Gav Thorpe's Blog, page 22

Interview with Mengel Miniatures – May 2016

You can read a new interview with Mengel Miniatures where we discuss in depth how I found out about Age of Sigmar, why I chose the Celestial Vindicators, being able to include Easter Eggs in Warbeast, along with much more.

There are definitely spoilers in the interview, so if you haven’t read Warbeast yet, click on at your peril!


Read the Interview

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International TableTop Day

April 30th was International TableTop Day, and to celebrate we managed a trip to The Dice Cup Board Game Cafe in Nottingham. We’ve had a few aborted attempts recently – Sammy is so interested in all the boxes and game pieces (a promising sign for the future!) that we spend most of our time stopping him from causing havoc. This time we went armed with parent #3 (the iPad) and a truck-load of snacks.

Based on advice from Steve, one of The Dice Cup’s owners and game experts, we went for Patchwork by Mayfair Games, as an easy to learn and quick to play game.

The aim of the game is to create a patchwork quilt made with Tetris style pieces, using buttons as currency to buy patches, and the time taken to “sew” them as a mechanism for pushing the game forward. As the ‘patches’ are randomly laid out each time, you can end up with a completely different game, requiring different tactics, each time you play. As with all good games, although it was easy to learn, I can see the strategy for playing developing continually.

We managed to get two games in, despite Sammy “helping” Kez to play on several occasions, and ended winning one game each.

The Dice Cup was again very busy, so much so that I hear later in the day people were playing on the floor as all tables were taken, and they were still gaming at 2am. Not just a sign of a popular venue, but also that The Dice Cup is so casual and welcoming, that it feels like you could be at home playing on the living room floor. This time we sampled one of the Vegan cheesecakes, thanks to a free voucher Kez had won at the grand opening weekend – it was very tasty, and as Sammy has a dairy allergy, it was great that he was able to try some too.

Steve’s other recommendation was Jaipur so we’ll try that next time we visit, but if you have any suggestions for quick games that we can try, please let me know in the comments.

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**

Space Hulk: Deathwing – Gameplay Trailer!

In case you missed the announcement last week, the first gameplay trailer is out for the Space Hulk: Deathwing video game. I’ve been a fan of the Space Hulk board game since it was released, and getting to write the novel for the latest edition was great fun, so I was really pleased to be able to contribute to the development of Deathwing.

Wow! I consulted on and co-wrote the story for the game – I’ll post more about it as and when I’m allowed. Slightly narcissistic, but I can’t wait to see how the story unfolds on screen.

“Infiltrate and explore the Space Hulk “Olethros”, a derelict collection of space ship and debris filled with hidden dangers and relics. As a Librarian, players can take AI squadmates or have fellow players join them in their investigation into the mystery of Olethros, co-written by renowned Dark Angels writer Gavin Thorpe.

Infesting the Space Hulk are ferocious Genestealers who utilise ambushes, swarming and tactical retreats in order to slowly tear down the player’s Terminator armour. Damage is localised, and taking too many hits in certain areas will cause your armour to malfunction. To stop the horde, you’ll have access to a wide assortment of weapons, skills, and powers taken directly from Warhammer 40,000 lore to customize your squad of Dark Angel Terminators.

Space Hulk: Deathwing will release later in 2016.”

You can find out more about the game including more videos, screenshots, wallpapers, and the sign up form for the official newsletter, on all the usual channels:

Official Space Hulk: Deathwing Website

Space Hulk: Deathwing on Twitter

Space Hulk: Deathwing on Facebook

So what does everyone think? Will you be playing it?

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**

April 2016 – Q&A

This is a compilation of questions that have been emailed and messaged to me recently.

If you want to ask about anything, you can post a comment here or get in touch through the contact page (and newsletter subscribers can just reply to any of my emails).

Sam asked: Hey Gav, I like writing very much, and as 40k is as a big part of my life as it can be allowed, i have been reading many BL novels. it has inspired me to write my own lore and stories about my Cadian regiment that I actually own. But i fear that as i am quite young, never had a book published and my writing seems to resemble Mr Abnetts very much I wont get accepted. Do you have any ideas on how I could counter these faults to increase my chances?

