Book Review: Flesh and Iron

Flesh and Iron is the second book from Henry Zou and the second book of the Bastion Wars series.  This is the story of the 88th Battalion of the 31st Riverine Regiment. They are on the world of Solo-Bastón to fight a Chaos uprising/incursion.

I have to give it to Mr. Zou, he writes a hell of a fight scene. He did it in Emperor's Mercy and he does it here. The are, however, many problems with this book as with the previous.

For one thing there were some overt anti-Vietnam war tones to this book. The vast strength of the Imperium against the indigenous fighters with covert help from Chaos. Add to that the terrible way that the indigenous peoples are treated by the Imperium and it looks a lot like southeast Asia to me. Add to that the fact that we have pretty much the oldest plot line in 40k, and probably fiction itself. Corrupt bureaucrats that are sending the noble warriors on an apparent suicide mission.

Book Review: Execution Hour

So for my birthday last year my wife bought me all of the available Print on Demand books from the Black Library. It has taken me a while (like nine months) but I have finally got to this one.

The Gothic War book, which is made up of the books Execution Hour and Shadowpoint are like many of the print on demand books in that they are old and out of print. Unlike some of the old Black Library books, these hold up pretty well as the years have past (at least Exection Hour has). There are no Landraiders that have Dreadnaught carrying capacity (I'm looking at you Crusade for Armageddon). I think this mainly has to do with the fact that it is mainly fleet-based combat, and not a single Space Marine in the book.

Battle Report: Space Wolves vs. Orks

So a buddy of mine threw down with a couple of 1500 point lists. He is just getting back into 40k, so we went for "fun" lists. I didn't want to take anything too face smashy. We rolled up the mission and we got a capture and control mission with Dawn of War deployment. The orks won the roll to go first, so he placed his objective left of center (from my point of view) behind some ruins. I placed mine middle left in some cover.

Book Review: The Purging of Kadillus

So I finished this book the other day. I must say, I am really enjoying the Space Marine Battles books. It could be because I am a huge Space Marine Fanboy, or it could be because they are excellent books. I'm betting its a little of both.

This story, like the others, centers around one major engagement for a Space Marine chapter (well the Hunt for Voldorius had two chapters, but I digress). This chapter being the Dark Angels. If I had picked up this book before I had picked up William King's Rangar books, I probably would have been a Dark Angels player, I've always thought they were a cool chapter.

Podcasting: World's End Radio

After I had been listening to 40k Radio a while, they started talking about this hobby network they had created. It had the D6 Generation, Podhammer, and this other site, 40k Radio. I didn’t really give D6 much of a chance, because I wasn’t much interested in general gaming. I didn’t give Podhammer much of a chance because I wasn’t much into Fantasy.
I did, however give World’s End Radio a chance because they were supposed to cover not only 40k, but Battle Fleet Gothic, and Epic 40k, both of which I was interested in. The first episode I listened to covered the rules of BFG and this game called Blood Bowl which appeared to be a cross between Fantasy, American Football and Rugby.