Book review: Broken Honour

I vaguely remember reading "Warrior Priest", another Empire Army-book, and while I liked that one just fine, as much as I like this one, the details escape my memory, and I suspect the same will be the case here.

There are lots of positives if one enjoys a simple, fairly grizzly story where folks die in droves and surprises are few and far between. The characters are fine, but lack (unnecessary) depth, and I am sure one could probe Dirty Dozen-type films and find some evidence of theft or heavy inspiration.

The plot? Beastmen gather in Hochland, smarter and meaner than ever, and Eriksson, a mercenary captain, recruits some convicts to fight in the war against them. Yes, these guys may as well be in a penal imperial guard unit in 40K, and I suspect the whole story could fairly easily have been modified to switch setting. Anyway. A beastman touches a stone and becomes a smarter than your average beastie, and with a mind for tactics, he rounds up all his buddies with horns and start to eff up Hochland. You can probably guess a lot of the rest. Eriksson and his band of convicts are your surprise heroes, of course. Rag-tag band that they are, they still do well, rather than just slit Eriksson's throat and flee...

Robbie Earl can write, but it seems like he has difficulty keeping loose ends from flapping, as I seem to recall from some of his other books, or perhaps it's just me missing the subtleties and everything is in order, or perhaps these are in fact hooks to hang new stories on? "Write us a sequel, Rob." "Sure! Easy-peasy!" What happens to Freimann or Vicksberg? What's the deal with Hobbs? The plot is really not that confusing, and the characters are neither that brilliant or nuanced, so it seems fair to suggest that they could all be accounted for without that much effort or drudgery involved.

I do recommend this book. It's a good romp. It won't stay with you for long, raise any questions or hurl you into an existential crisis, but it's engaging and easily swallowed.

An aside... Another generic cover picture with no relevance to the content. Names throughout the book... are fairly random, some narrowly escaping that not so funny tongue in cheek.

3,5 out of 5 skulls, stars or twin-tailed comets or whatever it is.

Fanzone: Damaged

Last of the punk spectators. This one is of course a girl, and that's finally five humans for the stands.

These got out of hand. They ended up getting a more advanced paint job than they really deserved, but I am pleased with them and moving on now to something different.

Fanzone: Thirsty and miserable

What is there to say? Second to last of the punks.

I tried to make his jeans different, a bit more worn or stone washed. This was done with washes and drybrushing and came out... okay.

His cup is of course the classic bright red US plastic cup. Brings back vague memories...

Fanzone: Pretty vacant

I feel like I should be painting up a Judge Dredd next to balance out these punks...

These are obviously just a couple of humans, unconverted, painted in many stages but with rather simple techniques to try and get their leathers and jeans right.

They are a little strange... punks with shoes, not boots? It happens, sure, but they seem to mix a few subcultures with grungy holes in their shirts, biker jackets that many subcultures might claim, stereotypical mohawks, regular jeans... Anyway, here they are as BB-spectators.

Fanzone: Punk human. Oi!

Painting a group of punk humans who will get to act out in the stands, ready for a fight to support their team. Bot that I plan to give them team colours or anything like that.

I explained my method of batch painting today. I will work on multiple minis at a time, adding paint to whichever mini in need of the colour on my palette. It takes a little self-discipline and takes a little of the fun out of it at times, but it saves time and paint.

Base is not done, but won't get that much attention to be honest.

Wizard

Part of a new 'project', this wizened elderly gent is a minor detour from my Blood Bowl-painting. I suppose he could watch a game as well as that dwarf colleague of his, but I did not paint him up to hurl fireballs from the stands.

He is unconverted, painted up with a fair bit of care, but not much difficulty, as he is deliciously without pouches, bottles, scrolls or other wizardly trappings.

He is ready for some questing!

Fanzone: Dwarf wizard

Another fan for the next stand!

This time it is a dwarf wizard. One could use him as an assistant coach or coach, but I plan to just stick him in the stands with all the other random minis, staff and all.

This mini was not converted. Could I have cut his staff, adjusted his hat to give it a more modern look and possibly given him something else to replace his scrolls? Quite possibly, and I may make that version at a later time.

Next mini... not green. I have been playing a lot with greens lately, so it's time for something else now.

Hobgoblins

As I continue to tie up loose ends, I have now gotten to my old chaos dwarf team. These were more or less built ground up, converted or kit-bashed, and then sold.

