The decade I didn't see coming

You know, I said I wasn’t going to do this.

We’ve all seen people humblebragging in these retrospectives, and I didn’t want to be that guy. But sometimes it is important to look back, and today is the last day not just of a year but of a decade. A lot happens in ten years.

I thought about different ways to characters the 2010s in my own life. ‘The decade that everything changed’ would be fitting, but arguably even truer about its predecessor. ‘The decade I found my way’ seems a bit too smug and presumes that my journey is over, which it isn’t.

In the end, I think that the best way to describe this decade is to call it ‘the decade I didn’t see coming’.

Just to be clear, I’m talking about the decade in my personal life. If we were to take the decade as a whole, it has been a disaster for the literal and human worlds – from racing climate change to Brexit to the object in the White House. For these purposes, I’m going to ignore the wider world and selfishly talk about me.

When the year ticked over from 2009 to 2010, I was in a bad way. Not at that very instant: I was at a party in Cholmley Road and was having a great time. But I was in a bad way, whether I acknowledged it or not. AT the age of 26, I had the strangest nagging feeling that my best days were behind me. I told myself that was okay: I’d had a whirlwind of a time in that decade, leaving home in 2002 and having adventures I’d never dreamed of. I think I told myself stuff like ‘no complaints here’. But the rot was there, gnawing.

I had a terrible job. The problem wasn’t so much that it was dead end (it was), the problem was that it was unremittingly harsh and unpleasant with no possibility of ever becoming less so. I won’t say it was the worst job in the world because I’m sure others have much worse experiences. But it was, for me, a pit. I’d become convinced that I was stuck there for life. The management of this major retail chain had a very good line in convincing people of their own lack of worth, to the point where – terrifyingly – I started to actually doubt whether I’d ever actually achieved both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. That purple and orange hell got inside my head.

Then came the tipping point. An unfortunate romantic choice, as these things often are. Looking back I can’t explain it. But she mesmerised me for a while there, more than any man or woman I’d ever been with. But she wasn’t entirely well, sadly. I say this because I much later discovered that my own experience fitted into a pattern which she repeated over and over. Looking back now, I feel sad for that woman and I hope she managed to break that cycle.

To put it simply, she blew hot, she blew cold. She loved me then hated me. She was the sweetest person and then a demon. She thoroughly buggered up my head and then dumped me by text for someone else who worked in the same place. At roughly the same time, my (very lowly) supervisory role was eliminated from the org-chart, busting me back to the lowliest level, a fact which the withered hag I worked for took great pleasure in reminding me. November 2010 saw me doing some really, really dumb things.

I got home from hospital and decided to go back to work immediately. Than God I did, because that made the 21^st November a thing which happened. The universe hangs on a string of co-incidence, and never was it clearer to me than that day.

I woke up to a text message from my old pal Brendan, telling me to apply for a copywriting job at his company. I was sceptical – I had almost no experience – but he assured me it was worth a pop. Later that day, I was at work shelf-stacking and my old friend Jamie passed by. He’d just started a copywriting job at that same company and suggested I go for it. I thanked him, feeling a strange sense of moment. Two in one day?

I was working 8-5 that day, and at 4.55pm I was about to call it a day, but decided to finish up what I was doing on the shop floor. My friend Felicity came in… and told me to apply for a copywriting job at the same company (she worked in PPC advertising but had heard about the vacancies). I felt the world seem to shift, as if the universe had just started paying attention. I told Felicity about Brendan and Jamie. She said she was going to wait for me to finish. She waited and took me to the pub, then spent the next three hours talking me up and convincing me I could do it. Ten years later, I still remain thankful that she did. Cheers, Flee 😊.

I didn’t actually apply the next day. I had a late shift and a CV to write, and no internet at home. I applied on the 23^rd instead, sitting in a pub on my laptop. On the 24^th, I got a call which turned into a phone interview. They told me I passed. I had an interview on 1^st December.

I can’t tell you much about that interview, except for a few salient points. Some degenerates tried to throw a bottle coke at me on the way in. It missed by about a foot. If it had hit I think I might have lost my nerve. My ankles were bloody rags even when I arrived because of the cheap faux-posh shoes I had purchased. I remember seeing the vast hordes of candidates. I remember bits and pieces of the five-hour practical and theoretical interview which followed. I remember that it was starting to snow as I walked back outside at 5.15pm. I don’t think I’ve ever been so emotionally, intellectually or physically exhausted. I can’t tell you exactly how I got back to my apartment on Wokingham Road, stumbling through the snow in a shirt and blazer, cold blood covering my ankles. I remember almost moaning like a zombie before I got in, and the relief at my heated apartment and being able to remove those hellish shoes.

I got the call the next day, whilst I was at work. I ignored protocol and took the call. After an agonising moment of blathering, they made the offer.

The pivotal points of our lives are rarely clear to us as they happen, but at that moment I saw two futures stretching out. I knew what happened in one of them. I jumped wildly for the unknown.

I left the purple and orange hell just a couple of days later. I started my new job in my new career on 13^th December, one month exactly after I had cause to go to hospital due to my own recklessly. That fast, life turned around.

What shall I say of those early months? I was employed on a temp contract. Though they aimed to keep us for a year, they could have dismissed us without fault at any time.

And I was determined. I was not going to let this slip away. I worked harder than I ever have in this life. I came in early, I went home late. Every night I sat reading about SEO, design trends, copywriting practice, anything and everything I could. There was no job I wouldn’t take on, no lunatic client I wouldn’t try to talk around if I thought it would impress the bosses. Where I was offered a permanent contract on 16^th June 2011, I felt a relief and a joy that was almost unparalleled.

