Aiee! Run From Kelvin's Brainsplurge!

The Horus Heresy, the foundational story and grand tragedy at the heart of Warhammer 40,000, is an excuse.

Back in the grim darkness of 1988 Games Workshop released the first version of its Epic teeny tiny wargames system, Adeptus Titanicus:


Epic battles between giant robots! Ace!

Except all the "giant robots" in that first box were Imperial, so GW needed to come up with a reason why the humans were fighting each other. And so, one back-of-the-napkin later, we get the Horus Heresy, gengineered brother versus gengineered brother, lots of overwrought high drama, about a million tie-in novels, a spinoff tabletop wargame, and soon a role-playing game.

(We're not counting the "3D Roleplay" graphic on the AT box...)


I'm not convinced by this announcement -- what are players going to actually do in this setting? -- but I'm intrigued.

It is the Space Year 1987. Long before his adventures in the wilder regions of space, Fateweaver Duu'ey of the Ad Hoc Craftworld, fresh out of Farseer Academy, is sent on his first mission: to investigate a strange monolith on the jungle planet Brytonn IV. An easy job, the space elf wizard thinks, until he detects an alien psychic presence on the planet...

We're playing Rogue Trader! The first proper edition of Warhammer 40,000! Neither Stuart or I have played it before! What could go wrong?!

Rogue Trader is a chaotic -- small c -- mess so at least three Eldar army lists and three different Genestealer Cult lists were published during its lifespan. I picked my Eldar from the list in White Dwarf #127 while Stuart's cult was from the Tyranids-but-not-really list in WD #145, so we're not quite authentic to 1987, but close enough.

The book does have quite an extensive section on generating scenarios but we decided to use one from Sci-fi Skirmish Scenarios by John Lambshead; after five to seven turns, whichever side was in control of the monolith -- not that one -- in the centre of the table would win. Nice and simple.

I was worried from the off as I got out my 13 miniatures and Stuart just. Kept. Deploying. Troops. We both had 1000 point armies but I was hugely outnumbered and we hadn't even started!


I expected a cagey, tentative start as no one would want to go for the central objective, and so it proved. The two forces inched -- ha ha -- forward but no one put their heads out. The Avatar, the bloody-handed god of war, must have been fuming at all this weak posturing.

Stuart sent some Genestealers around to his right and I, being well familiar with how deadly Genies can be, sent the Howling Banshees and the dreadnought over to stop them. I was concerned that sending the dread over too was a bit overkill, but as it turned out the Banshees, despite being close combat specialists, had a very difficult time dealing with their opponents and it took the big war machine to break the deadlock.


The first major turning point came when the Genestealer Magus used his space magic to switch the allegiance of my Guardians overlooking the central square. Suddenly Fateweaver Duu'ey found himself surrounded by hostile enemies!

I had sent the Avatar on a speculative foray over to my right to perhaps assassinate the Magus but with Duu'ey surrounded and with more Genestealers on the way, I brought the war god back and charged the Guardians. While the Genestealers were immune to fear, the Guardians weren't, and they broke and fled, giving Duu'ey a chance to get to safety.

At the rough halfway point I had two units tied up with one enemy unit over on my left, and the Guardians gone over to the other side, so only the Avatar and Fateweaver Duu'ey were available to contest the objective. With the entire Genestealer army in front of them. Oh dear.

I decided to switch tactics and take advantage of the erratic jumble of rulesets that make up Rogue Trader. Eldar have a bespoke magic system that is nothing like that used by everyone else, so I used Duu'ey's Mind War power against the Patriarch. It cost me nothing to cast, so at best I could take control of the cult leader, and at worst I would chip away at the monster's power points, until it could no longer resist. All I needed was time.

The scenario has a variable length, between five and seven turns. The Genestealer Cult had the advantage in numbers and position, but if I could turn the Patriarch I could cause some trouble in the middle.

On this day, fate smiled on the Fateweaver.

The Patriarch turned, then literally turned, and charged into the back of his own cultists. This was a win-win for me; either Big Daddy would die, or his cultists would die, but either way that was two units tied up unable to claim the objective. I was still outnumbered, but there was a chance.


The Genestealers in the middle had been engaged in an inconclusive mêlée with the Avatar but withdrew -- Attack of Opportunity! -- to fall back and claim the monolith. Meanwhile the "combat specialist" Banshees finished off the Genestealers on my left with the help of the dreadnought, and moved into the middle. The dreadnought used its JUMP PACK -- because dreadnoughts in RT have jump packs, because this game is ridiculous -- to get there quicker.

