Adam

When Games Workshop was attempting to add some novels to expand on the lore of their franchises in the late 80's their first foray into Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 only published novels of short stories to see if there was any interest in such novels. Dark Future a now rather defunct intellectual property was given the same treatment. Personally, I'm not a very big fan of the short story anthology and so, this would have been a bad idea to garner interest from someone like myself. However, I think there are loads of people that like the sci-fi/fantasy short story approach, meanwhile, I just think it's never enough of a story for such usually epic settings. Dark Future, while being post apocalyptic, suffers from a similar trait.The Dark Future setting is starkly different from the products that Games Workshop has mainly been built around. It's core game is a sort of Mad Max styled road warrior game. If anyone remembers an old game called Thunder Road from Milton Bradley this seems very similar. However, I think Thunder Road ripped off the Road Warrior in its car design a lot more. Dark Future's vehicles seem more rooted in a sort of high tech James Bond style with the secret embedded weapons while still being sports cars. Some cars are very post apocalyptic and Mad Max inspired in a modified dune buggy fashion. So, as with loads of other things Games Workshop does, it's a blend of lots of different things that have already existed. Another interesting aspect of the setting is that it takes place in the U.S. and focuses on life after the collapse. It also has a bit of a Judge Dredd flair in the cops vs. criminals aspect as well and probably some of the vehicle ideas, but loads of creators at Games Workshop were inspired by the “2000 AD” comic books. Unfortunately, the setting didn't get developed much more beyond the big box game. There was a single supplement created and it was not a major contribution to the game. After that the whole project was dropped and left to die, only to be resurrected in the form of a weird video game in the 2000's era. I have not played that video game, but it didn't look like much more than a racing game. Anyway, let's dive into the stories.

Route 666 by Jack YeovilThis is the first short story and it shares the same name as the book title, which is used again later as a full length book title, why they would do such a thing is baffling to me. Anyway, this story was not too bad, however, I felt like there was way too much being introduced to us and it feels like less of a short story than it should be. There are entirely too many characters and various factions brought into this story. It should have been more focused on the main people involved.The first group we are introduced to is this group of resettlers called the Josephites trying to make their way to Utah led by a guy named Elder Seth. Elder Seth and his group made me think of The Stand quite a bit. They made me think of the guy building the paradise out in the desert, but it was a hellish place and knowing that reference made everything predictable on my end.Amidst this world we are also introduced to a faction in the gang called the Psychopomps led by a crazy woman named Jessamyn. We first meet this gang while they are fighting with another gang called the Daughters of the American Revolution, so you can see some of the historical reference/comedic concepts that arise in this setting.The other group are the cops lead by Sergeant Quincannon and another important figure is clearly Leona Tyree. They first come across some dead bodies left behind by the Josephites and are then told become a police escort for the group. The challenge now was to catch up with them.All of these parties end up meeting up again in a small town, where Elder Seth runs into his previous assaulter in the Psychopomps. Apparently Jessamyn stole some magic glasses from him and he's taking them back. Here we learn that Elder Seth wields some strange powers and now the cops are a bit more scared. But once he gets his glasses back, Seth and his group start to move on and the story just ends... That's when we find out this was just an elaborate introduction and we'll see the story continue in the forthcoming novel Demon Download. I really hope all of the stories aren't like this in terms of an elaborate introduction to something else where I could just read a full novel.In the end, the story wasn't too bad. It just wound up being pretty cliche as far as anything else goes. Lots of references and styles that already existed and didn't feel all that unique.... maybe as the novels grow the setting it will get better.

The Old World setting has really returned to the original ways of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, sort of... In the original creation the setting was broken up around the rule book then the forces of "good" and the forces of "evil". In the new edition they've used the same split, but now it's just the "Forces of Fantasy".

This book gives you a little bit of lore to get you started with your army. Right now none of the massive events from Warhammer Fantasy Battle have happened, and this setting feels a lot more of a pre-game of what's to come. I fully expect to see the forces of Chaos rise in the near future when we get back onto the regular timeline of the original release decades ago.

