If you've read my reviews of the previous two sets, Hunter and Hunted and Pyre and Flood, then you'll know what to expect from Briar and Bone, which once again contains two distinct sets of miniatures, as well as a large piece of unique terrain. It also comes with a Warband Tome that contains all the rules for your new models, and all the necessary cards. You'll need to own a copy of the Warcry: Core Book (sold separately) to actually use any of this, of course. 

Briar and Bone: Features & design

• Small, focused expansion with one key piece of terrain
• Unique warbands with great, though sometimes challenging, models
• An expansion aimed at existing players, rather than beginners

The warriors duking it out this time around are the Twistweald – a pack of mutated Sylvaneth – and the Teratic Cohort, a unit of marauding Ossiarch Bonereapers. It almost goes without saying at this stage that the models are excellent, though the Sylvaneth are trickier to build than the Cohort, due to the huge amount of detail packed in and instructions that aren't always the clearest. 

Games Workshop has done a pretty good job at theming these releases. The previous expansion, Pyre and Flood, pitched forces representing fire and water against each other, while Hunter and Hunted was pretty self-explanatory. Here, the Twistweald and the Teratic Cohort are both very different warbands but they share one thing: a kind of bitter resentment. The Twistweald, while still fighting for the good of the Sylvaneth, are effectively exiles. The Bonereapers, meanwhile, are warriors who have been transformed into weird constructs as punishment for failing Nagash's exacting standards. It sucks to be either of them, basically.

This set's included piece of terrain is a Ravening Gnarloak. It's another satisfyingly chunky and grotesque kit, though with its big toothsome maw it can't help but feel a little similar to the Mawpit from the Hunter and Hunted set. It has a single special rule: Kick 'Em In. If an enemy fighter falls within 2" of the mouth of the Gnarloak you can choose to kick the fighter into it. Nice, simple and effective.

The Gnarloaks are actually key to the set's campaign, titled The War of Briar and Bone, with the opposing forces battling for control of the killer trees. For the Teratic Cohort they are a useful source of fresh bone. The Twistweald, meanwhile, want to transform them into a way of preventing further access to Talaxis. In practice this means a set of six scenarios to be played out over three battles with the usual mix of assaults, assassination strikes, and defensive missions.

Pyre and Flood: Gameplay

• The Twistweald are a gang of murderous mutant trees, basically
• The Teratic Cohort burn through wild dice while using abilities
• Now that the setting is established the factions are getting weird!

The two factions in Briar and Bone have very different play styles. While the Twistweald are tricky to assemble (and look like they'll be a real challenge to paint) they're a good, aggressive warband designed for smashing foes quickly and efficiently.

The Teratic Cohort on the other hand perform well in combat (especially the Kavalos Centari which packs a real punch), but to make use of the abilities effectively you're going to need to use up wild dice. The warband comes with a way of generating more of these, but it's a slightly faffy mechanic. 

Let's get into the rules in a bit more detail...

Twistweald

In The Lord of the Rings movies the Ents are a bunch of standoffish, sedate, but broadly friendly ambulatory trees. It actually looks rather cozy when Merry and Pippin are given a lift by Treebeard. That's very much not the case with their Warhammer equivalents. The Sylvaneth, while broadly-speaking closer to "good" than "bad" (whatever these concepts of morality mean in the Warhammer world), they're also weird and dangerous. That seems to be doubly the case for Briar and Bone's new subfaction, the Twistweald – Sylvaneth exiles riddled with a parasitic fungus that keeps them in a constant state of agony.

That perhaps goes some way to explaining their play style. The Twistweald are all about aggressive, close quarters combat. All of the fighters in the warband benefit from the Mycelial Ravaging reaction – a very tasty trick which allows a fighter to damage any opponent who tries to engage them in melee combat. Every 5+ hit roll scored by the attacker in melee will result in 2 points of damage being inflicted back at them. Ouch.

Their abilities are equally punchy. Flesh-piercing Talons gives Dryads, Revenants, and Wardens a critical hit on 5+ rolls made in melee actions. Voracious Swarm does 1 point of damage to any visible enemy within 12" on a 3. And on a 4+ Eruption of Thorns can wound any enemy that gets too close (within 1") of any Twistweald fighter.

When it comes to Triples and Quads, the Twistweald are even nastier. Thorned Grasp has some serious damage potential – on a roll of 2+ an enemy model within 3" sustains 2 points of damage. The Sylvaneth player then keeps on rolling and allocating damage to the enemy fighter until a roll is equal or lower than the previous roll. Devour Infection is an interesting one in that it actively damages your own chosen fighter, but adds 1 to their Attacks characteristic in melee combat until the end of the next round. Finally, their Quad is Twisted Song, which both heals a fighter and grants them either a bonus move or bonus attack action.

Teratic Cohort

The Teratic Cohort has access to some cool abilities, but most of them heavily rely on you spending wild dice. Used wisely, however, this warband is a fearsome close combat unit.

