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 ;)
Ultramarines: The Movie
Making a CGI movie without being Pixar, Lucasfilm or other big studio is a risky attemp, but the world of Warhammer 40.000 is not so mainstream as to allow Games Workshop to spend so much money.
Ultramarines: The Movie is the first official full-length animation movie about the grim future. Around 70 minutes of action, depicting a Ultramarines ship responding to a distress signal from a beacon on a planet, from other chapter of Space Marines who have fell to a Chaos attack.
The best ace of the movie is the background/setting: Fully respects the boardgame, the weapons, the decoration, the courage and no fear attitude of the space marines... It is glad to see everything depicted correctly, from the armor details and purity seals, to the big bolters, thunderhawks, land speeder, futuristic gothic buildings... Everything is as in the books, illustrations and miniatures.
The story feels short but enough to keep some tension during the 70 minutes, with all the space marine chicles, taunts and war quotes.
The sound is pretty nice too. As I'm used to play all existing Warhammer 40.000 videogames, the weapons sound the same, voice acting is good, and the music has some great tracks (gothic chants with motivating music).
The movie features some typical space marine squads, with flamers, heavy bolters, an aphotecary, a captain, plus the chaos space marines and some other figures I won't spoil. It also has a nice wink to the game in the form of the spaceship's relic, a powerful Warhammer ;)
And then we come to the visuals/graphics. They are in the middle, not bad not impressive, with varying quality depending on the scene. The faces are in general very well done, every 3D model is an accurate representation of the "real" one and some lighting and fire effects are very good.
But in general, it could have been better. If you've played the PC game Dawn of War II for example, its introduction movie has more quality. The marines sometimes move a bit too fast (don't forget they're carrying a huge armor and big guns), and while it's for sure very hard to animate them, the games have a more natural movement than this movie.
Also, some scenes have lower quality than the rest, with not too good lighting (so the marines are too bright) or lower resolution scenarios (sometimes they look really poor and lacking detail).
My final complaint could be that, probably to stay in the budget limits, the enemies are chaos, yes, but still space marines. Of all the so visually varied races, choosing them reduces the visual variety. Orks are the always-present first choice, but with the Ultramarines the Tyranids would have been more appropiate.
This is a matter of taste and not a bad point itself, but let's hope there would be more movies in the future with other races.
I liked the movie, is not perfect but I hope it starts a new line of long-term products with more movies, whenever they are based on the long list of Warhammer 40.000 novels or smaller stories like this one.
If you are a fan of the game you will probably enjoy the movie.
Tags: Movies Warhammer 40000
Genestealer Hybrids Conversion (WIP)
In the old times of Warhammer 40.000 and Space Hulk, before the Tyranids became a race, Genestealers had not only the normal 4-arms monsters, but also semi-human Genestealer Hybrids. They even were available to play in the old Space Hulk rules, but Games Workshop phased them out and made Genestealers the baseline close-combat troop for Tyranid swarms.
I have some old miniatures (some yet unpainted), and I wanted to build a Genestealer Cult mini-army, but getting more hybrids like this is almost impossible today:
So, after one day looking at some Warhammer Fantasy Ghouls painted with pink tones, the heads reminded me of the hybrids, and I decided to do some modding experiments. This was the shopping list:
- Tyranid Genestealers. I had spare pieces from old Genestealer models so I still was able to build full Genestealers squads after rampaging arms, but will depend on your desired amount of claw-arms hybrids.
- Vampire Counts Crypt Ghouls. Initially I just wanted the heads, but after checking the models, I decided to go for a "weak hybrid" conversion also using Ghoul torsos and arms (either unarmed or changing the bones/knives for pistols). The torsos needed removal of hair and some spikes (or softening them).
- Catachan Jungle Fighters. I wanted the hybrids to have uncovered violet arms and some torsos (to remark that they are no longer human), so instead of other Imperial Guard miniatures I chose this.
Some afternoons assembling, cutting and joining pieces, and this is the unpainted result:
This is one of the new "weak hybrid" models I mentioned before:
The worst part was the necks. Catachan torsos had no neck because is the head the one containig it, but Ghoul heads are concave instead of convex, so I did one elaborate but guaranteed approach: Cut the ghoul necks from the torsos and adapt them to the Catachan ones.
It needs some cutting and careful glueing, and I found better to rotate horizontally 180º the neck (so that the back part becomes the front one) because it rises the head (as opposite as lowering it in the ghoul models).
The title says WIP (Work In Progress) because I've just started painting the squad. I'm not yet finished with any model but I painted all the flesh part of one hybrid to check how it looks:
You can't simulate the "hunchback" old hybrids mostly because of the bigger head and complexion, but I'm satisfied with the results of the experiment. I definetly prefer this to just simple Imperial Guards with another colors...
It will take me some time to paint every model, but I also have another modding project related with Genestealers which I'll show in the future (when I can at least start painting it and show a before-after).
Tags: Miniatures Warhammer 40000
Deathwatch, Deathangel and Castle Ravenloft
Finally, a long awaited order arrived with some interesting new games:
- Deathwatch: A Warhammer 40.000 book RPG. Being able to roleplay individual Space Marines (as alien-hunters instead of mere army soldiers), looked too appealing to let it pass. As far as I've read it is not a substitute for Rogue Trader but a newer version of the rules focusing on SMs. The book looks awesome but I have almost 400 pages to read!
- Death Angel: A card game version of Space Hulk that can be played from solo to 6 players (all with Terminator Squads, Genestealers are played automatically). I'm still reading the instructions and the system is quite clever and seems to have ported the basic feeling of Space Hulk battles.
- Castle Ravenloft: A module I didn't ever played on the old D&D converted into a boardgame full of miniatures, random maps and that also can be played solo or up to 5 people (with automatic rules for foes). I just assembled the contents and gave a quick look to the instructions (quite small, but the maps are random and there are lots of encounter cards).
I definetly want to prepare a Deathwatch campaign to play with my friends, but if I hadn't already too much to read, more stuff...
Book Review: Angels of Darkness
Angels of Darkness is the third and last book in the Dark Angels Space Marines story.
The first thing you notice while reading the book is the different author. We're still told two stories (one of a Fallen and one of an Interrogator-Chaplain, both Dark Angels) as in the second book, but although both are told in present tense, one happens before.
Also, the difference in writing is noticeable, not a bad thing, just you feel different than with the previous books. Probably having completely new characters boosts this feeling too.
This book deeps a bit more into how a Space Marine thinks. Questioning of oaths, duty, preservation of lives, and secrets, dark secrets between the chapter.
The combats are nicely described (and there are a bunch), although killable this Space Marines are real badasses, and in general the setting is really good (probably the best of the three books).
As usual it ends with a few unanswered questions, but it at least makes some really interesting revelations of the Dark Angels. One warning, though. Without spoiling anything, Astelan's tale has been confirmed to be subjective and not the reality.
If you enjoyed the other too books, you must read this one and finish the trilogy.
Tags: Books Warhammer 40000
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