The colour, blood red, makes them quite khorney, and the hobgobs were given an... Eastern feel. Do they work? Well, the green colour is always up for debate, and one might have wished for more colours in the team palate, but they were kept simple in that regard, and I gave them light skin to avoid the entire team going super dark.

Old goats

These were originally done ultra quick, ie glued up and dipped, for a friend with a small budget and a big rush. At the time he made do without properly painted up warriors, and gors without any frills.

Dipping works, but results improve much if you actually brush it on. It works especially or perhaps specifically with earth-tones, and this burnt orange or terracotta is one. So are the skin and fur. That does mean that the minis lack some contrast, so-called 'pop!' perhaps, but it sped things up at the time. The somewhat hyper-green grass helps offset the orange and brown, though.

Warriors... plastics. One converted human thrower, one converted chaos warrior with a daemonic claw hand. All these warriors had very BB-friendly poses, so it was just weapon snipping that needed doing.

Dwarf team: group shot

Here they are all together in one picture, finished except for the varnish and numbers.

I am quite pleased. A reasonably priced football-looking team, 16 strong.

Dwarf team: The killdozer!

Finally we come to the end of the road with these dwarves, and I saved the best and wackiest for last... the killdozer. While it is of course technically 'just' a deathroller, I was not pleased with any available choices out there and made my own.

Keen-eyed readers may have spotted that the driver of this Mario Kart-esque monstrosity is in fact one of the already twice seen on this blog drunken dwarves, only with a new poorly sculpted helmet on, but still drunkenly toasting us in beer. How right you are. I cut him in half at the waist, and he replaced the cyborgy driver that the thing had, before I built a frame and added a dwarfish panel on front.

I am pleased with this silly thing. It is stable, not too big, fun and unusual. Perhaps I could have stuck to ideas of adding an antenna with a tail and/or fuzzy dice, but I think they would have seened weird. I could also put more work into getting the guy's helmet to look like his team mates', but...

Dwarf team: runners

The runners are the last of the conventional players, and the least converted. All I did was 'fix' their noses.

They have weird 'purity seal'-looking decorations on their shoulders that I did not quite know what to make of. Why? No clue. Sometimes you really would like that commentary track with your minis. An explanation. Why the runners and no one else? I left it on, though I could have knifed and filed without that much effort.

I liked the bandanas, at least until I thought of awful pirate dwarves.

Caped blitzers

Taken from behind.

Dwarf team: blitzers

These are perhaps my least favourite players on the team. While I like their facemasks, I cannot say that I have any love for their capes. While painting a cape can be good fun, I just can't see past the stupidity of wearing one in a game like Blood Bowl. That said, I opted to leave the capes as the conversion was basically impossible. Even with an almighty cut, there is nothing underneath the cape, and I would have had to sculpt an entire back of the mini...

Dwarf team wip: linemen

So far so good. This line will hold for sure with a sturdy and stubborn group of blockers.

Figured out where they are from? I will help by revealing that I cut the horns off their helmets, filled it out a bit as that left them with small heads, and gave them all nosejobs. This helped their look slide towards the more cartoonish old Citadel/Marauder look and it matched them better with the driver of the yet to be revealed kill-dozer. Sharp little noses on dwarves? Really?

People will recognise the Packers colours, but I still need a good name for these guys, a good coach (torn between two choices) and a stronger urge to bore myself playing dwarves.

More to come...

Dwarf team: slayers

First two players are basically done: the slayers. Obviously the bases still need work.

These are actually conversions, so points to whoever can name the manufacturer of the originals. I did violence to their fugly helmets, and the mohawks sticking out through the helmets are green stuffed on by yours truly.

They wear no clothes except those helmets, so I kept them in order to have somewhere to put the team colour. Or at least one of them.

Very pleased with the orange.

Fanzone: Throw another rock

Still passing time rekindling my joy for painting by doing these fans.

So here is a GW troll. He is converted, basically because he was damaged, and so he ended up with legs out of green stuff and a forsaken-sprue. Not a great choice in retrospect, perhaps. Still, I am not unhappy with it as such, but it could be better.

I obviously abandoned the traditional colour scheme for stone trolls, so call this guy a chaos troll.

Book review: Gilead's Curse

I finished this a while ago, but I have not had the mental energy and testicular fortitude to revisit it again untill now.

