Amazon's WARHAMMER 40,000 project recruits Mike Flanagan

Amazon has brought modern horror-meister Mike Flanagan on board with its long-gestating Warhammer 40,000 screen universe project. Flanagan will be working with producer-star-geek ambassador Henry Cavill in getting the project onto the screen.

As related previously, Amazon and Games Workshop entered talks in late 2022 to bring the Warhammer 40,000 IP to the screen across multiple projects, potentially for both TV and film, with Cavill advising, producing and potentially starring. In December 2023, the two companies signed a more comprehensive agreement on the project. In December 2024, the two companies agreed to move forward with the project, although that seems to have been more of an amber light than a green light.

Flanagan and United Artists (UA) have now joined the team. Flanagan is a writer-director with considerable recent cred from his adaptations of Stephen King works, particularly Gerald's Game (2017) and Doctor Sleep (2019). He is also the writer-director of Oculus (2013), Hush (2016) and The Life of Chuck (2024). He is also the writer-producer-showrunner of The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), The Midnight Club (2022) and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). He is also in charge of the upcoming Stephen King mini-series Carrie, also for Amazon, and is attached to an Exorcist reboot project. Most notably, he has been planning an ambitious, true-to-the-books adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower sequence for many years.

Whilst Warhammer 40,000 is predominantly an action franchise, it has strong horror and body horror elements, as well as a satirical tone. Flanagan's sensibilities seem in tune with the franchise, so it will be interesting to see if he can help this project get over the production line after four years of discussions.

Created in 1987, Warhammer 40,000 is a science fantasy franchise set 39,000 years in the future and incorporates elements of space opera, horror, military fiction and dark, satirical comedy. The ruthless Imperium of Man controls a vast swathe of the galaxy, but is beset on every side by external alien threats: the brutish Orks, the scheming Tau, the ancient Necrons, the hive-minded Tyranids and the arrogant Eldar, amongst others. The Imperium is also weakened from within by Chaos cults, worshippers of the dark Chaos Gods who dream of turning the Imperium into a charnel house of worship of the Ruinous Powers. Originating as a tabletop wargame, the franchise has expanded across well over 600 novels, short story collections and audio plays, alongside dozens of video games, numerous spin-off board games and hundreds of wargame sourcebooks and tabletop roleplaying rulebooks.

The lengthy discussion process has probably been down to Games Workshop's exacting standards of quality control. Previous proposed film and TV projects foundered on Games Workshop requiring to maintain creative control over all visual elements of the setting, since their bread and butter is the massive range of miniature models and accompanying artwork based on them. Most TV adaptations seem to want to change elements (sometimes for practical reasons, sometimes just changing things for the sake of change), which Games Workshop likely would like to avoid to prevent any disputes over the ownership of visual elements of the franchise. There have also been concerns over lore and fidelity to the source material, with some recent TV projects (including Amazon's own Wheel of Time and Rings of Power series) being fiercely criticised for large deviations from the source material. Warhammer 40,000 author Dan Abnett has also indicated that Games Workshop is lining up its future runs of novels and big lore expansions with the TV show, so GW is undertaking a careful curating of the property across multiple incarnations to make sure everything lines up.

Back in 2019 Games Workshop partnered with veteran US screenwriter Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, The Man in the High Castle) on a potential adaptation of the classic 40K novel trilogy Eisenhorn. No broadcaster was attached, but Spotnitz had previously worked with Amazon The Man in the High Castle. 

Both companies have clarified that the current deal is for Warhammer 40,000 alone, but the deal could incorporate fantasy franchises Warhammer and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar further down the line.

Games Workshop is currently working on a CGI TV series about the Deathwatch Space Marines. The franchise is also set for a boom in popularity with the long-awaited video game Dawn of War IV set for release on 17 September, and Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is expected to follow in 2027.

RIP John Blanche

News has sadly broken that legendary Games Workshop illustrator John Blanche has passed away. Blanche is famed for establishing the look and feel of the Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy universe in the 1980s.

Blanche was somewhat vague on his personal details, allowing that he was born in 1948 on an unspecified British council estate, and gained his love of art whilst studying at college in the 1960s. He was drawn to science fiction and fantasy imagery, especially after reading The Lord of the Rings, but was told his interest would not lead to any kind of commercial success.

"Epic 40,000" (1997) depicts battles on an even more gigantic scale than standard 40K.

Staying true to his personal brand, he worked as a taxidermist in a Georgian manor house (as you do) before noting the explosion of science fiction and fantasy publishers in the 1970s, inspired by the success of Tolkien and the "New Wave" of authors spearheaded by the likes of Michael Moorcock. He relocated to London and got involved in the publishing industry with the help of artist and publisher Roger Dean, contributing to magazines and book covers, including some pieces for David Day's Tolkien Bestiary (1979).

"Amazonia Gothique" (1986) was Blanche's irritated reaction to the dominance of "bikini chainmail" and other illogical armour for female warriors in the SF and fantasy genres. This piece proved inspirational and influential on GW's Warhammer 40,000 line.