I learned and I worked and I learned some more. I was 27 that first year. Many around me were fresh from university, but in some ways, I felt I had travelled the better road. I knew how bad things could be.

The world turned and turned again. The rain fell on the just and the unjust alike. I began to develop a sense of self again, and at some point I discovered a burning desire to see the world. I started travelling whenever I could afford. I met a lovely lady who was everything that the aforementioned woman wasn’t. For some years, my rise out of the pit I had once been in was steady. Things were shaping up.

Then disaster struck.

The year 2016 will probably not be remembered as a great year for human dignity. The Americans voted a toddler into their highest office. My own countrymen embarrassed ourselves with the Brexit fiasco and then cycle of ever-worsening Prime Ministers. But for me, it was a particularly crudworthy year. On January 31^st, I came down with a pretty serious gastric infection. Eye-witnesses say that when I collapsed, I nearly took out a tumble dryer. I couldn’t tell you because I lost consciousness and when I came around I was covering in the thickest sweat I’ve ever felt (which wasn’t there a minute before). Still, I got to see the inside of an ambulance, which was pretty cool.

Anyway, I was off work for a week. I went back in feeling much better on 8^th February. My employer invited us to watch a high-production video explaining how the dark days were behind us and the gruesome storm of buyouts, illegal restructuring and lunatic rebranding was over. We were back, bay bay!

Two days later, my entire department was informed that we were being made redundant.

Not that our jobs were redundant, you understand. But they believed that they could save money by outsourcing to the north of England, where some poor buggers with very limited employment choices would be forced to accept lower pay and conditions. Now, it was finally admitted to me that the Board didn’t actually believe this would save money in the long term, but it would provide the illusion of activity to keep the creditors who now owned the company happy. If I sound bitter… I kind of am. Understand me, I’m grateful to that company for all the skills I learned, and for the years there. But it was a sour pill to swallow that we would all be paying for very obvious financial blunders which we had warned them against and which they had committed anyway.

They weren’t prepared, of course. They wanted us to keep working with clients throughout our last three months, and had to ask us to train our own replacements as despite planning it for half a year they hadn’t got anything in place for training. And all the while, they were insisting on the corporate happy-babble about how great things were.

I was the last out. 6^th May 2016, which for the record remains a good day in my head. Truthfully, I should have moved on about a year before and leaving at least gave me that closure.

But what to do next? Well, naturally I took a few days to compose myself and then set about the task of moving on. I did some freelance work, but really I needed another proper job. But for a couple of months, I found that my interviews were going… well, but something was missing. Feedback was always good. Usually the stumbling block was that I was too experienced (and one assumes therefore too able to sense bad practice). But there was something missing. I came away from interviews feeling irritable even though they went well. It took me a while to figure it out.

Truth was, I had been skipping from one large company to another for over ten years and I was sick to the back teeth of corporate bullshit. I was pissed at these people because I was tired of hearing a load of happy-clappy rubbish and knowing that when push came to shove it would all unceasingly be about profit. I not suggesting that in a largely capitalist society one shouldn’t care about profit, but god damn it, there should be something else.

So I started applying for things which mattered: charities, scientific institutions, advocacy groups, Higher Education. With my particular skillset, I knew full-well that I’d be doing the grimy marketing side of things, but that didn’t matter: as long as there was some glimmer of doing anything which could be considered decent or noble, I could live with that. The interviews went well. I felt better. And very soon, I had a job. I had the job.

Let’s just clarify here: I know people who have by any wealth-based metric left me in the dust. People who have done far better in this world in the way that this world demands. Good luck to them, they’re cool by me.

But that isn’t me. In 2016, returning to the same university where I had studied for my own degrees, this time to help promote the institution for future students and researchers, felt very much like coming home. As an added bonus, the working environment is much more comfortable. But that really is an aside. It’s not what I’m doing so much as why I’m doing it. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s perfect and that I don’t have bad days. I’m not going to say that every last single thing that the university does is absolutely noble. But I’ll say this: it feels a heck of a lot better to be helping an institution which you know can do good in this world than to be helping one you damn well know can’t.

I’ve continued to travel. More so, in fact. As far as I’m concerned, a little skill and a lot of luck has given me the opportunity to travel reasonably often. And if you don’t do it when you have the opportunity… then when?

I didn’t see any of it coming. Truthfully, after that awful November of 2010, every day feels pretty much like a bonus. I don’t know where the journey will lead in the next decade any more than I did ten years ago. I don’t know if I’ll be ready for the events to come.

But the journey… I’m ready for that at least.

The Hammer is back

The Christmas of 1995 always stands out in my mind. My family had been through a rather rough patch, but earlier that year our luck seemed to have changed and by Christmas we were close to comfortable. By pure coincidence, this happened to be the same time when I first encountered the hobby. My friends had gotten into 40k, and as a 12-year-old boy I was desperate to fit in. But at the time - though I later grew to love 40k - I was lukewarm about it. It was only when I saw Warhammer Fantasy that I fell in love. That Christmas, my family indulged me and got me a plethora of Warhammer stuff, totaling around £40. Now to a working-class kid in the mid-nineties, that was more than I could ever have expected reasonably.

I think that the initial glow never really left. Warhammer Fantasy kept me going through the viciousness of secondary school. Years later, I was the first member of my extended family to ever attend a university, and I remember taking my army books with me as a safety blanket. After university, I actually worked at Games Workshop for a good while, and even that did not break my love for the Old World. It was one of the major constants of my life.