First of all, writing anything is an achievement you should be proud of. If it happens to resemble Dan’s work I wouldn’t fret too much. As a species we learn by copying – whether writing, drawing or learning to walk and talk we all start off by imitation to learn the skills required. Also, there are far worse authors to emulate.

There are lots of articles on my site and elsewhere about writing and storytelling, but my three key tips when starting out would be:

* Pick a solid, simple story to tell. http://gavthorpe.co.uk/2015/09/05/how-to-write-a-story/

* Choose a strong point-of-view character and stick with that one person. http://gavthorpe.co.uk/2011/10/13/whos-the-agent/

* Come up with a plan before you start and then write to that plan. http://gavthorpe.co.uk/2016/01/30/proper-planning-prevents-something-something-something/

And, of course, get as many people as possible to read it and give feedback – a good edit is essential.

Matthew asked: Hello Gav, huge fan of your work. I wanted to know if you knew anything about Black Library’s policy on multiple submissions. It doesn’t seem to say anything in the guidelines against it.

Given the way the process works, I would pick what you think is your best idea and go with that – they are looking at you as a writer as muxch as the particular idea you are pitching. Focus your energies on one awesome submission. If you’ve got plenty of ideas for stories that’s great, but make sure they one you send in has got enough meat to it to last ten thousand words – that’s pretty long for a short story and you may want to see if you can fold in a character idea or subplot from your others to add some depth. All the best with your writing.

My Author’s Notes blog on my first Age of Sigmar novel, Warbeast, continues to be of interest:

Wayne commented: The problem I always had with this kind of fluff is that just like Marine vs. Marine, you can’t really rationalize Stormcast vs. Stormcast in the fluff/narrative of the game. You have to handwave it away as a “training exercise” which gets old. That’s been an issue IMHO since, well, forever with 40k (and I played in 2nd and 3rd edition) and seems like a new thing in AOS where you can’t really have Order vs. Order, it has to be Order (especially if Stormcast) vs. Chaos/other.

That’s a good point, though like Empire v Empire you can justify SM vs SM with examples of many historical falling outs between Chapters and mini civil wars. It’s always hard to work the ‘good guys’ fighting themselves, but I don’t see it as any more problematic that High Elves versus High Elves in the old background, or the even more unlikely case of Lizardmen vs Lizardmen, for example.

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**

Corvus Corax In New Pics Shocker!

Black Library have recently released card-mounted limited edition gallery prints of the remaining Horus Heresy novel covers. Take a look here to see which of Neil Roberts‘ awesome artwork you’d like adorning your walls. The Primarch of the Raven Guard is famous for his ability to move unseen, but Neil Roberts has managed to get him to pose for three awesome covers. My personal favourite is still Corax’s first appearance on the cover of Deliverance Lost, but you may prefer his later appearances on the novellas Corax Soulforge, and Ravenlord.

El Asedio de Deliverance – Out Now

The Spanish translation of Deliverance Lost (El Asedio de Deliverance) has recently been re-released in paperback by Timun Mas.

Title: El Asedio de Deliverance

ISBN: 9788445003268

Format: Paperback

You can pick it up at casadellibro.com and agapea.com, amongst others.

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**

Kickstarter Feature – Mythos

A couple of weeks ago at Daffcon I took part in a demo game of Mythos, created by Paranoid Miniatures. It was great fun and I was particularly impressed by the design and story of the characters.

The folks at Paranoid Miniatures have launched their Kickstarter now, so I thought it would be timely to do the follow-up feature I promised in my earlier post. However, it occurred to me that it would be even better to let them speak for themselves, so I’m happy to hand over to Mark from Paranoid Miniatures.

“Paranoid Miniatures came together 18 months ago, formed out of a group of five friends who have been gaming together for decades. We came together to progress an idea around a skirmish game inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.

