Only War

In the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium there is only war.
And so ever it has been, well, since 3rd Edition at least. One war unending, unbroken by the years both in the game and without. It has been a war of big characters and grand ideals, one never questioned and always pushing forward, requiring us to empty our bank balances to field vast swathes of reinforcements and new toys every few years.
resolute.jpg
Rarely do we get to see the other side of this. Oh the fields of Cadian dead are mentioned, where you’re memorialised only as long as you can be remembered. Warhammer 40,000 is not short on tales of death and grim defiance in the face of it.


Still it has never seemed as well realised I think as right here, in the Dawn of War III trailer.



The monologue is as daft and over the top as ever, but there’s something there, in the way it’s presented.


knightfall.jpg
The violence is nothing new. Relic has always understood that Chainswords, under-represented on the tabletop, were a visceral and compelling weapon. However in the previous games the violence was always cartoony, Saw by way of Loony Tunes.


Dawn of War III feels painful.


The Space Marines here they feel more pained, more human and more than just faceless mooks. We never see many of them, except when counting their dead, which almost always outnumber the living.

bodies.jpg
Gone are the banners. Gone is the lone Marine crawling up the hill to see the reinforcements coming. The motif here is not the glory of war but a mountain of bodies, piled high and growing. Of a Space Marine grinning at his own death before being buried beneath the dead.

Everything falls.

 For a setting with a reputation for being grim and dark never has it felt either so keenly.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Classic Battletech: A Whole Cluster of Problems

Image
I wanted to expand on a point after the other night’s Battletech rant and that is the idea of Battletech as a slow game; one of the primary reasons that my friends stopped playing it for a while and one of the focuses of my current attempt to fix what I see as some of the problems with the game. See Battletech requires a great deal of book keeping. This is integral to the game, more so than something like Warhammer 40,000 or even Necromunda, where much of the actual book keeping is backgrounded in favour of focusing on the battles. In Battletech two parts of that book keeping and particularly the way they interact create moments of some of the least satisfying gameplay in the game. Let’s start with Hit Location, and to talk about that we need to discuss how to resolve a damage roll in Battletech. I promise I will try and make it quick. When you hit a mech with an attack in Battletech (itself an intensive process I will catalogue at a different time) you then need to de...
Read more

Princes of the Apocalypse: Session 2

Image
Our last session of Princes of the Apocalypse was in November, and we hadn’t done much more than the adventure intro, so we returned to the Dessarin Valley after the events of Red Larch, in which our bold heroes had found a cult with an unusual symbol… [This promises to be a long one, we got a lot done. This post contains spoilers for Princes of the Apocalypse.] Our party consists of: David Maltman as Reed Tosscobble, Halfling Rogues Swashbuckler David Longbottom as Ulfang Strackhelm, Dwarf Cleric of Helm Amanda Hewitt as Eva Dawnfell, Human Monk Necromancer Dak’kon of the unbroken circle of Zerthimon a Githzerai and NPC Companion. This session was a trial at starting our sessions earlier in the morning. We convened at about 9am and shared a hearty breakfast of pancakes with crispy bacon and slathered in maple syrup. If you’ve never run a roleplaying session in the morning I heartily recommend it. This might be a point considering for your own group but there...
Read more

Princes of the Apocalypse: Session 4 Part I

Image
[This post contains spoilers for Princes of the Apocalypse] The wind was high this night, more so than usual, and Savra drew the shutters on her small cell, bound them tightly with the cord and bade goodnight to Hina, the half-elf who told her jokes and shared her fondness for Pasha in the stables. Tonight though she couldn’t help herself. Detachment had come easily enough to her. The dedication to take on something higher than herself, but tonight she thought of family and hissed a curse through her teeth at the Dwarf woman with the seafoam hair that had come at her father’s behest. ‘I am the breath of the heavens.’ She reminded herself with less certainty that on the nights before. ‘I ride the sky itself and raise all with me, by the will of Yan-C-Bin…’ Our party are: David Maltman as Reed Tosscobble, Halfling Rogues Swashbuckler David Longbottom as Ulfang Strackhelm, Dwarf Cleric of Helm Amanda Hewitt as Eva Dawnfell, Human Monk Necromancer Amy Tan as Amber Fros...
Read more