We all know what happened in 2015, some more than others but basically, we all know. Fuelled by egos and personal agendas, Games Workshop failed to address the self-inflicted cost problem of the Warhammer Fantasy hobby which had led to a sales fall (the 'selling less than Chaos Black' myth has been debunked but there was a dip). A crude, depressing, rushed 'End Times' was cobbled together, and one of the richest fantasy worlds of the last hundred years was replaced with... something. I always feel a bit bad about knocking Age of Sigmar because it feels like shooting fish in a barrel. In general terms though, the problem was that it was crude, bland, boring, disempowering, simplistic, unrelatable, unstructured, ill-considered, generic and frustratingly bereft of believable motivation. I could go into detail, but I'm trying to be as kind as possible here. Obviously, this was not acceptable. But the human mind has an odd way of reacting to conflict: fight, flight, freeze or appease. I was a fighter, and in all honesty, I didn't always express it very well. I have at times been belligerent to AoS converts, and that was not the right approach. Some chose flight, giving up the hobby altogether. But the freezers and appeasers formed the first true AoS zealots - having spent so much time and money, they needed to rationalize what had happened. Rather than admitting what I had to admit to myself - that we all got suckered - these people reacted by defending Games Workshop in order to justify to themselves the money they had spent. Thus, unfortunately, the relationship between AoS converts and WFB loyalists has never been pleasant or really even that civil. And at the time, GW themselves did not help matters. Both AoS converts and GW staff seemed to be eerily singing from a very similar hymn sheet: "Warhammer is boring/nobody wanted to play it/it's outdated/you just can't handle change/you're a bad person." There was a very ugly species of gloating around the more radical AoS converts, sneering about fantasy being 'dead'. It seemed to grossly offend them that others might prefer another game (again, I acknowledge that I at times may have acted unfairly to AoSists myself).

But something strange happened, and I can't tell you when for sure. I know when it was for me: about thirty minutes after reading the last bit of the End Times. Years in marketing led me to guess even then that some lame Hollywood reboot was coming: the writers didn't seem to just want to end WFB, they seemed to want to completely bury it, make it look so unappealing that nobody would miss it. I had zero hope for WFB's official survival. And right then, I decided that it would not be so: you cannot kill something that exists in the mind and the heart. I had my books and models: my Old World was not going to lie down just because of a corporate marketing decision. My friends felt the same. We began to plot the bones of what would eventually become 'Age of Rebuilding'.

On the day AoS was released, more cringeworthy and underwhelming than our worst fears had expected, our direction was validated. I remember we had a bunch of fantasy games in my apartment that day. Nothing bad happened to us, no magical GW nuke fell on us. I knew then that WFB would survive, if only in this one corner of Berkshire.

Time went by, and I became slowly aware that we weren't alone. Mutterings, voices from underground, whispers of gaming clubs and online communities who had no interest in AoS. As time went by, it became clear that Warhammer Fantasy was beloved enough that it simply didn't need official support. More astonishing still, it was actually recruiting. slowly, of course: I'd be surprised if there was one new WFB player for every hundred new AoS players. But nonetheless, recruiting. It would never be as widespread as before, that went without saying, but it wouldn't fall away as Games Workshop clearly hoped. What's more, whilst a degree of AoS kicking was involved (again, guilty), the general shape of the community was as healthy and positive as one can ever expect from a wargaming community. This actually made sense: only those who loved Warhammer Fantasy remained. The more toxic power gamers and those with no strong opinion had all drained away. That didn't mean the remainder always agreed, but it did mean that every view was passionate and sincerely held. The people who remained were not willing to passively accept that Games Workshop knew best, were aware that they were choosing a more difficult path and care enough to do so anyway. These were people who understood that if Warhammer Fantasy were to survive, supported by the community, they would have to invite more work on themselves. And everyone in the community, in some way or another, rose to that occasion. Whether it was continuing to play Fantasy, writing new stories, creating new units, running campaign weekends and tournaments, attending those same events... by the very choice to go with what they loved rather than what was easy, those people all made the effort. They were all... we were all... working not just for our hobbies but for the continuation of something which we thought was worth preserving. Importantly, we weren't waiting for Games Workshop to save us. In those early days in particular, it was clear that Games Workshop was not interested in our opinion on the matter. To understand recent news, it is important to recognize that the Warhammer Fantasy community was not on its knees crying to Games Workshop for salvation. Warhammer Armies Project, The Elector Counts, Champions of Destiny, even my own humble Age of Rebuilding project... these were all evidence that we didn't need Games Workshop and weren't expecting anything from them. Sometimes we would buy their moels. Other times we would search eBay and buy from up-coming companies who flooded to fill the void. We purchased square bases separately when they weren't included or cut them from MDF if we had to. We improvised, combined, tinkered, substituted - because astonishingly, Warhammer Fantasy had transcended its owner. It had taken on a life independent of Games Workshop.

And so the world turned and turned again. The rain fell on the just and the unjust alike. A new management took over Games Workshop. I would be remiss not to mention that this new management was not only more intelligent but also more sympathetic. They engaged in properly conceived marketing and engagement campaigns. They partially stepped back from a lunatic pricing policy with numerous good-value combination sets. The people who gave the world AoS to the world were outright hostile to the Old World: the new management much less so. WFB began to feature in 'Time-warp' articles and was referenced elsewhere. The scornful contempt was replaced with a more respectful tone. Interestingly, it seemed that some ongoing releases were devised for a dual audience: 2019's Night Goblin release only needed square bases to be near-perfect for WFB. These changes in attitude were appreciated - at least by me - because it showed that the new management had some civility which their predecessors lacked. But still, no serious analysis suggested an official comeback for WFB. Their attitude had softened, the product had tacitly taken on more appeal to the old guard, but they were still wholly committed to AoS (which I still believe to be the case).

