The Maelstrom is an ancient Warp-Realspace junction deep in the galactic core. In this area of space both reality and the warp churn together to create an area saturated with sickly energies and otherworldly vortexes. While the warp is rife here, there are also planets and it is here where the denizens of the Maelstrom often hide from the rest of the galaxy. Pirates, Corsairs, Raiders – The Maelstrom is home to all of these – from the looting Ork Freebooter Krews, to the Aeldari Corsairs and even the renegade Space Marines there’s a lot of danger here.

In this review we’ll be checking out Lair of the Tyrant and seeing what it offers to players of Warhammer 40,000. We’ll take a look at all the volumes within the slipcase and see just what is inside and what fun stuff there is to add to your campaigns.

There’s also a stack of new model releases – Battleforces for both flavour of Corsair and Huron Blackheart himself! Later in the review we’ll be unboxing all of these sets and painting them up to see what they look like in the flesh!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us these over to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Red Corsairs and Aeldari Corsairs through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed full unboxings of both of the new Battleforce boxes and the Huron and the Masters of the Maelstrom box, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s dive into the Lair of the Tyrant and see just what is inside!

The Maelstrom – Lair of the Tyrant Review

The latest Warhammer 40k campaign series continues following on from 500 Worlds Titus. I say follow on, but really this is an independent set of books and story. While the Titus book focused on the campaign of compliance in the 500 worlds of the Ultramar system, The Maelstrom instead heads to the treacherous region of space of the same name.

While 500 Worlds Titus featured the Ultramarines and Necrons as the main armies featured, The Maelstrom is all about Corsairs of all flavours. The Red Corsairs under Huron Blackheart are the main stars of the supplement, but sharing the stage are the Eldritch Raiders of the Aeldari Corsairs, under the command of Prince Yriel himself!

Like with the previous volume, this is very much a narrative supplement with a focus on lore, campaigns and materials to help support adding fun new things to your games such as custom characters. Like with the previous book, all the profiles for new models and some detachments are actually available for free on Warhammer Community, so there’s no need to have to pick up the book for the rules – but the book is 100% worth picking up for the rest of it!

Like with 500 Worlds I don’t want to go into too many spoilers with this one – but there’s less of an overarching narrative running throughout the first book “Lair of the Tyrant”. Instead this acts more like a background book about the forces that exist within The Maelstrom. We get decent background exploring the region of space itself, who exists there and why they risk their lives in such a dangerous area. The majority of the book however is a deep dive into the Red Corsairs and the Aeldari Corsairs. Both are covered here in great detail, with particular attention given to Huron and the Red Corsairs. We get to see what they have been up to since the Badab War, and what they are up to in the Maelstrom. What I really like about them is that they are less “Chaos” Space Marines and more “Renegade” Marines. Huron doesnt worship the Dark Gods (though does see the potential benefits to his followers worshiping them. Because of this, from an army creation point of view you could almost do something that feels like a Horus Heresy army, with scores of veteran Marines supported by tanks and traitor guard compared to something more heavy in Daemon Engines (which I suspect the Iron Warriors will lean into)

The book ends with a collection of stories and lore snippets set within the Maelstrom, including a showdown between Huron and Yriel!

Now, 500 Worlds ended with the revelation that The Lion has contacted Guilliman, and we get a significant event at the end of this book too – click the spoiler area below if you want to know what it is!

Raid and Ruin

The second volume in the set is Raid and Ruin, a brand new narrative campaign pack for Warhammer 40,000. While 500 Worlds had a sprawling map based system with different resources and fleets to manage across the system, Raid and Ruin takes a very different track.

Raid and Ruin is all about Pirate forces fighting within the Maelstrom itself. Designed to be used alongside the new detachments and character creation rules in the other books in this set, this is a campaign that looks at a tighter slice of the things compared to the map based campaign. Instead, each player control a different piratical force that is looking to earn loot and glory while also trying to make a name for the charismatic warlord that leads the warband.

