Games Workshop’s Sunday Preview on 2 August confirmed the news Old World players have been waiting for since the Core Set landed: the Warriors of Chaos are being released as individual kits, and they go up for pre-order on Saturday 8 August, with a street date of Saturday 22 August. Leading the charge is a brand new Lord on Chaos Dragon — a two-headed monster you can build with a Chaos Lord, a sorcerer, or no rider at all.

It is a genuinely good bit of news for anyone who fancied a Chaos army but did not fancy buying the whole Core Set to get at the sprues. From next Saturday you can buy the Chaos Warriors, the Chaos Knights and the characters on their own, at your own pace — and the whole wave is already loaded into our Warhammer pre-orders. Here is the full line-up. 

The star of the show: Lord on Chaos Dragon

The centrepiece kit is a two-headed Chaos Dragon, and Games Workshop has been unusually generous with the options. The box gives you a Chaos Lord rider and an infernal sorcerer, and you choose which one takes the saddle — the other becomes a standalone foot character. Better still, the announcement notes you can build the dragon with no rider at all, which as any long-memoried Chaos player will tell you is the polite way of saying you could use it as Galrauch.

Three kits in one box, and a two-headed dragon at the end of it. If you only buy one thing from this wave, this is the one.

• Lord on Chaos Dragon: two-headed dragon, Chaos Lord and sorcerer riders, or built to fly free with no rider at all

The rank and file

The infantry and cavalry kits are the ones that make an army possible rather than aspirational. Both are built around swappable parts, so two boxes will not look like the same box twice.

• Chaos Warriors: 16 armoured warriors with hand weapons and shields, interchangeable heads, shields and weapons, and parts for one or two command groups depending on how big you build the unit
• Chaos Knights: eight knights with interchangeable lances, heads and shields, plus two full sets of command components (champion, standard bearer, musician). The parts are cross-compatible with the Chaos Warriors kit, which is where the fun starts
• Champions of Chaos: two champions, one on a daemonic steed and one on foot, with a suitably enormous banner either of them can carry as your Battle Standard Bearer

Worth knowing: reviewers who got hands on the Core Set sprues pointed out that the 16 Chaos Warriors come off duplicated sprue halves, so there are four base body poses in the box. In practice the interchangeable heads, arms and shields do the heavy lifting — and a rank-and-file Chaos unit arguably should march in lockstep. A bits box and a bit of arm-swapping will scatter any repetition you can still spot.

Two Battle March armies: the shortcut to a playable force

If you would rather skip straight to a game, both Battle March boxes give you a functioning army in one purchase, and they are the most efficient way into either faction.

• Warriors of Chaos Battle March Army: 8 Chaos Warriors, 4 Chaos Knights, a Sorcerer of Chaos, 5 Chaos Marauder Horsemen and 20 Chaos Marauders
• Grand Cathay Battle March Army: a Shugengan Lord on Great Spirit Longma, 20 Jade Warriors, 5 Jade Lancers, 6 Iron Hail Gunners and 4 Crane Gunners

Thirty-eight models for Chaos and thirty-six for Cathay, both with a character to lead them. That is a starting army and a paint project in one box, and it means the two factions from the Core Set can now be collected independently — handy if you and a mate want a side each without buying the same box twice.

Rules and reading

The wave is not just plastic. Chaos generals get a proper rules expansion alongside it.

• Arcane Journal: The March of Chaos: a 48-page book of lore, rules for building your own Chaos Champions, and expanded Winds of Magic mechanics
• Arcane Magic Ploys card pack: 56 cards of magical effects for your spellcasters, handy for keeping the Winds of Magic moving without flipping through the book mid-turn

Custom Chaos Champions are the headline here. Naming your own warlord, picking his marks and his gifts, then watching him get bounced off a Jade Warrior spear wall is the authentic Warhammer fantasy experience, and it is the sort of rules content that keeps an army interesting long after it is painted. 

Also going up on 8 August: Blood Bowl’s big guys

Chaos is not the only thing on the pre-order page next Saturday. Blood Bowl gets a genuinely landmark release: Morg ’n’ Thorg in plastic for the first time, after decades in metal and resin, buildable in Imperial, Badlands or Chaos kit and playable with almost every team going except the Undead. He is joined by two more Big Guys getting the plastic treatment.

• Morg ’n’ Thorg: the most famous Star Player in the game, in plastic at last, with Imperial, Badlands and Chaos kit options in the box
• Minotaur: the classic Chaos Big Guy, resculpted and moved to plastic
• Rat Ogre: the Skaven bruiser, all muscle and prehensile tail
• Blood Bowl Sevens Pitch: double-sided fold-out pitch and matching dugouts for the faster seven-a-side format
• Spike! Journal Issue 22: the Blood Bowl Sevens rules and everything around them

Rounding out the weekend, White Dwarf 527 covers the new edition of Warhammer 40,000, a Blood Angels versus Goff Orks battle report and solo rules for Warhammer Quest: Darkwater, and Black Library puts out a limited edition of Bjorn: The Fell-Handed by Justin D Hill, complete with signed plate, embossed cover and foiled spine.

What it means for you

Our take: this is the wave that turns The Old World’s Chaos army from a Core Set component into a proper collection you can build a piece at a time. Three sensible routes in, depending on where you are starting:

• Starting from scratch: the Battle March Army box is the obvious first purchase — a legal, playable force with a character, out of one box
• Already own the Core Set: the Arcane Journal and a box of Chaos Knights will do more for your games than anything else in the wave, and the Lord on Chaos Dragon gives your list a proper centrepiece
• Just here for the dragon: nobody will judge you. It is three characters in a box and it will look magnificent on a shelf whether it ever sees a battlefield or not

Whichever route you take, get your paints in before 22 August rather than the night before. Chaos plate wants a solid metallic base and a good shade, and the Cathay jade scheme is thirstier than it looks — our Warhammer Colour range and brushes will cover both. Rank-and-fill units also eat basing materials at a rate that surprises people the first time they base twenty Marauders.

Key dates

• Pre-orders open: Saturday 8 August 2026
• Release date: Saturday 22 August 2026
• Our prices: live on each product page when pre-orders open at 10am on Saturday 8 August
• Where: the full wave is in our Warhammer pre-orders, with the rest of the range in Games Workshop models, paint and accessories

Final thought: splitting the Warriors of Chaos into their own kits is the single most useful thing that could have happened to The Old World this month. A two-headed dragon on top is just good manners.

Further reading: The New Edition of Necromunda: Everything You Need to Know · Orruk Warclans: Army Analysis