So I subscribed to Warhammer + the day it became available, and now that I’ve had a chance to watch almost everything on it for the first week (only things I haven’t finished are the masterclass videos) I thought I’d put some thoughts out there. There has been a lot of internet negativity around the app and well, everything GW lately and I don’t think most of it is justified. I’m not calling this a review because I don’t really believe in “I give this a 3.5/5” - with something subjective like this I think its more useful to just share my thoughts rather than distilling it down to an asinine number rating that is really only relevant to me.

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Overall Launch Experience

Many people online were upset at launch issues (inability to link accounts, bugs, random problems) - I don’t doubt that these happened but I have to say my experience was smooth and seamless. I followed the instructions on the Warhammer community website, created a MyWarhammer account, and entered my payment information. Smooth sailing. I had downloaded the app to my Iphone the night before and was able to sign right in and get watching. Hopefully they quickly sort out any launch glitches that impacted some users - unfortunately nothing launches smoothly anymore because every internet-based product is a nightmare of complex layers.

The App

So I mainly will be talking about the iOS app, the browser interface is the only other thing I’ve used and its basically what you’d expect - functional.

The iOS app is pretty similar to Twitch. I found it easy to use and wasn’t struggling to find anything. My only complaint is that content takes one more “interaction” to get to than I’d expect (clicking on a video takes you to a splash screen about the video, with a button to play it). I’ve been conditioned by YouTube that videos should play when the preview is clicked darnit! A pretty minor quibble however. On to the more meaty content - the shows!

Hammer and Bolter

This was probably the one I was most excited for - seeing Warhammer shorts in an animated style. The preview episode (which was made available to everyone the weekend before) “Old Bale Eye” was good - though the story is simple and covers ground well trodden for a 40k grognard like myself. That being said, it would be perfect for someone new to the setting - I’ve yet to get my wife to watch it but I will report back once I do!

The two episodes available on launch I enjoyed quite a bit more than the preview - “Bound for Greatness” in particular was a home-run - without saying too much (to avoid spoilers) it showed clearly that the Warhammer 40k universe is suited to way more than just action-packed ultraviolent animations.

There has been some griping that the animation looks “low quality” - my eye didn’t see that at all. Instead, it looks like the studio made a very intentional decision to do an older style of anime (these look like early Dragonball Z or Sailor Moon episodes to me). I appreciate the choice to go for this art direction - honestly it reminds me of my childhood watching the early westernized anime’s. I understand it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, they have said the series will feature different “styles” of animation so if this wasn’t for you maybe a future set will be more to your liking!

Angels of Death

I was skeptical about this one because of the art direction - I appreciate the choice to use grayscale for everything but red from a conceptual standpoint but wasn’t sold that “this would be cool to watch”. Unfortunately the first episode didn’t really assuage my fears - I had to crank the brightness on my phone to max to see anything (to be fair - once I did my enjoyment increased a great deal). If you find things hard to see, give that a try. Hopefully future episodes don’t require manually mucking with brightness settings to see whats going on.

Story, acting, and character wise I’m intrigued - the shipmistress in particular is a cool character (I’m a sucker for normal human characters in positions of authority around Astartes, its a cool trope and makes for interesting interactions). I’m looking forward to seeing where they go with this one (with my phone turned up to max brightness so you know, I can see what’s happening)

Battle Report

Not too much to say about this one - its about what I expected. Two excellently painted armies on very nice terrain. I did really like the “interface” cutouts flashing rules as they became relevant. The production value was quite good. I hope to see a wide mix of armies (I think the AOS one was slightly better, they did a really good job of calling out what’s new about the new edition). I also hope there is more variety in the hosts - the ones they had were fine but I don’t want to always see the same people play (ideally some female representation)

There you have it - my thoughts on the content available on Warhammer +. I havent delved too much into the Vault but having access to all the old WDs and Visions is great, I look forward to dredging up painting guides. For me, it was well worth the money and I look forward to more “stuff” to watch this Wednesday!