Blanche had already gotten into collecting and painting metal miniatures for wargames, so the chance to work for Games Workshop in 1977 seemed too good to pass up. He began illustrating covers for White Dwarf Magazine, and drew the localised British cover for Games Workshop's reprint of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. He continued to juggle book and magazine work with Games Workshop, but the relationship grew closer in the early 1980s. He created the cover art for the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 1983 and worked on dozens of sourcebooks and magazine articles for the game.

In 1986 he was made Art Director at Games Workshop in Nottingham and played a key role in establishing the look and aesthetic of the Warhamer 40,000 universe. He personally drew hundreds of pieces of art inspired by the setting and commissioned more as Art Director. His work for Games Workshop is notable for its sheer longevity; he only officially retired from the company in 2023.

"The Emperor of Mankind" (2008) may be Blanche's most famous single painting, a rare depiction of the Emperor of humanity sitting immobile on the Golden Throne on Terra, as he has done for ten thousand years.

His work for GW did not prevent him from working elsewhere, and he provided some iconic cover art for the Fighting Fantasy game book series as well. He also provided art for the local thrash metal band Sabbat.

John Blanche's artwork was powerfully influential on multiple generations of British science fiction and fantasy fans. His style was inimitable and his skill extremely impressive. He will be missed.

It's probably most fitting to leave on a quote from Warhammer 40,000's most notable writer of fiction, Dan Abnett:

"For me, John Blanche will always be the master. His extraordinary, grotesque vision informs everything we do."

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER 40,000 announced

Creative Assembly and Games Workshop have confirmed their highly lucrative alliance will continue into the grim darkness of the far future. Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is definitely a thing.

The game will see war raging unchecked across at least a star system, and possibly the whole galaxy, as multiple 40K factions clash in battle. Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Orks appear in the trailer, with Eldar in the promotional art, and more factions are likely to join the fray, if not in the initial release than certainly in the several thousand DLC that will follow. Armoured vehicles, aircraft and orbital bombardments will change up the standard Total War experience.

A significant change will be that the game with launch on PlayStation 5 and XBox Series X/S as well as PC. It's assumed that the game will target a 2026 release date but that's not confirmed so far.

Creative Assembly confirmed last week that Total War: Medieval III is also in early development.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition

The planet Tartarus has come under heavy attack by the Orks, hard-pressing the planet's Imperial Guard defenders. The Blood Ravens chapter of Space Marines arrives to reinforce the planet and carry the fight to the Ork forces, but with both the Eldar and Chaos Marines also playing a role in events on the planet, it is clear that more is going on behind the scenes...

Originally released in 2004, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War was an important milestone in the growing popularity of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It was a major sales success, unusually for a real-time strategy game at a time when the genre had already started stagnating, and has been credited with helping boost the success of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, particularly in the United States, where it had previously been quite niche. The game was also hugely praised for its voice acting, graphics and particularly its characterful animations, with gory "finishing moves" for melee combat. Although I enjoyed the game, I wasn't keen on its brevity versus its price, a repeating issue with Relic Entertainment games (with just 11 missions and one faction playable in campaign mode, though this expands to four in multiplayer), and the slow drip-feed of content over the next four years. I also found the first expansion, Winter Assault, underwhelming enough that I never checked out the later two (Dark Crusade and Soulstorm). It also didn't help that Relic's Company of Heroes took ideas from Dawn of War and made many of them work much better in a World War II context.

Now Relic have taken a leaf out of the Age of Empires book - reasonable given their work on Age of Empires IV - and combined all of the content for the original Dawn of War and released it as a "definitive edition," with all of the game and expansion content and factions rolled into one package, moderately remastered. This isn't a comprehensive remake. The game looks a bit better than in 2004 with higher-resolution textures and a better draw distance, but it's mostly the same game with a slight shine added rather than a massive update. That said, it's a definite improvement and an easy recommendation if you are new to the game. Far more important is removing the original game's memory limitations, allowing it to scale much more nicely and appropriately with modern hardware rather than being limited to just a few gigs of memory. There are also some interesting new options, like being able to keep corpses on the battlefield rather than them disappearing over time, which makes the psychotic kill-count in some battles much clearer. These changes should also allow for more impressive mods to appear.

The Definitive Edition also handily removes a lot of the issues I had with the original game. This is now a big game taking about 50 hours for a full run-through of all four campaigns with a single faction (far more if you try to 100% it with every side), featuring no less than nine factions: the Blood Ravens Chapter of the Space Marines, the Orks, the Chaos Marines, the Eldar, the Imperial Guard, the Tau, the Necrons, the Dark Eldar and the Sisters of Battle, making multiplayer correspondingly more interesting. This is now a pleasingly chunky package as opposed to the anemic original release.

It's also a varied one, with each of the four titles having a different approach. The original Dawn of War is a linear, story-led campaign with you guiding the Blood Ravens under Captain Gabriel Angelos in the defence of Tartarus. At first the battle is a straightforward clash between the Space Marines and their Imperial Guard allies (not a full faction in the first game, but some units are playable in some missions) against the invading forces of the Orks. But soon the Eldar and the Chaos Marines both intervene, with all sides tracking a powerful artifact. There are plot twists and betrayals in the well voice-acted cutscenes, as well as the clash of forces on the battlefield and an a reluctant alliance of convenience between people whom in other circumstances would be mortal enemies. It's all good stuff, just a bit on the easy side even on higher difficulties, and far too short.