Then came Friday, 15th November. The day that none of us saw coming. The announcement that in 3-4 years, the Warhammer Fantasy world would return (with a slightly tweaked name of Warhammer: the Old World). I have no idea what they will do with this. And neither do you. By their own admission, they are in the earliest planning stages. If I had to guess wildly with nothing to back me up, I would guess a 28mm scale game similar to 6th or 8th edition, supported by Forgeworld.

Obviously, I like everyone else am overjoyed. But before I get into that, let's look into what this is not.

There's a small, unworthy part of most WFB fans (and that includes me) which really wants this to mean that AoS is failing. To that I say simply: no. Nothing of the kind. AoS is, in my view, a bad product. But it is simple and requires little thought, which unfortunately appeals to many people. More importantly, you can sell any poor product if you're skilled at marketing. I know whereof I speak. And the new Games Workshop management is very good at marketing. AoS was seemingly designed as a vehicle for profit, and from what I can see it is achieving that. It's a cash cow. It does not come from a place of love but of ruthless financial consolidation. AoS will continue to be a cash cow for a long time - not forever, as I'll come back to later, but for a long time.

If you go onto any AoS group, you will see wild hysteria. Some of the same people who told me that I couldn't handle change four years ago now appear to be dissolving at the very suggestion of the Old World's return. The apparent fear is that Warhammer: the Old World will displace AoS. Whilst there would be a certain cruel justice to this, I would like to reassure any AoSist that this is not the case. Old World, whatever form it takes, will be a niche product more akin to Necromunda of Adeptus Titanicus - probably more popular than either, but on that sort of level. Or indeed, as Games Workshop themselves have said, like The Horus Heresy. The reason for this is twofold: firstly, they are successfully milking the AoS cash cow, so it would be silly to drop it unless they needed to. Secondly, can you imagine for a moment the shareholder meeting where they had to stand up and explain that they were canning a profitable product which they had spent half a decade talking up? It would be a glaring strategic error.

Another point we need to address is that this is not an act of generosity on the part of Games Workshop. It isn't quite correct to say 'they listened' because that puts the Warhammer Fantasy community in the position of supplicants with the noble Games Workshop swooping in to give us love again. What actually happened was that the Warhammer Fantasy community didn't go away. The new management were almost certainly savvy to the fact that throwing away a portion of paying customers wasn't a cunning plan in the first place, but the continued popularity of Fantasy makes the business case clear: these hobbyists have money. They will spend it on the hobby. Games Workshop is presumably now of the opinion that allowing third parties to have that money unopposed might not be their best plan. Simply put, why would a business refuse money when they - being the official holder of the IP - can provably make a profit simply by reviving a product which only their own ego threw away to begin with?

Now, having talked about what this is clearly not, let's move on to what it is and why I'm very happy about it.

In the first case, there is a reputational/legacy aspect. AoS is clearly a money-spinner, but that's all it is. It's a good device for pumping out product, but there's no underlying loyalty or integrity. If they dropped AoS tomorrow in favour of something else, I'm confident that in four years there would be no AoS community to speak of. They would move on to whatever came next. It's also worth noting that the more cartoony, bland aesthetic of AoS steers it into competition with multiple online games. At the moment, that's a strength. But it might not always be. Restoring Warhammer Fantasy might well be a way of ensuring that in years to come, Games Workshop is perceived by investors as having continuity and a responsible sense of its own history. When explaining how your revenue streams work, it helps to be able to say 'we've been offering this since 1983' rather than 'we dump an IP as soon as someone's ego demands it and there's a sales dip'. A company that doesn't jump about all the time is more reliable and less likely to do something stupid with an investor's money. So in that regard, the move makes sense.

There's also the fact that it never hurts to have an ace in the hole. AoS is profitable, but it's entirely soulless, relying on cashing in on certain trends. The world will turn again eventually. There's no doubt that the minute it flags Games Workshop will dump AoS in a flash and move onto whatever seems likely to have most mass appeal in the background. But if they ensure that there is a steady stream of background products creating a baseline, this shouldn't cause them too many problems.

But most of all, what I think this represents is a colossal vindication for Warhammer Fantasy fans. It almost doesn't matter what Games Workshop does. There's a chance they'll make a massive pig's ear of it. But the point is, the Old World proved to be the world that just wouldn't die. It wouldn't die to the point where Games Workshop thought they'd better get back in on the action. And that shows a level of love, dedication and engagement which is bigger than Games Workshop. Even if they flub it up, Warhammer lives. Warhammer will live. If they mess it up, I strongly suspect that they'll have another go. And looking at the way that they announced it, I believe quite confidently that it will be our Old World and not some half-baked AoS-ified version. Look at the logo - very old-school, with the more subtle colour palette of the early 2000s. The fact that they call it 'The Old World' rather than 'The World That Was' shows that they understand the audience for this forthcoming project. I'd be shocked to find any references to AoS in whatever they do. The Old World may never be as prominent as it once was, but then none of us expected it to. None of us ever expected an official acknowledgment. Games Workshop tried to drag us with them. But by staying the course and doing what we were passionate about, we dragged them. 

