Reveal night reactions: Chaos wins, Kill Team gets dinosaur Eldar, and Necromunda shrugs
Reveal night reactions: Chaos wins, Kill Team gets dinosaur Eldar, and Necromunda shrugs
Sometimes a Warhammer reveal lands in exactly the most chaotic way possible: one of us is trying to watch the video, another has internet that refuses to cooperate, somebody else is already on the way to the cinema, and the rest of us are live-reacting from screenshots and vibes alone. This was one of those evenings.
The short version? Chaos Warriors looked fantastic, Cathay got people talking, the two-headed dragon absolutely hit, and everything outside of that got a much more mixed reception from us.
The immediate reaction: Chaos and Cathay
The whole thing basically started with Wilini dropping the first impression: Chaos Warriors and Cathay. And very quickly the consensus formed around one key point: those Chaos models are gorgeous.
Michał, meanwhile, was fighting a much more dangerous enemy than the Ruinous Powers: bad internet.
“The video won’t load. If you have screenshots, throw them here.”
So that is exactly what happened. Before disappearing off to the cinema, Wilini heroically dumped a pile of screenshots into chat for the rest of us to inspect.
Even before we got into the details, the mood was clear: the new Chaos stuff just looks right. Big armor, heavy silhouettes, lots of menace. The kind of release that makes you briefly forget how many unpainted models you already own.
Important question of the evening: is there a two-headed dragon?
Naturally, Michał asked the only question that really mattered:
“Is there a two-headed dragon?”
Yes. There was.
And yes, that became one of the stars of the whole reveal for us.
Michał’s verdict was immediate: “the dragon is awesome.”
Honestly, same. It’s one of those centerpiece models that instantly dominates the conversation. Even if the rest of the release had been weaker, a model like that would still carry a lot of excitement on its own.
Battle sets, temptation, and the eternal problem of already collecting something else
The other thing that caught our eye were the battle sets. Michał called them out as especially strong, and that felt pretty fair from what we saw.
Wilini summed up a very familiar hobby feeling perfectly: if he wasn’t already collecting Bretonnia, he would probably have been tempted.
That is maybe the highest form of praise a release can get in our group. Not “we are definitely buying this,” but rather: “if our current project list wasn’t already a disaster, this would absolutely be a problem.”
Michał was a bit more reserved on the new Chaos Warriors themselves, but still noted that the Arcane Journal for Chaos looked interesting. So even where the models didn’t fully click for everyone, there was still enough there to keep Old World brains engaged.
Side note from Stas: Chaos Warriors the video game is apparently great too
In the middle of all this, Stas added another kind of Chaos recommendation: Warhammer: Chaosbane? No — actually Warhammer: Chaos Warriors as a game reference in spirit, describing it as having a Left 4 Dead kind of energy, but more melee-focused, and importantly: it was on the Steam Summer Sale and runs fine on Steam Deck.
That wasn’t the main reveal topic, but it absolutely had the energy of a proper group chat hobby tangent, so we’re recording it for posterity.
Then Kill Team arrived with… Eldar on dinosaurs
And then the conversation took a turn.
End3r dropped the bombshell: Kill Team Eldar on dinosaurs.
The reaction was, let’s say, not universally positive.
Michał immediately went for the comparison a lot of Old World players were probably feeling in their bones: instead of giving us proper Lizardmen for The Old World, we get dinosaurs in a place that feels, to him, much less fitting.
That one really captures the split-brain experience of being a Warhammer fan in 2026. Sometimes the model itself is wild enough to get an “OMG,” but the wider context still leaves you thinking: why here, and why now?
End3r also immediately started imagining the practical absurdities of the model on the table — trying to hide that dinosaur in cover on Volkus or squeezing it through doors on Tomb World. Which, to be fair, is a very Kill Team-specific kind of concern, but also a very real one.
Necromunda: the sound of polite disappointment
Necromunda did not exactly set our chat on fire either.
End3r’s summary was brutally concise: Escher versus Goliath, and that’s basically it.
That led to a broader verdict on the reveals overall: meh. No dwarfs, no Salamanders, and not much to really spike the excitement level.
Community mood: not exactly glowing
As the evening went on, End3r started reporting in from the wider internet, and apparently the Kill Team community was already in full complaint mode, with people listing reasons why this might be one of the weakest sets in a while.
To illustrate the mood, we also got meme screenshots for both Kill Team and Necromunda reactions.
That “enthusiasm level -100” line felt like a pretty accurate summary of where chat had landed by that point.
Of course, Michał raised the classic counterpoint: watch these things turn out to be S-tier, and suddenly everyone currently complaining starts buying and playing them. End3r agreed that they probably have to be very strong if GW wants them to move, but also pointed out another very modern problem: if the rules are too convoluted, people may simply bounce off them anyway.
The comparison to Necrons in Kill Team was painfully familiar — powerful, maybe, but with enough mental overhead that not everyone actually wants to put them on the table.
Final group verdict: Chaos carried the whole thing
By the next morning, Wilini had the cleanest summary of the entire reveal cycle:
“Overall, apart from Chaos, there was basically nothing interesting in this release. So that’s nice, because I won’t buy anything.”
And honestly, that might be the healthiest possible hobby outcome.
We came away from this one with:
- a lot of appreciation for the Chaos Warriors visuals,
- genuine admiration for the two-headed dragon,
- some interest in the Chaos Arcane Journal and battle sets,
- confusion and skepticism around Kill Team dinosaur Eldar,
- and a very muted response to Necromunda.
So if we had to score the evening in pure emotional terms: huge win for Chaos, shrug for almost everything else.
Which, in practical terms, means the pile of shame survives another week.