Servants of the Imperium

Progress Update

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Wow, so it's been 2 months since I went on haitus. It's been pretty nice actually taking a break, and I'm finally getting back to the stage where I want to work on SotI again. There won't be any strips for a few weeks yet; I want to build up a backlog of episodes so I'm not drawing a strip and then posting it straight away, because I think that's why I burned out.Expect some new stuff towards the end of next month.

Taking a break

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

This year, in June, I will have been creating SotI strips for 5 years. Five years; that seems pretty crazy when I think about it. I started drawing Severus and co as a personal joke for my friends and I when we were playing our first Dark Heresy game and it was only when I posted them on Deviantart and other people said I should do more of them that the idea of making them a webcomic series occured to me. I didn't think it'd last more than a dozen strips, as opposed to over 180.I've always said to myself that I'd keep drawing SotI for as long as it was fun for me to do so. I don't get any money from this site; I don't advertise or get revenue in any other way from it so this has never been about profit, just personal enjoyment.However, over the last few weeks the strip has become somewhat of a chore. I have the next few strips roughed out; they just need turning into finished items, but whenever I sit down to do so I loose all enthusiasm. I'm not ending SotI; far from it. I want to keep going and reach the end I have planned for Severus, Krin and co (I've known how the comic will end from the very first strip in fact) but I'm going to reduce the pace of my updates. I'll work on the strip when I feel like it, and hopefully in a while I'll get back into a steady rhythm.In the meantime, thanks for all your continued support. I really enjoy all the emails I get from you guys. If anyone wants to send in any guest strips to fill in while I'm on low ebb, I'll post them up!

Slight delay

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

There will be a slight delay with the next strip as I've been spending my time writing plot notes for the LARP game I will be helping to run in March this week. I'm aiming to get the strip up around midweek.

Join Operation Righteous Vengeance!

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Phew, finally got back into this comic malarkey!Just a simply exposition strip this week; more interesting stuff to come I promise!I had originally wanted to have Drade silently waving at Bertram to shut up in the background, but everything I tried just looked a bit odd, so instead he just goes for the good old-fashioned face-palm.In other news, I will be co-running another 40k LARP game in March and we're a still looking for more crew. If any of you are UK based (or are mad enough to travel to the UK for a 2-day LARP event) then please have a look at the game brief below and if you fancy joining us then head over to the <a href="http://www.deathuntodarkness.org/forum" target="_blank">Death Unto Darkness forums</a> and sign up!The planet of Henlock remains in the clutches of the Archenemy and hope is all but a fading memory to the wretched people of the world. Their homes shattered by war; machines, men, women & children massacred, their lives destroyed by a foe they cannot hope to defeat. But they have not been abandoned to be crushed beneath the boots of the enemy for the slumbering giant that is the Imperial Warmachine has awoken.Battlefleet Prosperitas has mustered a counter-invasion fleet, drawing troops and specialists from regiments and Adepta across the sector. Even now they muster at a staging area close to the disputed world, with dozens of capital ships carrying tens of thousands of brave warriors and even a titan barge from the Legio Ignis escorted by a Skitarii landing ship.The Lord-Admiral intends to return the favour paid to the sector by the Chaos fleet, beginning the attack with a massive blitz on the enemy lines to drive a spearhead through their fleet and begin immediate assault drops onto the planet surface.This tactic means that the first stage of the fight must be that of the infantry alone, for only the fastest and most agile of assault ships have any chance of running the gauntlet of the enemy fleet and captured planetary defences.Only the bravest and most skilled will be part of the first wave to make the landing and forge the beachheads to allow for overwhelming might of the Imperial armoured companies to land. Those who choose to lead the invasion will certainly suffer the most casualties, but will also win the greatest share of the glory in the victory that they shall ignite the flames of. Do you have what it takes to ride the flaming wings of fury and be amongst the first to shed the blood of the Archenemy?Operation Righteous Vengeance begins today!Death unto Darkness is a Warhammer 40,000 LARP that has been running in the UK for the past 2 years and the next game 'On Wings of Fury' is running from the 8th to the 10th of March 2013 at Candlestone campsite in Bridgeend, Wales.Although most player slots are now filled we are still looking for as many crew as possible. A crew ticket is only Â£5 and for that price you get a Friday evening meal, Saturday breakfast, lunch and evening meal and as many snacks as you can eat. You also get to take on the roles of the forces of Chaos and bring the fight to the players!Crewing the game is a great way to learn the system, which uses traditional LARP weapons mixed with NERF guns for ranged combat, and we have a real mixture of veteran and newbie LARPers so do not worry about your level of experience. Sadly due to the themes involved and the site insurance, the events are strictly 18+, sorry!

