Over twenty years, miniature wargame Warmachine has carved out its own visual identity in the fantasy landscape - more pulpy than Warhammer, less goofy than Warcraft, and with just a hint of modern military edge. I've just received review samples of the game's new Old Umbrey subfaction, and they're something else - heroic and pulpy, sure, but with a mixture of rustic simplicity and deep woods decay straight out of folk horror cinema.
Old Umbrey was revealed during Warmachine's Adepticon livestream earlier this year, and miniatures are already on sale - they took a little while to arrive in the UK too, so the photos of painted minis in the article aren't mine, they're the Steamforged team's work. Umbrey is a rural province within the nation of Khador, a Russia-coded land of ice, snow, and the color red, that has been part of Warmachine for as long as the miniature wargame has existed.
Old Umbrey fills an interesting slot in the setting. The original Khador range had a lot of different tones, from the organised Winterguard to the rural Kossite Woodsmen. Old Umbrey takes the rural aesthetic and develops it further. These forces aren't part of the formal Khadoran military: they're an occult organisation, led by powerful Warlocks, fighting for both their land and their own ends.
This army is directed by the Old Witch, a very ancient, very powerful being that manipulates history from the shadows: she had a major role narrowly averting the apocalypse at the end of the last edition of the game! Her cult's Warlocks are empowered by the primordial destructive magic of the Devourer Wurm, and go to battle beside creatures once thought little more than folk tales.
It's the perfect set-up for an army that, visually, is a true folk horror feast. You want ravens? We got ravens. Things with antlers that shouldn't have antlers? You bet. Warriors with animal skull masks? Sure. Monsters with animal skull heads? Have a selection.
This aesthetic works beautifully with a neat feature of modern Warmachine miniatures - magnetizeable body parts. Each army's Warbeasts (or robotic Warjacks) has various loadout options, and the model's body parts are designed to take 5mm x 1.5mm disc magnets and swap in and out whenever you want to tinker with your army list.
This is a perfect fit for Old Umbrey's chimaeric monsters. The Primeval looks equally haunting whether it has a bear, elk, or crow skull for a head, and the Feral can mix and match parts from an eagle, sabertooth, boar, porcupine, and other less identifiable sources, to create all kinds of gribblies.
The minis are 3D printed: they're highly detailed, the supports on the models are minimal, and there's no residue left over from the cleaning process, at least on thee sample's I've received. The resin is hard, with just a little flex.
Under previous owner Privateer Press there were big problems with resin components arriving snapped. I've received a lot of Warmachine review samples from Steamforged Games: almost the complete line of the Cygnar Gravediggers, and most recently the Command Cadre and Battlegroup Box Set for Old Umbrey. I hadn't any breakages, right up until I opened the Old Umbrey Command Cadre and found the Warlock's dagger was missing. There's no sign of it, so I assume it broke off in the warehouse rather than in postage.
Steamforged seems to be accounting for the risks of models breaking in transit in how it's designing new figures. One model's spearhead is supplied as a separate piece, and I suspect the reason is to minimise the risk of it snapping off the haft while in the post.
I'm looking forward to trying Old Umbrey out on the tabletop. The faction is similar to the old Circle Orboros, with a lot of non-linear threats, pretty good evasion, high damage output, but not much armor when it's brought to bear. There are some very fun mechanics just beyond the starter products, like Marked models, which when killed - or when triggered by another ability - can be replaced by a massive Werewolf shifter. And your army can include a Druid disguised as a sheep herder and his two psychotic black rams. Delightful.
There are a lot of Warmachine fans in the Wargamer Discord community - come and say hi, share your favorite models, and if you've got your hands on Old Umbrey already, show us what you've painted so far!
If you like the fantasy Russian aesthetic, we'll point you at the Kislev Warhammer the Old World faction - sadly not playable on the tabletop yet, but one of the four base game Total War: Warhammer 3 factions.