warhammer 40000

Chris Knight's avatar

Yesterday I came upon a story that has wound up sticking in my gray matter, because what it foreshadows is going to be world-changing in a whole heap o’ ways.  It’s an article on the wargaming website Spikey Bits, of all places.  It has to do with this guy: one Huron Blackheart, of the Chaos Space Marines from the very popular Warhammer 40,000 miniatures game produced by Games Workshop.

A few weeks ago the company announced that Huron is getting a new mini.  A glorious new sculpt that better reflects his malevolence and power.  Here is the preview that Games Workshop published:

Looks pretty gnarly.  I wouldn’t knock on this guy’s front door without my hat in my hands, my hands in plain sight, and a totally cheerful disposition.  And he’d probably still kill ya anyway on general principles.

Anyhoo, that’s the picture of the Huron model that ...

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No, I am still not going to “write” a blog post using artificial intelligence.  I’m sitting in front of a keyboard composing these words.  If you ever do see a product of AI being displayed, it’s going to state as much.  Which is what I’m doing now.  What you are about to read is definitely the product of artificial intelligence.  It also represents the first time that I’ve used a “chatbot” to generate text.  Up until now I’ve avoided such things.  But as I’m currently involved in a project necessitating some familiarity with AI, there was little choice but to see what it is that I’m getting into.

A friend encouraged me to try ChatGPT.  I’ve been playing around with it since last night, firing hard at its walls.  And I have to say, I am intrigued.  One of the things I asked it to do was to describe the ...

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This coming December will mark thirty years since the original computer game Doom was released by id Software.  Gadzooks!!  Where did all that time go to?!?  Well, Doom sucked me in hard and refused to release its grip.  There had been a few first-person shooters before, notably id’s own Wolfenstein 3-D.  But it was Doom that showed off the REAL potential of the genre.  And it broke the ground for other high-drama atmospheric entries in the category, like Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3-D, and Quake.  Those in turn showed the way for more advanced games in the forthcoming generations, such as Halo and Call of Duty.

But no matter how advanced home computers and gaming consoles have become, my heart belongs to 1993’s Doom and its contemporaries.  Especially for how editable it was, and it seemed like everyone and their brother was creating WAD files containing new graphics ...

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Behold my new Ork big mek with kustom force field:

This is a model that I assembled three years ago, in the initial days of the COVID pandemic.  It seemed there wasn’t going to be much travel for awhile, and there were a few Warhammer 40,000 minis that I had accumulated but never gotten around to giving much attention toward.  It was as good a thing as any to occupy myself with.  I put this together and it finally dawned on me that the lockdown could last months instead of weeks.  So he just kinda lingered unpainted on a shelf.

Anyway it’s now 2023 and Warhammer 40K is hotter than ever and poised to get even bigger.  And I wanted to see if I still had my mad mini-painting skillz.  I’m rather pleased with how this little fella turned out.  So far as in-game mechanics goes, a big mek carrying ...

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Way back around 2009 or so I got into the Warhammer 40,000 miniature game hobby.  It started with the now-legendary Assault on Black Reach boxed set, which included two armies: Space Marines and Orks.  I had a lot of fun putting the miniatures together and painting them, and then played against other people at game stores in Greensboro and Burlington.  There are a lot of different factions in Warhammer 40K but I gravitated toward the Orks as my favorite.  It’s hard not to like a mob of green-skinned hooligans shootin’ and cuttin’ their way through the opposition all the while screaming “WAAAGH!”

In the years since I drifted toward other things, but Warhammer 40,000 never left my mind.  I love the setting, the lore, the beautiful miniatures, the various armies to choose from… there’s a lot of good to be said about it.  The game is over 35 years ...

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If you’re at all a fan of Warhammer 40,000 whether you play the game or just are fascinated with the astounding body of fiction and art it has inspired, you probably got the the news yesterday that there are are childrens books coming out soon based on Warhammer 40,000 and its fantasy sibling Warhammer: Age of Sigmar.  At first I thought it was a joke but a quick look at Bell of Lost Souls confirmed that these are indeed being released in the near future.  Here are the first two:

Reaction from the fanbase has been mixed.  Some are applauding it, some think it’s “too immature” whatever THAT means… especially coming from players of a game during which screams of “WAAAAGH!” are common.  Still others think that Games Workshop is playing a strategy of “get ’em while they’re young” like tobacco companies, Democrats, the John Birch Society and freemium ...

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Y’know, if the Emperor of Mankind hadn’t embarked upon his crusade to wipe out ALL religion from humanity, the galaxy would have been a much better place.  Some things are too ingrained into the human psyche.  The need for spirituality is one of them.  Attempt to deprive a people of that, and disaster will be the outcome.

Anyhoo, just an idea for a pic that crossed my gray matter last week.  Had a dilly of a time finding the right image from the Horus Heresy but in the end Horus himself cuts a fine jib.

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Warhammer 40,000 Sixth Edition came out over two months ago and I still haven’t gotten to play with the new rules! Just been busy on multiple fronts. Which makes me look positivalutely pathetic compared to what these dedicated players go through…

Slate Magazine has a terrific article about how the futuristic tabletop war game is incredibly popular among the men and women (okay, mostly men) of the United States armed forces, and especially with many who are serving overseas in places like Afghanistan (including players such as Army Sgt. Steffan McBee, pictured). Warhammer 40K’s publisher Games Workshop estimates that perhaps 25 percent of its very large American player base are active-duty personnel: some of whom go to great lengths to have their stockpiles of miniatures shipped safely to their duty posts around the globe.

What’s the appeal of a war game played on tabletops with plastic and metal models? ...

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Been a might busy on numerous fronts lately so I haven’t had much of a chance to get in a game of Warhammer 40,000 in awhile (though that also owes to the fact that I’ve been building up my army of Orks, muhahahahahaha!!!)

Anyhoo, it’s from the world of 40K which this next item comes from. Seems that Swedish torrent-trackin’ site/political party/new religious denomination The Pirate Bay, which has already made a name for itself letting users search for songs, movies, video games and books, has now added 3-D models to its database.

Which means that through the ever-improving technology of 3-D printing, it is now possible to download physical objects via the Internet.

Here’s how it works: you download the model and using a 3-D printer, the computer lays down layer upon layer of plastic or resinous material, gradually building-up a physical object. Right now the technology is ...

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I caught on Slashdot this morning that Games Workshop, the publisher of Warhammer 40,000 (which I have gotten into this past year) has sent a very harsh cease & desist to BoardGameGeek, a website devoted to all things pertaining to tabletop gaming. The C&D from Games Workshop has ordered BoardGameGeek to “remove all fan-made players’ aids. This includes scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces — many of these created for long out of print, well-loved games. GW did this shortly after building a lot of good will by re-releasing their out of print game ‘Space Hulk’ to much hoopla.”

What the hell is Games Workshop thinking?

Ya know, I’m no stranger to the crazy world of alleged “copyright infringement”. And even though my situation was in the purview of the American legal system and Games Workshop is a company based in the United ...

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