Patreon Review: Grimdark Terrain

Its no secret that Der H loves a good Patreon (Brother Handro: “Dont get him started on Kickstarter!”) and we thought we’d share his most recent indulgence…

Der H recently found his way back into Titanicus (Der H: “I wonder why…”) and as such began trawling for information. Der H also enjoys podcasts, and the Eye of Horus: Engine Kill is no different. Episode 13 dropped on Monday, and included a nice chat with a German chap called Rudolf! AKA Bronco Fish AKA GrimDark Terrain

First off; check our the Instagram pages via the links above - some gorgeous work by Rudolf, and the EoH guys for that matter!

Secondly; check out the awesomeness of the Patreon…

The content so far is amazing! Der H signed up and has just printed the wagons (Der H: “5 so far!”) and has trains, pylons and more on the way.

For our needs, Brother Handro put it best…

…and the Siege of Grandia, with agri-fields, torn up by trenches, craters, broken pylons and the ruined Grandia Grain Train line will make an excellent board for our Legios to battle over.

Please check out GrimDark Terrain:

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Warhammer World - Exhibition - New and Exciting

Warhammer world events usually come with free exhibition tickets….what’s not to like!

Signus!

The entrance way dio is now Signus Prime! This board is stunning. Mostly Khorne, but some other deities are represented.

The terrain effect is very cool. A dry, dusty/rocky board is scattered with stoney spikes and openings in the ground. These openings are largely blood pits, and various daemons can be seen emerging from them. Awesome work.

The main man himself, Sanguinius!

Titanicus has a display in the hall also! A titan column assaulting a fortification is such a nice idea, and the scene just makes me want to finish my titanicus stuff (Brother Handro: I’m waiting….)

I love the retro section. I hadn’t spotted the Slann previously; the old nids and harlequins are oldies but always nice!

Retro time!

On the retro theme, there was an army which highlighted the flexibility of the Militia list…

One display that always catches my attention is the Krieg/Blood Angels defensive line….no words needed….

A new display, to us at least, is outpost 402; Dark Eldar attacking Imperial Guard in the jungle by an Eldar portal… beautiful terrain, and a great theme!

That about does it for our new spots. As always the Exhibition hall is stunning and makes me very keen to paint, build and play this great game. Check out our old post on the Warhammer World Museum, and keep your eyes peeled for more progress in the next few weeks!

Der H & Brother Handro

Unboxing - European Pikemen

Every day is like Christmas when you’re a butterfly...you never know which of the many (​Brother Handro: ​​many.....​)​ orders will arrive in any given day...

Despite appearances​, mainly the many hundred pewter soldiers grey and neglected in my hobby room, I love the Historical pirate era game Blood and Plunder! The team at Firelock games have designed and developed a stunning system which plays well, is easy to pick up, and (​Der H:​​ best of all...​) contains pirates!

Recently Firelock tried a new funding system; Firestarter. This system allowed pre-ordering with a view to being charged once a threshold was reached. Think of it as Kickstarter light!​

The result of this process is these gorgeous European Pikemen: ​

Two sets of 4 identical casts, each comes with a length of shaped metal for a spear NB not suitable for children/cats​!​ The unit sizes in B&P range from 4-12 usually so 8 is a nice number to get started with.

The casts are clean as always, and have some nice details making them generic enough to be ‘european’ without obvious restriction to which european faction.​

Ill probably put there guys together pretty soon, but painting them....well, that is the eternal struggle.​

I shall here VOW to paint my Blood and Plunder collection in the autumn, following the 2019 Melos campaign.... after all, I have 1000pts of Krieg and 1000pts of mechanicum to finish.​

Der H 

Thought for the day:   “Take what you can. Give nothing back!”

Blood and Plunder: No Peace Beyond the Line

It. Is. Here! 

Firelock Games’ 28mm historical pirate game is something really special. I went all in for their first Kickstarter, so when the second arose I had to go big or go home!

[Brother Handro: “...is that why there’re still hundreds of lead coloured pirates in the basement?”] 

I’m a big fan of Kickstarter. It gives smaller companies the space to expand their range or start their business with guaranteed funds and a new player base from the off. I joined Alex Huntley’s 2nd and 3rd kickstarters for Arcworlde [Der H: “and haven’t painted much of that either!”  ] and always find that, with wargaming at least, the enthusiasm of the creators gets stuff finished and shipped out pretty promptly!

This Kickstarter is BIG, huge box...glad I took the landy to pick it up. 

Such goodies! 

The contents are far too numerous to list here, however I will post some pictures of the haul:

The ships are, as with the first Kickstarter, beautiful. The Paragua and Bark are relatively small, and the canoa are essentially glorified longboats with some extra rules.