It blew. I liked the previous tale of Gilead for its melancholy, even if that too had its stale bits. This one, however, read like a bedtime story specifically designed to induce sleep, and the story withina story that it featured (like the previous book) added nothing to it, save perhaps an excuse for a very tedious style.

To sum up: Now Gilead, sad husk of an elf that he was in the first book is now basically fine AND he can kick as much ass as you could possibly have. His personality is that of a damp towel, but he makes up for it by being able to do anything. He has his faithful retainer, and an annoying cousin, and they fight evil, seemingly just out of some sort of ... Well, you get the impression that this is just what they do, much like birds flying South or planets orbiting, mold growing... all equally exciting, actually.

Pass on this book.

One star out of five. Sleep tight.

Fanzone: Scout

An ogre talent scout with an eye out for talented youngsters as well as junk food.

I wanted to catch that contrast between drab colours and gaudy that certain types of people seem to enjoy, but admittedly the character changed a few times as I was painting him.

He is a converted, of course. Originally he was a strange 35 mm or so human who looked like that guy from NYPD Blue. Sipowicz? Anyway, off with his head, and on with a GW ogre head. Collar is green stuffed.

Drunken comparisons

Asked and answered. Here they are, side by side, to show the effects of the conversion as well as different approaches to the paint job. One lot was painted with my left, the other with my right...

Fanzone: More drunken dwarves!

That's right, sports fan-fans... more drunken dwarves.

In an attempt to up my game, I created four more fans out of the same three drunken dwarf minis. A keen observer may have already spotted that those three are clearly already done from the same dummy. They are identical waist down. Taking this into account, I wanted them to look different, and I wanted to make them more modern. First step was to lose the fantasy helmets. I made two go bare-headed, one got a silly hat, and the last one got a cap. All fairly easy sculpting. Second step was to give them shorts instead of... tunics. Or whatever you call those. Not terribly difficult, and all done by knife.

Two og them were identical. I gave one a hat abd trimmed his moustache, and I repositioned the hand for the other guy.

They all got different beard colours, of course, but they are all wearing Packers-colours.

Fanzone: The first stand

There was no obvious way for me to take a good picture of this, and naturally one might arrange all the fans in different ways.

I plan to get back to painting teams now, but I think I will keep painting fans with 'left over' paint.

Comments always welcome.

Fanzone: failed slayer

This dwarf is clearly a slayer, and perhaps quite a drunk first and foremost. He is - and always was - unarmed and taking a swig from his bottle, and he is obviously not the fittest slayer out there, slaying more ales than greenskins these days. Did he pawn his axe? Perhaps he used to play blood bowl untill injuries sidelined him...

Some drink to remember, some drink to forget, right?

Points to anyone who may know where this guy came from. I do, but I was not happy with him, so he got a new beard and a modest mohawk, and I think it worked quite well.

Fanzone: skaven ticket-scalper

This is a rather large rat, a proper stormvermin-type, and naturally he came out to the game in his famous blue raincoat. I did sculpt the goofy hat on him in an effort to make him look a bit more like a fan, but he kinda ended up looking a bit more like a bum.

This may be the guy who has lined his coat with tickets to the sold out game!

Naturally he was disarmed, but he does have brass knuckles on one hand. You may recognize him as a cousin of the skaven who plays for my recently painted chaos pact.

Fanzone: Cult following

Chaos fans! The yellow-clad cultists of The Changer come out to the game, robed and ready to rumble.

I did say that my fans would not be out and out armed, and I like avoiding anacronisms or a mix of historical periods by having medievals rubbing elbows with moderns in the stands or on the pitch. That said, the cultists I had to spare for this lunacy were the crude dagger-toting kind, and I chose a bright yellow for their robes to test some techniques for that. I made allowance for the daggers, because the minis would look ridiculous without them.

Fairly awful minis.

Fanzone: vuvuzela

Getting horny now?

You may wonder if this guy falls over as easily as one might expect. Pretty much! He has got some metal at the front, and I threw on a bone to help too. Still not great.

I know I have one goblin musician on here already, but eventually they could end up in different sections anyway, so I am not worried.

Fanzone: Downed pilot

I like playing stunties and throwing players, and little goblins, snotlings or halflings with goggles and that old skool aviator look are always charming. Now and then, your throw sends an unfortunate little guy over the sideline and into the stands, though... and here he is!

