As a rule, Wargamer doesn’t cover leaked or rumored products for Warhammer 40k, Horus Heresy, Age of Sigmar, or the rest – even if we believe they’re authentic. That’s my call as editor. It’d be easy traffic, and as fans it’s always exciting to see models early. But I don’t want our reporting to devalue and derail months or years of work by miniature designers, sculptors, and creatives, just because a parcel got sent to the wrong address. So on Tuesday, when Games Workshop started satirizing its own leaked product, on a website intended to publish pretend leaks as a marketing gimmick, my grasp on reality went a little… cottage cheese-y.
Let’s break down a timeline of events, for those Warhammer 40k and Horus Heresy fans who haven’t followed this odd little sideshow. Last Thursday, May 8, Games Workshop announced it was launching a new edition of Warhammer The Horus Heresy via a cutesy teaser video with big ‘dad joke’ vibes, under the jokey legend “The Horus Hearsay”.
It’s filled with obvious easter eggs that (mostly) appear to lead nowhere. It’s just a fun, light hearted reveal that its specialist spinoff miniature wargame – covering the battles of the Horus Heresy books – is getting a new edition.
That traditionally fires the starting gun on months of speculation about what new rules we’ll get – and what delicious new models are coming in the inevitable, big, shiny launch box set. We wouldn’t usually expect to see hide nor hair of that, though, for many weeks after the initial reveal.
Also on Thursday, May 8, a new one-page website and matching social media channels sprang up, titled thehorushearsay.com. It isn’t linked to from other official GW sites, but shows every sign of being a tongue-in-cheek marketing ploy on GW’s part, and not – as it purports to be – a peculiarly well informed rumors blog.
Its header image is a higher resolution, transparent-backgrounded version of the ‘Horus Hearsay’ logo in GW’s official trailer. It proudly states, in all caps: “THIS IS A TOTALLY 100% LEGIT WARHAMMER WEBSITE”. It uses the same fonts as GW’s official Warhammer sites – something fan sites don’t do; why would they? It has authentic copyright legal messaging and links to GW’s privacy policies in the footer.
Right from the off, it was posting original, high-quality images of obscure, unseen plastic components that, if real, could only come from GW and, if fake, would be bizarrely tedious things to falsify. Its brief blog posts read like a marketer’s carefully worded spoof of real fan posts.
To all intents and purposes, it seems a mildly amusing guerrilla marketing campaign that’s poking fun at toy soldier fans’ conspiratorial habits. I don’t love it, but it’s no biggie – just GW having a bit of extra fun with a second-tier release. Enter the Big Leak.
On Monday, May 12, two images began circulating online, showing what looks like the new Horus Heresy launch box set, months before we were expecting it. One shows two copies of the box set – titled Age of Darkness: Saturnine – in the back seat of a car.
The other shows the rear side of the box, in just about high enough resolution to see the box’s hero models: a Saturnine Dreadnought and Space Marines in Saturnine Terminator armor, classic characters that fans have wanted new models of for decades. It’s a really cool looking set – the sort of thing GW would usually reveal via a fancy video during a Warhammer Preview livestream.
We saw it, we sighed, we got on with our work. It’s not uncommon for new Warhammer kits to be shipped out early by accident. True, this supposed leak came much earlier than we’d usually see such logistical muck-ups – but production cycles are long and release schedules change; it’s not a huge surprise. As usual, my feelings were a 50/50 mix of nerdy excitement about the new models, and sympathy for the poor working stiffs in marketing, who’ve just had their Summer work schedules shaken about like peas in a drop pod.
On Tuesday, though, things started getting weird. Instead of the usual, expedited official coverage from Warhammer Community, the Horus Hearsay promo site reposted the apparently leaked images, saying – in a snarky, non-serious tone that’s achingly familiar to Warcom readers – that they’re, like, so totally fake, man. GW, it seems, was satirizing its own leaked product.
“Is this the new Box Set!?!” one post reads. “We’re skeptical. How come the photos are so bad?”
“Photographer, the bigfoot guy called – he wants his camera back.”
In my expert editorial opinion, it’s all a bit cringe. The community at large had already decided that Hearsay was a GW site. It had also already concluded the Saturnine box leak was probably real, and Hearsay’s cutesy, jokey denials seemingly confirmed it – but in kind of an annoying way. Who was this weird meta stuff intended to please, I wondered? I’m still not sure.
But here’s the thing: the whole point of the Horus Hearsay site seems to be to generate buzz about the new edition and miniatures by revealing real product details, dressed up in the gimmick of being ‘leaks’. And this weird little saga has achieved that aim beautifully. Instead of the Hearsay campaign being kneecapped early by a distribution mistake, it’s taken the leak in its stride, and gotten everyone talking. The timeline may be wrong, but the results have been bang on target.
It’s even activated that minority of tin foil hatted fans who’ve insisted for years that ‘leaked’ info on GW products is all choreographed by the company, to keep the hype wheels turning. Could it be that GW leaked its own boxset, they wonder, their little nerd hearts aflame with excitement – or even leaked a meticulously crafted fake version, just for the hype?
Almost certainly not, obviously. Occam’s Razor applies: either option would be far costlier, riskier, and stupider than just following its normal routine of drip fed blog posts and an eventual video reveal. It’s much more likely the Saturnine box leak is both real and unintended, and GW’s simply joking about it on the Hearsay website, as a humorous form of damage control that keeps the site ‘in character’.
But, whether by luck or design, uncle Geedubs has kind of aced this one. I’ve never been a fan of marketing that feels like it’s trolling or mocking its customers – and I’m less than comfortable with the Hearsay website’s general schtick, at a time when online misinformation is actively burning down the world. It rubs me up the wrong way – but don’t knock it, it worked. And I’m damned if I don’t want me some Saturnine Terminators.
How do you feel about it all? Jazzed to be getting some Space Marines with even bigger shoulders than normal? Just a little tiny bit confused by all the fuss and bother? Come join the discussion on the Wargamer Discord community – we’re probably going to be talking about this for a fair old while.
Or, in the meantime, you can always do a bit of background reading with our guides to all the Warhammer 40k factions and our compendium of all 21 40k primarchs.
Source: Wargamer