The warband has access to Predatory Ravage, a reaction that enables a fighter who has been attacked in melee to make a responsive melee attack in return. Making the reaction comes at the cost of a wild dice. You can choose to forgo that forfeit, but doing so will drastically reduce its efficiency – you have to subtract 1 from both the attack characteristic and the damage allocated.

In terms of abilities, Eyes of Katakros is open to all and is useful way of generating wild dice. As you will see, this is necessary given how much this warband eats through them. Bestial Leaps, meanwhile, allow the Kavalos Centari and the Mortek Cykloptians to make a bonus move of up to 3" which can be extended to 4" if you spend a wild dice. Nadirite Strike is a punchy ability that adds 2 to the attack characteristic of a fighter's next melee attack. That's fine, but (you guessed it) if you add a wild dice then any 5+s rolled become crits.

The charmingly-named Artery-severing Strike is a powerful way to inflict additional damage on enemy fighters who have been wounded in melee. Each time the enemy fighter makes a reaction or action (except for Wait) the enemy player must roll a number of dice equal to the ability and, for every score of 2+, the enemy fighter takes an additional point of damage.

Unleashed Rage gives you an additional critical hit for each one scored in melee. And if you spend one of your wild dice then one of those crits gains two additional critical hits. That's super effective for landing killing blows. Finally, Savagery Unbound is a great way for taking your enemy by surprise. It can only be used by the Kavalos Centari and the Mortek Cykloptians, but it means that any friendly model in a fighter's battle group can make a bonus move. If you spend two wild dice then that can be upgraded to work on any Teratic Cohort fighter full stop.

Should you buy Warcry: Briar and Bone?

As with all these Warcry expansions whether this is for you or not depends on how much one or both of the factions appeal. The previous set Pyre and Flood was aimed squarely at me as both a Lumineth and Nighthaunt collector. This one, not so much, but again that's purely personal preference. Certainly there's no doubting the excellent miniatures and I love the Gnarloak. 

The Teratic Cohort are an interesting from a rules point-of-view with some potent abilities but a reaction that's only useful in very specific circumstances. They're also quite expensive, points-wise, which may put some off. The Twistweald, on the other-hand, are more straightforward – a big gang of angry trees, basically, and who can argue with that?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

With the imminent release of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 — the video game set in the Warhammer 40K universe — they're about to be even more popular. So, we figured there’s about to be a fresh wave of new recruits, er, I mean, excited hobbyists who are interested in starting Warhammer 40K and building a Space Marine army of their own. 

With that in mind, we've put together a beginner's guide to Space Marines to explain who they are, how they play on the tabletop, and, more importantly, why you should start collecting them in Warhammer 40K.

Who are the Space Marines?

The Space Marines, also known as the Adeptus Astartes, are the Imperium of Man's greatest defenders. They're an army of genetically-enhanced super soldiers that are stronger, tougher, smarter, and just generally better than any regular human.

Space Marines are typically clad in huge suits of armor called power armor. They stride across the battlefield wielding their iconic weapon of choice, the boltgun — it’s so iconic that it’s got its own Doom-like video game, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. These aren't just big machine guns; boltguns fire rocket-propelled explosive shells in rapid succession. Between the guns and the armor, each Space Marine is effectively a walking tank.

Originally created by the Emperor of Mankind, the Space Marines were organized into 20 Founding Legions. Half of the Legions went a bit evil during the Horus Heresy, a massive civil war that took place about 10,000 years ago in the 40K universe. Since then, the Founding Legions were split into thousands of smaller Chapters, each containing 1,000 Space Marines.

These Chapters include descendants of the Founding Legions like the Ultramarines, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels, along with countless successor Chapters who were spawned from one of the original Legions. Notable examples of these successors include the Black Templars and Flesh Tearers, derived from the Imperial Fists and Blood Angels Chapters, respectively.

Each Chapter has their own distinctive color scheme, which offers you a ton of creative options when painting up your models. Beyond the aesthetic differences, each Chapter also has their own unique personality and style of combat. Some prefer melee combat (Blood Angels), others specialize in ranged destruction (Imperial Fists), while others are all about using stealth and subterfuge (Raven Guard).

How to start collecting Space Marines

As the main faction in the game, there are way more Space Marine model options to buy than for any other 40K faction, by a considerable margin. This can result in a bit of decision paralysis for prospective players who click onto the Warhammer store and see hundreds of options to choose from.

Combat Patrol: Space Marines contains a great starter force for new players, as it comes with a good variety of units that are almost always going to be useful in games. It contains a squad of five Infernus Marines (guys with flamethrowers), 5 Terminators (dudes in even tougher armor), and two Terminator armor-wearing characters to lead your force (a Captain and Librarian).

However, and this is very important, don't buy Combat Patrol: Space Marines! 

It costs $168 / £100, which is decent value for the miniatures inside, but you can get the exact same group of models — plus a bunch of Tyranids, and the core rules handbook, dice, and other accessories — in the Warhammer 40K Starter Set, which costs just $112 / $67.50. This can become even better value if you find a Tyranid player to split the cost of the box with, netting you a Space Marine starter force for $56 / £33.75.

