Chaos in Conflict - CSM vs CSM

So after 18 months of playing Warhammer with my lad, Charlie, I finally had my first game against someone not related to me and able to call on the unbeatable reserves of his mum. Having said that, I’ve never won against Charlie—and yesterday’s game was following suite.

But what a great laugh! I met Iain by one of those weird coincidences wherein we’d both commented on the same photo on a Facebook group and I noticed his address said ’Greetland.’ Long story short, we befriended on FB and met up yesterday for the first epic game.

We’re both Chaos Space Marines players, and for our first battle chose to stick with the armies we knew. Iain’s been playing since he was a lad, and fortunately this was a fun game where I was reassured he was going to go easy on me!

My boys???

The Lords of Aberration –Decay Division (2500 points)

HQ: (1) Lord Terganus—Chaos Lord: Jump Pack , MON, Sigil of corruption, Plasma pistol, Black Mace
(2)Boroth Bileblood—Daemon Prince : Burning Brand of Skalanthrax, Demon of Nurgle, Power Armour, Wings

Elite: (1) Chaos Terminators (x5) –Reaper Autocannon /Combi-melta, Powerfist x3
(2)Chosen (x5)—4xMeltagun, MON, Chosen Champion Gift of mutation, Plasma Pistol, Power Sword, Chaos Rhino
(3) Helbrute - Missile launcher/ TL lascannon



The Lords of Aberration chaos marines

Troops: (1) Chaos Cultists (x10) Autoguns /Flamer
(2) Chaos Space Marines (x10) Autocannon ,Plasma Gun
(3) Plague Marines (x6) Meltagun/Plasma Gun & Plague Champion - Combi -melta, Power Fist& Chaos Rhino
(4) Plague Marines (x5) : 2x Flamer & Plague Champion- Combi-flamer

Fast: (1) Chaos Bikers (x3) - MON, 2x Meltagun &Chaos Biker Champion- Melta Bombs, Plasma Pistol
(2) Heldrake - Hades Autocannon
(3)Raptors (x5) Meltagun/Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol

Heavy: (1)Chaos Predator : Autocannon, Lascannons
(2)Forgefiend –Additional Ectoplasm Cannon, 2xHades
(3) Obliterators (x2) :MON


One of the Nurgle Obliterators

Iain lent me a drake to play with, and his 2.5K of awesomeness included a Nurgle psyker DP, terminators in a land raider, two units of CSM (Nurgle), plague marines, Dreadclaw drop pod, heldrake, defiler, a vindicator, and… an Imperial Knight. Yes, I’m not messing with you—370 whatever points of awesomeness, with a big bugger melta pie-plate that made my troops do the impression of the wicked witch having a shower…

As it was my first game of 7th Ed we decided just to go for total wipeout, and off we went…

I didn’t take enough notes to do a detailed Batrep, but essentially we had a standard size play area with loads of terrain (and cover!!), an abandoned Aegis line with Quad-gun and statue, and a river with bridges. I had Helturkey and termies in reserve, he had Heldrake only.

First round I learned about absence of psykers in my army the hard way as his DP sends rotting magic and fly palsies across my troops. I slung some heavy shots against his vindicator and defiler, stripping a few HPs away, and raced up the field with raptors and bikes aiming to flank the Imperial Knight.
Then he flings a defiler, vindicator and imperial knight pie-plate in the manner of a 41st millennium Greek wedding. Think the raptors and chaos lord went down to that salvo, and predator/forgie got scorched. The awesome drop pod lands in the middle of my dudes and his marines spill out.



the ill-fated bikers racing towards the huge Knight....

Turn two the Chosen earned their money by melta-ing the land raider, and some lucky hits from my brute and bikers immobilises his Knight. Similar hits on the vindicator stop it dead in its tracks.
His DP cooked and rotted his way through my cultists, and the Knight blew up two bikers.