The fun starts with the Fleut and the Galleon. The Galleon is a BEAST of a model, 4 decks and an impressive chunk of resin. It sounds hollow so I’m tempted to look into putting a Bluetooth speaker in to play dramatic navel music [Der H:   “Think master and commander...”  Brother Handro:   “yeeees! Do it!” ]

The faction boxes are a nice touch; the previous KS had loose figures!

The less clear miniatures are assorted characters, with beautifully crafted cards, and civilians. Always nice to see the disguised female pirates and monkey with blunderbus make an appearance! 

Like a kid in a toy shop....actually, exactly like that... 

The Deluxe/special edition/combined rule book is beautiful! Crafted with a raw cut edge... 

...it is styled to represent the style of many books of the era; Great work Firelock! 

I feel it will be a few weeks at least before I get my teeth stuck in. Exams, real life and the release of Titanicus have occupied much of my time. All being well the new year will see much more hobby time, but until then we shall plod along!

Der H 

Thought for the day:    “To wives and sweethearts; may they never meet”

FWOD 2018 - Brief summary!

Huzzah! Anther successful open day!

The dawn chorus was once again rudely interrupted by the sound of a poorly tuned diesel, and we began the 2 hour journey to Nottingham. Arriving in the middle of what would become the eventual queue, we surged into the sales hall and realised.....we don't actually need anything new!

[Brother Handro: "To the Forgeworld store!"]

Two proteus' (Armoured and standard) and some doors for Handro, and the Last chance to buy renegade preachers [Der H: "Watch this space..."] for Der H and we returned our winnings to the car.

Several trips around the design studio hall, and the obligatory tour of the museum, later and we  had seen much!

A second [Brother Handro: "...and third"] trip round the forge world store saw Der H finally cave in and buy 5 more phoenix terminators and a Spartan with IIIrd legion doors....and a LCTB Hounds of Xaphan....don't ask!

Over the next few days we will post some summaries covering a review of the information gleamed about Titanicus - including and over the shoulder view of Tony unboxing the Grand Master Edition - and a post covering new releases and the new stuff from the studio!

For now here are our two new releases from today:

Lastly, stay tuned for tomorrow where we will review, with images, an unboxing from TC himself.

Der H & Brother Handro

Bolt Action Panzer 38(t) by Warlord Games, A Review

You can find a couple of video unboxings of Warlord Games' recent light tank offering, but none of them actually build the thing!...(Although Warlord Games themselves have ninja'd me last week. Should have posted this earlier!...)

Mighty artwork!

So what do we get in the box?

Two sprues (well, one and a half really) in the usual hull, tracks, turret pieces layout.

One set of Axis transfers (German, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian) and the modern info card and damage markers. Also included is a nice glossy instruction guide, paint scheme suggestions and transfers guide.

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First off, you essentially get the option to build either an 'early'  (Ausf. B/C) or 'late' (Ausf. E/F/G) version, (there are only minor differences, and rules-wise none at all) and the option to remove the hull MG for a platoon commander's tank. (Would probably do for the Recon variant provided in the rules). Equally you get an early-war tank commander with beret and a later version with standard sidecap.

The parts are numbered in the guide but not on the sprue, which causes a little back and forth, but is still technically an improvement from the 'no parts labelling at all, just guess if it looks like the picture' days.

The kit goes together well, taking me about an hour and a half to complete. You can build it quicker but I'm a stickler for every part being cleaned up and dry-fitting before gluing.

Things you might find tricky;

You'll find it easier to build the track assemblies if you put the rear pieces (parts 26 & 27) in first, there's a slot which should ensure you don't go wrong, allowing the adjoining pieces to go in smoothly.

The front hull plate was a pretty tight fit. It'll need a little bit of pressure to pop in, or you may want to insert it before gluing both track sides to the hull.

The rear panel of the turret doesn't sit particularly well until the top plate is fitted, so get that part ready to go at the same time.

Parts 40 and 41, which sit on the rear hull and are something to do with the running gear are incredibly fiddly to attach. Get your tweezers ready! I have no idea why the weren't simply moulded as part of the hull. I think it might be possible to glue them in before attaching the rear panel but I didn't think of that at the time...

Part 39 (turret handgrab) is tiny and will also require tweezers, as well as careful removable from the sprue.

Extras include the signature German jack (placed differently or simply left off all the example models) and a fire extinguisher, of which there is entirely no mention and I can only assume is there for the sprue's other purpose, namely making up part of the Marder kit.