At last, Duu'ey broke down the Magus' psychic defences and took control of the opposing space wizard. We ruled that although the Patriarch and Magus were not dead, the Eldar mind control meant that the psychic link between the leaders and the rest of the cult was severed, and so the cult turned feral. The Genestealers in the middle were confused and could not contest the Monolith, and everyone else was either engaged with the Patriarch or was stumbling around in a daze, so the only "Genestealer" forces that were in contact with the Monolith at game end were... two alignment-switched Eldar Guardians.


So the game ended as a draw by the scenario rules, but Stuart did also have a single confused Genestealer in contact with the monolith, so there's an argument that he may have had a slight edge, or maybe not, because the Genestealer was confused and not really in control of anything. I don't know. You decide!

---

We had a lot of fun playing the original 1987 Rogue Trader. We were expecting it to be baroque and difficult but there is enough shared DNA with later versions of 40K that it was familiar to us and it played quite well. There is a lot of randomness but for the most part it added to the fun; Stuart's Magus and Patriarch had some funky space magic, some useful, some not -- you can teleport a mile! -- and my Avatar and Farseer had random statistics, which resulted in a god of war that was more or less invulnerable but also comically unable to hit anything.

The rules are weirdly granular at some points but handwavery and vague in others. You have to take into account encumbrance, and miniatures can't turn during their move without giving up distance in half-inch increments, but there's nothing in the book about climbing or falling off buildings, not even in the detailed section on... combat in buildings. The game is designed to be run by a referee and I imagine a lot of the edge cases would be ruled on the spot by them, but it's odd looking back from the future, where this sort of thing is covered in the rules. There's a definite loose OSR type feel to the game.

So yes, good fun! It's basically a skirmish wargame and there are more recent skirmish wargames that I prefer overall, but it's clear why this game took over the world.

Arbitrary score: 1987 out of 40,000.

Next up in the 40K Project: 1993's second edition, the best edition!

Edit: Stuart's summary of the game is here.

I may have a problem.

This doesn't even include the two copies I own of the best edition -- second, obviously -- nor the army books.

(In my defence I only have two army books for each edition. Sort of. Ish.)

There is a plan behind all this, it's not just nonsensical collecting; although it is that too. Stuart and I plan to play at least one game in each edition, for fits and shiggles.

Oh dear, I see the man-babies are apoplectic with rage about female characters in Warhammer 40,000 again. This time it's because it's been revealed that the Adeptus Custodes -- basically even more Space Mariney Space Marines -- include women in their ranks.

Gnash! Wail! Gasp! Etc!

This is sort of a retcon. I say "sort of", because I don't think it's ever been stated that the faction is all-male, it's just that no one's mentioned female members before.

Obviously the thing that's annoying these very mature and sensible people is the change to "established" canon and NOTHING ELSE, so I imagine that they are also furious about:

• Squats.
• The origins of the Necrons.
• Space Wolf commander Leman Russ.
• The Sensei.
• The half-human, half-Eldar chief librarian of the Ultramarines, who may also have been a tennis player.
• Where Squigs come from.

All changed or removed from canon, so all similarly rage-inducing, I'm sure, because it's about the sanctity of canon. Nothing else. Nope.


I don't always agree with Games Workshop's decisions -- release your old books as print-on-demand, you cowards! -- but this is glorious. Well done, GW.

Cyberdyne Warrior, Commodore 64, 1989.


Scale creep was always a problem, apparently, even back in 1989. Look at the size of that Beakie in comparison to the player sprite at the top!

See the game in action below, and perhaps note that the chunky marine isn't the only bit of IP borrowing going on.


That ending music sounds quite familiar too...

The squats are back in Warhammer 40,000! Although we're not calling them squats any more.

Now they are the LEAGUES OF VOTANN:


Hang on, that sigil looks familiar...


I still quite like the new squats anyway.

I love this old article, from White Dwarf #136, because it's so pro-fun and pro-hobby. This is Games Workshop saying "here's a new ork vehicle for you to build and use, and you don't have to buy anything!"

(Except for the issue of White Dwarf, of course.)

If I were in charge at GW I'd keep the full article on the website forever, and I'd update the rules with every new edition of 40K, to keep the Gobsmasha, and the enthusiastic hobbyism, alive.

This is probably one reason -- among many, I admit -- why I am not in charge at GW.

Just before Chrimble I was sent a review copy of Gabriel Ciprés' role-playing game Space Knights:

Space Knights is a science fiction roleplaying game about alien invasions, mighty warriors and desperate battles in the dark future. The player characters in Space Knights are no individuals but the companies of an Order of Elite Warriors in a time when humankind has spread through the galaxy and fights for survival. Space Knights uses a PbtA-based system and contains everything you need to play.