The main mechanic revolves around challenges. In these each player is trying to earn notoriety points by performing certain tasks during a battle – this might be slaying the enemy Warlord, or maybe have your Warlord destroy enemy units during the battle, or controlling more objective markers than your opponent by the end of the game. There are 7 of these challenges, and each challenge has 3 “ranks” to it which are unlocked by completing the challenge multiple times during the campaign. What’s really cool is that your warlord will earn new titles by achieving these different levels. So for example if you manage to kill the warlord in one of your games then your Warlord will earn the title “Vengeful” but do it a second time and you will unlock “Unrivaled” instead. There’s something fun about the players trying to outdo each other with their ridiculous over the top names for their Warlord as Raidmaster Ang’orth the Bloodthirsty Executioner and Unstoppable faces down against a plucky Grot hero with no titles!

Pirates love loot, and another big element of the campaign is the various treasure you can try and lay claim to over the course of the campaign. There’s a massive D66 list of different treasures that you are trying to get hold of, and after each game you get to make a roll on the chart for each objective you control at the end of the battle. You can only ever earn one spoil of war though, so having more objectives just gives you more rolls, and allows you to pick your favourite from them all.

A lot of these have some unique and fun rules – some of them for example are cursed (and being cursed sometimes make you pick the result even if you have multiple rolls!) and these normally do something detrimental to your army such as switching off any rerolls for your warlord, or limit options you have when picking how you want to go about the battle (more on this later)

Others will do things such as allowing a unit to reroll advances or gain scout. There’s even some powerful weapons that can be given to your heroes with some pretty cool rules – such as a S9 Melta 2 pistol with AP -4, Or an Anti Infantry 3+ torrent weapon with 2D6 attacks!

The Maelstrom Raid and Ruin book contains 12 new missions which do a good job of mixing up how games play, but it does a little more than that by adding a whole stack of rules which change how the game is played. For starters, army construction is different, with a limit of 1 for each monster, vehicle or character, a max of 4 duplicate battleline or dedicated transports and 2 for all other units, which goes some way to stopping spam.

Attacker, Defender and even the mission is determined by a matrix – each player picks one of 4 actions (Rapid Raid, Planned Strike, Ambush or Hold Prize) and depending on what both players have picked that will determine what you play and what roles you both have, which is really fun.

With objectives in these games representing treasure to be found, (non vehicle) units can even pick them up, move them around and even take them off the battlefield! This is really cool, carrying a unit slows you down so you have to pick your moments, but much treachery will ensue when you manage to steal an objective off someone and rush it out of their deployment zone!

And speaking of treachery, the book also includes rules for 3 and 4 player battles along with some custom scenarios for them! I was a massive fan of Triumph and Treachery back in the day, and it’s great to see these sorts of games come back into the fold! And yes, there’s rules for making deals and trading Command Points to fund them, and no, the person you make a deal with doesnt have to make their end of the deal…

Games like these appeal to me much more than traditional matched play games, and I really hope this is something that we see more of going into 11th Edition 40k

Crucible of Champions

One of the most exciting things about The Maelstrom set is the brand new character creator for games of 40k. If you’re an Age of Sigmar player then this will all seem very familiar – this is essentially a 40k version of the Anvil of Apotheosis, and it allows you to make your very own custom characters for your games – and yes, they have points values too so can be used in any game of 40k! Tournaments will probably have rulings on if they are allowed or not, but I would love to go to an event where people are encouraged to create your own custom heroes to lead their armies!

This mechanic works really well in AOS, and there is a lot of cool potential for conversion work here. Amazingly, every faction in the game is represented within the book – which is ace! And there’s a lot of options within the builder for each army.

So how does it work?

Well essentially you pick an archetype for your unit – this is basically the type of character you want to run – so for Space Marines for example you are picking between a Champion, a Librarian or a hero interred in a Dreadnought (seriously!). These archetypes are different across all the armies in the book and there’s lots of cool stuff here! Want a Gretchin character? No problems! Want a giant tyranid beastie? That’s fine! What about a Tau Stealth Suit character? Yup you can do that too! There’s so many options here and I’m really excited to start converting some up!

