2022 (may) be the year of the plastic Lenny Henry. There will also be an Eldar Avatar but I feel history will judge the Lenny Henry miniature more favourably. For 40 more hot takes like this, read on…
Note: This guide was written before the New Year’s Day preview.
For Warhammer 40,000
- Eldar Avatar, Scorpions, Warp Spiders and Shining Spears.
- Q1 Kill Team of Eldar Corsairs vs Black Legion.
- Black Legion codex.
- Chaos Knights with new Wardog models.
- Q3 Kill Team of World Eaters vs Harlequins.
- World Eaters Berserkers.
- Demon Prince Angron.
- Death Korp of Krieg characters and heavy weapons.
- A new tank that might be a Malcador.
Personally these rumours tally up so here are some extra wild guesses from me:
- Mini Space Marines release with some new units.
- Possible new marine codex, assuming we are now in a cycle of 1.5 years between marine codexes. Hopefully this means putting some units into Legends (I’m looking at you, Stalker and Hunter).
- A small Tyranid release ready for 10th edition 40k in 2023 possibly part of a Kill Team.
What we are not going to see in 2022
- Any new Grey Knights to send Angron back to the Warp.
- Any Emperors Children except dead on bases.
For Age of Sigmar
This is really tricky to guess depending on which way the wing is blowing with regard to the global supply chain, we could get one or two releases squeezed into next year like High Elves and Slaanesh in 2020 or we could get 4 or 5 as GW clear the backlog.
Small releases for:
- Nurgle.
- Bonereapers.
- Gloomspite Gitz.
- Nighthaunt.
Full releases for
- Ogors.
- Dark Elves.
Considering the Age of Sigmar factions could get pretty far out we could see fire worshiping ghost elves riding skateboards for all I know.
Specialist Games
A lot of games have reached the end of their release cycle and would need to be replaced. I’m talking about Shadespire, Warcry, Necromunda and Adeptus Titanicus, these might only get 1 consolidated boxed set and a release or two this year. Cursed City will probably get its expansion but who knows what going on with the release cycle for that. If pushed to go into details I would say:
Bloodbowl: With High Elf and Vampires getting cast on demand last year, it leaves Kislev (see below), Chaos Dwarfs, Amazons, Norse and Khemri.
- However it looks like none of them will see the light of day until the next BB refresh in 2023-4.
So it looks like we are going to see:
- GW double down into Dungeon Bowl and release mixed teams for the colleges of magic while Blood Bowl 3 is released digitally.
Next the big stuff…
Horus Heresy Plastic Boxed set
- New MK6 marines with Cataphractii Terminators, Contemptor, Land Raider Spartan and commanders.
This was all spoiled in the photo leak. However I’m going to go one step further and suggest:
- This will be a part of a major push for 30k with a new ruleset as well. It will allow GW to release various trueborn marines and vehicles for the next 2 or 3 years.
This leaves a door open for GW to (re)release Assault Marines, Devastators, Rhinos and Predators, and then start working through the Forgeworld back catalogue with plastic Leviathans and Sicarans maybe not this year but 2023-4.
Warhammer Old World
This box is so bizarre it defines all reason. GW do have to replace a lot of their specialist games. But releasing a mass fantasy battle game in 2022 featuring Kislev is a fairly risky strategy even for nostalgia huffers like me.
- Box set featuring Empire infantry, archers, knights and maybe a cannon.
- No enemy faction in the boxed set. I see this as more of an Adeptus Titanicus style box where you could just buy the whole thing and split it or just paint it all up for yourself.
- No Kislev in the main boxed set.
New Lord of the Rings
Baring further delays, on Sept 22nd 2022 the Lord of the Rings prequel will release on Amazon Prime.
Surely GW must have something big planned for this, my thoughts are:
- If it involves an NDA with Amazon we will know nothing about it until a month or so before release, so no leaks or blurry phone footage.
- Looking at the cast list we could see a plastic Lenny Henry depending on how large his part is.
- Joseph Mawle (Benjen Starke from GoT) is rumoured to be the main antagonist so that’s probably more likely.
Blackstone Fortress 2022 edition
It will be 4 years since the original and that seems to be the refresh time for these sub games. I’m going to guess we see a
- One or more Squats.
- Female Inquisitor or Rogue Trader.
- Sslyth (we only have a finecast version of one).
- Medusae (see above).
- Confessor.
Adeptus Titanicus 2022 redo
Again, its 4 years since the first release so this is about the last time for a refresh. The interesting question is which direction will it go. Eldar or Ork titans? New Imperial titans like the Nightgaunt and Flea? A full Epic 40,000 release? My guess:
- Fellblades, Shadowswords and other Super Heavy Tanks.
- No Imperator Titan, that’ll be saved for 2023
The moment you start adding Armigers in you may as well start pushing it towards Epic. As much as I’d love a Phantom Titan vs Gargant boxed set. It’s probably wishlisting at this point. This one was the hardest to call as a new boxed set should see new titans.
Other predictions
- You are probably going to see more non-caucasian paint jobs on Eavy Metal miniatures. The release cycle for painted miniatures is such that Eavy Metal artists who were inspired by the 2020 BLM protests are now having their work shown off.
- First trans Age of Sigmar model.
- CMON will get into NFTs. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth but I imagine the first mint will sell out in under a few hours.