If the models in that box set don't take your fancy, a lot of the special Space Marine Chapters also have their own Combat Patrol boxes for $168 / £100. While these sometimes contain Chapter-specific miniatures, they're primarily filled with generic units that any Space Marine player can use. These alternative box sets include:

• Combat Patrol: Space Wolves
• Combat Patrol: Dark Angels
• Combat Patrol: Black Templars
• Combat Patrol: Blood Angels (currently being replaced as Blood Angels are getting a new Codex soon!)

Alongside your models, you'll need some tools, paints, and paintbrushes to turn them from gray plastic into a fearsome fighting force. You'll also need to choose a paint scheme, which is a daunting challenge in itself; either paint them up as one of the existing Chapters or you can come up with your own unique heraldry. Have a look through Codex: Space Marines for inspiration and see if any of them catch your eye.

Once you've built up your first Combat Patrol box, you can start adding other units to your force. Try to get a variety of things to see what you enjoy building and painting. Most of the starter boxes are solely composed of infantry, so adding a vehicle to your force is a solid next step. The best advice I can offer to burgeoning Warhammer players is to buy the models you like the look of, and don't worry too much about which units are strong at the moment.

This is because the competitive meta of Warhammer 40K changes constantly, with new factions, mission decks, and quarterly rules updates vastly shifting the balance of power. If you buy a 2,000 point army based on what's strong now, by the time you've got it built and painted, there's a good chance they'll have been nerfed into oblivion.

Remember the Warhammer player's mantra: rules are temporary, beautiful Warhammer models are forever.

How to play Space Marines in Warhammer 40,000

Once you've built up a big enough force to start playing games, it's time to get your Angels of Death on the table and start purging some heretics. But, how do you actually do that?

Well, the first thing you'll need to do is pick up Codex: Space Marines, an essential guidebook which contains all the rules you need to play your army in games of 40K (alongside the core game rules which are available for free on the Warhammer Community website). It contains datasheets for your units along with your faction rules, and also a bunch of detachments, each with their own unique stratagems and enhancements that change the way your army plays.

Space Marines are a bit of a jack-of-all-trades army within Warhammer 40K, which makes sense; they're the first army most players pick up and as such they're the perfect opportunity to show off a little bit of everything. They're pretty good at shooting, fighting, and taking a punch, but they're not the best at any one thing.

Their main army rule is Oath of Moment: this lets you pick one enemy unit at the start of every battle round and your army gets full rerolls to hit against them until the end of the battle round. Basically, you point at a thing and say "I don't want to see that thing in front of me anymore". This rule makes Space Marines excellent at bringing down individual tough targets, although it won't be nearly as effective if you're facing an opponent who has multiple small units, instead of a few big ones.

Alongside this main army rule, you have access to seven detachments which each have their own additional rules to help you tailor your force to suit your playstyle.

The Gladius Task Force is the "vanilla" Space Marine detachment, and it's probably the strongest one of the lot. It has a suite of strong stratagems and enhancements, along with a versatile detachment rule called Combat Doctrines, which gives you access to three powerful abilities that you can use once per game. Whether you want to play an army that favors shooting or close combat, infantry or tanks — the Gladius Task Force will have your back.

The other detachments are more specialized: the Ironstorm Spearhead is all about tanks, while the Stormlance Task Force is all about fast units like bikes and jetpack Marines. You should look to match up the units you're bringing with the detachment that will benefit them the most.

On top of the different detachments in the base Space Marine Codex, you also have access to the so-called divergent Chapters that we mentioned earlier. These Chapters are sufficiently unique to warrant their own Codex supplements — complete with their own rules, detachments, and special units. Since your paint scheme doesn't actually lock you into playing a specific subfaction, there is nothing to stop you adding a Dark Angels-specific unit to your force and playing your bright red Space Marines as Dark Angels for a game.

Once you've got a few games under your belt, you might decide that you're ready to get into some truly competitive play and hit up some tournaments. 

If you want to get seriously into the tournament scene, it's a good idea to keep an eye on the meta by seeing what lists are doing well at the moment. Goonhammer is a Warhammer 40K site that posts round-ups of all the big tournaments every week, showcasing the top performing lists and explaining how they work. From this you can learn what the top lists are at the moment, and use this information to craft your own list.

As we said before, the Warhammer 40K meta is constantly changing thanks to balance updates and new releases. However, sometimes all it takes is an unlikely hero to win a big event with a list no one expected, and all of a sudden BOOM — that list is everywhere and the whole competitive scene has flipped around.

Just copy-pasting someone's tournament-winning list from Goonhammer won't be enough though. You're going to need to "git gud" as it were, and that can only come from experience. Play games… play lots of games. Enough games to fill out an '80s movie montage. Familiarize yourself with your army and what it can do, while also learning what every other faction in the game is all about too. Play against good players, get absolutely battered by them, and then learn from those losses.

