Liber Chaotica Collection
Visually very good, clever and a well thought through and conceived piece….though not the easiest of reads due to the subject matter at hand. Wonderful insights into the Chaos Gods (with some bleed over into 40K), as well as the crafty addition of Undivided….plus the whole ‘writer falling into madness due to subject matter’ was an inspire idea….but as I said before, made it challenging and difficult to read.
7/10
Horus Heresy Art Books (1-4)
Excellent initial background books to the heresy from a mostly Imperial based perspective. Covers most of the well known and pivotal points with pretty pictures too….however, it feels incomplete with glaring things omitted and an ending that seemed very rushed, like other parts of it that delved deeply into the events….could easily have continued on for another edition or two.
8/10
The Sabbat Worlds Crusade – Dan Abnett
As with all background books, it wins on visual aspects but lacks any real narrative and feels very bitty…..the story behind the Sabbat Worlds Crusade is not exempt from that either. It’s good to read more about what’s going on in the cluster besides what the Ghosts are up to, but it’s seemed very ‘all over the place’.
6/10
Xenology – Si Spurrier
Best of the 40K background book I’ve read so far from BL (The Anphelion Project from Imperial Armour holds the top spot). Good mix of storyline and background with a small array of interesting characters with impressive characterisation despite the limited air-time they get….and very Imperialistic with its contradiction. Plus coming from a biological background, the anatomy pictures were particularly of interest to me, despite the Tau having toes instead of some kind of hoof like structure that the figures have.
8.5/1
The Inquisition
A big let down really. High expectations of what may be revealed through a book based on the
Brief descriptions were too brief making it feel like a ‘Dummies guide to the Inquisition’ rather than a background book for at least the vaguely informed or an in-depth encyclopaedia. Very little new was mentioned of revealed and felt a little cobbled together.
4/10
The Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer (1st and Damocles edition)
Brilliant! Pure, unadulterated garbage of the first order that is a giggle from start to finish and a book you have to read twice (once to read the book and once to read all the ‘inspirational’ sayings at the bottom of each page. Utter Imperial propaganda in its more concentrated form that it makes you wonder how and why the Guard swallow that much hogwash! Wonderful!
Great extras in the Damocles edition and some marvellous little contradictions with the Munitorium Manual
10/10
Imperial Munitorium Manual – Graham McNiell
A companion piece to the Primer (for you will be shot if you can’t present this document when asked) but not quite as delightful, but a lot more technical in nature. Great insights into how a Guard army fights though I’d have liked more examples of variety rather than just one case study of a ‘standard’ but I understand the reasons behind it. Though little amendments and other examples at the bottoms of some of the pages was a lovely edition to the main body of the text.
9/10
1 comment:
The thing that irritated me most about the background books (I only own The 13th Black Crusade myself) was how BL bought stock images from NASA or old warzones and photoshopped them slightly to "look 40k."
The first time they used it, I thought it was cool, but it soon became apparent that it was a cheap cop-out to avoid having to pay too many artists. By far the laziest one was a "Chaos Missile" of some type that was very obviously a satellite with a Khorne rune slapped on. Really guys?
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