Grand Cathay finally brings positive East Asian rep to Warhammer
By exchanging a broad brush for a fine detail one, Games Workshop avoids messy mistakes.
Hell must truly have frozen over at Games Workshop headquarters in Nottingham. After the return of a loyalist Primarch to Warhammer 40,000 in 2017’s Gathering Storm, 2019’s Plastic Sisters of Battle, 2022’s Leagues of Votann and Ironhead Squats, we have another “that’ll never happen” release to cross off the list. The return to Warhammer Fantasy Battle’s Old World is now pushing into unexplored territory with the Adepticon 2025 announcement that the Chinese-themed armies of Grand Cathay are coming to the Old World game and miniatures range! I’ve been through a spectrum of feelings about this after seeing the Warhammer Community reveal go live on March 27th because, let’s be real, wargames don’t have a great history with representations of East Asia.
Cards on the table: I'm British-born Hong Kong Chinese, my experience is very much that of the pre-1997 Hong Kong Diaspora generation which means that I have a very particular perspective about capital-O Orientalism and Sinophobia. My first encounter with miniature games and wargaming, like so many people in the UK, came via Games Workshop. In my case, that meant Warhammer Fantasy Battle in the mid 1990s when I was just a bit too young for it. My interests have waxed and waned, but I've maintained at least a casual interest in minis my entire life, and even worked retail for GW in 2010-2011, coinciding with the launch of Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8E. During this period when retail staff were regularly sent up to GW HQ in Nottingham for training, and could get a little more behind-the-scenes access to the design studio and Forge World than they can now.