I do have to point out they were wrong about one thing. In the mailshot, the banner image said 'The Old World will live again'. Well Games Workshop, your heart was in the right place, but I have to correct you. It won't 'live again'. It never died.

One other thing. Archaon Everchosen, you three-eyed punk. Go find some other world to pick on. Because we're not going anywhere.

Refitting Beastmen Part 2: The Jabberslythe

"Beware the Jabberslythe my son, the lashing tongue, the madness comes..."

I've long been fond of the Lewis Carroll poem Jabberwocky, and the Warhammer Jabberslythe which is obviously based on it. I loved the description of it as an ungainly, flapping monster that slowly closes in on its prey as they go insane. There was only one problem: when the model came out, it was barely even intimidating. What appeared to be a large toad with horns was released (alongside the masterfully intimidating Ghorgon). Bizarrely, despite misgivings I actually purchased one. I don't really know why. It was a decision which I regretted very quickly. Considering it was designed for Finecast, the production gaffes were miserable. There was a gap between the halves big enough to count as a topographical feature. I asked GW for a replacement which was nearly as bad. Ultimately, I gave it up as a bad deal.

Many years later, I decided to have a go at it again, this time ignoring the model and focusing on the description. The two bits that struck me were the reference to the beast being 'part toad, part sludge drake [one assumes a degenerate dragon] and an insect and also the idea of it closing in inexorably at hopelessly insane victims. With this in mind I set to work.

There were two aspects that I really wanted for the model: the first was to show that it comes from the deepest, wildest, most monstrously fecund part of the forest. I started with a chariot sized base and one of the gnarly trees from the base of the Arachnarok which I had leftover from my Spiderfiler conversion. This would help show the hellish verdancy of the Jabberslythe's lair, whilst also lending some height and a creeping motion. The reason I needed the height was that I was determined to show the maddening effects of the Jabberslythe's aura. For this, the Helblaster crewman with his hands over his ears was a perfect victim. His wide eyes and open mouth can easily be arranged to show a wildly screaming man trying to block the sound of the monster out. When I painted him, I gave him stark, staring eyes with trickles of blood.

Now, the monster itself. Using the idea of 'toad', I started with the bloated body of a Rot Fly, filling in most of the rotted bits. I thought it might give a nice echo of Dali-esque disproportion if I used long, extended legs. I made these from several of the long legs from the Plague Drones kits, tipped with zombie hands to make them look more unsettling.

The wings are parts I got in a job-lot - I think they're from Kromlech. The arching head and neck come from a Steed of Slaanesh because there's nothing more freaky than those horrible daemon birdfish. The weird feelers around its face are from one of the big Tyranid gribblers, as are the wibbly tentacular forearms. The tail is the only part of the original Jabberslythe kit to make it into this version.

Posing was key for me: I wanted to emphasize the helpless horror which the Jabberslythe induces. I posed it to be creeping across the rotten tree, head leering down at the doomed Empire soldier, one of the hands reaching out towards him.

A conversion with this many bits together will lead to a few messy joins. To conceal these, I covered the painted monster's shoulders and abdomen with black static grass to serve as insectile fur.

Now, it still doesn't drive me mad to look at, but I think it fits the bill a bit more!

The Sultan stirs...

Far from the Empire and Bretonnia, an ancient civilisation dreams between the great desert and the sapphire ocean. The world is forever changed, and the time has come for Araby to make its voice heard...

Read The Sultan stirs

Refitting Beastmen Part 1: the Beastlord

Beastmen have always been my favourite flavour of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy: there's something very evocative about herds of giant evil murder-goats loitering in the forests, an odd fusion of Visigoth and faerie tale monster. They're the thing that goes bump in the night. They're the monster that ate grandma.

But Games Workshop never seemed to quite get behind the idea. We're not talking about the same sort of self-inflicted problem as Chaos Dwarfs, but their efforts with Beastmen always seemed a bit half-hearted. The 2003 Beasts of Chaos release, for example, featured only one plastic kit and the importing of several 90s kits (this is in the same era as Bretonnians getting four plastic kits, Wood Elves getting three and Ogre Kingdoms getting four). One of the bigger problems for the Cloven Ones was the lack of variety in Beastlords. There was two released in 2003. Both were nice enough models, but they had problems. The great weapon wielding one was a one-piece casting in metal which made him almost conversion-proof, and the other had two separate axes but basically no way to customise him. Added to this, neither one of them was as imposing as we might like.

This was a problem which was unexpectedly solved when Games Workshop released its recent Beastgrave game. One of the factions was the muddled mess of conflicting identities and reused CAD that you'd expect from an AoS original concept, but the Beastmen were very much in the spirit of the Old World. What's more, the Bestigor was large enough to stand out as a leader in a Beastmen army. And look how freakishly well he stands on a 25mm square base!

So there it was: finally, a Beastlord worthy of the name. And that was just the start of my quest to bring the Beastmen into the modern age...

The Dwarfs return

No race suffered such brutal beatings as the dwarfs during the dark years. But the dawi are a hardy race, and they have returned to take vengeance on their enemies... and take back their ancient homes.