It sounds like a lot of work — and it is — but you have nothing to be afraid of, because you are a Space Marine, and the Emperor's Space Marines shall know no fear!

If you enjoyed the setting in games like Space Marine and Space Marine 2 and you embrace the competitive, strategic elements of the best board games, you might be on your way to finding your next tabletop gaming obsession. So, why not give Warhammer 40K a try?

Even without discounts, Warhammer 40,000 is well worth giving a shot. However, if you were looking for another excuse to begin your journey with 40K, there are currently some great offers on Space Marine kits that might just be the push you need to get started. For example, the Warhammer 40,000 Introductory Set is almost $10 off on Amazon (currently $55.25). Beyond miniatures, you can get the Space Marine Codex for $51 on Amazon, down from its usual price of $60.

Should you buy Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines?

The Warhammer 40,000 Introductory Set is an excellent low-commitment way to dip your toe into the hobby. As a newbie, you really don't need anything fancy like magnifying glasses or paint storage, you simply just need to make some minis and get to grips with the game's basic mechanics. 

Thankfully, this set has exactly what you need to do that. It provides 5 Space Marines miniatures (and 11 Tyranids for you to pit against them), sprue clippers, a starter paintbrush, 5 pots of Citadel paints, and game accessories like dice, tokens, and a range ruler. As well as all that, it also comes with a 48-page handbook that teaches you how to construct and paint your minis, explains Warhammer 40K's rules and mechanics, and guides you through three tutorial missions.

If you're hoping to rock up to a 40K meetup next week for a full game, let me quickly dash those hopes. The truth is you'll likely spend months putting together your completed army. Don't be discouraged though! In the meantime, you can get plenty of practice with beginner-friendly adaptations of the game. Not to mention, the process of slowly building up your perfect collection is arguably one of the most satisfying parts of the hobby. 

I can't blame you for wanting even more Space Marines after you’ve constructed your initial box of minis. After all, they're the big, blue poster boys of the 40K setting. However, you might want to hold off until you're more confident in your painting skills before you take on the challenge of larger models like Dreadnoughts or Rhinos. If you want a manageable product that focuses entirely on Space Marines, the Primaris Intercessors could be a good port of call. This box includes 10 beefed-up foot soldiers which are perfect for filling out your forces and offer you plenty of opportunity to perfect your technique. The kit also allows you to customize your squad set-up and experiment with transfers.

For maximum guidance in assembling and playing your Space Marine army, the Codex is an invaluable tool. This hefty hardback tome crams in 216 pages of exciting lore, intricately detailed rules, datasheets, campaigns and skirmishes play through, and much more. What's even better is that all this helpful information is accompanied by epic illustrated art to inspire your heretic-busting forces. It's also useful to note that given that the 10th Edition was just released this year, your Codex will be entirely up-to-date until at least 2026.

If you're keen to scope out more great tabletop savings, swing by our page of board game deals. Want other cool stuff to check out? Be sure to take a look at our guides to the best tabletop RPGs, or the best card games.

But having attended Gen Con 2024 earlier this month and having seen and played a whole bevy of different games, now I have the honor and privilege of being the one to shake you down and yell in your face. Proverbially speaking, of course. Not everything I tried during the event is worthy of a place amongst the best board games, but a handful might be. Here are 5 tabletop games, ranging from card to board to role-playing, that I haven't stopped thinking about since the convention.

Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition from publisher Bezier Games is one of the few games I knew going into Gen Con 2024 that I wanted to track down and play. As it turns out, it's also one of the few games that I spent my own money on at the convention, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. 

While the original Rebel Princess included all of the same trick-taking mechanics (you're looking to avoid marriage proposals from princes as, you guessed it, rebel princesses) the Deluxe Edition really ups the quality of every other aspect of the game while also providing a few choice tweaks and expansions to the preexisting rules. Individual princess tokens are now chunkier and have some heft to them while rules are actually written out instead of requiring reference material. It's the best version of Rebel Princess yet, and it's hard to imagine a better possible version. 

If you're reading this, I likely don't have to tell you that it's the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons this year and Wizards of the Coast is going all out with a new updated version of the D&D Fifth Edition core rulebooks – starting with the Player's Handbook, which also happened to go on limited sale at Gen Con 2024 with a lucky few being able to purchase it ahead of its September street date. 

While not officially an entirely new edition of the popular tabletop role-playing game, it effectively functions as one and is sure to shake the scene up in a big way. Even if I weren't personally interested (and I very much am) it would be hard to deny that D&D was the talk of the town in Indianapolis.

I would be lying to you if I said that I thought Oh My Pigeons, a card game with some light rules about trying to gather enough pigeons before other players, was on my radar before Gen Con. I would also be lying to you if I said it didn't immediately shoot to the top of my wishlist the moment I played it. Because I did, and it did. 

While turns generally revolve around trying to play cards to get enough pigeons to win by grabbing from the public flock or others, the real fun comes when you roll a specific die result and try to flick said die – as an abstraction of pigeon poop – at your opponents in order to knock their own pigeons off their board. From my experience, Oh My Pigeons makes for a rowdy, but straightforward good time.

