Dice, Dwarfs & Doom: September 2025’s Plastic Fantastic (tabletop/figures news roundup).
Crikey. September 2025 has barely given us time to finish painting last year’s backlog, and the games industry has already hurled another avalanche of cardboard and plastic in our direction. From demon-worshipping duardin to cherry-blossom samurai, here’s the month’s highlights for those of us who know our “pile of shame” is actually a lifestyle choice.
Games Workshop kicked things off with its Warhammer Day previews, unveiling two limited-edition shinies: Urkhan the Dark Warden, an Age of Sigmar Chaos hero swishing his cloak like he’s auditioning for a Hammer Horror remake, and a jump-pack Space Marine Captain lugging more relic gear than your average cathedral. Over in Warhammer 40,000 proper, the Leagues of Votann get their moment, with robot bruisers (Ironkin Steeljacks), mole-artillery (Cthonian Earthshakers), and heroes like Buri Aegnirssen, who looks designed purely to terrify Tyranids. Space Marine veterans like Darnath Lysander and a White Scars jet-biker also return to keep the armour polishers busy.
Age of Sigmar hasn’t been left out, wheeling in the Chaos Dwarfs—rebranded as the Helsmiths of Hashut. These duardin have traded in mining picks for bull-mechs, hobgrot henchmen, and centaur cavalry, backed by heroes like Uruk Taar the Daemonsmith. New battletomes for Flesh-Eater Courts and Nighthaunt add extras like the toxin-slinging Lord Vitriolic and High Falconer Felgryn, whose bird obsession makes him sound one pigeon short of Trafalgar Square. And Kill Team takes us into claustrophobic Necron tombs, complete with Deathwatch marines skulking about like Indiana Jones in power armour.
Crowdfunding has been equally relentless. Risk of Rain: The Board Game from Nerdvana smashed its goals faster than a speedrunner with infinite items, promising roguelike chaos, plastic loot, and expansions like Survivors of the Void. Reiner Knizia’s Samurai has been reborn as Hanami – Samurai Reimagined, swapping feudal Japan for cherry blossom and showing you can make tile-laying positively poetic. Bitewing Games is summoning Moytura, an Irish myth-fuelled two-player wargame with a non-player faction spreading like an especially aggressive patch of moss.
Elsewhere, Wyrd Games has unveiled the Malifaux 4E Two-Player Starter, pitting clockwork queens against sea-soaked horrors, complete with fate decks, widgets and tokens. Osprey Games continues its classy compact line with General Orders: Sengoku Jidai, where daimyos juggle worker placement and tactical warfare as politely as possible while lobbing siege engines at each other. And cult favourite Trench Crusade has spawned Missionaries, a new Wargames Atlantic and MiniWarGaming collaboration — zealous 32mm figures armed with relics and rifles to keep hellspawn at bay.
On the spooky side, Smirk & Dagger are chilling us with This Game is Killer: Frozen Horror, a party game where a shape-shifting monster stalks Arctic survivors—think Among Us, but frostier. Black Site Studios’ retro-slasher homage Don’t Look Back remains open for late pledges, offering solo/co-op miniature horror campaigns complete with expansions like Summer Camp Massacre. Subterranean scares also return via Sub Terra, whose €15 Horror & Leaper pack replaces your polite meeples with suitably gribbly miniatures.
So there you have it: Warhammer chaos, roguelike cardboard, cherry-blossom reskins, missionaries with muskets, and party games where betrayal comes with hypothermia. September’s offerings prove once again that the only certainty in this hobby is a lighter wallet and another shelf buckling under sprues. Here at SFcrowsnest we salute your courage. Keep those brushes damp, your dice honest, and remember: in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only… more Kickstarter campaigns.
