Warhammer Music.

Today I want to share a fun Youtube channel I tripped over by chance:

Adeptus Anthemicus

This is a music channel apparently run by one person from the UK. All the songs are Warhammer themed, both 40K and Fantasy, with a large portion being parodies on famous songs and some being originals in different styles such as folk and even death metal.

I haven't had the time to listen to all of them, but the dozen or so I've heard are amazing. I'll embed a few below. So, if you're in the mood, go and have a listen, the music is awesome and deserves more views. (Disclaimer: I do not know the creator at all.)

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week! 

    

 

Listen carefully.

Being a life long fan of Warhammer 40.000, I was interested to learn about a story called:

The Watcher in the Rain.

But I hit a snag. The Watcher in the Rain is an audiodrama only, it doesn't exist in written form. I became determined to listen to it so I went hunting.

You can get it from Games Workshop directly, but paying over €10 for a 75 minute drama felt a bit steep. It's not like an album that you can listen to several times a day if you want to, an audiodrama is a book, you might want to revisit it from time to time, but not as often as music.

Then I found it on Audible (not a sponsor), Amazon's audio book platform, and to my delight you can sign up for £0.99 and you get a credit with which I got The Watcher in the Rain. 

I had heard a couple of audiodramas 15+ years ago, dramatizations of a couple of Lovecraft stories,which were excellent.

The main differences between an audiodrama and an audiobook are sounds effects and multiple voices. An audiobook is normally read by one person, but an audiodrama has different people for all characters and the aforementioned sound effects. This creates a wonderful atmosphere that enhances the experience beyond mere narration.

So, I sat down, put on my headphones and enjoyed The Watcher in the Rain. I'm not going to go into detail about the story as such, it deserves to be experienced as it is, I'll only say that it was excellent both in writing and performances. If you like Warhammer 40.000 I highly recommend it. 

This experience has also rekindled my interest in audiodramas in general, and I'm going to go hunting for more. They were all the rage back before TV became a thing as something people could enjoy at home on the radio instead of going to the cinema, and they work well when playing a game that doesn't require too much audio, like World of Warcraft.

 

That's that and all that. Join me again nest time, and until then, have a great week!  

What is Warhammer 40.000?

The Warhammer 40.000 IP has seen quite a few successes lately, with the Space Marine 2 game being the latest. 

But what is Warhammer 40.000 or as it's also known, 40K? For those of you who didn't grow up with it as one of your favorite settings, I have the answer. Or rather the Youtuber/live streamer Bricky has the answer. He has a really funny and informative two part video called Every single faction explained as well as a good one that explains the timeline. Keep in mind that the 40K setting was created in the 1980's and has been expanded on, retconned and developed for about 40 years. Bricky's videos can only scratch the surface, but they are so worth watching. 

Faction Part 1

Faction Part 2

Timeline

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!  

Assassinorum: Kingmaker

I recently finished reading:

Assassinorum: Kingmaker,

and I want to talk about it.

This standalone novel set in the Warhammer 40.000 (40k) universe is written by Robert Rath, and is set in the most recent timeline in 40k.

Three assassins are sent to a Knight world, a planet ruled by two noble houses, where the nobles pilot huge bipedal war machines, called Knights. Their job is to kill the current High Monarch before he secedes from the Imperium of Man, while causing as little damage as possible and steering the election of a new High Monarch in a way favorable to the Imperium. This seems at first to be an impossible task, but the characters aren't just deadly in combat, they are smart.

From the start, Rath sets up believable and compelling characters that are easy to like. Not a small task since Imperial Assassins are a truly brutal bunch. He also weaves in many elements that might come into play later, but in such a way, that you don't notice them. There is a theater concept called Chekov's Gun, that states that if you show the audience a gun, it has to be used at some point in the play. Rath manages to hide his Chekov's Guns amongst the rich details of this book all without overloading you with details. A hard task many authors fail at, but Rath pulls off with aplomb.

I have read a lot of novels set in the 40k universe, ranging from very good to completely abysmal, and I can confidently say that Assassinorum. Kingmaker is up there with the best. Many fans recommend the famous Eisenhorn Trilogy as the best place for a completely new reader to start, and I don't disagree, but after finishing with Eisenhorn, I highly recommend Assassinorum: Kingmaker.

A lot of the books in 40k are understandable focused on war, with the setting originally being just a tabletop war game, and this can be a bit boring for those who are just getting into Warhammer. What both Eisenhorn and Assassinorum: Kingmaker do so well is skirt around most of the battle stuff and instead show you what sits behind all the warring, in the cultures, the worlds and everything else that happens in the setting before and on the side of the battles.

All in all, Assassinorum: Kingmaker is an exciting book that never gets dull or bogged down, is always on point and constantly managed to surprise me even though I've been a Warhammer fan since the late 1980's. It felt fresh and fun all throughout.

If you are a fan of 40k and you haven't given Assassinorum: Kingmaker a chance, you are doing yourself a disservice, it really is that good. I wish I could tell you more about it, but that would spoil it and it doesn't deserve that.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

More Geek TV

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Sandman is finally getting a TV series. It seems we have more news on the fantasy TV front.

First off, Warhammer 40.000, Games Workshop's grimdark Fantasy & Space Opera setting is now getting a TV show. Very little is known or even decided at this stage, but it's the Eisenhorn books by Dan Abnett that are being adapted. Eisenhorn is an inquisitor, one of the independent agents that hunt heretics, demons, aliens and other threats to the Imperium of Man.

I have read the books, and they could work quite well on the small screen. Warhammer 40k is chiefly a war-game, so it follows that the setting focuses mostly on war, which gets crazy expensive to film. This is where Eisenhorn shines, being more about investigations, small scale fights and such. In the later books, there are some events that would cost the equivalence of a small nations GNP to film, but they have time to figure that out.

The 40k fanbase is very passionate, not to mention detail oriented, so here's hoping the show makers know what they are doing, because the fans do. Breaches against the lore are not going to go down well.

In other similar news, Amazon has signed an exclusive TV deal for Middle-Earth. They signed it in 2017 with a two year window, so the clock is ticking and filming will likely have to start this year.

Nothing is known about casting as yet, but what is known is that they are using the Second Age, i.e. the time in which Sauron rose to power and the last alliance of men and elves took place. The Second Age is 3441 years long so what they choose to focus on remains to be seen. Either way, calling it a Lord of the Rings show is misleading as that story takes place in the Third Age. I guess it's a Game of Thrones issue, A Game of Thrones being the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, not the whole title in itself.

It seems like it's going to be filmed in New Zealand, like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Jackson is not attached to the project in any way. Ian McKellen has stated that he wouldn’t mind returning as Gandalf, but he has to my knowledge not been asked. Time will tell.

It seems to be a golden age of geek television, and with Game of Thrones being such a run away hit, it's no wonder. Whether they manage to produce anything really good is another question. Cautious optimism is the way to go in my opinion. Get too hyped and you may get too disappointed.

I'll probably keep talking about this as more news trickles in so stay tuned. This however is enough for this time, until next we meet, have a great week!

More gaming news

Hello there, it's time for more Eccentric Spheres!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Microsoft's plans for their Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and the plan to erase the walls between PC and Xbox gaming.

Well more information is available and it's not all that good. I did mention that games bought from the Windows Store are locked to borderless full-screen and that LSI is disabled, but it goes deeper than that.

The problem is that the .exe game files are essentially apps, and as such are locked down and can not be modified. In essence this means that games bought from Microsoft can't be modded! One of the biggest elements of the PC gaming scene is disabled. Microsoft please...

If this persists they have completely lost their minds. Another aspect is that games can't be recorded by traditional means, which means that Let's Players and streamers can't and (most likely) won't use these games. This in turn will kill any chances Microsoft has of becoming a major retailer of games. Why should anyone buy their games from them when other retailers don't have these limitations? You tell me, I can't figure it out.

Microsoft did say there would be 'growing pains' but this is worryingly dumb. Get your heads straight guys.

Interestingly, speaking of MS, they have suggested to Sony that it would be interesting and cool of Xbox players and Playstation players could play together, and Sony has agreed, at least in theory. These talks are very much in their infancy, so time will tell.

Finally, Creative Assembly, the team behind the beloved Total War series, have pushed back the release date for Total War Warhammer by a month. Considering how messed up Total War releases have usually been, this is a good thing.

Other interesting things about Total Warhammer are that the Vampire Counts have finally been released, and it looks fine so far, but many essential elements are still absent.

They have also revealed that the sieges will be different from previous Total War titles. Where you could previously attack all four sides of a city, you can only attack two in Warhammer. This is to aid the AI in using functional strategies, something that has been lacking in previous titles, I'm told.

Again time will tell if Total Warhammer will be a good game, and in that vein I have decided to adopt a wait and see strategy instead of getting the game upon release. I love the setting too much to take the risk of getting my heart broken.

That is that. Until we see each other next time, have a lovely week!

Vermintide

Today's subject is a new game on the market: Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide.

Although it is in pre-order status, it is in the final beta stage, otherwise I would have waited before buying. But I was curious and took the plunge. It paid off in spades.

For those who don't know, Warhammer is a fantasy setting created back in 1983 by Games Workshop, and I've been a huge fan ever since the late 80's myself. I practically grew up in the Warhammer world.

It's only relatively recently that we've started to see good Warhammer games on the PC. There have been some games before, but most weren't very good. The ones that were worth anything tended to be in the sci-fi sister setting, Warhammer 40.000. Now we seem to be getting them left and right. Total War Warhammer is out next year, or rather the first Total Warhammer game of three.

Vermintide take a lot of inspiration from the Left 4 Dead games. Let's be honest about that upfront. You could even go so far as to say Vermintide is a fantasy version of L4D. But it is also so much more. But basically, if you liked L4D, chances are high that you'll like Vermintide.

Now, Vermintide is a four player co-op game in which you and your team must battle hordes of Skaven in a gloomy and burning city in order to complete objectives. Skaven BTW, are human sized rat men. How cool is that?

Since the whole game isn't out yet, I can't give you a proper review, but I got to play the three first levels, and boy oh boy were they ever great.

The classes seem to work well together, I played as the Bright Wizard (fire wizard) and we had the Witch Hunter, Elf Wayfarer and the Dwarf Ranger. There is a fifth class; Empire Soldier, but we didn't really use him. Everyone has their own strengths that they bring to the table and no one felt out of place or useless.

The game so far plays great. Both the ranged and the melee aspects feel solid, and the game is gorgeous. Even on medium settings, it shines. The banter between the characters feels natural and the over all mood is wonderful.

When the whole game is out, I'll write up a full review, but so far, this game is amazing. Had it existed when I was a kid, I wouldn't have done much else.

Until next time, have a great week!