Book review: Curse of the Necrarch

It is that time again... I have been reading.

This book was obviously titled wrong. It should have been called "Wait... WTF?" or something along those lines.

Necrarchs are of course (or were?) the sort of scholarly nosferatu-types in Warhammer vampire lore, and as I tend to like that type a bit better than the Bela Lugosi-type, I felt that this book had promise. You'll see one of the necrarchs there on the cover, and hey, here's one of those covers that seemingly actually relates to the actual plot in the book. Not all Warhammer books can boast about that, so ... so far so good, right?

To sum up the plot real quick: Theres this part of the Empire where an old bloodline (yes...) of knights protect some peasants and the lands on which said peasants toil, seemingly primarily from the eeeevil of a coterie of necrarchs who come back to bother the good people every now and then. This is one of those times, and there's some drama and a fight.

It is really hard not to give away spoilers as I attempt to point out what is wrong with this book. So stop reading unless you want a few surprises ruined.

Some of the characters are quite good, while others really aren't. They range from stock characters to fairly interesting ones with quirks and actual personalities. I have seen both better and worse as a veteran reader of these books, and this is not where the problem lies. Allow me to attempt to illustrate the problem through a tale, a parable if you will.

Imagine a spider. A big, hairy and ugly one. The kind with a nasty "face" and multiple eyes and all that. Imagine the web it weaves. Strands of webbing, lots of them, long and in an intricate pattern. Imagine insects now. Flies, butterflies, perhaps a moth or two. You see where this is going, right? No. You don't. A large, wet dog walks by and straight into the intricate web. It rams right through it, tears it, and it's all gone. Story... done. A big... wet... dog. Or another big animal. That's not the point here.

See, in this book there are numerous characters who are introduced, talked up, explored... and then never "put to rest". Not just in a literal sense. No, there are several people whose fate is just... unknown. That goes for plot elements too. A few examples off the top of my head: One necrarch (there are several in the book) spend a great deal of time building a nine-souled monster-machine ... and it never gets to do anything. There is a bone dragon that they take great pains to revive... and it eventually just dies again. There is a mystical, fancy hand of Nagash, an undead super warrior, a werewolf, a perhaps dead older necrach, some freaks... A series of anti-climaxes at best, and the "grand finale" that one feels lead towards is not grand at all. 

I liked the necrarchs with their treacheries and magical bent, but the plot just never came together, and the whole book just seems like a patchwork, or like a brainstorm of some sort. The author may have focused on creating some horror scenes that one could picture vividly, but it is just not coherent enough, and I was left with the image of a child who had emptied out all his toys on the floor.

2 stars out of 5. What the hell was this?

Human team: human nature

Slightly improved or at least different pictures of the various positionals.

I AM going to do coloured rings for ease of play, but there are others differences.

Catchers have only one pad and no helmet.

Throwers have the same helmets as blitzers, but only one pad.

Blitzers have modern helmets like the tvrowers, but two pads.

Linemen have two pads as well, but their numbers go on the opposite shoulder, and their helmets are old skool.

So there you have it.

Human team: oh the humanity

Done!

Converted with brutality and not much attention to detail, sprayed Milka purple as an experiment with primer, and then given a quick paint using fast techniques and a hastened hand. They have several minor errors if you look carefully, and they are not here because I am proud of them per se, but because they were a practice run for some paints and techniques, and also an attempt to see how little it is possible to do and still get a fairly decent team out of it.

Fotos are awful. I need to make a new lightbox.

Human team: more human than human

After a long hiatus my "studio" is recreated, and thus I am back in action. True to form, I am working on a team that I have no current intention of playing...

I am working on this team for several reasons...

1. I like the idea of teams in shorts/uniforms. Football, rugby, Aussie rules or soccer? I like a nod to all of the above, though not always at the same time.

2. I am testing some new primer sprays.

3. It is a simple team. Fast and easy? Lets see...

4. While I have loads of orcs, I had no humans gor them to face in that epic, classic struggle.

As usual, comments welcome. This is very much wip and just a dummy really.

Size matters

I have recently been a proud supporter of no less than two Blood Bowl related crowdfunding projects.

I'll reserve my general opinion on crowdfunded BB-projects for another post, and just focus on the issue of size.

It is not really a secret to anyone with a decent pair of eyes that size has changed as the years have passed. Ironically, perhaps, as we often hear how materials have gotten more expensive (metal at least) and the level of detailing improved. By "changed", I mean of course that minis are an awful lot bigger than they used to be.

