Reports of the death of Warhammer 40k‘s beloved Astra Militarum character Commissar Sebastian Yarrick were, it seems, greatly exaggerated. In an impressive, three minute animated trailer, Games Workshop has revealed a brand new Yarrick model, and confirmed that ‘Old Bale Eye’ (as he’s known by his Ork nemeses) is playing a major part in the game’s upcoming Armageddon storyline.
Announced via GW’s Warhammer Community site on Monday, the new Commissar Yarrick miniature is confirmation of long running fan theories that kicked off as soon as the classic character’s official Imperial obituary appeared in the 9th Edition Astra Militarum codex in 2022.
The general consensus was that the Hero of Hades – one of the most loved and most memed characters from any Warhammer 40k faction – had been killed off screen at some point during the Arks of Omen storyline, possibly by Angron. But no – as so many grief-ridden Guard fans have been crying for the last few years: Yarrick lives!
Yarrick’s return comes in the form of a fully voiced, animated short, which shows a wavering Guard general attempting to order a full retreat from embattled war world Armageddon, before being shot in the back of the head by Yarrick (who’s rather good at that sort of thing).
The miniature itself has everything a Yarrick lover could want. The repurposed Ork Power Klaw is suitably hilariously oversized, for starters. In general, it’s a very close match to the previous 2000s sculpt, but (of course) upscaled to meet the larger average model scales in today’s game. It’s amusing, too, that Yarrick gets two tactical rocks.
What’s even more intriguing, though, is the manner of this reveal. Famous and beloved by fans though Yarrick is, two and a half minutes of fully voiced, cinematic level animation is not cheap, and would seem overkill to announce the release of a single miniature. It feels more like the precursor rumbling to a major narrative event – the sort of thing GW would normally create movie quality trailers for.
And that’s a little odd – because it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of time between Eye of Terror (its third end-of-tenth-edition narrative supplement, due in the next month) and the presumptive arrival of Warhammer 40k 11th edition in Summer. Are Yarrick and Armageddon a secret fourth story drop before 11th? Or – pause for gasps – could the 11th Edition launch box actually be Orks versus Astra Militarum? It’d be a planet sized turn-up for the books, but one should never rule anything out where uncle Geedubs is concerned.
WarCom makes clear, at the end of its Monday announcement article, that we’ll be “learning more about Yarrick, and the wider war for Armageddon, very soon”. We’ve been waiting nearly a year for some hard information on just what the new War for Armageddon actually is. We still don’t know yet – but we know at least one of the main players on the board is a grizzled old bastard who likes Orks a hell of a lot less than they like him.
What do you reckon this means for the next few months of Warhammer? Was all this fuss really just for one model? Come join the free Wargamer Discord community and let us know. Summary executions by laspistol are banned, though, so don’t even ask.
Source: Wargamer