Space Knights is a pastiche of Warhammer 40,000, in particular the fascist warrior monks of the Space Marines. The game is short, consisting of 10 pages, which includes a cover and a credits/introduction page. It can be purchased at the very reasonable price of Pay What You Want from Drive Thru RPG.

I haven't had a chance to play it, so these impressions are based on reading the pdf. Don't hate me.

The Good

• There are a number of rpgs out there that put you in the power armour of a Marine of Space, but in my experience they tend to focus on individuals. Space Knights instead puts players in the roles of entire companies, which is an interesting approach. (Of course, the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game has the same sort of perspective, but that's not an rpg.)
  
• The system -- which is derived from Apocalypse World -- is simple and leans towards storytelling rather than crunchy detail. It seems like it would be quick and elegant to play, and again it is an interesting approach to a game that is about blokes with guns shooting each other. Roll 2d6, with partial success at 7 or total success at 10, applying modifiers or rerolls based on a company's unique traits. Bosh! That's it!
  
• Despite its length, Space Knights is full of flavour, and the writing captures the theme well. There is not much in the way of fluff or background, but all of the little mechanical bits and pieces capture the feel of doomed heroes -- or perhaps they are religious extremists, or perhaps they are both -- on vast crusades, risking not only their lives but their souls. I suspect that in part the game is relying on evoking my own experiences of the 40K setting, but even if that is the case, there is some skill in that.

The Bad

• The game gives examples of Space Marine chapters Space Knight orders and some sample missions, and there is a section of random table to generate mission details, but the game is a bit fuzzy about what happens in a session and what the players are supposed to do. In other words, how the game works is described well, but how it plays is not. Is it designed for one-shots? Can it be used to run a campaign? You can work this stuff out by reading between the lines but a bit of guidance would be handy.

The Ugly

• There is almost no art in the game, but I can't criticise it too much for that. Space Knights is a Pay What You Want indie rpg based on a well-known setting that already has four decades of art behind it, so it's a very minor issue. You don't need Ciprés to draw a Space Marine, because everyone knows what a Space Marine is and if not it's only a Google away. To be honest, I'm only mentioning it so I have something to put in this section.

All in all, I recommend Space Knights as a fun little game that would fill an evening of play, and brings a new perspective to the experience of playing a power-armoured religious warrior. I have some questions over whether there's anything more to it than a couple of hours of play, but those couple of hours should be fun enough. Assuming the Emperor hasn't banned fun, obviously.

If I get a chance to play Space Knights, I'll update this post -- or write a new one -- about how it went.

Up until last week, the last time I played Warhammer 40,000 was in 1997ish. I had a Genestealer Cult army and when the third edition of the game came out Genestealer Cults weren't supported, and I didn't have enough money to start a whole new army, so that was that.

(It didn't occur to me that I could just keep playing second edition. I was, in many ways, an idiot.)

I kept up with developments in the game and over the past couple of years I've been collecting and painting classic Eldar miniatures in order to build the army I always wanted but could never afford at the time.

Then a couple of months ago Games Workshop announced a new edition of 40K, one that applied some of the lessons learned from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle reboot. The rules seemed to be simpler, discarding much of the fiddly cruft that had built up, and then GW released five low cost army books that covered the entire range of miniatures.

I decided to give it a go -- it didn't hurt that the rules are free -- and roped Stuart in, because I was getting the Eldar book anyway and I knew it also included one of Stuart's armies; there's no point playing 40K if you don't have an opponent, after all.

Stuart's son Sebastian also wanted to get involved and so we ended up playing a three-way battle. I brought my vintage Eldar, while Stuart dusted off his Necrons, and Sebastian fielded a Dark Angels-Imperial Guard alliance.

It was a bit choppy, because even though the new rules are streamlined, the first play of a new game is always a bit wonky. We were all a bit rusty too; Stuart hadn't played 40K in a couple of years, I hadn't played in twenty, and Sebastian had never played at all!

Sebastian set up a nice desert village with a ruined Imperial factory complex on the western edge of the board; Stuart's Necrons deployed in the south-west corner, my Eldar took the south-east-ish corner, while the Imperial forces came in from the north-north-west-ish.

(I'm getting Metal Gear Solid V flashbacks looking at these pictures.)

