New 40k next week! Don’t miss the latest on 40k Psychic Awakening: Ritual of the Damned that is going on pre-order January 18th 2020!
Ritual of the Damned is the fourth book in the series that will supposedly bring Dark Angels, Grey Knights, and Thousand Sons up to speed with the usual Psychic Awakening support. (I.e, Stratagems, relics, Doctrine bonuses, etc.). While there is a lot of grey area remaining, The Independent Characters podcast (which you should give a listen too – it is one of our favs) might have given a few snippets away that we need to chew on.
GW also just confirmed it’s going to be next week’s preorder on Warhammer Community:
“You’ll be able to explore the ongoing battles in the Forzare System in Psychic Awakening: Ritual of the Damned, which is available to pre-order from next Saturday. “
Let’s start with the latest rumors and previews for Ritual of the Damed first:
Lazarus & Psychic Awakening: Ritual of The Damned
Lazarus, the newly previewed named Primaris character is unique. While he’s a named character, this is the first time we’ve seen a unit with a unique name get different weapon options.
It looks like the earlier rumors were true! Lazarus us back, and he heralds new rules for not just the Dark Angels but also the Thousand Sons and Grey Knights as well!
At the head of the Dark Angels forces is Master Lazarus – former Sergeant, now Captain of the Dark Angels 5th Company! For those of you who remember The Wrath of Magnus, Lazarus was laid low by the fell sorcery of the XV Legion. Reborn as the first Primaris Space Marine of the Inner Circle, he’s back with a dark vengeance and an even deeper hatred for psykers.
At the head of the Dark Angels forces is Master Lazarus – former Sergeant, now Captain of the Dark Angels 5th Company! For those of you who remember The Wrath of Magnus, Lazarus was laid low by the fell sorcery of the XV Legion. Reborn as the first Primaris Space Marine of the Inner Circle, he’s back with a dark vengeance and an even deeper hatred for psykers.
Fighting alongside the Dark Angels are the Sons of Titan, whose prognosticators have foreseen the future evildoing on the twin homeworlds of the Thousand Sons. All of this will be covered in the next instalment of Psychic Awakening, which also contains rules for all three of these factions.
Are these the rules Grey Knights have been waiting for? From this preview, it looks like the Dark Angels will be getting the same treatment as the Blood Angels in Blood of Baal. GK players will be waiting with bated breath to see if their beloved chapter will gain some of the rules to at least put them on par with their fellow Astartes in the game.
For the Dark Angels, this book brings the Chapter into line with recent Space Marines updates, and also includes lots of juicy new rules content, especially for Deathwing and Ravenwing commanders.
The Grey Knights get plenty of new tricks too, including a particularly powerful new ability called Masters of the Warp, which rewards you for taking a dedicated army of Grey Knights, channelling a specific aspect of the warp to provide an army-wide bonus.
The Thousand Sons can now dedicate their Sorcerers to one of the nine Cults of the Legion – a callback to their arcane roots on fallen Prospero – providing them with a plethora of new tactical options.
Until now everything about this model was shrouded in mystery, pun intended. It’s not surprising to see GW release a Dark Angels Primaris character for this expansion. For each chapter that’s been updated, we’ve seen some kind of Primaris model hit. (Aside from the poor Black Templars in Faith & Fury).
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Primaris Captain Lazarus Coming With Wargear Options
Normally, named characters have set wargear. Gabriel Seth has Bloodreaver, Dante has the Axe Mortalis, Marneus Calgar has his fists, and Vulkan has his spear. All of the wargear on named characters is normally set in stone, so to speak. However, Lazarus looks to be the first Primaris named character with different weapon options.
While we first saw him carrying his helmet with a sword, you’ll also be able to put a helmet on him and have him toting a bolter and power fist instead.
What could make a Dark Angels Space Marine more mysterious (or durable) than giving them a face-hiding helmet? The Master Lazarus model has bare and helmeted head options for battlefield occasions.
This is something completely out of pattern for GW so this could be them “testing the water” on giving named characters different wargear. With that said, we may see an increase of named characters in the future have different weapons to be modeled within their kits!
Lazarus Reveals From New Years Open
Hobby heroes Fauxhammer and Garro were at the event and shared some great pictures of the models as well
First off here’s the sprue shots of the new Captain:
I think this is the first time they made a hand to hold a helmet and have options for accessories like wings for it as well. From this sprue pic, it’s had to tell if you can put the wings on the helm for the head or not, but I doubt that would stop some players from kitbashing this into a Primaris Azrael.
Another look at the options from the back of the box.
Plus here is the painted version that was on display over the weekend Looking good for a “traitor” eh?
GW Hints At What Exactly Will Go Down in Ritual of the Damned
While there is a lot of grey area around the factions, who will get the new “guaranteed” model, and what kind of storyline will unfold, Warhammer Community recently dropped a short story giving the clearest image yet of Magnus’ plans. A Grey Knight Prognosticar named Lushian is trying to gain insight on what will happen…
So how do we know Magnus is involved? We’ve got a description that fits the bill from the short story.