Winter Assault switches gears and sees a battle unfold for control of the planet Lorn V, fallen to Chaos, with the Imperial Guard tasked with reclaiming the planet for the Imperium, with some limited support from a small group of Ultramarines. The Eldar provide clandestine support from the shadows, hoping to use the humans to soak up the invading Chaos and Ork forces before revealing themselves. The twist here over the base game is that the story is divided into two distinct campaigns: Order and Disorder. Both campaigns see the factions forced into an uneasy alliance (Elder/Imperial Guard and Chaos/Orks), with the player having the freedom to choose which faction within each alliance will gain the upper hand. This is a clever way of making the most out of limited assets, as there's only a handful of maps. The game's structure allows you to revisit each map with different factions and alliances doing different things. Having said that, it's still a very short game, and the only Dawn of War title not to have any presence from the Blood Ravens, making it feel separate from the rest of the canon.

Dark Crusade throws a huge curveball into the mix. There is no linear, story-led campaign here at all. Instead, there is a strategic map of the planet Kronus, when multiple armies fighting for it. You tell your forces where to attack next, with each province of the planet providing different bonuses and abilities. Seize the planetary starport and you can mount assaults anywhere on the planet rather then the immediately adjacent provinces. Seize an industrial region and you start your battles with more resources. It's not exactly Total War - what to do in each province is pretty limited - but it does offer some interesting choices and some of the most challenging battles of the entire collection. The main problems with it are a lack of exposition on what's going on with the strategic map and how to play optimally, and the baffling absence of any kind of autosave. You have to manually save regularly or lose progress, no matter how many battles you win. It's barmy nonsense. It also doesn't help that the game doesn't explain the "Honour Guard" mechanic, which is the key to winning some of the endgame, ultra-hard battles. The expansion does add the Necrons (always a hard species to balance correctly) and Tau into the mix, and does a good job with them.

Soulstorm is where it feels like the wheels have come off the game a bit. It's basically Dark Crusade II, though for some reason it looks a lot worse (the attractive strategy map of Dark Crusade has been replaced by something much more primitive and ugly here). It looks bigger, as it unfolds over three planets and several moons, but the provinces are just bigger and scattered over the various worlds instead. The game adds the Dark Eldar and the Sisters of Battle to the mix but I'm not sure if they were playtested, as their balance feels a bit off. The game is also odder in that it's generally more straightforward and easier than Dark Crusade, but the last couple of factions you have to eliminate will have built up so much strength that in order to defeat them, it becomes a bit of a joyless slog. Soulstorm also - utterly nonsensically - doesn't keep structures from previous missions in the same province in place (unlike Dark Crusade). I'm assuming this is because in Dark Crusade it was a viable strategy to take every strategic point on every map and hugely fortify it before assaulting the enemy base and ending the mission, making it almost impossible for the enemy to actually win counterattack missions. But it's otherwise illogical why all the infrastructure you spent ages building up in a region are missing just five minutes later. Soulstorm also has very little story (even less than Dark Crusade) and plays even less lip service than Crusade as to why the Space Marines, Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard are fighting one another. Soulstorm is the weakest link here, even if moving your armies around to conquer territories and paint the map your colour retains some appeal.

The core appeal of the game remains intact. Sending scout forces out early to secure territory to gain enough recruitment points to form a huge army that then assaults the enemy position never gets old, resulting in a constant tension between attacking, defending, capturing and consolidating. Get the timing of your attack wrong and you will pay a heavy price. Animations remain among the best-in-class, and the polish-up from this remaster allows the game to remain visually pleasing whilst also being playable on a potato. The combination of the four titles into one gives it enough heft to be worth the reasonable asking price, without even counting the possibility of mods and multiplayer.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Definitive Edition (****) is, indeed, the definitive edition of the game. There's probably not enough of a change here to justify the purchase for established veterans who already own all the content, but for newcomers or maybe those who got the original game but skipped the expansions, this an enjoyable experience. The game is available now for PC.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, pleae consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

WARHAMMER: DAWN OF WAR IV announced

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV has been officially announced. The latest instalment in the venerable real-time strategy series will be released in 2026 on PC. It will also be the first game in the series not to be developed by Relic Entertainment, with instead King Art Games taking on development duties for publisher Deep Silver.

Despite the new team, the game will be steeped in the lore of the earlier titles. Once again you take control of the Blood Ravens chapter of Space Marines and their Adeptus Mechanicus allies as they battle Orks and Necrons on the planet Kronus. Cyrus, a major character from Dawn of War II and its expansions, also returns as the commander of the Blood Ravens forces in this game. The game promises a return to the larger-scaled combat of the original title and its expansions, and promises an eyebrow-raising 70+ campaign missions spread across the four factions, whilst there will also be several multiplayer options.