Fanzone: Gnome at home

For some reason I decided to spend exactly 59 minutes (the length of the CD I listened to) painting this awful little fellow. He is the sort of mini that you cannot remember where or why you got. A gnome, from the looks of it, and now a blood bowl fan.

Fanzone: Daemonic supporters

Meet my two daemonic fans, Kevin and Adam...

There is not much to say about these two. They are converted, so that they now hold banners, instead of cartoony tridents.

I suppose I could have chosen more interesting colours, both for the daemons and for their banners, or just have made them more different. I missed that boat, I guess.

If not fans, then what would these be? I cannot really see a good use for them, though they have character and flair. Big heads with little legs, horns and wings? They are a bit like Disney monsters, Muppets or some sort of more comical daemons than what Warhammer normally offers.

Fanzone: sausage seller

I think this somewhat oddly sculpted goblin (did he need those trousers?) was a freebie or a cheapie at some point, but finally his day has come, and the spectators can buy themselves a fine sausage to snack on at the game.

This weirdo gave me an opportunity to experiment with purple and green together. Limited success, I would say. His hat looks shiny in the picture, but that is just because I have yet to varnish and de-gloss all the fans.

Fanzone: 'ooligans

Fixed up the guy with the scarf... So to speak.

The other one is of course more or less your standard hooligan, though his hair ended up making him a bit of a Real Slim Shady. I am not actually a big fan of that mini to begin with, but he came out okay.

It seems 90 percent or so of all goblins are in fact hairless. Being one of the hairy ones and going skinhead... powerful statement!

Fanzone: Drunky the troll

Now, I don't want people to think that I associate sports with alcohol consumption, or that I am lifting all og these models from some sort of tavern diorama that I had already prepared. That said, drinkers, random civilians, unarmed adventurers and what not are all going to be thrown in here with the more proper fans. Not only will it make the crowd a bit more wild and mixed up, but I also cannot afford to buy up a bucket full of the fans that are out there.

So here is a drunken troll.

Fanzone: Join in the chant

There is not an awful lot to say when the mini is not converted, relatively simple and without any controversial or innovative elements thrown in.

The gobbo hooligans. An 80s mini (pair) which was probably not even considered controversial or managed to fly entirely under the radar. Mind you, GW seemed more or less unconcerned with how kids might be le(a)d astray by their products. Hell, orcs/orks had genitals, fimirs were... about, and everyone killed one another, as they still do. So here is a hooligan gobbo, straight out of the heyday of the hooligan era.

Fanzone: Rowdy Grotty Piper

Most of you may recognise this squig-herder, but he is squig-less so far and merely a nuisance to his fellow spectators in the stands at this point. I consider him one of the best gobbos of his generation.

There are more greenskins to come in the following days, entirely without conversion, just like this guy.

Fanzone: Three drunks

Drunken dwarves are classic. These three fellas are quite expressive and have that 90s style of dwarfiness, even if they are not actually GW-miniatures. They are untouched by my knives and saws, and came exactly like this. They do wear chainmail and helmets, and that may seem silly, but they have no weapons, pouches, quivers, backpacks or other adeventurer gear, so that was a huge bonus.

These actually inspired a little writing, and I throughly enjoyed giving them red noses and crossed eyes.

Cheers!

Fanzone: The Shot-caller

How does a riot start at a friendly game of blood bowl? Someone orders it. You might think that the big lug with the chunk of warpstone is in charge of this section of the stadium, but you would be very wrong. That oaf? He has no idea what blood is really about, but this guy... Oh he does.

Taking a stand

People asked about the stands that I plan to use for my fabulous cheering fans, and so I made an effort to follow up on assembly and basic prep of one of them.

This is laser cut wood, smooth, but with brick details. I will bring the brick out with a nicer paint job, but the rest should just look like cement, and this spray seems to get the job done.

I may add some grafitti and random rubbish.

Throw a rock!

Say you're an ogre, clad in the furs of beasts that you have clubbed to death, because you're MORE ogre than those pansies with the gut plates and the gnobblars to do their cooking and cleaning, and say you're an ogre who pays the gold he's taken off foolhardy travellers and those idiots who come looking for foolhardy travellers who are missing to see his favourite ogre team play... Now, when those boys fuck up, and they always do, then wouldn't you pick up that big stone, the one you took off the rat-snacks before you made kebabs out of them, and throw it at someone?