GW is showing off the new models for the upcoming Age of Sigmar faction, the Gloomspite Gitz and they look great!
This article was originally published on the Warhammer-community site.
Next weekend, the Bad Moon will rise over the Mortal Realms, heralding the first wave of the Gloomspite Gitz – a new army that combines the Moonclan Grots, Spiderfang Grots, troggoths and even some gargants into a single madcap faction. Because we love you guys, the nights are long and we wanted to end the year with a bang, we thought we’d give you the lowdown on what to expect:
Since the release of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, battletomes have gone from strength to strength, and Gloomspite Gitz is no exception. This book is packed with sinister (and often hilarious) new lore, fantastic art and a deep set of rules that transform the grots and their monstrous allies into a single, coherent and powerful army.
As of next weekend (that’s Saturday the 5th of January if you want to stick it in your calendar), you’ll be able to order your copy of the Battletome in standard, digital and lavishly presented Collector’s Editions. Additionally, like other new armies, you can pick up a pack of Warscroll Cards to keep track of your army in-game:
We’ll be previewing how the new battletome works in detail next week – if you want the lowdown, keep an eye out for our series right here on the Warhammer Community site.
As well as a battletome, the Gloomspite Gitz will be getting loads of new kits, updating classics and offering brand-new options. Take Fanatics – a notorious sneak-attack unit beloved by longtime grot fans and feared by everyone else!
In the new Fanatics kit, you’ll find everything you need to build five Fanatics, with your weapon of choice. Loonsmasha Fanatics wield balls and chains, and can be concealed inside your units during deployment before being unleashed as a deadly surprise for your foes, while Sporesplatta Fanatics shield your grots from shooting with choking clouds of spores.
Squig Hoppers, meanwhile, have been remade in an incredibly customisable plastic kit that offers interchangeable riders, customisable squigs and more. This kit also builds a brand-new Moonclan Grots unit – the Boingrot Bounderz.
If you’re looking to field hordes of Squigs, you’ll be well served by the new Squig Herd kit, which features everything you need to build and customise 10 of them, plus a pair of herders. With your choice of 10 unique faces, interchangeable with various legs, you’ll be able to ensure no two Squigs look alike.
If your army needs a leader, you can’t go wrong with Skragrott the Loonking. As self-proclaimed overlord of the Gloomspite Gitz, he’s a supremely cunning commander and powerful Wizard.
On the tabletop, you’ll find Skragrott invaluable, capable of manipulating the passage of the Bad Moon and even stealing enemy Heroes’ artefacts of power! He’s a magnificent project for a painter, too, packed with gorgeous and characterful detail.
Meanwhile, the Bad Moon Loonshrine is a must-have for anyone starting a Gloomspite Gitz army. Available at no matched play points cost to your army, this icon of the Bad Moon has a chance to return destroyed units of Stabbas and Shootas to the battlefield, representing the unending hordes summoned to battle by the Bad Moon:
On the topic of unending, the new endless spells are another indispensable addition for Gloomspite Gitz players, offering you a new set of summoned sorceries unique to your army. Each endless spell has a host of strange and powerful effects, like Scrapskuttle’s Arachnacauldron, which offers your Wizards greater arcane power while damaging nearby foes. We’re not sure what’s in that cauldron, but our advice is: don’t drink the soup!
One of the items that has caused the most delight on our Warhammer Age of Sigmar Facebook page, isn’t even a model. The design team have been hard at work in the squig pens for months, attempting an unholy fusion once thought beyond the reach of science, magic and stranger arts besides. Now, the fruit of their labours can be revealed – meet the rare and elusive Dice Squig:
Now, normally that’s all we’d show – if this were a regular pre-order preview article, that is. But, in the spirit of year-ending madness, behold the second wave of the Gloomspite hordes (a veritable tide of clammy, boggle-eyed beauties they are too). Available for pre-order on the 12th of January are such delights as will fire the hearts of even the oldest and most wizened Grot generals!
Consider, if you will the glorious Gobbapalooza – a selection of wise-grots whose fungal-experimentations have left each blessed with curious powers and appearance.
A group of five Grots, the Gobbapalooza includes a Shroomancer, Spiker, Boggleye, Scaremonger and Brewgit. This set of fungus-mad models is a firm favourite in the office (Boggleye is even taking a turn at being the Warhammer Community mascot).
While we’re looking at characters, we should mention the forthcoming Loonboss. This moon-headed hero is the leader your Grot Stabbas need to keep them, er, stabbing at maximum efficiency. He’s not bad at fighting, with his moon-slicer either! Aaand, he looks just like the Grot on the cover of the Battletome.
For fans of alliteration, the Sneaky Snufflers are the Grots for you. Each of the six plastic Sneaky Snufflers is a shroom-hunting maniac with a rack of ill-gotten fungi on his back and a Snufflesquig straining at the leash.
These curious Squigs are the first to scent the growing looncap mushrooms that herald the Bad Moon’s arrival, and on the battlefield, the looncaps they harvest can intoxicate even the lowliest Moonclan warriors into fearsome fighters… though it might cost them their lives. Not only are they handy in a fight, but they’re also glorious sucker-snouted beauties, adding even more flavour to the Squig family.
Mangler Squigs were a common enough sight on the battlefields of the world-that-was, and the all-new plastic kit up for pre-order on the 12th will ensure that they’ll be rampaging across the Mortal Realms for many years yet to come.
This glorious kit not only makes the infamous multi-Grot-Squig-rodeo-insanity that is the classic Mangler Squig (for those new to this lunacy, it’s two massive Squigs chained together and ridden into battle by a clutch of surely-doomed Grots), but you can also build it with a hero riding on top.
Moonclan are certainly at the front of the line when it comes to the new releases for the Gloomspite Gitz, but the biggest and beefiest new models due for release are the much-anticipated Troggoths.
Rockgut Troggoths to be specific! These towering creatures of muscle and stone are said to have crawled from the bowels of the earth, and looking at them it’s easy to believe. A three-model kit, these pot-bellied, rock-skinned brutes are a gorgeous re-imagining of a Warhammer classic as a plastic kit loaded with spares for you to customise your Troggherd!
Last, and by the size of it, definitely not least, lumbers the utterly monstrous Dankhold Troggoth.
Antisocial and reclusive, these behemoths dwell in the darkest… well, dankholds, where they slumber away the decades, awakening only to feast on the magical fungi that grow upon the realmstone deposits in the roots of the Mortal Realms. Such raw magic doesn’t kill the Dankhold Troggoths as it would lesser creatures, but instead mutates them into the vast, lumbering monsters you see here. This gigantic plastic kit comes loaded with spare bits, enabling you to make a boulder club-wielding Dankhold Troggoth with a variety of alternatives. We’ll be showing you each in detail in the near furture.
And, there we have it. Truly, the Bad Moon has favoured us in this holiday season – and now all that waits, is to usher in the new year in a truly splendid fashion. If you want to know more about all the things we’ve shown here, keep your eyes on Warhammer Community, we’ll be bringing you the lowdown on the whole Gloomspite Gitz army, with breakdowns of the models, lore and rules so stay tuned and let us know which you’ll be adding to your army first over on our Facebook page.
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