Turn three, I blew some more chunks out of his guys but nothing major, and the DP got medieval on some Plague Marines asses—well, the cankerous flakes of armour that resemble buttocks. He returned the favour by his DP toasting my PMs, and his other heavies almost finshing Forgie.



The Decay Division's finest Plague marines, looking for moisturiser...

Turn four, and still no drake, and the Termies deepstrike mishap back into ongoing reserves! Noooo!!!. DP finishes off the plague marines and sets his sights on Imperial Knight, whilst Helbrute and one biker keep chipping at it. Then Forgie and Predator nail the Defiler into demon-crab oblivion. In reply, he finishes off predator that round and his Termies annihilate the cheeky Chosen.


The Cheeky Chosen

The epic finale finds my plasma-melta PMs scrapping with his CSMs and losing; his Vindicator holds on still; and my DP charges his Imperial Knight. On my round of combat we are both still standing, albeit both with a wound left. And my Termies mishap again! 240 points of utter crappery there!



The shy Termies who never arrived at the party

Final round, Iain’s turn five, is like the end of the Godfather. He pops my Forgefiend, my Plague Marines, and my Heldrake. And the fight between the Imperial Knight and my DP? Incredibly I get the hits, and the pen roll—and he explodes. The wave of energy vaporises my last biker, and some of his marines.


Forgefiend, looking rather blue in this photo. Lad did well in battle--earned his points back

Iain is the victor—winning by 3 or 4 VPs due to his slay warlord, linebreaker and first blood. Most importantly we had a great laugh, and finished the game feeling like we’d known each other ages rather than for four hours. It’s funny how life throws these things at you—meeting someone who has such similar tastes and sense of humour in such an offbeat way. I’m hoping we’ve got many more games ahead, and many more laughs.

Stainless Steel Style

My first exposure to Harry Harrison's writing was actually via an adaptation of his work for the UK sci-fi comic 2000AD. The Stainless Steel Rat appeared in issues in the late seventies early eighties, written by Gosnall and drawn by Carlos Ezquerra (who drew Jim like James Couburn). It was quite different to a lot of 2000AD stories, as it captured the irreverent humour of Harrison well, and I loved the idea of a space-age thief (because let's face it we all wanted to be Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker).
A few years later, when I started to read a bit more sci-fi (mainly Heinlein) I decided to try the SSR books, and from there got into Deathworld, Bill the Galactic Hero, and the Eden books.
Harrison was a skilled writer. His style was easy to devour, avoiding the pomposity of many sci-fi writers and he managed to write humour without deriding the genre. I found it interesting that Harrison's origins were in the comics field- he was an illustrator and a writer of syndicated comic strips in the 1950s.

Deathworld was Harrison's first SF novel. It was originally serialised, as were many of the fantasy and SF books of that era. Its hero, Jason dinAlt, is a typical Harrison rogue--he is a gambler with some psychic ability--and he meets and accompanies Kerk Pyrrus to the planet Pyrrus (the Deathworld of the title). When I read the book first time I was blown away by the mixture of action and humour that typifies Harrison's work. Harrison wrote three Deathworld books in the sixties, but it was the Stainless Steel rat series that produced the greatest output.

After discovering them in 2000AD I read the first seven books through the 1980s, four of which had been written when i got into the series, and three after (SSR for President, SSR is Born and SSR gets Drafted). The decision to write SSR books about Jim's youth was a great idea, in my opinion, as the series was turning into a little of a family affair by the fourth book.

Jim DiGris was a perfect anti-hero. He was a moralistic thief and con-man who abhorred killing, justified his thievery by saying it provided the galaxy with something to talk about, and was dedicated to his missus and kids. His love, Angelina, has less compunctions about bumping people off. The concept of the Special Corps (a group of largely ex-criminals who now fight crime) formed the basis for the early books, and highlights Harrison's love for the rogue in SF.

