On November 27, Games Workshop dropped a cute fake news report onto its social media, in which a bewildered reporter meets enraged Warhammer 40k fans protesting the sheer lack of releases for the Ultramarines this year. It's a goof, of course - the Ultramarines have had an unexpected windfall of releases and reveals in the last two months. Since the firm doesn't release videos this close to Christmas just for fun, it's almost certain that this is the start of a marketing campaign for something big - and there only a few Ultramarines releases it could possibly be.
Candidate number one: a new model for big papa smurf, the Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman. If you started playing Warhammer 40k with 8th edition or later then he's always been there for you - but when "Somehow, Guilliman returned" in model form in 2017, it was as mind-blowing for long-time fans as it was for the inhabitants of the Imperium of Man. That model is now over eight years old and it has been totally eclipsed by the other Warhammer 40k Primarch models, from the loyalist Lion to the daemon primarchs of Chaos.
There's also scope in the lore for a new version of the Primarch with a totally different style of armor, and different tabletop rules. Rulebooks and codexes state that Guilliman can never leave the Armor of Fate, lest the combination of high technology and Ynnari magic that were the key to his resurrection fails and he dies for realsies. But Guy Haley's Dark Imperium novels reveal that Guilliman has - secretly - experimented and learned how to survive outside the armor. He really doesn't take well to being told he can't do something.
If a neo-Guilliman is coming, he may not be alone. Earlier this year GW released a roadmap for Warhammer 40k codex releases that included a mysterious outline of a Space Marine. We had speculated that a second version of the Space Marines codex was coming - something that happened toward the end of 8th edition - but perhaps a standalone Ultramarines codex supplement is in the works
The Ultramarines do have more models than they did at the start of the edition. There's a second version of Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, a new model for captain Cato Sicarius, and elite Victrix Guard that feel like a parallel for the Blood Angels' Sanguinary Guard and Dark Angels' Inner Circle Companions. Then there's the news that Space Marine 2's Lieutenant Titus is being promoted to a Captain, getting a new model, a command squad of buddies, and title billing in the upcoming 500 Worlds campaign supplement.
That would still give the Ultramarines the slimmest selection of unique units in any current codex supplement… unless more new models are on the way. Not counting various special characters, the only Ultramarines-specific unit that used to have models and now doesn't is the Tyrannic War veterans, survivors of the first ever Tyranid invasion.
But with the Fourth Tyrannic war ripping through the Segmentum Solar, veteran Tyranid hunting Space Marines are hardly an Ultramarines speciality. I think that any upcoming units will be genuinely new.
Given Guilliman's role commissioning the Primaris project from Belisarius Cawl, I could see Ultramarines field-testing cutting edge new equipment. The designers could do a lot with the Ultramarines cool Roman-inspired aesthetic - perhaps some shield and gladius-equipped melee troops, a call-back to the Praetorian Breachers from the Horus Heresy. Or perhaps they could be joined by human units from the Ultramar Defense Auxilia, giving the Ultramarines a unique ability among the loyalist Space Marine chapters to field (comparatively) cheap troops as objective grabbers.
What do you think is coming? What do you want to see? Or are you an Ultramarines refusenik who can't wait for this to all blow over? Tell me what you think in the Wargamer Discord community. And to keep up to all the biggest tabletop news, sign up to the Wargamer newsletter today!