Dawn of War was released in 2004 and was a smash hit success, praised for its detailed (and gory) combat animations, its cover system and replacing resource gathering with holding strategic points on the battlefield, forcing players to play aggressively rather than turtle in their base. The original game allowed players to play as the Blood Ravens, Eldar, Chaos and Orks (though only the Blood Ravens in the story-driven campaign mode). The game was expanded through three well-received expansions, Winter Assault (2005), Dark Crusade (2006) and Soulstorm (2008), which added strategic maps where players could plan their next assaults, as well as adding the Imperial Guard, Tau, Necrons, Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar factions.

Dawn of War was regarded as a major reason for the increase in popularity of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise in the United States, as well as renewed interest in the franchise in the UK and a boost for sales of the wargame and associated novels. Relic also used the same game engine to power their critically-acclaimed World War II series Company of Heroes, with its first entry released in 2006.

Dawn of War II was released in 2009 and was also successful, but the decision to move away from traditional real-time strategy stalwarts like base-building in favour of guiding a smaller group of tougher units around the map, with a stronger focus on cooldown abilities, was controversial. The initial release allowed players to play as the Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Tyranids. The expansions Chaos Rising (2010) and Retribution (2011) added the Chaos Space Marines and Imperial Guard factions. 

Dawn of War III was released in 2017 and was highly controversial, with an attempt to appeal to both the fans of the previous games meaning it fell between the two stools and was not regarded as a good RTS or a good hero-focused action game, although the expansion of the game's scale to accommodate Titan-class units was appreciated.

The series has recently returned to prominence with the release just last week of Dawn of War: Definitive Edition, which repackages the original game and its three expansions into one title, with (modestly) upgraded graphics and resolution, and compatibility with modern systems and enhanced options for modding.

The Rose in Darkness by Danie Ware

Opal, a gleaming beacon of the civilisation of the Imperium of Man. A peaceful world deep within the Imperium, where vast crowds pay homage to the Emperor and his great hero, Saint Veres, in a glorious celebration held once every eight hundred years. The Skull of Saint Veres is a great relic, one which has been ordered to be moved to a shrine world, but the local leaders are reluctant to part with it. Sister Superior Augusta of the Order of the Bloody Rose arrives to expedite the process, only to find bubbling cauldrons of discontent and heresy waiting for her. She realises that Opal's opulence and tranquillity is a facade, one that is dangerously close to breaking.

My prior explorations of the Warhammer 40,000 universe have mostly been through the works of Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell, not to mention Paul Kearney's two books in the setting, which have meant reading a lot about Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Inquisitors. The Rose in Darkness was an appealing read as it meant switching focus to another one of the Imperium's orders, the Adepta Sororitas or the Sisters of Battle. The belligerent death-nuns of the Emperor, the Sisters step in to situations which local militias can't handle but sending in the Space Marines would be massive overkill, with the addition that their religious rites and devotion to the Emperor give them an insight that some of the other orders lack.

This book is a good exploration of what kind of situation requires the Sisters' attention, as they have to respect local traditions, honour the local Saint's day but also be firm in their objective of removing the planet's most holy relic, which the local leaders are understandably upset about. The negotiations are interrupted when it becomes clear that some outside force is stirring up trouble on Opal, and it's up to the Sisters to identify the threat. When it is identified, all hell breaks loose, resulting in lots of crunchy battle sequences of the kind that make up the backbone of most Warhammer 40,000 fiction.

Danie Ware paints Opal in all its Imperial splendor. Most 40K fiction takes place on the ragged frontier, where the Imperium is fighting some kind of conflict against an exterior threat, but here the trouble is much harder to pin down. Unleashing a storm of bolter fire to take care of an Ork invader is one thing, but when the threat is more insidious and you cannot tell friend from foe, it's a more nuanced challenge, something that Augusta and her troops struggle to initially engage with. The author is operating with a constrained page count here but deftly characterises figures so even briefly-appearing players (like the planet's governor and military commander) are given at least some depth and flavour.

The book's main success is this idea of a world deep inside Imperial space, blessed by the Emperor, relatively rich and opulent, but whose workers are poor and downtrodden, sometimes even starving when the rich nobility sits in comfort just a few miles away, creating a sense of natural anger and resentment even without strange cults or xenos interference. The feeling of tension ramping up through the book is remarkably successful. It also helps the book gives us POV characters both in the Sororitas and in the local population, so we get both an insider and outsider's perspectives as events on Opal reach breaking point.

It is worth saying that The Rose in Darkness is bleak as hell, even by 40K standards. Most other 40K fiction I've read takes the view that, sure, things are bad, people die, a lot of things blow up, but the most positive - or least-negative, anyway - outcome is infinitely preferable to the worst-case scenario. The Rose in Darkness instead evokes the idea of fighting against the dying of the light, of fighting a long defeat for the sake of fighting it, and true heroism is counted by people making a stand for the right reasons in the dark, where nobody will ever see or hear.