Read about the return of the dwarfs

The Imperium is a really weird place

The Imperium of Man is... really strange. I think it's one of the things which makes it so powerful and appealing. You have this bizarrely futuristic, medieval universe where theology and genetics are all mixed up together. One of the aspects which has always appealed to me the most in this bizarre landscape of oddities is the population carrying on their business. There's an aspect of body horror and existential fear to Imperial citizens, with augmetic tools of their profession sometimes grafted right onto their bodies, but I think that the humanity of these everyday folk is really quite charming. One of the silliest things about an overwhelmingly silly era of 40k lore is the ludicrous assertion that the Imperium's million worlds are ALLLLLLL at war. One of the things I always found so appealing about the Imperium in past years was that most Imperial citizens live reasonably peaceful lives: the Imperium, for all of its thousands of wars, is proportionally much more peaceful than our turbulent modern world. This meant that there were always people going about their peculiar everyday lives, worried less about the xenos and more about job security or being liked or being able to go on holiday this year.


These two characters are among my favourite for exemplifying the bizarre diversity and strangeness of the Imperial citizenry. The models are both Inquisitorial acolytes, neither are combatants, so I like to imagine them as people in everyday life. I don't think either is a servitor despite their augmentations: the chap with the unwinding scrolls has a robe and accouterments rather too ornate for the Imperium's lobotomized slave class. Instead, I see both men as some kind of ancillary Administratum functionary.

The more heavyset man I think of as an archivist: the augmetic speak grille allows him to replay audio files on request, and the great rolls of parchment are for printing out dataslates when necessary. I imagine that he spends the majority of his time cataloging, tagging, and filing data. That it might be pointless data never occurs to this bloke: all data is important as far as he's concerned. When a colleague comes to him with a request for a file to be recalled and printed, he thoroughly examines their ID and makes a record even if he knows them well. He does this not to be a bore but because the data of how and when the data was accessed is in itself no less vital than the records themselves. Maybe, if we take the model's original purpose into account, that's why he ended up with an Inquisitor: someone was making very suspicious requests which, when he reported them, helped the Inquisitor to crack open a monstrous heretical plot.

The other character I see as a notary. His augmetics were offered to him to heighten an already formidable accuracy and attention to detail which made him stand out from the other Administratum clerks in his division. A fastidious man, he accepted the upgrades. In meetings of senior Imperial personnel, the notary stands in the corner, his hands a blur as he takes down in cyphered shorthand, not just the words spoken but the relative positions, body language, and tone of the speakers. When not in meetings, he faithfully translates an exacting report of the events without bias or prejudice. Outside of his working hours, the notary spends most evenings in a small but clean and well-ordered hab. He enjoys reading histories and books of science.

And that's the great thing about the stranger characters in 40k, whether they be models of art pieces - you can well imagine history and personality for them!

Command of the finer points

Maybe it's because I'm a dedicated narrative player, but I have a bad habit of forgetting my Command Points or losing count of them. My group got around this by lining up a bunch of dice beside the board to represent them, but it wasn't very nice to look at. I decided I should make some counters to keep track of them.

I had a bunch of Necromunda bases knocking about. Maybe it's my age but I kind of feel like pre-textured bases aren't as much fun, so I'd based the models on normal bases so I could do my own texturing.

I had the idea of some sort of industrial or mechanical surface slowly being devoured by some creeping parasitic daemon fungus. First up, I glued trios of polypropylene spheres (small plastic balls) onto the bases to form the symbol of Nurgle. Once these were dry, I built up a little tumourous flesh with PVA and tissue. The groping vines/tentacles are Woodland Scenics Autumn Foliage glued down with great fury.

And there you have it! Quick, simple but fairly effective!

For whom the bell tolls

It occurred to me that I've never shared photos of this guy despite him being the second Death Guard model I ever actually painted. He's actually one of the models which tempted me back to 40k in mid-2017. I liked that he was something other than a guy cuddling a gun. There was a peculiarly entertaining lack of heroism about the glum bell-wielder. I didn't know at the time that the Blightbringer would be among the first of the many bizarre and intriguing models other than glorious combatants looking all heroic and stuff.

He was also the first model who got the Synod of Suffering paint scheme in something like its final form. In my first attempt, it was more or less the same but the cloth was painted as ragged human skin. It looked a bit silly, to be honest. As you might have noticed if you've seen my work, one of my primary inspirations for my Nurgle is the idea of the slow dilapidation and corrosion of the manmade. This is because these are things which make me uneasy and spooked. I remember once when I was out walking, I came across what looked like an abandoned production facility of some sort, with crumbling sheds and a larger, maudlin building. And here's the thing: I've sat by myself high in the Alps, nobody for miles, only the wind sighing, and felt no sense of desolation. But in that corroded echo of human ambition, I felt unnerved, as if unseen presences were watching me from the dark, disintegrating buildings.

To bring this back to the cloth on Plague Marines, I decided to work in a way which would first create a simplistic version of the 'uncorrupted' colour scheme and then smear on the grime. I chose white as the colour for the cloth partly because of the implication of purity (and subsequent defilement) associated with that colour, and partly because the gross stains would be easiest to apply over white! I liked the effect, and thus my new army started in earnest.

The hope of spring

This is a strange era for the Wood Elves. The King and Queen who have ruled them for centuries are gone. Now there is a new King and Queen in the Woods... can they live up to their mighty forebears?

Read the Hope of Spring

Plagueburst Crawlers

 “Anyone else notice that we’re moving backwards?”