"Forces of Fantasy" gives you rules for the various armies and gives you instructions to help create a muster list. From here you will need to get a hold of your army's respective Arcane Journal to flesh out all the details of running your army. I'm sort of surprised they went this route instead of creating the old 128 page army books that gave you all the information you needed. I do wonder if they eventually march into the next edition they will eventually do that. There are just some minor details that I sort of wish they would get into and flesh out, but that's what makes this feel a lot more like a "getting started" sort of design. The rules are fully fleshed out, but I mean more in the sense of the lore at this point.

I did enjoy reading all the basic lore of all the armies though, so, in that regard I did enjoy the book. Maybe they're trying to entice people to start more than one army... which I can very much see Games Workshop doing. In any event, to play this game as any of the armies in this list, this book one really be enough. You need three books to fully play your army of choice in this edition of Warhammer.

Firstly, I do love a lot of 80's slop and I love discovering lost forgotten tales. This kind of sits in the realms of both. However, some 80's slop can be really good and well written, the rest is just not good to painfully mediocre. Sadly, I'd probably rate this in the realms of not good overall. I can really find no info on the author, it might be a pseudonym, or this Tankwar series might be a one and done for this author.

I found a few of these books at a library sale and they looked so ridiculous I had to give them a try. Bonus points because they were short and hopefully a quick read. Unfortunately, the story wound up being somewhat boring at times that I could not tear through the writing as fast as I would have liked. I also had to switch on and off with another book just to read something a little bit better. However, this entire series being lost to time, might mean I read the whole thing so someone out there has a full review of the books!

The story is primarily about the outbreak of World War III and the tank crew of an experimental tank called "No Slack" suddenly caught behind enemy lines. For whatever reason the experimental tank was in Germany and when World War III broke out as the Russians moved into the region, our intrepid tank crew found themselves needing to escape the region immediately. The book starts off with these kinds of tank action sequences and it was pretty good at first. I was somewhat hoping it would be similar to that movie Fury, which was a really fun movie. I will say, at first glance this book felt a bit like that, but rather quickly deviated.

The main character is the commander of the tank crew Sergeant Max Tag. As with a lot of military novels, the rest of the crew has plucky nicknames, which makes it annoying to read when there are too many to keep track of. Luckily this book doesn't get that bad for the reader. As they make their escape Max and his crew run into an old German buddy Holz. Who is heading up a small German unit with his sister Giesla.

...And this is where the ultra bad writing begins. Reading this in 2026 is probably very different from reading this in 1989, and I don't know if I ever would have thought about it back then, but I've seen enough lists of bad writing tropes of women to know that this pretty much checks off all the boxes. First off, she's basically the only woman in the entire novel. Like, we seriously don't encounter any others at all anywhere in this universe. Maybe this will change in future novels? I'll keep you posted. First off, I assure you this woman is very hot. Because the only woman around a warzone better be? She also has a traumatic past, to "give her character depth," I assume? Guess what happened to her? She was kidnapped and sexually assaulted multiple times. The assaulters also killed her husband and made her watch. Was this during a war? No, no it wasn't, it was during a car race... At this point we've very much lost the plot... but it gets worse.

We have a couple chapters of war action, which weren't terrible, but then we move into a 20 something page chapter about Max's past. About how awesome he was in high school, of all times. This isn't even much of a spoiler, because it has literally nothing to do with the book. It feels like it exists just to show off how awesomely cool Max must be? Anyway, this is where another woman shows up in the book, she has pretty no lines, while Max rattles on about things. You see, instead of going to prom with someone he really liked, he took pity on the homely girl and asked her to go with him to show off how great of a guy he is, I guess. It's just dumb and very bad writing all around. But low and behold she gets dressed up and now she's hot! They stop for gas and these bikers start to harass her about going with them. Now Max needs to show off how cool he is and stand up to the bikers at the gas station. He, naturally, embarasses them, but now they lie in wait after the prom and they bring the whole gang! Max challenges them to a race and wins... which solves the problem? The sheriff gets involved and forces the bikers to back down, but then Max goes and has a talk with his dad. His dad proceeds to tell him stories about Vietnam and now we have this whole Vietnam sequence in the middle of this book... what in the hell am I reading at this point? Now the plot has really been destroyed and I'm, frankly, bored out of my mind.