Last year at Gen Con, Freelancers from Plaid Hat Games was easily my personal game of the show. The wild rulebook system with accompanying voiced narrative and wide variety of possible scenarios and outcomes straight out of a Choose Your Own Adventure book with a wicked sense of humor really spoke to me then, and the spacefaring followup in the same vein called Wandering Galaxy really speaks to me now. It has the same vibe as Freelancers but leans on sources like franchises with "star" in the name and Firefly, to name a few. 

Out of all the possible games, my group of friends heading to Gen Con would absolutely not shut up about Altered, a trading card game looking to solve a number of classic TCG conundrums. And now that I've played it, well, I can see why. Not only is it a nonviolent game (the goal is to win a race) but the rarity system allows for genuinely unique cards as well as digital ownership thanks to assigning each individual card its own QR code. And if you own it digitally, you can order more prints, but you can only play competitively with cards you digitally own. This divorces the ownership of the card from the play of the card, meaning you can easily and happily play with as many paper cards as you want, meaning there's nothing stopping you from making decks to play for fun with as many people as you want. 

While it remains to be seen if this will truly work as advertised, I'm excited for Altered to fully launch in September as I've never seen anything quite like it. And this is how effusive I am after one of the designers absolutely trounced me at the convention. 

Want other recommendations? Don't miss the best card games, or the best tabletop RPGs according to our experts.

If you’re hoping to amass an impressive collection of these stunning cards (and you also happen to adore the thrill of cracking open packs), the MTG Duskmourn Collector Booster Box is exactly what you need in your basket. However, you might be a little reluctant to splash the cash given that Collector Booster Boxes are consistently one of the most premium products in any Magic set.

Thankfully – somewhat taking the sting out of indulging in this little box of TCG luxury – you can pre-order the MTG Duskmourn Collector Booster Box for $229.97 on Amazon, down from $324. This $94 discount makes the box an especially tempting find, particularly if you're a lover of horror and retro aesthetics.

Should you buy the MTG Duskmourn Collector Booster Box? 

All in all, you get 12 15-card Boosters in this box, making for a total of 180 cards. To break it down, that's around $19 per Booster. Compare that to the current $27 asking price for a single Duskmourn Collector Booster and the value is obvious. 

Quantity isn't supposed to be the main event of a Collector Booster Box, though. The primary appeal of this product is meant to be its quality. As always, many of the cards that’ll emerge as real ‘white whales’ for this set can be found in a Collector Boosters thanks to the greater ratio of Rares and Mythics. There's also a much higher chance of landing your favorite fancy Booster Fun cards like foils, alternate arts, full arts, and more. 

What's more, there are a number of treatments that are entirely exclusive to Collector Boosters like the Japan Showcase and the Textured Foil Double Exposure. Rather than the sweet, anime-inspired art treatments we saw in Bloomburrow, the Japan Showcase in Duskmourn draws from the artistic legacy of legendary horror manga artists. That said, some ridiculously adorable ghost animals make an appearance too (seriously, they have no right being that cute).

Meanwhile, the Textured Foil Double Exposure is a Collector Booster-exclusive variant of the Double Exposure treatment. We’ve already gotten a glimpse of The Wandering Rescuer in its Textured Foil Double Exposure form, and it’s really something special. Like a pull from Innistrad: Double Trouble, the art is in a moody black and white monochrome but it also features in bold shocks of red imposed across the Wanderer. Of course, the digital render never does justice to these more three-dimensional elements of Textured Foils but I can already tell that this is a card I’d be keen to add to my collection.

Need inspiration on what to play next? Try out one of the best card games! Alternatively, if you're on the hunt for more great savings, give our board games deals a look.

These days, we know this to be nonsense, sparked by tenuous conjecture from those who'd never played the best tabletop RPGs and overblown by sensationalized storytelling by the media – and we have plenty of evidence as to how therapeutic the act of playing TTRPGs can be. But this country-wide panic had a formative influence on the direction of the next D&D edition.

In 1989, TSR Inc released Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Second Edition. It came six years after the launch of Advanced D&D, and after D&D creator Gary Gygax had left the company, thanks to disagreements over company governance that saw him ousted in a Succession-esque coup. 

This new edition, known as '2E,' loosely marks the moment that gamers lost control of the brand to more stereotypical business people and it shows in the resulting game, which traded some of the flavor and chaos of D&D's earliest editions for a more standardized and inoffensive system.

Devil in the detail

To start, 2E was intended to sidestep negative publicity around the game’s links to satanic practices. Ostensibly 'evil' playable character options like the assassin, or half-orc, were removed from the core rules, while monsters based on devils and demons were quietly dropped in favor of a larger emphasis on dragons and giants as challenging opponents – 2E monsters generally became stronger, too. The devils and demons came back in a 1991 supplement, anyhow, just rebranded as Baatezu and Tanar’ri instead.

But this non-Gygax edition also did much to improve balancing across the game's many complex systems, reorganizing the core rules with a host of new mechanical quirks.

