The world of Warhammer has had a very difficult journey on its way to the screen. Over the years, Games Workshop has attempted to bring it’s visually striking and exciting Warhammer 40,000 franchise to eager fans and it’s mostly been misfire after misfire. Given that the world of 40K is galaxy-wide and ten thousand years long, it has always been a daunting task.

Try as they might, they’ve never quite pulled off the visual side of things; Games Workshop has been amazing with books and audio dramas, and it’s inspired some amazing fan films, so clearly it’s possible and the will is there, but it’s never quite gotten there. If the first episode is anything to go by, we’re pleased to report that this has changed with the launch of their anthology cartoon series; Hammer and Bolter.

Episode one is the tale of Old Bale Eye. It’s the backstory for one of Warhammer 40,000’s more iconic heroes, Commissar Yarrick. Told from the perspective of Yarrick’s greatest foes, the Orks, this is a fun twenty-minute short that gives us an origin story of sorts for one of the Imperium of Man’s greatest mortal heroes.  Most fans of the franchise will already know the story (and probably own the model), but it’s fun to see the giant Ork war machines and ridiculous power weapons on the screen.

The animation is very much style over substance; it isn’t smooth and it isn’t meant to be. This is Warhammer, the setting is loud, gothic and overly ornate. So yes, we get scenes that are essentially a still image except of cannons blazing or someone yelling. It’s an approach that the fans have been using for years and it’s put to wicked effect here.  It’s cartoony where it needs to be and feels very much like an animated version of an ’80s British sci-fi comic strip.

This first episode is extremely promising as it shows that Games Workshop are willing to be very creative in their approach. They have a lot of stories to tell and not all of them needed to be given a full CGI high-budget approach.  Instead, they’ve relied on good voice acting, a decent story and powerful artwork. These are things that Games Workshop have experience in doing well and it shows.

With the launch of Games Workshop’s new Warhammer+ service, the Nottingham based creative powerhouse has taken the opportunity to launch animated shows amid a whole load of other features. Despite its name, Warhammer+ isn’t really a streaming service; its primary goal is to provide support in terms of rules, guidelines and inspiration for the various games set in the Warhammer worlds;  less of a streaming service and more of a power tool for getting you run games, paint models,  write fan-fic and so on.

And honestly, if you’ve a shed full of unpainted Orks that you’ve been meaning to get done for the last decade, we suspect watching this will very much inspire you to get the paintbrush out.

We look forward to seeing what Warhammer+ inspires in its fans and we hope to see that reflected back in productions like this; this has the potential to become something unique and remarkable and we are looking forward to seeing what happens next.