#181: Intelligence

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Apologies

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Yikes, I've been slacking off, huh?Sorry for the lack of strips, or updates, of late. To tell the truth I've had trouble getting back into the swing of things since Christmas, but I hope to remedy that this weekend coming.

Merry Jingly!

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Right, that's your lot for 2012, see you next year!

Deathwatch review

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

If there's one iconic element of the Warhammer 40,000 game line it's arguably the space marine in his suit of power armour, looking moody and badass. Most people who play tabletop end up with a space marine army at one point or another, they're released as part of every 40k boxed set after all, and space marines are one of the few things recognisable even to people who don't know anything else about the 40k world.So Deathwatch, in many ways, was the 40k game a lot of roleplayers were waiting for; finally you could actually play as a member of the Adeptus Astartes in all their power armoured, xeno-crushing, posthuman glory. Not only that, but you could play as a member of the Deathwatch; the black armoured special forces of the space marines, selected to serve the Inquisitors of the Ordo Xeno as specialist shock troops. Talk about extra badass.So when it was finally released 2 years after Dark Heresy, a lot of fans were pretty excited. I have to admit, I was one of them, and it was worth waiting for.System-wise, Deathwatch is near identical to Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, continuing the trend of taking the existing rules system from the previous game (in this case Rogue Trader) and adding a few extra setting-specific skills and talents. The updated psyker rules from Rogue Trader have been kept and new (or rather old, if you played tabletop) powers for space marine Librarian pyskers were added. Yup, even space marine bookworms are dangerous.One great benefit of Deathwatch using the same system as DH and RT is that it gives us a measuring stick by which to gauge the space marine's legendary skills and, I have to say, Deathwatch does a pretty good job of making you feel like you're playing a superhuman warrior from the 41st millennium.All space marines begin the game with the Unnatural Strength and Unnatural Toughness traits that, in Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, were reserved for the horrifying monsters you came across. There are rules for a large majority of the weird organs that have always been a part of space marine lore and even the weapon rules have been modified so that your Astartes-issue boltgun is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the weapons found in Dark Heresy. Once you've played a session as your space marine, you begin to realise how much more powerful these guys are than a run of the mill human. It certainly encourages a slightly different style of play to previous games, at least where combat is concerned. Deathwatch characters can literally mow through hordes of enemies and as such the enemy rules have been upgrades so that gamesmasters can pit entire squads of lower-rank enemies against the space marines, allowing for some pretty cinematic combat sequences.Adding to these combat sequences, and the 'kill-team' squad-based feel of the game in general, are the 'Squad Mode', 'Solo Mode' and 'Cohesion' rules. Specific to Deathwatch, these abilities reflect how the Deathwatch is made up of multiple different space marine chapters, each with their own abilities