Book Review: Ultramarines: The Killing Ground
The Killing Ground represents the fourth book in the Ultramarines series of Black Library Warhammer 40.000 books.
Continues the adventures of Uriel and Pasanius, this time in an imperial planet in which there is a killing ground... where the dead are not at peace precisely.
This book has Imperial Guard, ghosts, the unfleshed from the third book, and another sweet surprise I don't want to spoil, but that sadly is badly represented here, being killed almost entirely as mere puppets instead of the "special" thing they are.
The story is predictable in general, nothing incredible, but at least you enjoy reading. I just wish it had more action and less ghostly stories.
Not bad but neither impressive, a mere nexus between the original Omnibus and the following books.
Tags: Books Warhammer 40000
proof: Warcraft was originally going to be Warhammer
For many years there has been a legend about Warcraft, that the first game of one of the best money-making machines franchises was in fact going to be originally the computer version of Warhammer, by Games Workshop.
Stories say that GW decided to cancel it (or decided to not do it) but Blizzard went on and released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
I've tried many times to hunt for reliable sources about this, not finding a single non-forum based comment/version/claim.
Well, today, reading a spanish PDF e-zine (Cargad! #10) I found an interview with Félix Paniagua, an ex-GW miniatures scuptor that claims the following (fragment on page 22):
Felix: [...] Did you knew that Warcraft was going to be Warhammer?
Interviewer: What?
Felix: The guys at Blizzard proposed Games Workshop to do a computer game based on Warhammer. Games Workshop said no, so Blizzard still continued with it and called it Warcraft. Games Workshop didn't took long to start being sorry [for the decision they took].
 
So, for me an ex-employee's claim is enough proof that this is actually true.
Tags: Videogames Warhammer 40000
Assembling a little bird + some painting progress
With the newly released Grey Knights I couldn't resist ordering a few of them to build another small army.
My plan is to have in time 7 or 8 different race armies of at minimum 1500 points, to be able to play with friends and all enjoy as much variety as possible, but as I'm the only one that buys them...
It is also quite nice to paint different models and in different colors, I noticed some time ago that both of my armies were too dark and greenish in general.
Right now I have this armies:
- Space Marine Dark Angels: Endless army, one day I should count the points, but I can play just with a Deathwing sub-army if I want.
- Orks: Another big one. I have almost all models I want (as with the Space Marines) but also is a huge green swarm with lots of orks and heavy stuff (2 dreadnoughs and the like).
- Genestealer Cult: All my old and new Space Hulk Genestealers, the old and new hybrids, patriarch, mages, a Carnifex (big badass and awesome miniature) and one tank small conversion I will show once painted (someday...). Very specialiced and probably not suitable for all battles, but I wanted my genestealer horde to become a true cult :)
- Dark Eldar: Kabalite warriors squad, 3 reavers and one mandrakes squad. right now the smallest army, whenever the 2nd wave of DE miniatures is launched I'll probably expand it.
- Grey Knights: One normal squad, one terminator armour squad, a brother captain and the Stormraven I'm currently building.
Also they have as allies two inquisitors and two assassins (models I bought a while ago and couldn't use with the Dark Angels due to Codex restrictions!).
I also bought a Chaos Space Marines battleforce, Terminator lord and Soul Grinder.
So the total is 6 armies so far. Most of them unpainted so not worth taking pictures (what is painted is already in my photo albums).
In the future I will probably add an Eldar battleforce and some Necrons (which rumors say will be revamped soon), and that will probably be all. Increasing ranks but remaining races like the Tau or Imperial guard do not engage me enough and have just one or two nice-looking miniatures for me to collect and paint.
Having said all that, I can focus on the initial idea of this post, divided in two parts. First, my progress assembling a "little bird":
I've also learned to not glue everything before painting, so the pilot and cabin aren't glued to allow me to paint everything in detail.
The Stormraven is huge and heavy (and I haven't finished yet), with an amazing level of detail. I'm looking forward to paint it and try metal highlights (it's going to be for the Grey Knights). An expensive (at least for GW range, compared with Forge World items is even cheap XD) but awesome model.
And the second part of the post is that having enough time to paint seems to be a difficult task for me. Anything below 1 hour is not enough, and usually when I have at least that much spare time is after midnight and my pulse is not perfect due to starting to feel tired.
So in painting I advance slowly, quite slowly. But I do advance something.
I finally finished painting the remaining details of Azrael, my Dark Angels army commander. He had a few details still unpainted (weapon, head and banner pole/angel figure at the top), so I finally did them:
I also have started to paint the ork Stompa, not only because it will look great, but also because has 6 fragments unglued waiting for being painted, so now it is both unusable in games (at least without blue-tac) and taking a lot of space in the shelves.
Those are two finished fragments, the back gretching with a drill, and the head with the Ork Kaptain giving orders.
I am currently painting the main body to glue this pieces and then glue each remaining fragment as I finish with them.
Book Review: Ultramarines Omnibus
The Ultramarines Omnibus is a compilation of the three first stories of Ultramarines Captain Uriel Ventris and his friend and fellow Sargeant Pasanius.
Each book is a different story evolving the situations adn the state of the main characters but not much else.
The first book tells a dark about Imperial Guard, Dark Eldars and some... political problems. It is nice to grasp how mad this dread aliens are, and has interesting plot twists.
The second book is about a tyranid invasion on the planet Tarsis Ultra and the combined defense of Ultramarines, Imperial Guard and even the Inquisition and other elements I won't spoil.
For me the best of the three and almost the best WH40k book from the few I've read so far. You "live" the alien invasion each page.
The third and last book contained in the omnibus is a travel to the Eye of Terror (home of the Chaos forces, like another space, warped and twisted), so the main theme are Chaos Space Marines and demons. Not bad but the plot here was weak for my taste, and full of opportunism and tricks.