The Rose in Darkness (****) does what good 40K fiction does well - chunky action sequences, mixed in with moments of supernatural horror - but it does it with an air of melancholy and futility that I had not previously encountered in the setting (despite its reputation), which is interesting, but I suspect won't quite be for everybody.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Games Workshop and Amazon agree to proceed with a WARHAMMER 40,000 screen project

After an exhaustive and unusually public two-year discussion process, Amazon Studios and Games Workshop have agreed to move forwards with a screen project set in the latter's Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy universe. As previously announced, actor and noted geek ambassador Henry Cavill will star in and produce the project.

Amazon and Games Workshop announced plans to work together and with Cavill on the project two years ago. One year ago, they moved to the position of formalising contracts, but also announced a twelve-month consultation process where they would agree on the terms of the adaptations. That consultation process has ended with both companies happy to proceed.

That means that the first project, details unannounced so far except it will be a TV series, not a movie, will now go into early development, with scripts to be written. Cavill has confirmed his continued involvement.

Warhammer 40,000 is a science fantasy franchise set 39,000 years in the future and incorporates elements of space opera, horror, military fiction and dark, satirical comedy. The ruthless Imperium of Man controls a vast swathe of the galaxy, but is beset on every side by external alien threats: the brutish Orks, the scheming Tau, the ancient Necrons, the hive-minded Tyranids and the arrogant Eldar, amongst others. The Imperium is also weakened from within by Chaos cults, worshippers of the dark Chaos Gods who dream of turning the Imperium into a charnel house of worship of the Ruinous Powers. Originating as a tabletop wargame in 1987, the franchise has expanded across some 600 books, short story collections and audio plays, alongside dozens of video games, numerous spin-off board games and hundreds of wargame sourcebooks and tabletop roleplaying rulebooks.

The lengthy discussion process has probably been down to Games Workshop's exacting standards of quality control. Previous proposed film and TV projects foundered on Games Workshop requiring to maintain creative control over all visual elements of the setting, since their bread and butter is the massive range of miniature models and accompanying artwork based on them. Most TV adaptations seem to want to change elements (sometimes for practical reasons, sometimes just changing things for the sake of change), which Games Workshop likely would like to avoid to prevent any disputes over the ownership of visual elements of the franchise.

Back in 2019 Games Workshop partnered with veteran US screenwriter Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, The Man in the High Castle) on a potential adaptation of the classic 40K novel trilogy Eisenhorn. No broadcaster was attached, but Spotnitz worked with Amazon The Man in the High Castle. Whether that project had any bearing on this one is unclear.

More news on the first project is expected next year. Both companies have clarified that the current deal is for Warhammer 40,000 alone, but the deal could incorporate fantasy franchises Warhammer and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar further down the line.

Ciaphas Cain: The Greater Good & Old Soldiers Never Die by Sandy Mitchell

The Imperial planet of Quadravidia has come under attack by the Tau. Commissar Ciaphas Cain arrives to advise on the defence of the planet, after several previous encounters with the untrustworthy species. However, the Tau call an unexpected ceasefire in the face of a greater, mutual threat: an incoming Tyranid Hive Fleet. Cain's mission moves from combat to diplomacy as he has to broker a deal between the Tau and Imperium - the latter not known for its interstellar diplomacy - and then help defend the planet from the new alien menace.

We're back in the mayhem with the ninth novel of Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain series, in which the grim darkness of the far future is alleviated by the presence of the most self-preserving and undeserved glory-receiving specimen in the Imperium of Man.

The Greater Good puts Cain's reputation front and centre as he has to negotiate a peace deal between the Imperium - whose entire ideology is "shoot aliens in the face and never, ever talk to them," - and the Tau, a race dedicated to the somewhat nebulous concept of "the greater good." There's a degree of a comedy of manners here as the two species' highly incompatible ways of working clash with Cain trying to avoid war in the face of the greater Tyranid threat.

This stuff takes up a few chapters and then we're back to the battle front as bullets fly and large things explode spectacularly. Mitchell is accomplished at both the action and the black comedy sides of the setting (Cain sometimes feeling like the Only Sane Man in the entire barmy Warhammer 40,000 universe) and serves up both with aplomb here. Particularly entertaining are the deranged human scientists who think experimenting on live Tyranids is a good idea (spoiler: it isn't) and the Space Marines who worryingly agree with them.

There's a nice amount of variety to the story, as it moves from diplomacy to grim humour to action, although it does feel some ideas are left under-explored, such as the human inhabitants of the Tau Empire and how they regard the Imperium from a human, outsider perspective. There's also the usual advice that, although the omnibuses are most economical way to enjoy Cain's story, it's perhaps a good idea to read other things between the books, as Mitchell is perhaps less concerned than other authors in the setting with varying his prose style or characterisation between stories.

Still, this is an exciting action story with some laughs and some brief moments of thoughtful discussion. The Greater Good (****) is definitely one of the stronger entries to the series.

Also included in the Ciaphas Cain: Saviour of the Imperium omnibus is the long novella/short novel Old Soldiers Never Die (****), which is a fast-paced zombie story as Cain and his trusty Valhallan allies find themselves stuck on a planet beset by a particularly nasty Chaos curse. Ciaphas Cain vs. Zombies is just as good as it sounds on the tin, and the short format means the story doesn't outstay its welcome.

