A random ram

I suppose this creation will end up as a minotaur in yet another chaos team. I can't say I had a purpose in mind when I began the work, and he is largely a random cobbling together of a Reaper Bones... thing, greenstuff and the head of a goat/ram/whatever that I think had a dwarf rider.

He looks a bit rough now, but he'll get there.

More Sevens orcs

Ah yes, the carefree and amateurish Sevens teams with their old skool feel... I couldn't help doing up more orcs out of leftovers, and they immediately sold to a friend.

Sevens

You wouldn't be blamed for thinking I had abandoned this place, died or forgotten the password to the account...

I have in fact painted a lot and read some Warhammer novels too, but struggled with the blogger app and thus neglected the tome.

Have a crappy Sevens team in the meantime. Orcs.

A productive year so far

This blog seems dedicated to my Blood Bowl painting, and I am keeping it that way for the sake of... Well, I am inclined to change it, but so far it's been like that, and that's left the impression that I don't currently paint much, or that I have stopped reading Warhammer-lit. The latter is somewhat true, though I do read fantasy, but I ran out of Warhammer-lit that caught my fancy, and my reviews on here have also been limited in scope to deal only with the fantasy setting, not 40K, and I am not likely to change that.

I do currently paint a lot though. In fact I have been painting a few commissions as well as selling off a good share of minis that I felt that I no longer needed or wanted. My primary motivation is not money, as I don't live in a place where I can make any sort of decent money that way. That's not just due to the level of my painting, but I do have a full time job (and then some) and to reach higher levels of painting does require more time, so this is pretty much the level of my "for sale items".

Here's a recent addition, just to get a splash of colour on the page here again: A chaos team. These are obviously all conversions and suitable for the "old" scale of Blood Bowl, ie 28mm-ish.

A shameless plug!

As some of you may know, I am quite the fan of "old skool" dungeon crawls, ie anything that may be associated with Heroquest, Fighting Fantasy and so on. Luckily I am not alone in this, and I am happy to help promote this awesome project on Kickstarter.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/zealotminiatures/twisting-catacombs-litchmyre-dungeon

Book review: Mark of Chaos

It is generally unwise to read books that are based on computer games, I should think... There is at least one other awful one out there for Warhammer fans, and this one is hardly a hidden gem or anything. To be fair, I must point out that I never played the game, so I don't actually know if it follows the plot and structure of the "story mode" or whatever they may have called it.

This takes me directly to one of the major weaknesses of the book: It is essentially a series of quests, basically from the perspective of two characters, one good, one evil. Again, this may be how the game was played, ie a career of some sort for either a good or evil player, or maybe just the good. I won't be revealing too much by saying that the title refers to the back story of the protagonist, and that he does prevail in the end. A few twists and turns along the way, but nothing major, if one is a veteran reader of Warhammer lit. What may irk some is the loose stringing together of quests/battles featuring characters that tend to be a bit two-dimensional. People who play a lot of video games may not be bothered by that, or at least used to it, but there is no attempt (presumably as per instructions) to hide that the game is the basis of the novel. This also comes across in the choice of races featured. They don't quite manage to throw them all in there, but some appear in only the most basic way and seem to have the literary equivalent of a walk on part, or perhaps cardboard cut outs.

Reynolds is certainly one of the better authors in the Warhammer gallery, and you can't really fault the writing. There IS no room to flesh out the characters or give them more convincing motives or personalities. They're all painted up stereotypes, moving along. There is a good pace, and the book is so easy to grasp, follow and digest that it is a very smooth and quick read. That's not an entirely good thing, and I wonder how it was an author, to basically sit there beefing up a computer game, rather than allowing a plot to evolve more organically. This said, I can't fault the effort at all, and I imagine that all boxes were ticked by editors. There is perhaps a bit of idiocy along the way with people who have killed "thousands" (Really? One guy? How many folks live in the Old World?) and some questionable strategies in the battles, but hey...

Details to flesh out the setting are quite minimal, and anyone familiar with Warhammer already will certainly not read this and learn anything. In fact they are at a disadvantage, as the plot would be more interesting to a complete novice, although one may not have a clue what these skaven (spoiler! Gasp!) are about, and how they live and what they do, even after reading the book. Maybe that's meant to entice you further into Warhammer, or maybe it all just had to be kept under 400 pages, so the skaven received a bit less love than they deserved.

All in all, I would recommend this book to kids, parents who read to their kids, commuters, snowed in folks or perhaps fan of the computer game. As an adult, I felt a bit like I had been eating from the kids' menu or something.

I give it two and a half skulls. Three, if you are 11 years old.

Book review: Hammers of Ulric

Another one of the older Warhammer books fell into my lap, and I was not disappointed!

The cover is a bit arse. Sorry, whoever the artist is, but while I can see how this deserves some praise for actually being a relevant cover, as opposed to some of the other older books that just got a random badass on the cover, I can't say that I am impressed with the quality of it. The style is somewhat wrong, and it doesn't quite fit the mood of the book either.

I expected it to be a bit of a Warhammer Fantasy BATTLE book featuring the White Wolves prominently. I was wrong. While they are indeed featured heavily, there is far more complexity to the story. First of all, it ties together several "main characters" who each star in different tales spread out over the seasons of a year in Middenheim. This works well, and it may take you a while to realise that these are in fact interconnected and not simply novellas thrown together based on a shared location. Obviously now I have 'spoiled' as much for you, but still. This means that some parts are more of a detective story, other parts are about templars and heroism (or lack thereof) and other parts are harder to pin a genre to. It all comes together in a climax that one may or may not find enjoyable, but it's quite grand and neatly bundles up the story, while leaving enough open ends that they could make a sequel to the book, or indeed a whole series. I have not bothered to find out if they did, but I would read on if they did. All in all, it was more of a Warhammer Fantasy ROLEPLAY novel, as the older books tend to be, and there is no army gathering in the North and no big battlefield where army lists are made flesh for readers/consumers to enjoy.

There are a few characters who lack depth in this, but to be fair, there is a large cast of supporting characters, or low-level main character. Some of these are obviously a bit cliche, but if you read enough fantasy novels, you come to accept that or switch genres. Other characters are quite good or even very good, and the plot is good enough to keep them all afloat. Too often the Warhammer books have either a decent plot with two-dimensional characters, or a bad plot where strong characters end up lost in idiocy. This book has a pretty good balance. Dieter Brossman, the priest of Morr, is perhaps the strongest character, and the knights - some of which seemed Dumas-inspired - are largely decent, except for a few "Red Shirts" that a can reader can perhaps pick out as filler marked for death...

There is an enjoyable amount of info about Middenheim, one of the cooler settings of the old Warhammer world. Maybe you can't quite smell the place based on the descriptions, but it's a solid backdrop for the story, and it has a little info about the White Wolves and the Knights Panther that readers may welcome, though the Panthers largely come off as a bit naf. Fair enough, I suppose, as it's not a book about them, but they did seem a bit too useless for my taste. Why do templars of Ulric use the warhammer (of Sigmar) anyway? Best not wonder.

The book is supposedly written by Dan Abnett, Nik Vincent and James Wallis. How that worked, and who did what, I don't know. It's a fairly seemless blend, or at least they've managed to edit it together with consistency.

I give this book four skulls out of five and recommend it as solid.