the last rulebook (released only 3 years ago) the chart lists Saturnine armor as launching during the Heresy itself, so that doesn't make any sense.

 

In Deeds Endure from the Shattered Legions anthology, the Salamanders are using Saturnine plate on Isstvan V.... but the Iron Hands don't appear to recognize it yet. So yeah... Forgeworld just retcons a TON of stuff, all the time.

 

My big lol of the Heresy tabletop is still the introduction of Geigor Fell-Hand. Model in the starter set, with the late tie-in audio drama giving him background. I just found out that he even got a freakin' JoyToy action figure!

He's literally a stand-in for Bjorn, the Fell-Handed, who was at the battle of Prospero but canonically lost his hand there, so didn't wield that claw. A character that just got added so that HH had another named character that wasn't Bjorn, but filled the same niche, to the point of copying the original bloke's title.

[darkhorse0607]

Ran across this article on the Guardian, and while it's not specifically about Games Workshop, it covers Audibles announcement that they plan to contract out AI services to narrate audiobooks (pending agreement with the studio that is producing the book) with AI

 

I would hope that BL doesn't go down that road but it's worth keeping an eye on

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/13/audible-unveils-plans-to-use-ai-voices-to-narrate-audiobooks

[DarkChaplain]

CULT OF THE SPIRAL DAWN AUDIOBOOK INCOMING! FEHERVARI IS COMING HOME, BABY!

[Krelious]

On 5/24/2025 at 6:13 AM, Nagashsnee said:

And the first heretic, and the corax book, and a night lords short story, and some iron hand stories, and...

 

And even reading all of them, you never actual get a start-end story, what happened to the loyalist fleets? The Gloriannas of 3 legions ( tho i think the Raven Guard one is confirmed dead),  Like if tomorrow the Salamanders/Iron Hands in 40k showed up with their Glorianna and said ' yeah it fought its way out of istvaan and it got better now,' no one could even say its a retcon.  Did the Iron Hand one even make the battle or was it still under repair? We know their vessels were still arriving in bits and pieces late into the massacre.  There was real meat on the story bones here for BOTH sides. 

 

Isstvan V has been covered in bits and pieces, we know the general gist of what happened, and at this point its been covered enough to not warant a book on it. But IT SHOULD have gotten one. Its one of the most crucial battles of the Heresy and it covered legions that never got real spotlight. How the Salamanders got 3 books and Istvaan got diddle squat is a head scratcher.  And seeing some of the stories that they did go with makes it a real head scratcher. 

 

 

Id imagine that when the 4 secret traitor fleets arrived to deploy their surface forces they likely blind sided the loyalist fleet at the same time as the ground force ambush and likely had similar results not to mention that they could have already been engaged with the original 3 traitor fleets and then been sandwiched between them.

 

That being said im one of the people in the camp of not really caring about the Shattered Legions which is only amplified by hearing about all the Salamander books being crap and anything by Gav Thorpe is a nope for me. 

[cheywood]

On 5/24/2025 at 12:28 PM, grailkeeper said:

I haven't read any of the novels that tie in with edition releases. Have any of them been good? I've a general impression they're mid, but open to finding something I've overlooked.

They’re usually filled with cliches, obvious product placement and an excess of fight scenes. The past two 40k new edition novels stand as some of the worst written material of the past 5 years. But at the same time Dark Imperium was a decent novel, so there’s always hope.

[Dornfist]

On 4/13/2025 at 2:28 AM, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

TO BE CONCLUDED IN THE END AND THE DEATH VOLUME TWO

 

No, I'm not still mad. Why do you ask?

Nah, you are good lol. I remember my hardback of volume I claiming the same...and it still makes me salty...

[Bulwyf]

So is ADB retired? He has written anything in years. 

[skylerboodie]

He now has a full time role as Head of Narrative at Games Workshop I understand, so no longer has had the time to focus on writing unfortunately it appears; he was already a self-confessed very slow writer, even when that was his day job, so I'm not hopeful we'll see many new novels from him any year soon. Sadly

[cheywood]

I don’t think there’s any reason to believe ADB has quit writing. He has that novella coming out to tie-in with Dark Heresy and a short story in Era of Ruin, which is explicit confirmation he’s still writing. That said I imagine he’s moving at a snail’s pace. Hard to write much when you have a creatively involved day job and 3 kids to take care. Hopefully we see a novel from him in the next few years. 

Edited Friday at 11:57 AM by cheywood

[skylerboodie]

That Era of Ruin short story was likely written a good 2-3 years ago though, given how long in advance these are done (and the book has been printed for at least a year?) - perhaps written before taking up his current role in November 2022.

 

But yes, I doubt he's 'quit writing' - just don't expect much output, especially considering the amount we got when he was writing it full time. Quality over quantity at least

[darkhorse0607]

6 hours ago, cheywood said:

I don’t think there’s any reason to believe ADB has quit writing. He has that novella coming out to tie-in with Dark Heresy and a short story in Era of Ruin, which is explicit confirmation he’s still writing. That said I imagine he’s moving at a snail’s pace. Hard to write much when you have a creatively involved day job and 3 kids to take care. Hopefully we see a novel from him in the next few years. 

 

Plus you have the fact that his new day job is literally writing lore. So I can imagine it's taxing going from writing lore in one setting, going home and dealing with real life, before completely switching settings to write your book and then back again when you go to work the next day. I just wish they'd announce one way or another on a lot of the stuff we are waiting for. I get why they don't from a business perspective, but I feel like it's growing more irritation than anything by staying silent

 

Hope he's doing better mentally though

[Taliesin]

Are we certain though. that he is really head of narrative and actually responsible for developing the lore/narrative direction in current 40k books?

Because many complain that there doesn't seem to be much going on , on that front.

[theSpirea]

Afaik he got that position only recently and GW plans things years ahead. It's not like he gets in and starts making changes immediately. 

[darkhorse0607]

48 minutes ago, theSpirea said:

Afaik he got that position only recently and GW plans things years ahead. It's not like he gets in and starts making changes immediately. 

 

It was in late 2022 that he took over, so going off the 3ish year planning timeframe that they at least use for miniatures, it would be about now-end of the year. I have a suspicion that starting in 11th we will start seeing new codex lore and more stuff on that front if they gave him 10th as kind of a "plan ahead" kind of edition to get up and going

 

That being said, the newest Armaggedon campaign book feels very ADB with the factions and settings involved given what he has written novel wise

[Preliminary Bombardment]

1 hour ago, theSpirea said:

Afaik he got that position only recently and GW plans things years ahead. It's not like he gets in and starts making changes immediately. 

Imagine he’s doing stuff around 12th edition, return of Lemun Russ that sort of thing…

 

[Felix Antipodes]

Considering they plan years ahead, I expect to see an ADB influence start to make itself known with 11th edition at the earliest.  Frankly, I’m not sure we will even notice the transition when it occurs.  GW removed author credits years ago and I doubt there will be a large change from the current style within the codices.

I will be giving the new Crusade: Armageddon a close read when it arrives (just in case it is his first product in the new role) but I would expect some PR from GW when that arrives as his name still sells.

[darkhorse0607]

Era of Ruin is next weekend in all formats

 

May the Emperors light shine on those braving the LE preorder system