and combat doctrines. When a kill team is first formed each marine has his own fighting style, reflected in their Solo Mode ability, which grants them certain personal abilities in combat. As the kill-team slowly bonds and learns to fight as a unit they unlock the Squad Mode abilities, granting them team-based abilities but only when they work together. The Squad Mode abilities are powered by Cohesion Points, which are generated when the party perform certain actions and are lost if they mess up. Having a good leader increases the rate at which Cohesion is generated. Altogether it's a nice mechanic that enhances the game style and encourages players to work together.As with Rogue Trader, Deathwatch continues with the tradition of laying out games in a setting-specific format. Rogue Trader had Endeavours; Deathwatch has Missions. Missions can be short one-off adventures, or long-running campaigns built around a series of smaller objectives. As with Rogue Trader Endeavours, Mission provide a framework for organising objectives and awarding experience that is a big help to first-time or inexperienced gamesmasters.Now for the negative. The biggest possible flaw that Deathwatch has is the very nature of it's subject matter. Space marines can be seen as very single-purposed characters; they are biogenically-enhanced warrior-monks that exist to defend the Imperium and the most obvious way they do that is by punching the face off anything that doesn't salute the Aquilla (and even some that do).Because of the way many gamers see space marines, Deathwatch games run the risk of degenerating into mindless hack-and-slash adventures, where the players are set against waves of enemies until they kill a 'boss' and then hurtle away in a waiting Thunderhawk gunship. While this kind of game would be fun as a one-off or a short-run campaign, it's not the kind of thing you'd want to spend any length of time doing. The Deathwatch rulebook does try to present other ways in which the game can be played, but a large majority of the rules centre on combat, weapons, combat tactics, weapons, aliens and weapons. Did I mention weapons? I have a feeling many inexperienced players and gamesmasters, lead by the book, will fall into the trap of running games that are nothing but an exercise in seeing how many dice you can roll while blasting your way through an ork Waaagh!I've not played or run Deathwatch nearly as much as I'd like to, but I'm hoping to address that in the next year. However, when I do run Deathwatch I'm careful to try to give the players more than one way out of any situation and that at least one option will involve their brains rather than their brawn. Space marines are warrior-monks, and I like to emphasise the monk part. None of them are stupid by any means and many space marines are pretty sharp guys; I like the idea of a Deathwatch game that goes beyond the battlefield and sees the players guiding their space marines through hazards such as diplomatic envoys, underhive espionage and stealth (yeah, stealthy space marines; it can happen. Just ask Night Haunter), as well as the traditional alien face-punching. Someone once suggested a game based on the film The Name of the Rose, but replacing Franciscan friars with space marines and setting the mystery in a space marine chapter house. Now that's a game I'd be interested in playing!At the end of the day, Deathwatch is what you make of it. I think it's a great set of rules that can make for some brilliant one-off run-and-gun games or some gripping long-term campaigns if you make sure to occasionally spend some time away from the battlefield.

