The Art of #New40K - WarCom

⚫︎ From the Warhammer Community, coverage of the New40K launch:

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that a new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is on its way. We’ve shown off stunning new models and started previewing the exciting changes to the rules. But what about one of the most important parts of any new Warhammer product? That’s right, we’re talking about the art.

The art and imagery of Warhammer 40,000 are key to the game’s appeal. The grim, dark universe of the 41st Millennium comes to life through the incredible artwork that peppers the pages of the game’s books.

Source:  The Art of #New40K

I can only agree wholeheartedly with the above. The art across all of GW's publications add so much flavour to the worlds they have created; fleshing them out, providing inspiration for the imaginations of fans, converters and painters.

Preview artwork from the 9th Edition Warhammer 40000 Core Book. Lacking official title, description, or artist credit. Source: Warhammer Community

The artwork previewed in the post show an Imperium darker than we've oft seen previously. The Emperor's Angels are far from the glorious heroes they can be portrayed as in both the background and on the tabletop. The febrile juxtaposition of panoply and poverty, the futuristic and the antiquated, the functional and the baroque, and most especially the massive scale of the Imperial war machine and the dwarfing of the mortal cogs that support it, are really on display, in an arresting mix of the martial, religious, superhuman and almost subhuman. The Astartes are rendered almost uncanny, their post human stature and trappings of brutality and nobility a far cry from the scurrying bent backed humans that attend and honour them. It's a powerful composition, and there're are even some lovely nods amid it all to the older versions of the game and background, with the Blood Angels 2nd Company Standard on display as well as the chainsword with hazard stripes in the bottom left.

The 41st Millennium has always had its own tone, and the art pieces feel like they are distilling what has always been the essence of the setting, as much as they are finding things new to add. It's a rich and strange brew.^*

Preview artwork from the 9th Edition Warhammer 40000 Core Book. Lacking official title, description, or artist credit. Source: Warhammer Community

From the same post we get this disquieting vision of the multitudinous threats and terrors that humanity faces. As dark and weird as the Imperium is the foes it is surrounded and infested by are darker and weirder still.

Life in the Imperium is for most inhabitants an ongoing scene of horror, but for all that it is a far the lesser evil compared to the horrors that life within the system supposedly protects against. Or at least that is the calculus we are at times invited to examine. The small hopes and the flawed heroes, the clinging filth and the grinding toil of existence.

It's only right that as we see the Imperial side of things displayed with more of its dichotomy openly visible, that that vision is set amongst a more openly monstrous, the reality of both displayed in greater relief against the other.

The full set of previewed images gives a promising insight into the flavour of the new edition; of a Warhammer 40,000 that's taking all that it can from its progenitors, deepening and improving as it evolves.

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* Might just be recaf.↩︎