We'd each chosen sixty power levels of troops, but I was worried from the start as both opposing armies outnumbered mine. I wasn't too concerned about the Imperial Guard because while they do travel in large numbers they are squishy and easy to kill -- apart from the tanks, but we'll get to that! -- but there also seemed to be an awful lot of Necrons and they didn't exist last time I played so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Power levels are one of the new ideas introduced with the eighth edition; while you can still select armies the old way, tinkering with details to get an exact points value, power levels are an off-the-shelf abstract approach that gives you a general idea of a unit's, er, power level, more suited for casual games like this one. It's quick and easy and I like it a lot.

The mission was to seize objectives -- the bushy green plants -- and hold them for as long as possible; we'd get a point for each objective we held at the end of a turn. I was lucky as three of the objectives had been placed almost in my deployment zone, and as a result I didn't need to advance much to get into a good position.

Not that I had an easy time of it, as Stuart sent his heavy floaty laser cannon dudes in on my left flank early on -- pictured above -- and this tussle lasted almost the entire game.

In the centre, my Guardian squad shuffled forward to claim an objective, but not too close, as Sebastian teleported a Terminator squad right in the middle of the table and I didn't fancy tangling with them.

I felt most exposed over on the right with a single Dreadnought holding the flank and two squads of Imperial Guard -- plus tank -- rolling forward. On the plus side, most of the Space Marines were over on Stuart's side of the table, well away from me and my space elves.

There was a brief wobble on the right as Sebastian sent both Guard units into hand-to-hand combat with my Dreadnought, but the war machine barbecued most of its opponents with its twin flamethrowers before they could get close.

A Space Marine character accompanying the Guardsmen made a nuisance of himself so I pulled the Dreadnought back and then mashed the Marine with concentrated missile launcher fire from my Dark Reapers. After that, Sebastian pulled away from his left flank -- my right -- and decided to concentrate on the battles in the centre and the Imperial factory in the west, where most of his Marines were deployed.

This is where the fighting was most brutal, as Stuart threw everything he could at the Guard tanks, to no effect; as it turned out we had made a mistake while writing down the tanks' statistics, and they weren't nearly as tough as we all thought. The Necrons were held up for so long trying to destroy the vehicles that it gave the Dark Angels enough time to get stuck in, including the heavy-weapon-toting Devastators who had up until then been jogging towards the fight instead of shooting.

With the Necrons fighting both Space Marines and indestructible tanks, and the Eldar being left alone to hoover up objectives on the other half of the table, we decided to halt the game on the fourth turn, rather than let it go on to the fifth.

The game ended with a narrow victory for the Eldar on nine objective points, with the Imperial alliance on eight, and the Necrons on seven. I think the placement of the objectives favoured me, as did Sebastian's decision to abandon his left flank and focus on the Necrons. Getting the tank rules wrong also had an effect, I'm sure!

Everyone had a great time, and all three of us want to play again. Stuart is thinking of rejigging his army and Sebastian is painting -- or rather is encouraging his father to paint -- more Terminators. I'm going to have a think about my army too; this time, I brought everything I had painted but I have lots of miniatures either gathering dust or soaking in Dettol so I have some options. My War Walker got blasted into bits early on and I don't think it fired a single shot, so I'm thinking of swapping it for a unit of troops to bulk up my numbers a bit, and I'm not sure about the Avatar; he's a bit of a beast but only killed one Necron in the entire battle, instead hanging back to provide a morale boost to the Guardians in the middle. It wasn't the best use of a fiery god of bloodshed.

On the other hand I'm happy with how the Guardians performed and with the Eldar being so light on numbers I liked having a big unit to anchor the middle of my line. I also enjoyed having the psychic phase to myself -- the Necrons don't have psykers and the Imperium didn't bring any -- so I'll field Warlocks again next time. The Wraithguard are brilliant and saw off Stuart's heavy floaty laser cannon dudes, so I'll be bringing them back, and I'll try to get more if I can find the miniatures for a decent price. The Dreadnought also did well and I have two more of them in the painting pile, so it's tempting to bring more for the next battle.

The game itself is not bad. It's a bit abstract and I did like the detail of second edition, but I suspect the game would have taken two days if we'd played using those rules! That said, I do like how the core rules are nice and simple with any complexity or exceptions -- and even then there aren't many -- restricted to the individual unit descriptions. It took us most of an afternoon to play four turns but we were learning the game and there were three of us, so I imagine both added to the time; the game itself seemed to run quite fast once we got going.

All in all, I think GW has done a good job with 40K8 and I'm keen to give it another try, but I need to get painting!

Update: Stuart has blogged about the battle here.