Once you have picked your Archetype then you get to pick a specialism – These are aditional options (that sometimes cost additional points) that steer your custom character in another direction. So for example for the Tau you have picked the Stealth Suit character, you can then pay additional points to instead put the character in a Broadside Battlesuit! Tyranids can give their character a better save, or give it deep strike perhaps. The better ones all cost points, and there’s lots of ways of tuning what type of character you have here.

Once this is done you then get to pick a special ability to give to your character – so sticking with our Tau example this could be giving it reroll to hits of 1, allowing him to redeploy after both armies are set up, or stopping battleshock on a nearby unit – some are specific to some archetypes, but there’s lots of combinations available.

Finally there’s a massive list of weapon options that can be given to your custom heroes. Again, some are specific to certain archetypes to stop some of the sillier possibilities, but you’ll still have enough here to create the custom character of your dreams! Interestingly the weapons don’t have points costs, but I feel that’s already been factored into the points cost for some of the specialisms and upgrades you can take.

Yes there’s going to be some silly stuff – for 40 points you can take a custom Grot hero who gives the Grot unit he attaches to infiltrate and stealth (and gives his unit +1 to hit and wound) and carries a Traktor Blaster far bigger than himself! But I don’t mind this, I think we should embrace the silly side of things! Most hardcore tournaments will have some restrictions in place, while this gives a massive toolbox to do some hobby and convert up some heroes! I really hope this continues into 11th edition and is folded into Crusade, as I feel this is where it would really shine!

I love this kind of stuff and think that while we have had a 10th edition that has leaned heavily into the matched play side of things, the new narrative supplements shows that 40k can still have fun and be silly and creative when it needs to be too

The Maelstrom Detachments

As with the last book, The Maelstrom box also contains a booklet with some new detachments in it, all of which with a pirate theme to them!

We start with 2 detachments for the Red Corsairs

The first one is Huron’s Marauders, and this one has units pick one of two different abiltiies each turn, or both of them if they are able to see Huron himself. The first is Huron;s Elite which gives units +1 to hit, the second is Mobile Marauders which allows units to gall back and shoot and charge

The next is Renegade Warband, and this instead removes the Dark Pact rules from your army and gives them Assault on all their weapons, which is pretty cool. on top of this you get a twisted version of the Space Marine rules. Vendetta has you pick a unit each command phase and gives your units rerolls of hit, and you can choose to attempt to go to their doctrine, which allows them to shoot and charge after falling back, or charge after assaulting on a successful battleshock test

The Aeldari Corsairs also get 2 detachments

Eldritch Raiders represents Yriel’s own army, and this gives all Aeldari the ability to charge after advancing, and your Corsair and Ranger units get to reroll advances. On top of this each unit can be given a special Corsair enhancement. These do things such as allow Yriel to generate battle focus tokens, give weapons lance or ani-vehicle/anti-monster

Corsair Coterie represents a more generic Corsair force and has your units do splash mortal wounds to units on objectives when you move within range of that objective – Like with the Eldritch Raiders you also have an assortment of enhancements you can give to your Corsair units. I do hope that we see the Corsair range expand to give people more options to run a pure Corsair force!

The Orks also get a new Freebooter Krew detachment, this one has you pick an objective every round, and your units get sustained hits 1 when either shooting at a unit near that objective or when your unit near that objective shoots. They have some fun strats here, such as being able to give Flash Gits Anti Vehicle 4+ or for giving the ability for a unit near your picked objective to be subject to a Waaagh even if you’ve already called it!

Finally we get a Votann detachment that replaces that standard Acquisition rules for a more controlled one – instead you always start with Hostile Acquisition, and can spend 3YP to switch back and forth between that and Fortify Takeover.

Summary

So what do I think of The Maelstrom Lair of the Tyrant? These kind of books are 100% what I love about the hobby, so you mileage may vary, but I’m loving this series of books so far. There’s some brilliant lore content here, with me getting inspired to put together a 2k Corsair force of both flavours when reading this book! The gaming content is brilliant too, I love a good campaign, and this is a really nice spin on ones we’ve seen in the past. On top of this we have the real jewel in the crown, the character creation rules. This is one of the most fun things that GW have done for Age of Sigmar, so it’s great to see it in place here! I hope this is embraced by the community and we see more like this going forward through the 11th edition Codexes!