What is the correct size? Well, hobbyists seem rather content with the elitist terminology that has sprung up: "True" this and that scale, "heroic" and so on and so on. All this sort of cool, "he knows his stuff"-talk that sets you, the elite collector, apart from the poor consumer cattle who goes to Games Workshop. I think it's safe to say at this point that those of us who play in even the smallest BB-club/group of mates encounter minis of differing sizes who range from 28 mm to 32 mm (if not bigger at this point) and with hands/feet that are anywhere from proportional to their bodies to Goofy-esque and idiotic (Thank you, Gary Morley for your wonderful dark elves. What DID Bob Naismith say when he saw those?). Frankly, it looks silly. It is one thing that it is nice to be able to tell at a glance if a player has more ST than others, but there's practical and there's ridiculous, and the whole thing is undermined when the scale difference is a whopping 4 mm, ie that all members of a team are 1/7 bigger than their opponents. It makes mixing and matching impossible, making it seem odd or stupid if you mix players from different companies in your team. Sure, maybe you can get away with a few "large blokes" in your team, but ... well, you try it and see. It gets stupid when your opponent plays his classic Olley ogres, and you play humans who are the same size... Anyway, back to my point question, what IS the best size? I tend to favour a smallish 30 myself, and I don't like hands that seem inflated.

Now, here is my problem. Pretend for a second that I am hopelessly naive, ignorant of anything except what is right in front of my eyes and bereft of friends who might cry out in warning. How exactly do I order the minis I see online either in stores or in crowdfunded projects and have any chance of knowing what I am getting? Crowdfunded projects are particularly bad because the minis have rarely (hey, you tell me) been created already, and all you can do is look at some drawings, or at best some greens and figure out if you want to take a chance on them. Sometimes, usually very late in the process, there are greens and even some cast minis and size compares and you then go either "yay!" or "oh." and then... wait to receive your minis.

You've guessed it at this point, no doubt. My two crowdfunded teams are not even remotely compatible. Hell, one of the teams is so huge that I am kicking myself for even buying it and consider myself unlikely to jump on any more campaigns from that particular company. Not unless they put a nifty little ruler with mm next to the drawings of their minis and I like what that tells me.

(To be fair, yes, I had figured it might be on the larger side, and I did already plan for other uses for some of the minis when I bought it. See, one company's average ST3 player can be a muscled SOB for another team...)

So in closing... Maybe you people could sort of try to meet half way? Instead of this "oh, this is how WE do it"-shite, then maybe you could all try and go for, say, that 30 mm which is between 28 and 32 instead of creeping ever upwards or staunchly rejecting all progress and going old skool and back to the small side of 28. I am sure your fancy 3D-drawing can work to scale anyway, right?

Book review: The Burning Shore

Recently both my painting and converting has been on a forced hiatus (redecorating my "studio"), but I have been reading a bit... 

I picked up "The Burning Shore" because it had a few things going for it, obviously. It seemingly had enough quality to spawn two sequels, and I THINK I recall there being miniatures for the pair of (dubious) heroes? Perhaps my old mind plays tricks on me, but nevertheless, I picked up the book (for a song, of course) with expectations... somewhat above average.

As mentioned in other reviews, I like a bit of exotic info in my Warhammer fiction. That is to say, I like a bit of pulpy tourist lit where I as reader can learn about exotic corners of a fictive globe and/or about exotic races and creatures. However, as the sayings go... "Be careful what you wish for..." and "too much of a good thing..." That is perhaps the major problem here: The book is basically a stack of cliches and it offers no surprise what so ever in terms of plot. We have a coming of age story where our hero Florin D'artaud is uprooted from his native Bretonnia with his friend/servant Lorenzo and travels to Lustria. Gradually he matures into a capable mercenary leader and the pairs adventures are as predictable as they are colourful. That is to say, there is nothing MISSING in terms of plot, but the plot is just not that satisfying. Like... Given the elements a seasoned reader would easily come up with something along the lines of what the book contains.

Is it well written then? Yes and no. The details are many, the descriptions are just fine, but it is not riveting at any point really. I was left with the feeling that had the plot been better, then Robert Earl could have treated us to something better, as it seems he had the tools, but did perhaps work to boring specs. "Write us an extended bromance with Old World mercenaries and lizardmen for when the new army list comes out." Something like that.

Another thing that may annoy the piss out of not just me: The Tilean mercenary captain. Why? Well, I have seen "Allo Allo"... Laughing at national stereotypes and pidgin English is just not my bag, bay-by. Well, other than in that whole Warhammer World way that we of course all buy in to it, but still. Ham-fisted.

The book was not packed with nuggets of info, but it was fiiiine in that sense, I guess. I learned that Lustria is a jungle hellhole full of insects, lizardmen, more lizardmen, predators and more lizardmen. It is hot and humid too, and a bitch to get to. All duly noted.

What is perhaps most frustrating is the fact that Florin and Lorenzo both seem like they have virtually no depth at all. Their bromance is not quite explained in any way or made all that believable, and neither have much of a personality. They are both supposed to be quite rogue-ish, but this just does not hit home to a point where you love it, hate it or love to hate it, and the book would have been vastly more interesting if this had been probed a bit better and somehow gotten further.

Over all rating: 2 out of 5.

Downtime

My studio is packed up at the moment, so I have not been doing anything in... a while. That does not mean I have not been reading and collecting stuff, planning, if you will...

I am invested in the heroquest classic campaign and hope the rules will be as good as the heap of stuff they come with. Otherwise... sad times, but cool stuff awaits in any case.

I am toying with the idea of a heroquest made of... better minis than ye olde MB plastics. Is that not what Classic is? Hopefully. But also for the classic set/rules.

For that, I liked this awesome dwarf.