#180: Common Ground

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A short respite

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Due to the usual pre-Christmas craziness coupled with a bout of illness over the last few days I've not been able to work on a strip or my Deathwatch review this week. I'll have them up next weekend.In the meantime, I'm glad to see everyone responding so well to my Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader reviews! I've had lots of feedback from you about them, glad you seem to be enjoying them!

Rogue Trader Review

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Rogue Trader was the first incarnation of the game we now know as Warhammer 40,000 and it still has a rather cult following even today. It was the birth of the 40k universe and even now there are elements that gamers who have never read the original setting would recognise in modern 40k lore. However , I'm not reviewing that game. I'm reviewing the FFG re-release that came out in 2009 following the success of Dark Heresy.Now, before I get into this, I must admit something to you all. I've not actually played Rogue Trader.For various reasons I will explain in a bit it has never really appealed to me as a game; I possess the core rulebook, and have read through it a number of times, but have never felt compelled to either play a game nor run one for my friends. So that might make this review a little lop-sided. Sorry.System-wise Rogue Trader is very close to Dark Heresy; the same skills; the same mechanics and a few more talents appropriate to the different setting. What is very different are the classes; in Rogue Trader you take on the role of the various important members of a Rogue Trader house and, rather than playing scummers and guardsmen as you do in Dark Heresy, you instead play noble captains, arch-militants and Astropaths.Characters in Rogue Trader start off on an entirely different echelon of imperial life to those in Dark Heresy; in Rogue Trader you have money, power and influence, as well as control over a ship or even a fleet of ships. As such the characters start with a lot more skills and abilities, as well as access to weapons and equipment most Dark Heresy characters won't see until late in a campaign.I think this is one of the main reasons I'm not a fan of Rogue Trader; I like my characters -whether I'm playing or running a game- to have to work to for their success. In Rogue Trader everything feels (at least to me) given to you straight off the bat, with no need to try to better yourself. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I much prefer characters to earn their shiny trinkets during play, rather than start with them; a power sword feels much more important when you've pried it from the cold, dead hands of an enemy rather than just been given it.As well as new character classes, there is a new 'Origin Path' generator which adds some nice background to your characters and gives them their reason for being part of the Rogue Trader crew. There is also a requisitions system, rather than using cash to buy equipment, that allows characters to gain equipment based on their success as traders, rather than the cold hard cash in their pocket.The biggest change to the Dark Heresy rules base are the complete revision of the Psyker rules, which now grants psykers the ability to choose how hard they push when unleashing their powers. It's a nice addition to the rules but part of me preferred the quick and easy method in Dark Heresy. Then again, I'm not know for playing psykers and all my friends who do and have used the rules seem to be fans. It does mean psykers are less likely to turn their minds inside out, or summon a daemon while trying to invoke a minor power, which is nice. Nothing like setting your brain to 'stun' rather than 'kill', eh Lyle?The whole idea behind a game of Rogue Trader is that your characters are off on an adventure at the limits of Imperial space, seeking trade and treasure on uncharted world and getting into all kinds of scrapes in the process. There are some nice rules for creating 'Endeavours'; a structured mission plan for the players to work through to achieve their goal, whether it's establishing a mining colony, finding a rare artefact or similar.Both Deathwatch and Black Crusade would go on to use a similar format to help gamesmasters lay out a game, and it's a nice touch to help inexperienced gamers get their heads around how to structure a campaign. There's also a built-in experience and reward mechanic. My second problem with Rogue Trader is what I like to call 'Star Trek Syndrome', and it kind of follows on from this. The character you play are all important members of the ship's command staff, in command of at least 10,000 crewmen or more (the Imperium don't believe in small crews). Why, I always ask myself, do the characters need to be the ones who head down to strange new planets and explore, or meet with the potentially hostile aliens? They could -and should- delegate the jobs to some of their near-limitless crew. And don't say they're the only ones capable of the job; when you command the population of a small city, there have to be a few suitable individuals capable of filling in for them. As with Star Trek, it never really sits right with me that the characters are the ones involved in the action. I can see why they are, from a gameplay point of view, but realistically (in as much as you can say that when talking about a roleplay game) it always ruins my immersion slightly.This review is probably sounding rather negative, and that's not what I intended. Rogue Trader is a brilliant game; well thought out and it adds another fantastic game to the FFG Warhammer 40,000 roleplay series. I think, at the heart of it, I'm not the kind of person who should play Rogue Trader; my kind of games revolve around small, personal struggles and visceral horror stories, rather than large space epics. Maybe one day someone will run a game of RT for me that will change my mind.As I've not played Rogue Trader, next week I'll launch straight into my review of Deathwatch. Spess Mehreens!