Interestingly (or not...) Warlord always style their kits as being made of 'hard plastic'. I presume that's a technical definition, but I found this kit to be relatively 'soft' - it was very easy to file and clean up in comparison to their infantry sprues and some other makers' plastic.

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Ta-dah!

She's a dinky little thing, I have a soft spot for many of the boxy early-war, bolted together death traps...here's a size comparison;

For the record, that's a British Sherman V, so infinitesimally longer than a regular one...

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In summary, this is a straightforward, no hassle tank kit that you should be able to knock together in no time. £18 is the going rate for Warlord's plastic medium tanks, so you might feel a little short-changed to pay the same for a light, but what can you do! If you play early-war you can gain same 'value' by buying the 3 tank platoon, and it's your only option if you want plastic, so what are you waiting for?  Panzer (38t) vor!

Handro

LORGAR Bearer of the Word - A Review

Shonky pic ahoy!

Continuing my very irregular book review series with the latest in The Primarchs series...

Coming in at 248 pages for a £12.99 hardback we are certainly in the realms of novella rather than full novel, albeit printed on a larger page. However this is not the book's fault; this seems to be style of the series, essentially giving the reader a flavour of the Primarchs' backstory/upbringing.

Which leads us to the first, crucial point; this book places way more emphasis on Lorgar's upbringing than on a general 'discovery by the Imperium/introduction to/shaping of the legion in question. Specifically, huge parts of this book are given over to Lorgar's first few weeks of life on Colchis. I would take the argument that this most pivotal of primarchs is deserving of such detail, in order that we may get a sense of his studious, fey nature but to me it just felt more like it belonged to a longer novel, rather than devoting a large portion of the novel to his first few weeks and the end pretty much being 'and then after a few years he conquered all of Colchis' (spoiler?). The balance is lacking in this one, I fear.

The contrast between this approach and say, Fulgrim, which places the reader at the IIIrd legion's first solo compliance action, many years post-discovery and legion shaping, with a few recollections of Chemos interspersed, was jarring. 

I would have much preferred Lorgar to have followed the same path and given us a sense of the legion adapting to its new father figure, taking on his teachings, moulding their faith, interspersed with flashbacks to Lorgar's early days on Colchis, much like the regular Horus Heresy series do. Conversely, I would have enjoyed a novel concentrating on Fulgrim's time on Chemos, a backstory I have always found interesting. However, I'm not here to wishlist the novel I wanted, but the one that we got..

The other major bone of contention I have with this story pertains to the pivotal Kor Phaeron-Lorgar relationship. Obviously this requires some suspension of disbelief that a demi-god-like being can be manipulated by a regular human, which is fine insofar as most of the plot of the Heresy requires this, but it still felt a little...plot-device-y. If I can venture some conjecture here,  I suspect the reason so much of this book centres around Lorgar's first few weeks of (conscious) life if that this was the only time it made relative sense for him to be so impressionable and accepting of so dubious a father figure; Kor Phaeron is completely bound up in his spiralling plots - Lorgar is only ever a tool to be manipulated. (There is a throwaway line right at the end of the novel implying Lorgar allowed Kor Phaeron to believe Lorgar unconditionally accepted his teaching as a way of masking his own plans, this is so convenient it just smacks of bad writing, and if Lorgar didn't truly believe all along, how on earth would he magically end up a true believer later?)

The parts I most enjoyed were those centred on Kor Phaeron's clandestine mission to keep the  'old faith' alive wherever he found it; this allows the idea that the seeds for Lorgar's return to the first faith he knew were planted way, way before his shaming on Monarchia and his pilgrimage to the Eye, rendering this aspect of the legion's volte face of worship far more believable. It was there all along!...

There are some minor grammar/continuity issues of no real concern, with the hilarious exception of the epilogue, which is set right at the onset of the Legion rejecting worship of the Emperor, (i.e. post-Monarchia) but according to the subscript apparently takes place in M40...c'mon guys, pretty basic timeline, you're only about ten thousand years out...

Overall, Lorgar is a decent read, I just feel its subject is a little misguided, (how apt!) and it could have done with more focus on the Machiavellian schemes of the legion in the run up (and way before) the Heresy and less on baby Lorgar's first steps. I can't let my personal feelings interfere too much; Lorgar is a decent book with a decent story; certainly you'll feel the urge to take up the sword and mantle of the cultist (incidentally I am building a cultist militia all of a sudden...), I just can't help but wish for the novel this could have been.

Handro.

Thought for the day; 'Blessed is the mind too small for doubt'.

Unboxing: Winter MMG teams!

A double whammy unboxing today folks - German and US winter MMG teams!

Enjoy!