For one, 2E marked the appearance of critical hits – the ability to double your damage output on an attack if you roll a 20 on the die. The last edition's Basic Rules considered a 'natural 20' to be an automatic hit, but this was the first time it changed how much damage you could actually do – something you still see in the current edition of the game today. And if your character changed their moral alignment, you no longer dropped down a level, instead simply requiring more experience to get to the next one.

Classes were reorganized into a more consistent structure, with each class fitting into a Warrior, Priest, Wizard, or Rogue category. Druids were now a subset of Priests, alongside the Cleric, with a shared spell list. The Illusionist officially became a Wizard subclass instead of its own entity – with a wizard character now specializing in a school of magic such as divination, illusion, or necromancy for the first time. 

The Bard, the magical musician class themed after traveling minstrels, got a huge overhaul in Second Edition as well. In 1E, the Bard could only be played by multiclassing in a specific way and rolling very high ability scores, making it very difficult to actually play one. But 2E changed the Bard into an off-the-shelf class you could pick right away. As one of the 'Rogue' classes, it benefited from both Thief abilities as well as the spells of other classes, though the 2E Bard dabbled in Wizard magic rather than the Druid magic used in 1E.

Damage for attack spells became more standardized too, capping at a maximum 10 dice for higher-level characters: for example, 10d6 damage for a Fireball spell instead of 20d6. 2E also formalized and expanded proficiencies for things other than weapons – what would become 'skills' in later editions – that had appeared in some 1E supplements previously.

Through D&D's many editions, Armour Class (or 'AC') corresponds to the level of defense in a player's armour. In 1E, players had to consult a complex series of tables for calculating what roll was needed to hit a certain AC - and the lower the number, the lower the probability of being hit. 2E replaced this with THAC0, or 'To Hit Armour Class Zero', a number that determined how easily a character could bring an enemy's armour class to 0, based on their class and level. If you had a THAC0 of 10, for instance, you could hit an AC of 3 only if you rolled a 7 or higher, and so on. Later editions simplified this rule much further, but it was still a step in the right direction.

No more binaries

But 2E wasn't just a reorganized system, and the game's various supplements over the years - such as Forgotten Realms Adventures and The Complete Psionics Handbook - introduced plenty of new concepts to the game. This edition marked the first appearance of time magic in the Chronomancer supplement, which was revisited in a big way through 'dunamancy' in the Critical Role actual play series, as well as the unpredictable 'Wild Magic' now associated with the 5E Sorcerer.

Another positive change in Second Edition was the removal of biologically deterministic stats. 1E capped the maximum Strength scores of female characters lower than male ones for most races, while an early D&D supplement even suggested giving women a Beauty stat instead of standard Charisma. Sigh. 

2E removed these restrictions from the core rules, ensuring female characters could partake in the same kinds of roleplaying fantasies as their male counterparts. Gygax himself had said that this limit "doesn’t make a great deal of sense" in a fantasy game – despite including them in the first place – and this was a good first step towards the more inclusive TTRPG community we have today.

Alongside AD&D 2E, though, the company was continuing to market and sell the BECMI rulesets – Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal – which offered a stripped-down alternative to the mainline game for a broader audience. In 1991, TSR released the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia, which repackaged the BECMI rules in a final compilation, just without the high-level Immortal supplement where you essentially play as gods. 

However, the sheer volume of materials for this once-basic ruleset had turned it into a complex beast of its own, ensuring that TSR wouldn’t keep both the Basic and Advanced lines of the game running forever. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that we finally saw both design philosophies blended into a single edition with the launch of Dungeons & Dragons 3E.

So far as today's version of the game goes, the D&D 2024 classes are well balanced – but have they lost their soul? Its creative director doesn't think so, and says that D&D "didn't burn the game down" for the new rulebooks: it's still the RPG you love.

With design credits on the beloved Return to Ravnica and a catalog of Magic: The Gathering fiction behind him, Troop has certainly lived up to that responsibility. But beyond his earlier work as a writer and designer on one of the best card games, he has also made significant efforts to push MTG into digital environments through his involvement in projects like Duels of the Planeswalkers and Magic: The Gathering Online. 

Outside of being an additional avenue for existing MTG fans to enjoy the game, there's also an unappreciated value Magic: The Gathering video games have for new players. Alongside WPN events, these digital clients help ease discomfort around walking into your first Friday Night Magic or Commander Night. With a couple of games of Arena under your belt, you can feel confident enough in your understanding of the game's basic systems and be able to focus on making connections with the community.

In that same vein, Troop describes how unraveling negative misconceptions of gatekeeping around MTG remains at the center of his decision-making. "There was a lot of Spike focus in R&D for many years. So, one of the things we started talking about is how we want magic to be for everyone. [...] One of the big things I really do try to highlight is that Magic has so many different things for so many different people. It is not all serious and competitive and Spike-y."

There's still high-stakes competition to be had (there's no doubt about that) but Magic is working to actively embrace more casual and social forms of play.