Ciaphas Cain Novel Timeline

919.M41 (40,919 CE): Fight or Flight (Novella). Cain meets Jurgen, deploys with the 12^th Valhallan Field Artillery to Desolatia IV.

924: Death or Glory (Book #4): Perlia campaign.

928: Echoes of the Tomb (Short Story): Adeptus Mechanicus mission, fights necrons.

928: The Emperor’s Finest (Book #7): Cain joins Reclaimer Space Marines, aids in Space Hulk retrieval mission.

931: For the Emperor (Book #1): Gravalax campaign, formation of the 597^th Valhallan Regiment.

932: Caves of Ice (Book #2): Simia Orichalcae campaign.

932: Duty Calls (Book #5): Periremunda campaign.

937: The Traitor’s Hand (Book #3): Adumbria campaign.

938: Old Soldiers Never Die (Novella): Lentonia campaign.

942: The Last Ditch (Book #8): Nusquam Fundumentibus campaign.

c. 951-954: Choose Your Enemies (Book #10): Ironfound campaign.

992: The Greater Good (Book #9): Siege of Quadravidia.

c. 993: Vainglorious (Book #11): Eucopia engagement.

999 (40,999 CE): Cain’s Last Stand (Book #6): Thirteenth Black Crusade. Chaos assault on Perlia, Cain comes out of retirement to lead defence.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Ciaphas Cain: The Last Ditch by Sandy Mitchell

Commissar Ciaphas Cain and the Valhallan 597th are deployed to Nusquam Fundumentibus to deal with an incursion of orks. The campaign promises to be standard, although still dangerous, until Cain learns of a far greater threat lurking on the planet, one which sees both the humans and orks as enemies.

The redoubtable Ciaphas Cain - the science fantasy by-product of an unholy union between Flashman and BlackAdder - returns in his eighth novel. Once again, Cain is deployed to a trouble spot which seems a bit iffy, but practical to deal with. Also once again, complications ensure which gives Cain an enormous headache and results in a highly enjoyable adventure for the reader.

The previous Cain novel, The Emperor's Finest, was solid but did not represent the series at its best, with too much of Cain and Jurgen running around in isolated corridors where the opportunities for Cain - and Mitchell - to show off their skills with entertaining dialogue and character observations were limited. Fortunately, The Last Ditch is a return to form. Whilst we once again get a lot of action sequences, we also get a lot more character development and even politics, as Cain has to balance the needs of the 597th in fighting the ork incursion with the civil administration of the planet, who are trying to hold things together in the face of collapse. Of course, Cain (and the aromatic Jurgen) ends up at the hot end of the fighting despite desperately trying to find reasons to stay behind the lines.

The timeline means we get to spend more time with the characters of the 597th, including the batty Sulla, whose insane hero worship of Cain (further enhanced by excerpts from her later-published, badly-overwritten memoirs) remains extremely amusing. However, by this time Cain has been fighting (successfully) alongside the 597th for so long that Colonel Kasteen and Major Broklaw just go along with anything he suggests, which means relatively little tension in that quarter.

Tension is restored by the difficult relationship between the 597th, Cain and the planetary governor, who for once is (relatively) immune to Cain's charms and tries to continue politicking even in the face of an overwhelming alien threat. This is promising, but Mitchell punts off this storyline for Kasteen and Broklaw to deal with off-page, meaning we only get edited highlights from the subplot whilst Cain is off elsewhere.

Another potential source of rich conflict is Cain encountering a younger, more gung-ho Commissar fresh out of the academy, all too eager to start executing Imperial troops the nanosecond they slack off. Cain's more pragmatic, cooperative approaching clashing with the raw orthodoxy of the Commissariat would again be an interesting storyline, but again it's cut short by Commissar Forres relatively quickly coming around to Cain's way of thinking and becoming a useful ally.

Still, if Mitchell dodges these potentially engaging storylines, what we have is fun enough. A relatively epic narrative featuring a raging war across an entire planet told in a commendably concise number of pages, with enough plots twists, reversals, action sequences and wry humour to satisfy fans of the series, The Last Ditch (****) is entertaining. The novel is available now as part of the Ciaphas Cain: Saviour of the Imperium omnibus, along with the preceding and succeeding novels and several short stories.

Ciaphas Cain Novel Timeline

919.M41 (40,919 CE): Fight or Flight (Novella #1). Cain meets Jurgen, deploys with the 12^th Valhallan Field Artillery to Desolatia IV.

924: Death or Glory (Book #4): Perlia campaign.

928: Echoes of the Tomb (Short Story): Adeptus Mechanicus mission, fights necrons.

928: The Emperor’s Finest (Book #7): Cain joins Reclaimer Space Marines, aids in Space Hulk retrieval mission.

931: For the Emperor (Book #1): Gravalax campaign, formation of the 597^th Valhallan Regiment.

932: Caves of Ice (Book #2): Simia Orichalcae campaign.

932: Duty Calls (Book #5): Periremunda campaign.

937: The Traitor’s Hand (Book #3): Adumbria campaign.