I'm really hoping the rest of the tank crew doesn't get these weird twenty page monologues, because then there would be almost nothing left of World War III to talk about... and while that, thankfully, doesn't happen, their backgrounds are minute blurbs. To be honest, they feel more like one sentence author notes that just got put in here and weren't fleshed out at all. So, now we know the backgrounds of everyone on the team, now we can get back to the war. The action rather drops off for quite a while as most of the time is spent running and hiding. They end up meeting up with some other Americans and with the German Jagd unit they make a break for safety. I don't know if, being American, I just don't know much about the German area, but I was getting pretty lost in their descriptions of where they were trying to go. They pretty much escaped into farm country and I imagine the areas and lands are just as nondescript as driving through those regions of the U.S.

The writing often feels a bit clunky, where the author tries to be funny or witty with his characters. Sometimes it works, but maybe I just don't know 80's military slang, because everything feels like slang at a certain point. It's also weird to have all the American soldiers throwing their slang at the Germans as if the Germans would understand what is going on... They eventually get to a farmhouse and regroup and this is where the obligatory sex scene has to occur? This was just awkward to say the least. Giesla basically trauma dumps on Max, telling him all the horrible things that were done to her and her husband when they were kidnapped. And here we find out that she was taken by a group of black men... that were in cahoots with the Russians? Does our intrepid author explain the connection, certainly not. Just throwing around things people fear at the time... but it's not a racist book, one of Max's tank crew is a black man. So it's all good right? So, after she trauma dumps, it is now time to have sex. We are, thankfully, assured that Max is very big down there, I know all of us reading it wanted to know.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, it's time to get back to the war. I will say the actually parts where there is tank action are good. The battle sequences and final escape were good. I actually tore through the last thirty or so pages wanting to see where things would go from there. At this point, I do wonder if the following novels get better. If this is really the authors first try ever at a novel, it would explain a lot of the bad writing. Most authors first book is not well written and they have to grow into their style a lot more. I think of Clive Cussler as a staple comparison, where even he knew the first Dirk Pitt novel was not that great. Comparing the first writings to his like tenth book are night and day... maybe that will happen with Steelbaugh as the series progresses.

Outside of the action sequences this book is bogged down by all the bad writing tropes people would later identify and complain about constantly in the mid-2000's. There is none of the wackiness of the 80's I was hoping find. This is labeled as sci-fi, but it really isn't. The experimental tank isn't even all that experimental. It has some new armor coating to make it more defensive and then more powerful guns, but like... it's not run by anything super different than regular tanks. The only other major factor is that it's fast... but like, fast for a tank. This book ends up reading a lot more like a Vietnam war story, but instead of a squad making their way in the jungle, it's a tank crew. Personally, I'd give it a pass, I'm gonna read these so you don't have to! I need a break from this though... we'll see when I get around to book two.