#179: Liftshare

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Dark Heresy Review part 2

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In my local regular gaming circle I tend to fall into the role of Gamesmaster, mostly because it's where I'm happiest. I guess I am at heart a storyteller, plus I'm a massive control freak and also love being the center of attention!I've run a few Dark Heresy games over the years, and am currently in the process of wrapping one up even now, so I thought that today I'd tell you about how I run my games and share a few anecdotes as well.When I run Dark Heresy I tend to take a very similar route to when I run Call of Cthulhu, in regards to pacing, plot and tone. Really I see Dark Heresy as CoC in space; there are eldritch horrors lurking just beyond the physical world and learning of them can (and will) drive the average person insane.The first long-term Dark Heresy campaign I ran lasted just over a year and centered around a small group of civilians who ended up as a senior Interrogator's preferred agents and eventually became his acolytes.Those characters were Lupa the psyker, who had an affinity for stealth and a love of the brown-out power for breaking and entering; Octavius the tech priest, who just couldn't help himself when it came to forbidden lore; Albrect the arbiter, the party meat-shield who was mortally scared of females thanks to a close call with a daemonette; and Fraal the guardsman, a feral warrior from an oceanic planet with a love of sniper rifles.The core plot of the campaign I ran for these guys concerned the dire machinations of Solkhan the Infernal; a Thousand Sons Space Marine sorcerer who was flooding the Hazeroth Abyss subsector with warp-tainted artefacts with the help of a corrupt noble house and their minions.I ran the game weekly and broke it up into small chapters, with each chapter concerning a new mission the party had been given by their Interrogator handler, Septimus.Many (but not all) of the missions revolved around either one of the many warp artefacts released into the subsector by Solkhan or the plots of the corrupt House Voross, Solkhan's unwitting but equally evil lackies.Not every chapter concerned the main plot, of course, so the action was occasionally broken up by one-off investigations, such as one mission that concerned a number of young nobles who had been killed in a rash of bizarre accidents. Said nobles all belonged to the same gentleman's club and had won large amounts of money from another noble at cards. The noble had subsequently turned to sorcery to get rid of the men he owed money to.I tend to run my Dark Heresy games with a heavy emphasis on investigation and leg-work, with short action scenes to break things up. With the above-mentioned sorcerous-murder mission, the party spent a lot of time talking to the victims' families, inspecting the crime scenes for clues and reading hand-outs (I always think giving the players a piece of paper to read to each other is infinitely better than reading it out yourself, it sometimes leads to them making some hilarious conclusions).The only time the party got into an action scene was when they finally connected all the dots and went to confront the noble who was responsible for everything. The noble set his house guards on the party and, after a brief fire-fight in a well-appointed salon, the party captured the noble and brought him to justice.I do make sure that I occasionally mix up the formulae as well. Every now and then I run combat-heavy games, just as sometimes I run very social-orientated games where the characters who took Charm and Command get to hog the limelight.When writing games I tend to look for inspiration in other media. I've run games based on episodes of the X-Files, the Relic (as in the 1997 horror film) and, of course, HP Lovecraft novels.One of the best games I ran was a direct retelling of Lovecraft's "The Innsmouth Look", but substituting Deep Ones for Beastmen and moving the story to a remote feral world.The party were sent to locate an Inquisitorial researcher who had suddenly vanished, and the trail led them to the remote village of Greenspire in the darkened forests of Dwimlicht. In this village; a vile, decrepit place, the party encountered a number of odd-looking locals who told them they'd never heard of the researcher, despite evidence to the contrary.Forced to spent the night in the village, the party were forced to sneak out of their room in the local inn, evade hostile locals and managed to witness a host of twisted beastmen emerging from the forest to talk with the locals.It turned out the researcher had, in his studies, learned that he was a descendant of the people of that corrupted village and that he too had the 'Greenspire Look'. Unable to resist his heritage, the researcher had returned home and fallen to Chaos.The party were forced to evade the beastmen in a midnight dash through the forest, witness a horrific chaos ritual in the depths of the woods and survive until morning when they managed to locate friendly forces and arrange an Imperial Guard strike on the area.I'm told it left a lasting impression on my party!One last story. Many people who know me and my gaming group often assume Brianna is based on my wife (they have similar temperaments). However the character most inspired by my wife is actually Lyle. Rhi played Lupa the Psyker and there is one story concerning her that my friends often relate.During a mission in which the party were sent into the underhive to trace shipments of heretical artefacts Lupa attempted, as she had many times before, to break a digital lock by using her Brown Out psychic power.However, on this attempt, Rhi managed to roll a psychic phenomena which then turned into a full-blown Peril of the Warp. Rolling on the Peril of the Warp chart revealed that Lupa had called down a Ethereal Storm, causing 10 damage to every sentient creature within 800 meters.Now in the underhive you can pack a lot of people into 800 meters and although 10 damage won't kill most people, it will kill anyone with a low number of wounds; namely children, the sick and the old.So when the party gathered around Lupa to wait for her to break a lock in the way she'd done dozens of times before, they suddenly heard a cacophony of screams and yells as around them dozens of people suddenly keeled over dead.The party, sensing that the underhive would quickly become a very bad place to be, legged it; abandoning their mission and vowing never to speak of the incident again.I really can see Lyle, Krin and co doing exactly the same thing!