942: The Last Ditch (Book #8): Nusquam Fundumentibus campaign.

c. 951-954: Choose Your Enemies (Book #10): Ironfound campaign.

992: The Greater Good (Book #9): Siege of Quadravidia.

c. 993: Vainglorious (Book #11): Eucopia engagement.

999 (40,999 CE): Cain’s Last Stand (Book #6): Thirteenth Black Crusade. Chaos assault on Perlia, Cain comes out of retirement to lead defence.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

RIP Bryan Ansell, WARHAMMER legend

News has sadly broken that veteran British game designer Bryan Ansell has passed away at the age of 68. Ansell was the co-founder of Citadel Miniatures and the boss of Games Workshop in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly the period when Warhammer 40,000 was launched. Ansell was a hands-on boss and worked on books and material for both the Warhammer fantasy and 40K universes.

Ansell was born in 1955 and became a key fan of science fiction, fantasy and wargaming at a young age. He sculpted his first miniature - a guardsman of Gondor - in 1966 after reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. A few years later he acquired a pyrogravure heat pen and set about converting Robin Hood figures produced by Airfix into hordes of orcs.

Ansell further developed his artistic skills as a teenager and began sculpting models for wargaming, earning him a job at Skytrex and then Conquest Miniatures. At Conquest he worked on the Age of Joman range. He was inspired to start his own company, Asgard Miniatures, in 1976, along with Paul Sulley and Steven Fitzwater. Whilst at Asgard he met and worked with Jes Goodwin, Nick Bibby, Tony Ackland and Rick Priestley. In 1978 Priestley and his friend Richard Halliwell created the wargame system Reaper for Tabletop Games, with a second edition following in 1981.

Ansell left Asgard in 1978 to found rival miniatures company Citadel Miniatures, with funding from British gaming company Games Workshop. Citadel Miniatures began churning out large numbers of generic figures for use with roleplaying games, particularly Dungeons & Dragons (to which Games Workshop held the exclusive European distribution rights). The company initially focused on fantasy figures but also branched out to science fiction, producing figures for the SF roleplaying game Traveller and then the TV series Doctor Who.

Bryan Ansell was notable for not just his sculpting skills but also his business acumen, and he noted that from the sales patterns that people were buying some of the more generic figures - orcs, dwarves, elves - in large numbers, enough for entire regiments. This suggested they were playing full-on wargames with the figures, not just the very small skirmishes allowed for by roleplaying games. The suggestion was made for Games Workshop to create their own wargame, drawing on their immense catalogue of figures rather than having to invent things from scratch. Based on their work on Reaper, Ansell brought in Priestley and Halliwell to design a new game that could make use of their existing range. The result was Warhammer, published in 1983 and an immediate success story. A second edition followed in 1984.

Ansell contributed creatively to the worldbuilding for Warhammer by working on the Chaos and Orc factions, and created the infamous Chaos Gods for the setting.

In 1983 Ansell founded Wargames Foundry as a spin-off company run by his father after his retirement.

Ansell instigated a buyout of Games Workshop in 1985 and an effective merging of Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures into a single company. Ansell oversaw a series of sustained growth for the company, first through the expansion of the Warhammer line and then the introduction of Warhammer 40,000 in 1987. Like Warhammer, the 40,000 line drew on GW's immense pre-existing SF figure line and even modifications of the fantasy line, sometimes literally taking orcs and removing their swords and bows in exchange for guns. As the line became hugely successful in its own right, bespoke models were introduced.

Ansell also redirected all Games Workshop offices and entities to be based in Nottingham. As the years passed, ex-GW employees would found their own companies nearby, leading to shared vendors and resources, creating an area known as the "Lead Belt," the centre of the British (and arguably European) warming miniatures scene.

Towards the end of his tenure Ansell saw the further expansion of the company, with the profile of their games raised by a strategic alliance with MB Games which resulted in the board games Hero Quest (1989) and Space Crusade (1990), as well as their first forays into video games. However, Ansell also directed the company to drop its work with other games and focus almost all of its creative efforts on the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 brands, with its associated White Dwarf magazine also becoming solely focused on the company's own games rather than the hobby at large. This move was criticised by some employees and some critics in the hobby at large.

Ansell left Games Workshop in 1991 to focus on his family and returning to his first love, of sculpting miniatures. He established Guernsey Foundry in 1991, transforming it into a new incarnation of Wargames Foundry in 2000. The new company specialised in historical figures with some SF elements. Bryan retired from the company in 2005, but mismanagement led to him returning in 2012. A new company, Casting Room, was set up to help ease the problems and bring in new models. A further company, Warmonger Miniatures, was set up in 2015 to sell exclusively fantasy figures.

Bryan Ansell was an integral part of the Games Workshop story, and his combination of creative and business inspirations led to the company's mass expansion in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the creation of Warhammer 40,000. He left an indelible mark on the British wargaming industry, and can be credited with transforming it, turning into a world-leader in the miniatures field. He will very much be missed.