The game is set in the classic Lovecraftian era of the 1920’s which evokes the feel and atmosphere that Lovecraft is so well known for. As part of the initial design process we looked at all aspects of Lovecraft and right from the outset we wanted to create our own take on Lovecraft and not “cut and paste” what other companies had created.

This decision has meant freedom for us, a chance to take Lovecraft’s principal ideas and run with them in our own style. We wanted to ensure that the game mechanics really did give you a feeling that you were playing a Lovecraftian game, so sanity, madness, darkness and horrific entities were all key elements for us to include.

A further decision which we think has really added value to our project is that we all took individual factions to design. We think this has really made the Factions have vastly different aesthetics and gameplay. As individuals this has meant we have been responsible for the Factions concept art, final character artwork, character gameplay mechanics and also 3D sculpting.

As part of the actual gameplay design we have a number of mechanics which really evoke the feel of Lovecraft. One key element is that as a character progresses in the game and the more “Mythos” they tap into, the more insane they become eventually resulting in that character flipping their stat card to the reverse side and thereby activating a number of different abilities some of which may be negative some might be positive. This allows for one character to be played in different ways.

We are also creating different ways in which to play Mythos. We are keen to develop gameplay beyond just one off games and in that respect we will be writing linked scenarios so that players can take their Factions through a story campaign. We are also working towards an “RPG” style of gameplay where players can create their own characters and progress and “level” them through a story campaign.

Overall, Mythos is a skirmish game which is easy to pick up and learn the fundamental game mechanics but has a great deal of depth and tactical play. Players are challenged through a game to make decisions and take risks but are then rewarded (or not!!!) for those decisions.”

I really like that Mythos doesn’t just slap ‘Cthulhu’ on another game or setting, but explores the ideas and themes of HP Lovecraft’s work in a new direction with an original narrative, whilst also drawing on some great folklore.

If this looks like your sort of thing you should back them on Kickstarter – the Pledge levels represent great value for money for some very nice miniatures and a cool game.

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**

Interview with Civilian Reader – April 2016

Read an interview I gave to Stefan over at Civilian Reader, where I talk about Angels of Caliban – my next Horus Heresy novel, writing for the new Age of Sigmar, my history with…

Read the interview.

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**

Event Report: Daffcon

Gaming Hall at Firestorm Games

Last weekend, 8th-10th April, I attended the first ever Daffcon in Cardiff, Wales. Daffcon is a ‘multi-system gaming convention for all the small games out there’. What does this actually mean? About seventy people per day playing their favourite games that perhaps don’t have the audience or exposure yet to be able to warrant their own event (as well as Malifaux which is popular enough, but the organisers are well known on the Malifaux circuit and it would have been remiss of them to omit it!).

Huge schedule of events at Daffcon

The other games that folks could sign up for included some systems that you may have heard of such as Frostgrave, Epic Armageddon, SAGA, Guild Ball and Infinity; some that you may not have such as Open Combat (have you not been paying attention to my blogs?), Relic Knights, Krosmaster, Dragon Rampant, Iron Cross and Of Gods and Mortals.

Daffcon took place at the South Wales Gaming Centre located at Firestorm Games in Cardiff. As far as venues for gaming events go, the SWGC is pretty much perfect. As you can see from the picture above the gaming hall can host dozens of games, with boards and terrain to suit most settings. There is a fully licensed bar (I can recommend the Fubar, a few pints of which were sunk over the weekend) and Christian’s cafe does cooked breakfast food, burgers, hot dogs and other meals for very reasonable prices (unlike many conference facilities you might have frequented).

Firestorm Shop

And then there is the games store part of Firestorm Games. The sort of store that makes your wallet cringe – the impressive wall of board games was tempting enough (you can glimpse a tiny bit on the left of the picture), before I even looked at the shelves upon shelves of toy soldiers, paints, terrain… Let’s just say that if Firestorm was thirty minutes away instead of three hours I’d be out of the house more and would have less money for Kickstarters!