Bounces around a 3.5 to a 4.5 for meThis is the second installment in the Horus Heresy series that would become an eventually bloated fan favorite of the Warhammer world. So far, for me, I've enjoyed the book overall, but I've read some reviews that have some decent criticisms of this and I tend to agree with some of the nit picking they bring up, some I don't... let's dive in.One of the jarring things I think with this novel is the interactions everyone has with the Interex is just done now? Like, I thought they didn't subjugate those people at all and instead ran away for their lives? But Horus never brought the full bore of the crusade against them, and instead they're just off doing something else? According to the Lexicanum (a big Warhammer 40k wiki for those unfamiliar) they've already been defeated and destroyed... well... I thought this novel would be about that, guess we all missed it? It's a real shame though, because the Interex had contact with the Eldar and I thought this would be an incredibly interesting tie for the 40k era. As the 63rd expedition is about to engage xenos that still exist in 40k, they get side tracked by suddenly needing to overthrow the Emperor! Ah well, guess we'll never see the Eldar around here.This is where I get into some speculation. Many reviewers complain of the “silly” decisions being made by Horus throughout this novel and how quickly things happen. Well, I somewhat suspect that this is because I'm not sure Games Workshop envisioned this spawning 60+ books in the end. I wonder, if at the time of this writing, this was going to be just some sort of trilogy and they were telling authors to get to the point? Dan Abnett's book is a much slower pace compared to McNeill's and I do wonder if they wanted McNeill to just get to the important part as fast as possible and this was the most effective way he figured he could do it within the constrains of 400 pages. Whereas, it feels like the pacing of this book should have gone much slower, because then it would have felt paced more appropriately against Abnett's work.In any event, we find ourselves on the planet Davin as the 63rd expedition is sort of regrouping a bit, I assume after destroying the Interex? So, some of the pacing issues people are bringing up, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that an entire campaign has been fought with the Interex in between these novels. An interesting point of this novel that comes up is the insistence on bringing in the Imperator Titan, the Dies Irae. Games Workshop hasn't made an Imperator model since the late 80's/early 90's in the epic scale for Adeptus Mechanicus and at the time this book was written... there is no new one forthcoming. (I have hopes that with the new Legions Imperialis set we will get one though.) Anyway, Davin was brought into compliance a long time ago and put in the care of an old friend of Horus' named Temba. Now rumors abound that Temba is holed up on a moon and is defying the will of the Emperor or something... so Horus feels compelled to go and bring things back into compliance.Horus feels the need to take care of a lot of this stuff personally, but the real issue here is that one of the captains that has Horus' ear, Erebus, has already fallen to chaos. I think part of the problem with the "speed" people complain about is that Erebus has already been wearing down Horus for quite a while. Horus is not the same man from Abnett's novels. He is getting angrier, more apt to rash decisions and I think this because Erebus is psychically stronger with Chaos supporting him. To me, this would explain some of the aspects of Horus' seemingly quick fall and essentially falling for what appears to be rather pedestrian attempts to dupe him to turn against the Emperor.Horus is so enraged at Temba's seeming betrayal he brings the full brunt of his forces against Temba who is holed up on one of Davin's moons. Once the expedition lands everything is seemingly quiet except for some strange transmissions talking of Nurgleth. This smacks of the Whisperhead's incident from Abnett's novel. These are the parts of the book I thought were really cool, anyone familiar with Nurgle will know what to expect from this particular combat scenario. I won't ruin it for anyone, but suffice to say Temba is taken down (I mean, kind of expected given the point of the series), but the shocking fact is that Horus is mortally wounded. Which should not happen to Primarch, or so many believe. In the end the Mournivale, Horus' most important advisory council is fractured on what to do. Loken and Torgaddon return to the moon to retrieve the weapon that wounded Horus to see if knowing more about that will help Horus, but Abaddon and Aximand stay behind. Abaddon had always been an impatient and angry man, and as Horus seems to become more victim to those aspects of emotion Abaddon is far more fearsome in this novel, so he and Aximand seek another way to save Horus. Erebus tells of a special healing system on Davin and without notifying Loken and Torgaddon they simply bring Horus back to Davin out of desperation.Here's where you, the reader, really begin to question whether these primary characters are starting to fall to chaos or not. They are, honestly, starting to become quite different in action and temper as laid out in [b:Horus Rising 625603 Horus Rising (The Horus Heresy, #1) Dan Abnett https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414166935l/625603.SY75.jpg 611957]. This definitely feels jarring as some readers point out, but that's because the time scale is never really made very clear between the two novels. I think much more time has passed and we're “just supposed to know”? This is the part where I think the book is somewhat rushed or poorly written, but I have no idea how much that's because of McNeill, or Games Workshop meddling in the novel brief or editing after the fact. Where people accuse McNeill or writing Horus poorly, I must point out that I feel like Loken and Torgaddon are pretty on par with Abnett's story. Yeah, he doesn't get nearly as much character development, but I feel like because he couldn't. If you think about how much has been put into this novel and all the things that happen... when was he going to do that? Take all the time spent with Horus' internment in the healing device on Davin... which is spoilers... but... In the healing device Horus is subjected to a series of visions, for us readers in the know, these are obviously from the realms of chaos. He is guided through it all by Erebus, who is now a very known traitor to the Empire and is trying very hard to coax Horus into doing his will without expressly asking. It really is never made extremely clear why Horus decides to turn, but I sort of assume it's his desire to live and his vanity that play a major role. Even going against the Emperor he probably really believed he would be able to steer humanity into a better light... however, as this is all at the bidding of Chaos, I find it hard to believe Horus would be ignorant of that fact. However, the only argument I can think, is that the Emperor has drilled into his people that Chaos doesn't really exist and there is nothing beyond the material, SO much, that they just blindly believe this. So, even though Erebus was lying to Horus in a very obvious way, how much do we really understand how Horus interprets Chaos at this stage. You'd think at this point his encounter with Temba would have him seriously questioning stuff, but, honestly, after watching some people be duped by obvious things they simply "didn't wish to be true" or "must have another explanation" I'm kind of willing to believe Horus could fall for this regardless of how smart and perfect he is portrayed in these novels. Even smart people will believe incredibly stupid lies as I've come to find out in 2025 as I write this.The last part of the book is called “Crusade's End” and, honestly, this should have just been it's own novel. We go from Horus being healed on Davin to all of a sudden in the midst of a massive war with the Auretian Technocracy. A war that is not going super great apparently, but my gosh a lot has certainly happened between the two blank pages that divide up the novel parts... The big deal with the Auretian Technocracy is that they have access to an STC device and I really think it harnesses some serious AI tech that is absolutely feared by the Imperium of Man. However, it seemed like this was the missing piece Horus needed to truly bolster his forces. (I mean, I'm sort of assuming this allows them to bring about the Dark Mechanicum.) This isn't much of a spoiler, but of course they win and destroy the technocracy and take their tech. In this all too brief part of the book we start to see things put into motion for the fall of some of the Primarch's, the most overt is Angron's performance during this last war. I suspect that will be glossed over in the next book, but Loken and Torgaddon are starting to become extremely suspicious.The big revelation at the end of this book is painfully expected, so I find it hard to believe it a spoiler. But, at the end of this expedition Horus tells a group of the secret lodge members of his plan to turn on Terra. There's an entirely new author for the third novel, so we'll see how this goes. But I do wonder if it's going to have a similar ridiculous time jump that just comes out of nowhere. Depends on how fast they wanted to tear through the tale of the Horus Heresy without expecting it to take 60+ novels.In the end, I really liked this novel. I was able to kind of figure out reasons to justify some of the pacing even though it was largely annoying at times. The mysteries with Temba and the blade that harmed Horus were simply awesome parts. Loken and Torgaddon were the saving grace of the novel for me as their characters try to navigate the fact that all the other Space Marines around them are turning into something they don't understand. The seeds of Mersadie Oliton founding a new faith in the Emperor which can potentially turn back actual daemons. It's sort of a nod to the future of things like the Sister's of Battle, which is pretty awesome. So with her and Sindermann, that entire arc was really interesting. It was a fun 30k novel ultimately and I do look forward to reading the next installment.

