Book Review – Know No Fear

Warhammer 40K – I just finished reading the two latest books from the Horus Heresy series. Deliverance Lost and Know No Fear. Both were excellent reads and continue the detailed exploration of the pivotal events that shaped the Warhammer 40K universe as we know it today.

Deliverance Lost explores the actions of Corax, primarch of the Raven Guard Legion after the dropsite massacre. While I enjoyed the book, it left me feeling a bit let down. Most of the other Legion specific books go into great detail about the practices and culture of the Legion. This book focused almost solely on Corax's single minded quest to rebuild his legion to get back into the fight.

While it was nice to have the two paragraphs from the Raven Guard Index Astrates covered in more detail, I still feel like the story falls into the trap of these are the sneaky marines that do hit and run, they don't talk about what goes on.

In my mind the the real stars of the show are the Alpha Legion, the villians of this tale. We get to see more of their inner working in this book and see what drives them. I don't want to go into to much detail to spoil the surprises and plot twists. 

Know No Fear details the attack on Cath by the Word Bearers Legion. This is my favorite book in the series so far. Dan Abnett does a great job refecting the confusion caused by the attack with his writing style. The snippets of information remind me of the news casts during the 9/11 attacks and make the book very hard to put down.

Rather then focusing on one character throughout as most of the other books have done, Know No Fear jumps around telling the tale from multiple viewpoints and focuing on the scale of the conflict. 

This book filled in the gaps for me on why GW's poster boy marines weren't directly involved in most of the Heresy background material. From what I can remember there was a small blurb or two about the Ultramarines being sent to the far reaches of the galaxy and unable to reach Terra. This book explains exactly why they couldn't make it, and hints at the beginings of the Codex Astrates.

Mechanically Inclined

Rogue Trader – I'm continuing my quest to build up a rogues gallery of models to use in the Rogue Trader RPG I'm running. I found some unique models to represent Tech Priests and Explorators in the Iron Brotherhood line from Microarts Studios. Shipping was pretty quick considering they're coming from Poland, and the models arrived well packed in a sturdy box.

Opening them up the models had a fair amount of flash and getting the arms to fit was tricky. However getting things from a small boutique shop it's to be expected to have some extra clean up. On the tracked model which was resin there are a few minor bubbles that I should be able to fill of minimize their appearance. The metal models are pretty crisp with good detail. The remind me of better quality early Citadel minis. Minor gripe about the arms on the models with rifles, the ball joints don't line up and require a bit of bending to get a solid join. 

Not content with the look of most of the minis straight of of the box I'm doing some conversion work to make them fit with the look I'm trying to achieve. I'm most exciting about the tracked unit as I have been meaning to create a heavy weapons trooper for my team of adventurers. Going through my bitz box I was able to find some Tau gattling guns which I mounted to either arm. I added some pieces from the Cities of Death models to build a generator unit on the back and will add some cabling to tie it into the guns. I figure creating a generic looking gun mount will allow it to be flexible and count as whatever the team decides it needs at the moment.

The basic troopers with rifles are great out of the box. Aside from the minor issue with the arms I just had to pin them to the base and clean some minor mold lines. I think these will count as Tech Guard or generic Explorators. 

The other models came with some oddly shaped mechanical arms. I'm not really feeling them and am in search of some bitz to give each of these models more character. I feel one of them at least needs a servo arm and or Mechandrites. 

Restocking ....

Malifaux – I've been working on restocking some of the custom terrain in the online store, it seems that after Adepticon this year there's been a resurgence in interest in Malifaux. Which means my stock of custom buildings and terrain has rapidly depleted.

Over the weekend I cranked through and built a bunch of Western Style buildings and will be painting them tonight. 

40K Killzone

I didn't have a chance to make it to Adepticon this year as I was out of town, however going over the coverage this caught my eye.

Working in the Big Easy

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the Emerge conference in New Orleans. This doesn't really have anything to do with my hobby site but more to do with my real job. However the trip was pretty fun and I feel the need to share. Also at the conference I was able to meet some print buyers from various game manufacturers.

Essentially the conference was set up to showcase a variety of print vendors as well as provide some interesting keynote speaches revolving around branding.

The coolest part of the conference was the Mardi Gras parade to wrap up. We basically shut down the downtown area during rush hour to treck from the Hyat Regency to the House of Blues in a caravan of 19 floats with 3 marching bands. I doubt I'll ever have an experieince like that again.