#178: One-upmanship

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Dark Heresy review part 1

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

So, Dark Heresy.I'm not going to claim that it's a ground-breaking game in terms of game mechanics or setting, because it's not. However, what it represented to Warhammer 40,000 fans was pretty damn important.I had been a Warhammer Fantasy and 40k fan since I was about 11 and one of my first experiences of roleplaying games was the original Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (known to most as WFRP, which we pronounced 'woof-rup') which my friends and I played avidly.After a few years we began asking each other "Why isn't there a 40k version of this?"; we'd played other sci-fi RPGs and the idea of a game set in the grimdark universe of the Imperium was the holy grail for us. Like many 40k fans who'd played WFRP, I attempted to run a 40k roleplay game using the WFRP rules as a base. It wasn't great, but my friends and I certainly enjoyed it.Then, finally, in 2008 Games Workshop and Black Industries released Dark Heresy. For those of us who'd been waiting almost 22 years for it, the game was near-perfect. Now we could finally play citizens of the Imperium and take on the vile threats of the heretic, the daemon and the xeno.Dark Heresy's game system was very close to the WFRP version 2 system developed by Green Ronin and, as my friends and I were big fans of WFRP2, that was no bad thing. The stats were very closely related to the tabletop games and it's a nice easy system to master and allows you to cover a lot of situations simply. The only areas were the system falls down are handling two-weapon fighting, which is a nightmare of conflicting rules that still aren't overly obvious even today after multiple rules clarifications, and the lack of rules for action scenes such as high-speed pursuits (some house rules fixed this for my gaming group, what's a good RPG without a speeder chase?).A major gripe many fans quickly had with Dark Heresy was the game's intended default style.Dark heresy was intended as a investigation/ horror game, not an action/ adventure game; you start out as a lowly human operative of the Inquisition and, even after a fair bit of experience, that is where you remain. You're not a heroic champion, or an Inquisitor, and definitely not a Space Marine. Starting Dark Heresy characters are poorly-equipped, poorly-prepared and their best defence when encountering a daemon or some of the nastier xeno species is to run away, rather than fight.Further more, the core rulebook lacked any stats for traditional enemies such as orks, eldar and genestealers, focusing instead on cultists and minor daemons.Those wanting a more run-and-gun style of play could easily adapt the rules to include more action and allow characters more freedom, but the people itching to play a member of the noble Astartes would have to either wait 2 years until Deathwatch came out. Either that or make up their own rules. Similarly the Gamesmasters who wanted to pit their players against an ork invasion or the threat of a Dark Eldar blood cult would have to make up their own stats.Generally though the fans of 40k were overjoyed with Dark Heresy but, only three days after its release, Games Workshop announced that it was closing Black Industries and therefore killing off Dark Heresy before it could even get started. Shocked and betrayed was an understatement to describe how the fan-base felt. How could GW do this to us after we had waited so long?However, less than a month later, Dark Heresy was saved when Black Industries revealed that Fantasy Flight Games had purchased the rights to continue publishing it and, better yet, to develop more games. The first few books FFG released, such as Creatures Anathema and Disciples of the Dark Gods, assured the die-hard fans who'd been muttering that a non-GW company could never do the games justice that FFG were worthy inheritors of Black Industries' legacy.So now, four years later, there are over 20 books for Dark Heresy, including two adventure campaigns - The Haarlock Legacy and The Apostasy Gambit- and all of them are pretty damn good.Dark Heresy opened the way for more Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying games to be developed and it introduced a number of people who'd only played the tabletop games into the world of dice and paper roleplaying.Most dedicated Dark Heresy players and Gamesmasters have developed their own house rules and styles of play, and all of us have our own favourite stories of gaming sessions both good and bad. Next week I'll bore you all with a few choice stories from the various Dark Heresy games I've run and played in over the years.