Harrison lived until 87, which is fair going, and its hard to be too sad about his passing as he leaves an astonishing catalogue of work behind. I'm planning to catch up on the SSR books that I never read, and indeed the Bill, Galactic Hero sequels. There are so many books and so little time!

Luther Arkwright- my first journey into Steampunk?

When I was a wee lad 'punk' was a term designed to generate raised eyebrows in my grandma as she cooly flicked past images of Mohawks and bogey chains in the Daily Mail. Then I learnt it could be used to describe any perp not fitting in with (a) Dirty Harry's concept of lawful conduct or (b) grubby muggers in superhero comics.

I can't remember when precisely I heard the term Steampunk. I assume it was around the time I heard of Cyberpunk, so probably a few years back. As a term it's really exploded and is seeping through the media into the mainstream now.

For those not au fait with it, it is essentially like retro-sci-fi, namely sci-fi stories set in the age of steam/clockwork. Generally this means Victorian, although I suppose it could apply to late Georgian and Edwardian periods too. In some cases it is a historical setting, in some it is an alternate world setting- perhaps where technology developed along steam/clockwork lines. It's replete with automatons, brass, cogs, airships and so forth.

The actual term was coined by Jeter in reference to his books Infernal Devices and Morlock Nights and, I think, about Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (an awesome book). But there were books that would fit into the genre description well before Jeter and when I first heard the term the first one I thought about was Bryan Talbot's The Adventures of Luther Arkwright.

I recall my first encounter with Arkwright (this sounds like a Yorkshire sit-com already). The RPG magazine Imagine ran an issue on him, with a Traveller adventure in it. We tried it two or three times and never got past some mutant dogs, but that didn't matter. The concept of alternate worlds hooked me and soon after Talbot began work for 2000AD and got the credibility he deserved.

Luther Arkwright started life in some small press mag in the UK and I read it later when they were collected then added to in the first Titan books volume. My mate Nik bought it and I followed suit. It was probably my first mature comic, except maybe for Sandman.

It tells a complex story of alternate worlds all put in danger by the existence of a doomsday device that is procured by a race called the disruptors. To flush the disruptors out, Wotan (the central advanced alternate) send Luther Arkwright, an agent, to an alternate wherein the English civil war has been perpetuated for centuries. The idea is for Luther to cause a hubbub and draw 'em out.

Luther is unique in his ability to cross alternates. Naturally this is due to a higher purpose which comes in later. The story is told in a very complex style of flashback, jammed with iconic imagery, stream of consciousness prose, symbolism etc. The art varies in quality, but still has sections that are breathtaking in their design.

The violence in it shocked me when I first read it, and even now packs a punch. The characters are great, especially Fairfax and Cromwell, and even the sexual content is well done (although Talbot was never great at drawing women).

The graphic novel is often brought up in discussions around Steampunk. So is it? Well it has some relation to the genre- it is sci-fi in an alternate world setting that is largely historical. Technology is mainly diesel-based (air-ships, motorbikes) but the feel, certainly of the European scenes, is very Imperial- with a Prussian Empire and appropriate attire. In the UK part everything is puritanical - monotone, austere, miserable. The book begins in a Victoriana alternate, which seems to be Arkwright's preferred home. So there are traces of Steampunk in there. Talbot credits Moorcock with a big influence - a tiny bit of Jerry Cornelius, a bit of Oswald Bastable (from Nomad of the Air series)- and the Bastable books were probably one of the pioneers of the genre.

In the end it is academic, and borne from a strange OCD desire of mine to categorise everything (too much reading the NME as a teen). Whether it's steam- diesel- alternate-headexploding punk or just bloody great, Luther Arkwright is one of the best examples of UK sci-fi of the Eighties and a great demonstration of what a graphic novel can achieve. Talbot went on to write comics on child abuse, Lewis Carroll and animals doing film-noir, all of which are amazing. He remains probably the most talented 'all-rounder' in the UK comic scene.

Time to put some Damned on the I-pod and have some ...er...punk-punk.