Musings on WH40K 2026 New Year Previews — Corsairs on the Horizon
Every time I think I'm finished with my Homebrew Space Marine Chapter document for 10E, James Workshop teases something new that may require me to make changes. Specifically, it looks like new rules are on the horizon for Eldar Corsairs, and I do have an existing armylist of those as an allied force.
Prince Yriel (whose rules I use as 'counts as' for my own OC, Lady Caliel Firesong) is getting a new mini which means his datasheet will likely be coming back out of Legends.
And we're due another set of Detachments to play with, which may be better suited for Eldar Corsairs than the plain Warhost the armylist currently uses.
And since the other half of the expansion is the renegade chapter, the Red Corsairs, there may also be some good Chaos Space Marine detachment rules that are more renegade focused than Chaos worship focused. Not to mention there's some nice new sculpts that aren't overly spiky or mutated.
The Red Corsair character models also give me ideas. Garreon the Corpsemaster is just a shoulderpad swap away from being one of my Stormwolves Helix Keepers, and Captain Sargotta's command hoverpod would be wonderful to use for my Inquisitor Infocyte. (And props to GW for remembering that Tarellians are a xenos species in their setting, even if I don't have a place for that among my homebrew marines.)
But what has really caught my interest is the Crucible of Champions book that's going to be in the next 4 book slipcover.
It's touted as giving players "a flexible set of rules for creating your own character units and leading your army with a hero of your own making" which seems huge for me, as this is a departure from their policy of recent years in only publishing rules for the exact kits they sell, and nothing outside of that.
(A policy that some pundits attribute to GW's legal beef with Chapterhouse Studios. From what I understand, one of Chapterhouse's legal arguments was that they were offering model bits for units described in GW's rulebooks that GW did not actually offer models for.)
As a homebrewer, this is an exciting development. While nothing is stopping me from making my own shit up, a framework for creation of unique characters may have all sorts of ideas I could borrow inspiration from.
And finally, the Whirlwind is getting a new kit in the Horus Heresy range, very reminiscent of the original scratch build conversion from White Dwarf 117. While I have my own render of a Whirlwind in that style, as well as some 2E era bits that I was going to use for building a physical model one of these days, it's nice to see an official kit for it as well.