The tone of Lord Eiterfex’s voice was light, but Belisarius Cawl knew that tone. The Lord of Suffering was, in his slow and inexorable way, getting angry. Cawl didn’t blame him: The Imperium had done a good job of making Saxon Decimus Ultimus formidable: the hive city’s walls were encrusted in weapons batteries, and landing strips high in the city’s upper flanks were spitting out flights of fighters and bombers which were creating a miserable attrition rate among the Airborne Pestilence. Seeing Hytothrax the Younger being humbled probably amused Eiterfex, but not enough to compensate for the fact that the advance had stalled. The Imperium had been ruthlessly efficient in leveling six kilometres of the outer city and shanty towns around the hive, so that by the time the Death Guard arrived there was an almost impenetrable barrier. Even here, a kilometre from that killing field, enemy munitions tumbled past periodically.

Finis Omnium lumbered past, heading back into the relative safety of the wider urban sprawl. The ancient Reaver Titan was dragging its left leg a little, and the wet spark of faltering void shields gave the air an unpleasant, electric edge.

Eiterfex watched the titan with an air of faint interest. Cawl barely dared to breathe.

"You know, he's broken the backs of six worlds. Six. Credit to the Throne-rats. They've bloodied our noses good and hard."
The light quality in Eiterfex's voice had become even more pronounced. None dared approach him for a moment. Eventually, it was Sergeant Thrombax who spoke.
"Let's be real about this, boss. We screwed up going after the lesser cities first." 
There was another long, dangerous pause before Eiterfex grunted. 
"Oh well," he replied, "it was a gamble. We lost this one."
He stared into the distance.

"Alright," he said eventually, "pull back. That goes for Doomhark and that upstart Hytothrax. All divisions move back to the second city."
Thrombax nodded and wandered off, bellowing orders. 
"Cawl," said Eiterfex after a moment, "get your Crawlers ready. The Throne-rats will see us pull back. They won't be stupid enough to fall for it. But they will attempt to secure the outer urban sprawl. The Brass Reapers are only days out now, so they won't want to take any chances. They think the end is in sight. And it is in the hopeful nature of these poor creatures that their downfall always comes.
"I think we let them have back that ground we just took."
Eiterfex chuckled. It was a whispery, dry thing. 
"And then, Cawl... we shall rain down horrors upon them."

Foul Blightspawn

"It's a funny thing, you know," rasped Brother Sardus Vomortis, "people often say that my order are sadists. I don't know where that came from. I'm a scientist."
He scratched at his side absently, the rhythmic throb of the churn in his guts drowning out the distant sound of screams. On the table, the eldar spat curses in its own heathen tongue and struggled against the bonds. 

"May Khaine himself be avenged upon you, filthy warp-soaked mon-keigh!"
Sardus looked around. He didn't raise an eyebrow, because his flesh and his armour had long since melded together and made such notions absurd, but he managed to convey the impression that the gesture would have imparted. 
"There's really no need to get angry," Sardus replied in halting but passage Asuryn, to the eldar's visible surprise, "I'm not here to harm you. Not in the long run, at any rate."
He lumbered over, dragging up a chair made of mouldering Astartes bones. He sat heavily. The chair had no back - it would have got in the way of his tank. It grumbled faintly in protest but held. Sardus looked at the eldar long and hard. 
"It's all about survival, you know," he said, "ultimately, that's all it's ever really about. We live in a universe which tries to kill us all, and it will have its way in the end. But we can forestall that end with the application of science."
The eldar spat. 
"What would you know of science, lowly ape-thing?"
Sardus grunted and reached down. From the putrid deck of the ship, he lifted a beautiful blueish gem and held it for the eldar to see. The alien grew deathly still. 
"I understand that this is a wonderful piece of science," said Sardus, "an absolutely incredible achievement. A literal defiance of species-wide damnation. From what I have read and observed, the stone resonates in just such a way and holds just the correct properties that it draws eldar aether-matter into it with a pull which, over a short distance, is greater than the pull of the warp. From there, the eldar's fellows release the aether-matter into a purpose built psychically resonant haven within the Craftworld. I offer no mockery when I say that your people were truly among the galaxy's greatest minds to devise such an invention."
The eldar stared at the gem, wide-eyed. He did not plead or beg, which Sardus admired, but the alien's fear could be felt almost physically. 

"It's a good solution, I'll grant," he went on, "especially as the alternative is so appalling. The Dark Prince devours your souls if they enter the warp unshielded. And we're not talking about the few moments of pain and surprise that humans feel before they ignite and the warp's predators shred their consciousness. Your people remain conscious indefinitely."
Sardus held the spirit stone out and wagged it, like a teacher waving a book at a stubborn student. 
"But, I started this discussion by talking about survival. And what does an eldar do to survive if his spirit stone is lost?"
The eldar's eyes widened and he might have spoken then, but Sardus was too fast. He hurled the stone against the wall. Astartes strength and the warp tainted malice of the ship did all the work. The stone shattered. The eldar stared at the remains in utter desolation.
"Now," said Sardus, "we can have a proper discussion. Let us examine the facts. You are trapped and weaponless on an enemy ship, surrounded by what you would call corruption and disease. And you cannot allow yourself to die. It is not a matter of honour or loyalty. You must make a determination about how to survive. As a scientist, I wish to help you make the best choice. I am also, after a fashion, a gardener. A gardener understands that his plants will die without the correct care and that a plant who stings is still a thing of beauty."
He stood up heavily and clumped over to a workbench. With surprising dexterity, he began to examine vials of unmarked liquid. 