Moves like this, he argues, are crucial for the evolution of Magic, both paper and digital: "We talk a lot about how if we change nothing, Magic dies, we're very confident about that. If we change too much or too much too soon, Magic either dies or creates some unfun times for all. [...] We do a lot of deliberation internally about what are the right tweaks to make to keep this game continuing to feel fresh and exciting, but also still resonant and like 'my Magic'."

No doubt this balance is a delicate one, and criticism has been levied by some who claim that Commander has been overly prioritized to the detriment of the game's overall health. These are feelings which were only further heightened by the recent controversy around the Nadu ban. Troop seems to be particularly in touch with this tension, and despite the popularity of EDH, he asserts that efforts are continually made to give TLC to other formats too.

"Right now, Commander is obviously the most popular format," Troop explains, "You know, the way I think about it, it's the center of gravity for Magic. So yeah, we want to embrace that. At the same time, we still love Standard, Modern, Draft, and all these different ways of playing Magic."

Regardless of the environment or the format you choose to play in, all Magic: The Gathering players are united by a shared appreciation of really great cards. Be it stunning art, satisfying mechanics, or captivating lore, we all have picks we’re particularly fond of. So, what is Ken Troop's favorite card? "Any card I've designed," he jokes. I … I have to admit that’s a pretty good answer.

If you're looking for the next great addition to your board game nights, check out the best board games or our favorite board games for adults. 

Ahead of the weekend, Games Workshop offered a number of Warhammer Nova Open reveals with new miniatures and plans for all of its games, including a refreshed line of Stormcast Eternals miniatures. The highlight of the new Stormcast line was a new named hero called Iridan the Witness, an imposing character riding atop a Morrgryph and wielding the fearsome Axe of the Final Threshold.

Iridan’s backstory establishes them as the first Stormcast to kill a fellow immortal warrior, granting them a "true death" and sparing them from the Curse of Reforging, which slowly erodes a Stormcast’s soul turning them from a reborn mortal to an emotionless, memory-less killing machine. After conferring with the god Sigmar and Ionus Cryptborn (a Stormcast seeking the cure to the Curse of Reforging), Iridan is now deployed at any battle "where Stormcast Eternals are in danger of losing themselves completely." Of course, the irony to Iridan’s character is that they have an eidetic memory and never forget the face of a Stormcast they mercy kill, even though the Stormcast they kill have all but forgotten who and what they are. 

Notably, Games Workshop used they/them pronouns for Iridan when discussing the new character in both the Nova Open preview (which you can watch below) and accompanying article over on the Warhammer Community announcement page. This marks one of the first nonbinary characters to permanently appear in the fantasy-themed game and certainly one of the first featured nonbinary characters.

A similar character to Iridan, an unnamed Lord-Terminos responsible for mercy killings of Stormcast, also appeared in the Skaventide novel by Gary Kloster, and was also described with they/them pronouns. However, in the context of the novel (and the overall lore), the Lord-Terminos is an imposing and foreboding mystery and use of nonbinary pronouns may be a reflection of their solemnity and grim duty rather than a desire to provide greater representation or inclusivity. 

Back in 2021, Games Workshop announced Sylas Beastbane as one of two anniversary models for that year. Beastbane’s initial description used they/them pronouns as well, but Games Workshop quickly revised the character’s description to use he/him pronouns in all but one part on their website. No explanation was given for the change, although some noted frustration at the seeming walkback at the time. Games Workshop has used nonbinary pronouns to describe other characters in their various Warhammer games in the past, although they were generally aliens, robots, or followers of the hedonistic Chaos god Slaanesh. 

Iridan’s sculpt can alternatively be used as a generic Lord-Vigilant, a ruler of the Bleak Citadels where the Ruination Chamber (a collection of Stormcast Eternals on the verge of losing themselves to the Curse of Reforging) reside. As a generic character, an Age of Sigmar player can choose to make them whatever gender presentation they’d like.

Games Workshop provided no release date for Iridan or the rest of the new Stormcast Eternals line, but based on the Roadmap provided for Age of Sigmar, they will be released later this year alongside the Stormcast Eternals Battletome. 

Curious about how this new version of the game compares to the last? Check in with our guide to all Warhammer Age of Sigmar 4th edition rules changes. You can also see what we thought about it in our Skaventide impressions piece.

While many of the Warhammer Nova Open reveals tease what we can expect for the hobby over the next six months or so, there are some goodies for the here and now too. It's a particularly good show if you play Age of Sigmar, for example; the bulk of announcements revolve around the Stormcast Eternals' many reinforcements, and even if it's not your faction of choice, these are particularly handsome models. There's even a terrain piece that should be an interesting headache to contend with.

Sure, we're bound to get more info for next year as we approach 2025 (ranging from one-offs that seek to challenge the best board games to the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game revamp), but for the time being, this is what fans can look forward to. I've broken these announcements down below with my thoughts to provide some commentary on what it all means.