Before getting into the meat of what I got up to, I’d like to say thanks to Mike and friends, as well as everyone else I spoke to and played with, for making it a really friendly, social weekend. It seems that everyone else agrees that Daffcon was a great success and dates for next year have already been announced – 11-13th August 2017, once more at Firestorm. I’ll be putting that on the calendar, you can be sure. You can follow what’s being planned next year on the Daffcon Twitter and Facebook pages.

Bear hug apparently not optional

I rocked up just after lunch on Friday and things were already well underway. My plan for the weekend was that I had no plan. This was a perfect opportunity to hang out, chat to people, look at what’s been happening in the gaming scene of late and maybe roll some dice. I met Mike Marshall, principle organiser and frontman for Daffcon, and of course our first conversation was about… Wrestlemania. But there was lots of gaming talk too. Mike introduced me to one of his Malifools/ Fools Daily/ Butterfly Gamers podcasts co-hosts, the unforgettable Matt Spooner, who was running demo games of Dragon Rampant. Matt reacted to his brush with ‘celebrity’ with poise and decorum.

The last of the Butterfly Gamers trio is Conrad Gonsalves, like Mike a man I first met many years ago when he was one of the infamous ‘Geeks’ playtesters for Warhammer. It was really good to catch up with Conrad and share views on what’s been going on with gaming and miniatures over the last few years.

Open Combat

What took me to Daffcon in the first place was offering to help my friend Carl of Second Thunder with his Open Combat event on the Saturday. As it turned out, one of the attendees pulled out due to illness so I stepped in as a ringer (ha!) to take his place. We managed to fit in five games of Open Combat over the day, using the standard campaign rules presented in the Open Combat book. That was pretty good going considering this was the first time Carl had tried to run an event of this kind, and everyone was still a little slow with the rules to start (in fact, one of the participants, Dave, had not played at all before our first game, which shows how simple it is to pick up).

Over the course of the day we played through different scenarios and tracked the injuries, experience and Reputation of our warbands, with a handshake and trophy for the player whose warband finished with the highest Reputation. (Also, everyone that attended got a special green custom Open Combat dice, only available to the Kickstarter backers and event goers.)

I put together a warband using some classic Undead figures I’d taken along just in case, and away we went. If I get a bit of time I’ll be putting up my warband roster(s) on the Open Combat forums.

The first scenario was ‘Open Combat’ with Confrontation deployment. There was no terrain, but the magical mists that had swept up our warbands contained random hazards. I was matched against Dave, the Open Combat newcomer, who used a warband of elves drafted by Carl. After a couple of turns Dave was well into the swing of things and needed only minimal prompting to play – mostly hints about positioning and tactics rather than the rules.

Game 1 ended in defeat, and the death of my ‘Duke of Hell’, as well as serious injuries to two of my other models. Thus the tone was set for the day…

The next game used the ‘Capture’ scenario in which both warbands are trying to grab (moving) objectives and get off the battlefield. I had a run-in with JP’s orcs as we tried to swipe as many chickens, pigs and villagers as possible.

Another loss, and more casualties. It seems that sometimes the dead do rest easily.

My third encounter was against the rapacious halfings of Connor, over JP’s great marsh village board. In the ‘Retrieve the Prize’ scenario both warbands are searching locations of interest for treasure, or something else they both desire such a pieces of a map, maybe the broken parts of an amulet, that sort of thing. There are also mishaps, dead-ends and, um, giant fish to be uncovered.

I managed to corner the elves but unfortunately lacked the punch to do much damage once I had them there… More bones sent back to the graveyard meant that I was in very poor shape for the final battle.

In game four I once again lined up against the elves under the leadership of Dave, who were trying to Escort something valuable from one table corner to the other. Using a selection of animal miniatures, I set up ‘ambush markers’ representing traps, hidden warband members and the like.

I managed to corner the elves but unfortunately lacked the punch to do much damage once I had them there… More bones sent back to the graveyard meant that I was in very poor shape for the final battle.