Ciaphas Cain: The Emperor's Finest by Sandy Mitchell

Having narrowly escaped from an encounter with the feared necrons, Commissar Ciaphas Cain finds himself assigned as liaison to the Reclaimers Space Marine chapter, noted for their formidable weaponry, immense bravery and sometimes over-eager interest in technology. When rebel insurgents launch an uprising on Viridia against the local government, Cain fancies they are in for an easy campaign against an inferior foe. Of course, it's not long before genestealers abound, and Cain finds himself stuck with an overeager noble lady keen to ensnare him in political games, and a hellbound pursuit of a rogue hulk through deep space.

The misadventures of Ciaphas Cain are probably among the most purely entertaining in the Warhammer 40,000 canon. Whilst most books focus more on the "grim darkness" and "only war" bits of the setting, Sandy Mitchell's signature series instead tries to lighten things up, at least relatively. Commissar Cain believes himself to be blustering, cowardly and too eager to run at the first sign of trouble, but is constantly manoeuvred by fate into positions where he has no choice but to apparently-eagerly run to the front lines or into the most dangerous area possible, often surviving by the skin of his teeth and sometimes unexpectedly saving the day in such an outrageously public way. By this seventh novel in the series, things have gotten ludicrous enough that Cain is now getting full honour salutes from squads of Terminator Space Marines for his bravery (roughly akin to an angel saluting a particularly tenacious chimpanzee).

Of course, Cain's complaints about his cowardice and self-serving needs do seem to be contradicted by his actual proven ability to get tasks achieved and his impressive combat skills, and his constantly-present (via footnotes of varying degrees of bewilderment) editor-confessor, Inquisitor Amberly Vail, seems unsure about to what degree his "confession" is actual modesty, or even some psychological defence mechanism to rationalise a deeper-seated need to face death on a daily basis. This deep in the series it's a still a mystery (one I doubt will ever be solved), so it's probably best to move on and enjoy the ride.

The Emperor's Finest is, like most books in the series, fairly short but also packs a ton in. The book has three distinct sections, which less-disciplined authors might have tried to expand into a whole novel by themselves. The battle for Viridia is entertaining, with Cain acting as a liaison between the superhuman Space Marines and the ordinary human defenders, and getting into a Warhammer 40,000 meetcute (which means moderate flirting over the roaring exchange of bolter fire) with the governor's daughter, Mira. A slightly more interminable middle section follows as the Reclaimers try to track down the origin of the tyranid infestation, a space hulk cheerily named the Spawn of Damnation, whilst Cain tries to both win the respect of the Reclaimers and fend off Mira's attempts to lure him into political intrigue. The final section sees Cain, Jurgen (Cain's aide, think of the product of an unholy union of Baldrick and Gregor Clegane) and the Reclaimers let loose aboard the space hulk and finding things are far more complicated then they first imagined.

Mitchell delivers this with typical panache, with moments of humour and levity mixed in with above-competent action sequences and Vail's wry footnote interjections. However, the formula feels a tad off this time around. After a promising start, Mira never really develops into an interesting character and her storyline feels a bit rote. Cain's interactions with the Reclaimers and their crewmembers also hold a lot of promise but again are not fleshed out well: Cain's achievements in the book (from an outside POV) are highly impressive but I'm not sure he's done enough to earn the Reclaimers' overwhelming respect at the end. Cain is also at his best when in circumstances with lots of options for his natural self-serving tendencies to emerge and the reader to be left in doubt about his selfish/brave motivations. Here he spends a third of the book trapped on a space hulk with his back to the wall and no choice but to proceed to survive, which makes for a solidly tense adventure but doesn't service the character's best attributes.

Still, the book is short, to the point, has good action and some doses of light humour that the setting rather badly needs at time, so it's hard to complain too much. The Emperor's Finest (***½) delivers the required entertainment, but doesn't go above and beyond like the better books in the series. The novel is available now as part of the Ciaphas Cain: Saviour of the Imperium omnibus, along with its two succeeding novels and several short stories.

Ciaphas Cain Novel Timeline

919.M41 (40,919 CE): Fight or Flight (Novella #1). Cain meets Jurgen, deploys with the 12^th Valhallan Field Artillery to Desolatia IV.

924: Death or Glory (Book #4). Perlia campaign.

928: Echoes of the Tomb (Short Story): Adeptus Mechanicus mission, fights necrons.

928: The Emperor’s Finest (Book #7). Cain joins Reclaimer Space Marines, aids in Space Hulk retrieval mission.

931: For the Emperor (Book #1). Gravalax campaign, formation of the 597^th Valhallan Regiment.

932: Caves of Ice (Book #2): Simia Orichalcae campaign.

932: Duty Calls (Book #5): Periremunda campaign.

937: The Traitor’s Hand (Book #3): Adumbria campaign.

942: The Last Ditch (Book #8): Nusquam Fundumentibus campaign.

c. 951-954: Choose Your Enemies (Book #10): Ironfound campaign.

992: The Greater Good (Book #9): Siege of Quadravidia.

c. 993: Vainglorious (Book #11): Eucopia engagement.

999: Cain’s Last Stand (Book #6): Thirteenth Black Crusade. Chaos assault on Perlia, Cain comes out of retirement to lead defence.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.