There's no more certain way to drive certain segments of Warhammer 40,000 fandom into frothing rage than to mention female Space Marines. For some reason -- and you'll see people jumping backwards through hoops to provide in-universe justifications -- female Space Marines are Not Okay.

Well, they are fine by me.

In part that's because I try not to be a sexist bigot, but in part it's because of this painting:



(Image by John Richardson -- not the comedian, probably -- and borrowed from the Commodore Format Archive.)

The maniacs who go all wobbly at the idea of a female Space Marine are also the sorts of people who would never accept this image as evidence, not least because it's a few steps removed from canon -- it's an image illustrating a review of a computer game adaptation of a board game based on 40K -- but it was enough for me.

I can see at least one female Space Marine in there, probably two, and twenty-five years of all-male imagery from Games Workshop isn't going to erase that from my mind.

Rumour has it there is a major redesign on the way for GW's iconic Space Marines; the miniatures will get bigger, and the armour will be more ornate. That's all fine, but wouldn't it be nice if some of the models had female features?

Comics writer and professional Gavin Norman impersonator Kieron Gillen rambles here about the aesthetic of Warhammer, how the original Warhammer setting is probably racist, and how Games Workshop may not be the Evil Empire it is often portrayed as, and -- to be fair -- was for a good number of years.

It's worth reading, but the first bit jumped out at me because it's something I've been saying for years: yes, the Warhammer games are all about the GrimDark™ but that this is supposed to be funny, because, by gosh, how could it not be? It's so over the top that I cannot understand how anyone takes it seriously.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay characters are rat catchers and students pushed into fighting the legions of Chaos by bad luck and poor judgement. Is that not self-evidently funny? Both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Age Battle of Sigmar are full of puns and ridiculous names; one of the Space Marine primarchs -- the most super duper of the super duper genetic soldiers -- is called Lionel. You can stick a random 80's trash fantasy novel apostrophe in there but it's still not a name that evokes the image of a hardened killer of alien scum.

The other, more famous, KG sort of blames the Americans, which I don't think is quite fair, but the obfuscation of the essential joke at the heart of the Warhammers does seem to have gone hand in hand with Games Workshop's global success. I don't begrudge the world these less comedic versions of the franchises -- and as Coop says here, Games Workshop has done its fair share to move away from the humour -- because if what you like about 40K is that everything is festooned with skulls, then good for you.




I don't think I'm trying to make a point. What I'm not saying is that anyone is doing Warhammer wrong. I think what I am saying is that to me there's an essential humour at the heart of the game lines -- even more so in some of the spin-offs like Blood Bowl and WFRP -- and it always baffled me that few people seemed to recognise it, so it is good to see someone of Gillen's profile also pick up on it. It's simple validation, I suppose.

This is not me bragging about my miniature painting skills, for the simple reason that I have none; put a paint brush in my hand and I lose any coordination I may have had, my hands turning into chunks of unresponsive meat.

No, this post is about the exciting world of varnishing. All of these Rogue Trader era Dark Reapers were painted in the same haphazard fashion but were varnished in different ways.

(Click to see all big and stuff.)


As I am a lazy and incompetent painter I thought that dipping seemed like a good idea as it would not only cut out the shading stage but would also varnish the miniature; it does indeed do both of those things although the dip itself -- I used Army Painter Quickshade -- is thick and difficult to control, resulting in some patchy shading, although it does produce a nice shiny finish. Mr Blotchy on the left was shaded and varnished in this way.

The middle miniature was washed with Army Painter Strong Tone ink -- I am told that it is a close match for the popular but discontinued Citadel Devlan Mud wash -- then varnished with Citadel 'Ardcoat. The shading isn't as patchy although the result is more dull overall and you'd probably want to apply a few quick highlights after the ink wash. The 'Ardcoat is easy to apply but varnishing an entire army with it is going to be expensive.

The Reaper on the right was also washed with the Army Painter ink and varnished with Pledge Multi-Surface Wax, which as the name suggests is for household use but seems to work for miniatures too. It's quite thin and not very waxy so I gave the figure two coats to get the same sort of finish, but you do get 750ml for £3.15 -- in Sainsbury's at least; other suppliers may differ -- whereas the 'Ardcoat costs £2.40 for 12ml. You can find out more about the Pledge -- including local variants -- here.

I am far from an expert on miniature painting -- exhibits A, B, and C above, your honour -- so I wouldn't expect anyone to take my word as anywhere near authoritative but it seems to me that a combination of ink washing and the Pledge Multi-Surface Wax is a much better -- albeit slower -- approach than the dipping I was using before.