The last battle of the day returned to the ‘Open Combat’ straight fight scenario, this time with random deployment. As Dave and JP had the highest warband Reputation at the time, we all agreed we should let them face off to decide who walked out with a swagger and bragging rights. This left me to battle Connor’s vengeful halflings.

Due to an Old Battle Wound suffered earlier in the day my necromancer didn’t even bother showing up. I think he knew what was coming. Outnumbered and surrounded, my stumbling dead succumbed, the Banner of Despair trampled into the dirt by a halfling mounted on a goat…

Big congratulations to JP, whose orcs fended off the elves (including a clash between a troll and an owlbear!) and emerged with the highest Reputation.

Demo Games!

I don’t really have space to go into detail about each of the demo games I played, but I will try to do some more on them in future posts. Here’s the basics to get you in the loop.

Mythos is the first release from Paranoid Miniatures, inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. You’ll not find any Elder Gods on this tabletop, this is a skirmish game set on the city streets, with a really interesting cast of characters and back story based on Lovecraft archetypes and classic folklore.

The Roots of Magic is a game of duelling wizards. Each player controls a spellcaster from one of the Houses of Magic, vying to control the courses of mystical power – the eponymous Roots of Magic. This will hopefully be expanded over the months and years to include apprentices, summoned creatures and the like, as well as multi-player encounters.

The Roots of Magic miniatures, like those of Mythos and so many others coming out at the moment, are beautifully designed and sculpted. These are the demo models, the production painted versions were being kept safe for photography.

Inspired by Mad Max, unashamedly riffing on Death Race, Gaslands is, as the tag line tells us, Post-Apocalyptic Vehicular Mayhem. (I think that is pronounced vee-hick-oo-larr.) The game system was smooth and fun, picked up in just a couple of minutes, but with huge scope for development and added craziness.

My Batmobilesque performance car did a victory handbrake turn over the line, to machine gun a truck that had fired a missile at me. Always end with a bang! If you can get some cool cars and a bit of scenery together, you can sign up to playtest Gaslands too.

The fact that I happened to win all three of my demo games (yes, yes, they were demos but it makes me feel better anyway) in no way influenced me to think that these were all great games that I look forward to adding to my collection. And with each being pretty low investment – a subject I shall be talking about in the near future – that will hopefully not break the bank either.

Hopefully I’ll see you at Daffcon next year. If you’re at Salute on Saturday, swing by the Second Thunder stand where I’ll be helping Carl share the joy that is Open Combat.

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**

Eye of Terra

Our house has been a bit of a plague pit these last few weeks and all my efforts have been directed at writing my current Black Library story, so I’m a bit behind in promoting Eye of Terra. This new Horus Heresy anthology includes my stories Inheritor and Master of the First, along with the following:

The Wolf of Ash and Fire by Graham McNeill

Aurelian, The Long Night and Massacre by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Brotherhood of the Moon by Chris Wraight

Vorax by Matthew Farrer

Ironfire by Rob Sanders

Red-Marked and Stratagem by Nick Kyme

Sins of the Father and The Herald of Sanguinius by Andy Smillie

The Eagle’s Talon by John French

Iron Corpses by David Annandale

The Final Compliance of Sixty-Three Fourteen by Guy Haley

The galaxy burns at Horus’s command, and a billion more lives are lost with each passing moment – though it was not always so. Once, the title of Warmaster stood for honour, loyalty and a fierce pride in the strength of the Space Marine Legions. But perhaps by following the myriad lines of destiny and defiance that were already woven around the primarchs and their sons, we may yet come to understand the bitterness that can eat away at even the most steadfast of souls…

Eye of Terra is available as eBook, hardback, and mp3 (extracts are available on the Black Library website), and you can also buy a print of Neil Roberts awesome artwork.

**To make sure you don’t miss out on any blog posts, you can keep up-to-date with everything Gav by signing up to my monthly newsletter. As a bonus, every other month I randomly pick a newsletter subscriber to receive a free signed copy of one of my books.**