Age of Sigmar Nova Open 2024 reveals

• Massive range refresh for Stormcast Eternals
• New Battletome for Slaves to Darkness on the way this year
• Roadmap spotlights Destruction & Death refresh in 2025

Warhammer's fantasy game got the lion's share of reveals for the Nova Open 2024, and the vast majority revolved around Stormcast Eternals. Alongside many new models (including one of its first nonbinary human heroes), we also got a better idea of what to expect from the next year of releases. It seems that greenskin fans are going to be kept busy, suffice to say.

 Stormcast Eternals

Following the reveal of yet more Skaven earlier in August, the Stormcast Eternals have finally received their due. Fresh off their defeat at Hel Crown in the launch event to coincide with Skaventide, Sigmar's reincarnated warriors have had their range massively reinforced with equally massive models. I've sketched out the details below, but the headline act would be a monstrous kit riding on a brook-no-nonsense griffin. A new Battletome was revealed too, but we knew that was coming and we haven't had a properly good look inside yet.

2025 roadmap

Following confirmation of the final AoS releases for 2024 (a Slaves to Darkness Battletome alongside a Darkoath Tribes box for the Spearhead game type), we got a brief tease of what we can expect to see next year. It looks to be a good time for fans of greenskins; the Orruk Warclans are getting a Spearhead box, yes, but it seems as if their smaller fellows, the Gloomspite Gitz, are going to enjoy something of a range refresh with an army box and new individual models. Their rank and file are long in the tooth now, so a refresh is definitely due.

Something big is promised for the forces of Death as well, so the cronies of Nagash are likely to get a similar treatment. Or could a new campaign be being hinted at?

Warhammer 40K Nova Open reveals

• Death Korps of Krieg get an army next year
• Aeldari are relaunching in 2025
• Next year will be a big one for Chaos

It was a leaner show for Warhammer 40,000 fans, but there does seem to be a lot on the horizon. Namely, the Astra Militarum is getting reinforcements from one of its most popular branches – the Death Korps of Krieg. We've seen this grim and gritty group of troopers recently via the last Kill Team starter set, but now they're gaining an entire army to rally around. 

This will be followed by a long-awaited relaunch for the Aeldari (some of those units are really showing their age) with promises of revised Aspect Warriors and more to go with them. We then get revitalized Imperial Knights, accompanied by the vague promise of Chaos goodies further into the year…

Horus Heresy, Old World, & Blood Bowl Nova Open reveals

• Tanks are a focus next year for Horus Heresy
• Empire and High Elves next to get models in Old World
• Chaos Dwarfs return to Blood Bowl

Although Warhammer's other games didn't get massive announcements (if any, in the case of Warcry, Underworlds, and Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game), there's still enough to chew on. Here's a whistle-stop tour:

And that's it for this year's Nova Open reveals! Want other cool stuff to daydream over? Be sure to check out our guide to the best tabletop RPGs, or the best card games.

Undoubtedly, Starter Sets aren’t the only way to get into Dungeons & Dragons, but I can’t say I don’t think the absence of one for 5.5E isn’t going to be harshly felt. Since way back in the 1970s with the advent of the ‘Basic Set’, Dungeons & Dragons has had a focused means of easing players into their journey with one of the best tabletop RPGs. Even to the uninitiated, these pared down boxes of rules and mini campaigns offer a great welcome mat to precede your more in-depth adventures.

In terms of sheer volume of content, these Starter Sets don’t hold a candle to the best Dungeons & Dragons books. However, they are exceedingly useful for those who are new to the world of D&D or tabletop roleplaying games as a whole. That’s what makes it all the more inconvenient that players are going to have to wait more than a year to pick one up. 

While not technically a distinct edition, OneDND introduces a swath of tweaked rules and important changes to Dungeons & Dragons as a system. And, as we progress further through the release lineup of 2024 core rulebooks, the existing 5th Edition Starter Set is becoming more and more redundant. That’s not to say that 5th edition isn’t worth playing with (it definitely is), but beginner adventurers are going to have to confront the unfortunate reality of having to learn 5.5E just as they start to really get the hang of 5E.

Like I’ve said, Starter Sets aren’t the only way to learn how to play D&D. In fairness to Wizards of the Coast, the new 2024 Player’s Handbook has demonstrated a noticeable positive shift in how it delivers content for first-time players. So, it’s possible that fresh PHB elements like sample session scripts can temporarily fill in the teacher-shaped hole left by the missing Starter Set. Still, what that doesn’t account for is the issue of budget.

As anyone who has seen my bank statements can attest to, tabletop gaming can be an expensive hobby. Wallet-friendly entry points like the Starter Set (and its cooler cousin, the Essentials Kit) are a savior for anyone hoping to dip their toe into D&D for less. Anyone D&D newbies who can afford to are probably going to splash the cash for the full Player’s Handbook. Everyone else, on the other hand, will have to stall until late next year. 

If you're looking for even more great additions to your tabletop nights, check out of rundown of the best board games. Alternatively, kick the littles one out and enjoy our favorite board games for adults. Our round-up of board game deals have you covered too.