We know that we are off to the Eye of Terror next, so I’m looking forward to seeing what gaming content is contained in that one too! I have to admit I’ve got my eye on a defiler or two…

New Models

Before we finish off the review however, I just wanted to take a look at the new models that are released alongside The Maelstrom book!

First up the Eldar Corsairs, and they get a great Eldritch Raiders Battleforce box. This costs £160 and contains mostly new units.

First up is Prince Yriel himself. This is a gorgeous model and a massive glow up over the old one! Some really nice touches here such as a choice of two different helmets and back banners with raised details you can paint in (Personally I’d rather a transfer, but I know some people find banners like this easier)

He was really easy to build up, though I’d maybe leave him off the base to make it easier to paint him – you might struggle to get under this cloak otherwise.

Next up we have the Void Dreamer Kharseth. This guy has a really nice old school vibe to him with his bug eyes, and I think he’s one of the nicest models in the box.

The big new unit are the Corsair Skyreavers. These are a new jump pack unit for the Corsairs with a choice of weapons, and I decided to build them as 2 units – one with anti infantry weapons and another with anti tank weapons!

To keep both of the units looking unique I decided to build one up with helmets and the other with bear heads – and there’s some really nice heads here which call out for some fun and colourful hairdos!

These took me ages to paint, but I’m glad I decided to get them all done, even if it was at the cost of getting the Red Corsairs all done! I’m looking forward to getting a couple more boxes to expand them out further

The Vyper gets a brand new kit in the box, and this time it builds a Corsair variant, the Starfang. This is a phenominal kit with the gun on the back able to twist round to put it in a vyper configuration. It’s very easy to make all the weapons swappable to you can use it as whatever mode you want to build it as, which is a really nice touch!

Finally the box also contains 10 Voidreavers which can also be built as Voidscarred – these have disapeared from the store for a while, so it’s nice to see these back!

This is on the pricier side of Battleforce boxes, but there’s not a bad model in the box and I have had so much fun painting them up!

The other force in the Maelstrom getting new models are the Red Corsairs, and these also get a brilliant Battleforce box!

Priced the same as the Eldar box, this one has a stack of models in it. Let’s take a look at the older bits first – you get 5 Chaos Terminators, 10 Traitor Guard and 10 Legionaires (With a snazzy new upgrade sprue with molded shoulder pads for the marines and termies, plus some new heads and accessories!)

This is about £110 just for those at RRP, but you get another 3 boxes of stuff on top of that

First up are the amazing new Raiders – you get 2 boxes worth here allowing you to build 10 of them, and they are not only amazing in game, they look incredible! Less overtly Chaos than most of the CSM range, and instead very much fit the renegade marine bill – There’s loads of spare parts too if you want to do a full Red Corsairs army, and between the contents of this box I had enough spare non-spikey heads and helmets to outfit most of an army I had been working on!

The other new kit in the box is the Reave-Captain, a brutal new leader for your Raiders (Though realistically you’re probably going to attach Huron and the Masters of the Maelstrom to them!). He has a couple of different builds, so if you wanted to have a few of them in your army you can make them look very different, which is a really nice touch, especially if we get a Red Corsairs themed Combat Patrol at some point to add to this army.

We can’t end this without looking at the big man himself – and like with Titus he comes in a box with his own entourage of characters for £57. This is a pricey kit, but the models are very very nice and it really does feel like a box of heroes, even if it operates a little differently to that in the game

I know Huron himself has been a little marmite, but I really like this new sculpt and really enjoyed painting him up! Unfortently due to the Eldar box taking me way longer than I thought it would I didn’t get round to painting everything in the box, but I had to get some paint on Huron! The other models in the box are just as cool though, and I can’t wait to work on them too!

This release for The Maelstrom has had some fantastic models, and if this is setting the benchmark for the end of 10th Edition then I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds…

The Maelstrom Lair of the Tyrant and all these new models are up for pre order today and are released Saturday 28th February

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.