I picked this book up because I also purchased the “Imperial Sector” box set so I wanted to see if this book had any helpful hints on setting things up. That's not really what I got, but what I did get was a book that will help me out when I really want to build a lot of complex detail into my “City Fight” campaigns!

I think this book is meant to be read after “How to Make Wargames Terrain”. “Cities of Death” is written with the approach that you already know how to do a lot of basic terrain creations. Even though it feels like I probably read this book out of order, I can't deny the potential of this quality book. If you're looking for some inspiration on spicing up your wargames terrain then this is a must have book, especially if you want it focused on an urban setting.

As usual with the Games Workshop books there are so many beautiful pictures you'll want to re-create everything for your own games. It gives you some interesting pointers on how to construct different buildings using their already available miniatures. Just because you buy the “Manufactorum” model, doesn't mean you can't combine it with a different set to make a different building entirely. This book gives you some details and pointers on some of these different creations. For a basic but wonderful addition, I really liked the suggestion of using different elements to make street signs to give it a much more realistic feel. I thought this was an awesome and simple enough modification that I will soon have these on my streets.

Even if you've already come up with plenty ideas on how to add more depth to your city campaigns this book may just have that extra something to give it even more of a kick. I already had a lot of terrain ideas for my gaming table, but this book has even managed to add onto those. “Cities of Death” helps to give your miniatures the most realistic world in which to fight.