#177: Introducing Ishara

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Movember Appeal

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

So I've had a LOT of responses from people about what to write about in these blogs and some really good suggestions. Also some really weird suggestions, but less about that.By far the most common suggestion were requests for reviews of the various Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch and Black Crusade series of roleplaying games, and stories from the various games I've alluded to before.So, starting next week, I will be doing a weekly review of each of the four games (and possibly a review of Only War if I can get my hands on a copy as well!) and adding a few stories from the campaigns I've run over the years.After that, who knows!And now for something a bit more serious.This year I've decided to join the Movember initiate and grow some extra facial hair in order to show my support for men's health. Some of you may know that I normally sport a goatee and, as I was loath to shave it off, I decided I had to aim to grow something extra. As such I'm going to try and grow a Souvarov so I can look like a Victorian gentleman of means!I'd love it if my readers could show a little support (and help me one-up my work colleagues by getting more donations than them) and sponsor me to make myself look stupid for a month.Even if each of you could spare only a single dollar, pound or throne gelt I think we could raise a fair bit of cash.So, if you're interested in sponsoring me (and watching the progress of my facial hair) please visit <a href=" http://mobro.co/4031041" target="_blank">my Movember page</a> and leave me words of support and maybe a small donation!Thanks guys.

#176: Who?

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Suggestions please

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Ok, I failed to get a strip up last week. Turns out I got pretty busy with various things. But at least I have a strip up today!It's all a bit quiet here at the moment, and I think I need more to talk about here than just whether I've failed to produce a strip or not. So how about you guys suggest things for me to talk about or review? Games, books, my opinions on Warhammer and so on. Let me know what you'd like to read about here and I'll try and make these blogs a bit more interesting!Also, I don't care what Dawn of War and the new 40k canon have to say on the matter, Orks bleed green damnit!

#175: Charge!

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Failcakes

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Argh, I fail at regular updates!I do have a strip for this week, I promise! I've just been super lame in actually finishing it off! I aim to have it done by tonight, or tomorrow at th latest!I'd like to say a big thank you to Dave over at <a href="http://www.grrlpowercomic.com" target="_blank">Grrl Power</a> who mentioned me this week and sent a load of his lovely readers this way. If you don't read it already, I urge you to go check out his webcomic as it's pretty damn good. Plus he actually draws his, rather than using crappy stick figures like yours truly!

War!

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Yeah, there wasn't a comic last week.I had hoped to do a double update this week, but life has a way of catching me out and so it's only a single strip for you all today! I'll try to get a better handle on things in the future!Before anyone emails me (and I know someone will), the sun is *meant* to have vanished after panel 3; it's in there because Krin's being an overdramatic wuss!So a friend of mine pointed out something I've somehow managed to miss up until this point; <a href="http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=201" target="_blank">Only War</a>, the new 40K RPG from FFG which continues the Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Rogue Trader and Black Crusade line into the world of the Imperial Guard!So far everything that's been revealed about it has been pretty interesting; I'm looking forward to seeing if the rules updates FFG came up with for Black Crusade are ported over into this new game as they really made the system that has been used in the other 40K games really quite slick and playable.More news on this soon, I hope.

#174: Route March

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Better late than never

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Yeah, I'm a couple of days late with this strip, but at least it's up now!Next weekend I'm off to Wales to help crew another 40K LARP. I will attempt to get a strip up on Friday instead, but no promises!

#173: It's a classic line

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT