NEWS AND RUMOURS: Of Lizards and Inquisitors

I made a New Year resolution to restart my News and Rumours posts so this is the first of what will hopefully be a weekly update.

It will predominantly be Games Workshop related because I play their games virtually exclusively, but if anything else takes my fancy I'll cover that too. My preference is for 40k so my reports will inevitably be biased in this direction.

40k
Ironically, there's not too much happening on this front ahead of the Lizardmen army book for Fantasy. The Ork Stompa is definitely confirmed by Games Workshop and photographs can be seen on Warseer. There are also cool pics on Bell of Lost Souls.

Brimstone has confirmed the Valkyrie product code in this thread (which means the plastic Valkyrie is definitely on its way - probably with the Imperial Guard codex in May).

Warhammer Fantasy Battle
In what is seen as a surprise move by many, GW have released a new FAQ for the 7th edition rules. Now I haven't read this in a great amount of detail but I am led to believe that it covers a lot of common rules queries. I hadn't expected these issues to be addressed until 8th edition.

The Lizardmen are obviously the big GW project on the horizon. January's White Dwarf carried pics of the new plastic Stegadon and I understand the army book will be released on 7th February. You can check out the Games Workshop Lizardmen preview here.

Lord of the Rings
Lord of the Rings is going Apocalyptic with War of the Ring in April. The book is said to cost £35. The rumour is that models will be moved around on oval movement trays. It will allow players to recreate those great big battles like Helm's Deep in a single night.

Forge World
Forge World were teasing customers over Christmas by showing a photograph of parts of a model, slowing revealing the whole thing. It turned out to be an Inquisitor in Terminator armour, along with three members of his retinue. He was announced at the end of Siege of Vraks book two as Inquisitor Lord Hextor Rex as he takes over the besieging armies fighting the debased followers of the Cardinal of Xaphan. Nice model.

Black Library
Games Workshop's publishing arm listed their top 30 best selling books of 2008. It's nice to see a background book on there as well as an audio book. I like to see Black Library experimenting a bit.

The next major instalment of the Horus Heresy saga will be Prospero Burns, to be written by Dan Abnett. It will be one of two books covering the Thousand Sons versus Space Wolves showdown, with the second book to be written by Graham MacNeill. Each book will look at the story from the point of view of one of the factions. Tasty. Prospero Burns is due to be released in November 2009.