"What insane riddles are these?" demanded the eldar, though his voice was empty and flat. Sardus glanced over his shoulder. 
"That feeling? That is despair. You are damned, and you can conceive of no way back. I can offer you no way out, before you ask. But what I can do is to help you recognise that being damned is not the worst thing that can happen to you."
The eldar regained a little of his former anger.
"You speak madness!"
Sardus snorted a small laugh. 
"Very probably. But that's kind of the point I'm making.  We need to stop thinking rationally in an irrational universe."
Sardus returned to the table and loomed over the eldar. He held a seemingly innocuous vial of clear liquid in his armoured hand. 
"A choice lies in your future. In the one case, you can continue to deny the nature of the universe around you and the events unfolding. In that case, you will die a very unpleasant death, and that will be only the beginning of your suffering. In the other case, you must accept a truth which will be difficult for you. I am no insensitive to that. You must embrace the knowledge that the world you have known is a hysterical lie smeared across the truth. Decay, debasement, and degradation are inevitable. In resisting these things, we give ourselves pain and heartbreak. By embracing them, we must face a moment of unhappiness. But beyond that, we are ironclad. We will survive much longer. And when death finally comes, the Ur-father himself will welcome us to the Garden. Embrace the Ur-father. Embrace the force that the world hides behind the name Nurgle. Your soul will be damned, but you will rejoice in it. Survival, you see?"

The eldar spat.
"Never!"
Sardus shrugged, the motion tectonic in his corroded power plate. The stench rolling off of him killed the eldar's defiance and he fell to coughing. 
Sardus regarded him for a moment longer before grabbing the alien's face and forcing the vial of liquid down his throat. 
"Call when you change your mind," he said mildly. He lumbered back to his workbench as the screaming began. the churn in his guts continued to work slowly, unhurried. 
Eventually, the eldar changed its mind.

Adept Primaris Rebyka Darlayn

Psyker.
A strange word, is it not? So much power, so much potential, so much hate, so much fear, all wrapped in six letters. A fitting name, though, because part of it is silent and unseen. Just one letter, one little letter 'P'. There is so much about an actual psyker that remains unseen.
I am a Primaris Battle Psyker. I look thirty-five, which is a little more than a third of my real age, sidereal. Partly a conceit to vanity, for I am considered attractive. Partly pragmatism: an individual of my skill and potency cannot be allowed to die simply by the tyranny of age. I was born psychic. The Black Ships came for me when I was seven years old, standard. Since then, I have served His Divine Majesty as an adept of the Scholastica Psykana.

I am not like those poor shackled wretches, chained in their own filth, who are herded into battle in crude Wyrdvane covens. I pity them for their fate, but see the necessity of it. I have seen what seeks to enter the world through them, and what must be done to deny such creatures. Most of those poor, shuffling creatures may live painful lives, but most will reach the Emperor's Light. Regardless, I am a different order of being.  

I can summon lightning to blast the enemies of the Imperium to ashes. I can fill the foe's mind with nightmares and shadows so that they scarcely know how to point their weapons. I can restore balance to broken men and screen my own troops from unfriendly eyes. I have stood alongside legends. Ulyssiad Sagath knows my name, and I bear a token from Aegyptor Astagath. Why do I tell you this? Because I want you to understand who I am before you attempt to lie to me. You are going to die. Let us not pretend otherwise. You, Corporal Vaylin Weisser of the 885th Volscani Cataphracts, are a traitor and a heretic. You will be remembered as such. We are here to determine two things. The first is whether a footnote will be added saying that you offered all that you knew and accepted the justice of Commissar DeSarco, the lady standing behind you. The second is whether, in doing so, in offering me everything you know, there is a small chance that you may yet be redeemed and reach the Emperor's Light. If you do not give me everything I ask for and mean it, your soul will ignite in the warp seconds after it leaves your body. This is not my judgement. This is not even the judgement of His Divine Majesty. This is the choice before you now. Confess your sins, tell me every single thing you know about the archenemy's movements in the Rubicon Sector and have a chance at redemption. Defy me and face death and damnation. Shall we begin?

The boom of DeSarco's bolt pistol was deafening. Adept Darlayn did not flinch. She looked at the corpse of the Traitor Guardsman, his head exploded like a rotten fruit. DeSarco called out into the hallway, and a pair of grim faced Ophelian Guardsmen entered. Without a word, they hauled the corpse away. Darlayn carefully added some notes to her docket. 

"Did you get anything?" DeSarco asked quietly. 

Darlayn didn't look up. 

"Some basics of troop deployment. He had no idea where Eiterfex is. He'd never even seen the Plague Lord, truthfully."

DeSarco grunted with an entire lack of surprise. She looked at Darlayn sidelong. They had been friends a long time, but neither one of them ever lost sight of the fact that part of DeSarco's job was to keep an eye on Darlayn. DeSarco was good at picking up on Darlayn's subtle tells. After twenty five interrogations, the Primaris Battle Psyker's iron will could not quite contain her tiredness. 

"You need a break, Byka?" DeSarco asked quietly. 

Darlayn looked up, pride and determination in her eyes. After a moment, she sighed and nodded.

"Just a short one," she replied. 

DeSarco pulled up a chair and sat down. They sat in companionable silence for a while. Servitors trundled in and scrubbed the blood from the floor and the wide interrogation table. Slowly, Darlayn centred herself and refocused her mind. She allowed herself a moment of sorrow for the faint sounds she had heard in the echoes of DeSarco's pistol: the shrieks of the dead traitor as he immolated in the Sea of Souls, and the Neverborn ripped his essence to shreds. Evidently, he had not sought redemption with enough conviction. 

Will they ever learn, I wonder?  she thought to herself. Then she sighed and pushed the thought away. She called for the Guardsmen standing outside.

"Send in the next one," she said.