Overall, Ultramarines are the favourite chapter of Warhammer 40.000 of Games Workshop and many people, so this book gives a good introduction to them, with some good narratives and a story about Tyranids that for me makes the omnibus worth just because of it :)
Tags: Books Warhammer 40000
The Evolution of Games Workshop and White Dwarf
Despite Games Workshop's trend of childish tone and approach to their gamers, the truth is that there is also a big segment of older hardcore gamers and miniature painters that love to read their books, play their games and paint their miniatures. In this post I'll make a short recapitulation of GW's evolution, focusing mostly on their miniatures and their magazine, White Dwarf.
This is not a deep study, just a grasp. The hyperlinks in this post lead to much more detailed resources, so if you are interested check them ;)
The two best ways of learning about the past are first reading documentation about it, and second analyzing their legacy. I have tons of White Dwarf magazines and I've read most of them, plus swimmed through the net for info, dates and facts.
Games Workshop started in the seventies building simple games and importing USA RPGs into UK, working at the beggining via mail order only.
Success came in, and apart from funding Citadel Miniatures they also reprinted old discontinued RPGs (which they would absorb years later). They shifted from having the main HQ in USA to England.
White Dwarf started as a general-purpose RPGs and boardgames magazine, with heavy focus on Dungeons & Dragons. Most content of the magazine in the first numbers would be non-Games Workshop specific, and it was mostly black & white.
After the success of Games Workshop and their strategy games Warhammer and Warhammer 40.000 (Rogue Trader in its first version), the magazine shifted to give more pages to their products, becoming clearly focused on them around issue #100.
Apart from building a chain line of official shops, the main income was from mail orders, always present at the last pages of the magazine and featuring the latest miniatures for their games.
Before 1992, White Dwarf had lots of games, both spin-offs/alternate universes containing races from the main Warhammer/40K universe and new settings, like a Max-Max style racing and shooting car game or Blood Bowl.
At the end of 1991 the company decided to focus on their most known and profitable franchises, Warhammer and Warhammer 40.000, slowly removing content from the magazine of the other games and ending up discontinuing them.
After the Lord of the Ring movies, Games Workshop bought the rights to create official content, and since then it has become another main line of production (having a moderate success, but that's another story).
Older editions of the magazine contained lots of new content, new rules and small expansions, but actually and probably as a market strategy they tend to release official expansions and army books (codex in the case of Warhammer 40.000), offering some freebies but overall reducing the magazine's "new" content to lore and some excerpts of them.
Focusing on the miniatures and drawings, as I'm a Warhammer 40.000 player I´ve prepared some comparisons to visually see the difference and evolution of them. From an initial sometimes chidish/funny look sometimes more serious approach, now all races (with specific exceptions like the goblins/gretchins) of all games have a harder, serious tone.
The drawings are the best example. From mostly B&W images of normal-sized humans in armor to the actual badasses in huge power armours, all Warhammer 40k images have changed a lot. Current drawings are insanely detailed and depict a trully grim and dark sci-fi future.
Space Marines visual style changed from the old MK.VI (Rogue Trader) armour to the MK.VII armour, with bigger miniatures, bigger weapons, and being the main symbol of the Warhammer 40.000 universe, it's one of the armies with the biggest miniature range.
The Eldar started as rogue pirates, with multi-coloured clothes and semichaotic organization, but the basics (their anti-grav cannons, shuriken rifles and distinctive helmets) were there. This race has become more militarized since then, becoming neutral guardians instead of pirates, and even spinning off another race, the Dark Eldar, to have an evil counterpart (recently redone in 2010, by the way).
Current colors are more uniform, differentiating per craftworlds (armies), but almost all non-basic troops have special one-option only color schemas. The original multi-coloring and flashy looks are only present noew in the Harlequins.
If you click on this image you will see a nice evolution of the Eldar miniatures.
Orks are no longer funny creatures wearing looted human clothes, but scary green monsters. Ork clans were defined, each with their color schema (some being still multi-colored, others more uniform). They now have their own vehicles, although is very common to do modifications on tanks and Space Merine Rhinos to create "ork looted vehicles". They are now one of my favourites and have most Space Marine unit counterpars, but with their "messy" touches.
The Tyranids appeared after the Genestealers of Space Hulk, and the lore of the later was modified to convert them into the main melee troops of tyranid hives. The original design was so different from the Genestealers that they suffered a redesign, all units being now more alien-alike, with scales, long heads and similarities. Genestealer hybrids have sadly dissapeared from the tyranid army (and their miniatures discontinued), but as I said above at least now all the miniatures are consistant in the base appearance.
I could have added tons of more images, but a few examples are more than enough to depict the evolution. In the past looked like the sculptors would create all kind of miniatures without any restriction, while now they adhere to some race requisites. Also now all the miniatures share the general serious, violent and grim appearance.
Games Workshop also moved away from lead metal ones to lead-free alloys for those miniatures whose details cannot be properly done in plastic, but the trend is to generate plastic kits as the prefered option.
Also all current plastic kits contain some degree of customization out of the box, which combined with the advances in plastic molding give us the collectors really customizable and moddable miniatures.
The lore and background of both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40.000 has grow to insane amounts. There are lots of books (with new ones published each year) at the official GW's editorial, The Black Library. Army books contain lots of stories and background, and the number of videogames based on both settings grows almost every year also. White Dwarf also publishes in some issues lots of content, and just the images are awesome.
Money always end up changing the path of companies, but Games Workshop at least maintains a collector's section where you can still find some old miniatures from discontinued games (but expect to pay accordingly!).
I hope this small article pleases your old times desire for information. We'll see ten years from now how much more has everything changed ;)
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