He saw throngs of people, gazing up in awe at a towering, winged warrior with skin of crimson. Tears of joy streamed down their faces as they fell to their knees, their hands clasped together as if in prayer. They beseeched and thanked and worshipped.
The image shifted again. He saw the same people, dead, in vast pits, dried blood encrusting their naked bodies, deep knife gashes in their necks. Expressions of incredible joy had changed to ones of terror. He then saw apocalyptic war, phalanxes of azure and gold warriors firing ensorcelled boltguns into fleeing civilians, and flocks of blade-winged Daemons terrorising the spires of Imperial conurbations.
However, this story takes on the perspective of some kind of vision. Moving deeper, two possible outcomes were given in the vision, which Lushian saw.
Then he saw the same knights dead, their bodies picked over by wretched mutants and evil sorcerers. He saw a warrior that could only be Supreme Grand Master Kaldor Draigo, standing triumphant over the corpse of Magnus the Red, the Titansword buried to the hilt in the Daemon Primarch’s skull.
‘Adept, note the presence of the Supreme Grand Master,’ he said.
The vision warped. This time Draigo was impaled upon the Blade of Magnus, a hundred warriors in bloodstained silver armour cut to pieces and scattered around him.
Overall, the theme of the story showed some kind of massive battle taking place while the newly-awakened Imperial Psykers that came to the Crimson King were to be slaughtered as part of a sacrifice. Ultimately, we don’t know what will happen as Magnus was just putting thoughts into the Psyker’s mind and was not able to discern which was true.
Now that GW has primed the pump for lore, let’s look into what rules may appear to be!
The Independent Characters’ Podcast episode 198 talked specifically about what was coming next in Psychic Awakening. At roughly 1:15:28, they begin to talk specifically about their experience playtesting the new rules:
I know – again having some of us playtested some of this stuff and seeing whats coming – I’m very anxious for my armies to get touched, because… in particular, and we can’t get into the details yet, but in particular thousand sons. There is so much character I’m going to be able to play around with and toy with and try different things, that I cannot wait it to come out.
Usually, when GW mentions “character” for a faction that’s not Space Marines, it’s little more than just a name generating table and a few pointless fluff-building exercises. However, coming from a playtester, could this mean that Thousand Sons will be set above the other Chaos factions that got support in Faith & Fury?
Historically speaking, GW has given much more focus to Death Guard and Thousand Sons so it wouldn’t be surprising to see some extra rules hit the Thousand Sons army that never made it to other Legions like Iron Warrior or Night Lords.
Can we Look to Past Books for Patterns?
The Independent Characters also mentioned that some of the “older things” that might have gotten glossed over from the first book might be getting reworked/revamped to where you’ll want to do some experimentation.
This sounds similar to the Blood Angels treatment in Blood of Baal as some of the stuff they had in their old book just got improved to the next level.
For where we stand right now, we should keep our eyes peeled on Christmas. There could be an in-depth preview on the next book. However, looking into 2020, we know that there should be a book release every month for the first three months. While power creep is definitely still a thing, the short release time between books may help mitigate some of that.
Rumored Thousand Sons Rules:
This screenshot of what may be Thousand Sons rules was spotted on a discord channel:
I guess we’ll know very soon once GW starts it rules preview cycle on what we suppose would be Monday whether these are real or not!
Overall, what do you think the next factions will get in Psychic Awakening? Can we use past books to map out what support will look like? What kind of “character” do you think Thousand Sons will get?
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About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits in 2009
Socials: Rob Baer on Facebook and @catdaddymbg on X
About Rob Baer: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor of Spikey Bits, the leading tabletop gaming news website focused on the hobby side of wargaming and miniatures.
Rob also co-founded and currently hosts the Long War Podcast, which has over 350 episodes and focuses on tabletop miniatures gaming, specializing in Warhammer 40k. and spent six years writing for Bell of Lost Souls.
Every year, along with his co-hosts, he helps host the Long War 40k Doubles Tournament at Adepticon and the Long War 40k Doubles at Las Vegas Open, which attracts over 350 players from around the world.
Rob has won many Warhammer 40k Tournaments over the years, including multiple first-place finishes in Warhammer 40k Grand Tournaments over the years and even winning 1st place at the Adepticon 40k Team Tournament.
With over 30 years of experience in retail and distribution, Rob knows all the products and exactly which ones are the best. As a member of GAMA (Game Manufacturers Association), he advocates for gaming stores and manufacturers in these difficult times, always looking for the next big thing to feature for the miniatures hobby, helping everyone to provide the value consumers want.
While he’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (since 5th Edition) and has been hobbying on miniatures since the 1980s, Titans of all sizes will always be his favorite! It’s even rumored that his hobby vault rivals the Solemnance Galleries, containing rulebooks filled with lore from editions long past, ancient packs of black-bordered Magic Cards, and models made of both pewter and resin.
