Let's Read the Horus Heresy 7: Legion

The Nurthene uttered some of the usual gibberish before he died.

 - The Horus Heresy: Legion, Dan Abnett

"Brother Alpharius, be so kind as to pass me my powerful Astares binoculars."

"Yes, Brother Alpharius."

 - Alpharius, probably

After the previous novel's post-technological fantasy, here's Dan Abnett with a total change of pace and scenery. The previous Abnett book in the series was the first one, and it was probably the best one so far, so I'm actually kinda expecting something.

**

As it happens, I was not disappointed. Legion is really good.

I'll get the bad stuff out of the way first. Some of Legion is very silly, even by the standards of this series, and the endless macho posturing starts getting very boring very quickly. Abnett is very sure to let us know that everyone is dead 'ard or whatever, and keep letting us know. It's actually very much like the characters in Darktide, which uncoincidentally boasts Abnett as a writer, and which I may have compared to a Guy Ritchie gangster movie parody.

Luckily, even though Legion shares some of the macho stupidity of Lock, Bolt and Two Smoking Barrels 40,000, the British entertainment product it far more closely resembles is 'Allo 'Allo. We have a main character who works undercover, pursues a totally unlikely romance, more or less disguises himself as an onion seller, and tries to stay alive amidst the conflicting schemes of a foreign intelligence organization, the army, the secret police and the Alpha Legion. Go on, tell me Lord Commander Namatjira isn't General von Klinkerhoffen, or that you can't see John Grammaticus bemoaning what a tangled web we weave.

The one disappointment in all this is that as a mirror image of the macho bullshit, Legion objectifies women in a way that Horus Rising very notably didn't. Or I mean to put it another way, I'm sure there was a very solid plot reason to create an Imperial Army regiment that has a permanent cadre of horny teenage girls. It's not bad by mil-sf standards, but combined with the very manly soldier men being dead butch, it starts to get quite tiresome.

What rescues Legion from its flaws is the plot, and especially the Alpha Legion. It starts out as a decently entertaining spy thriller that aspires to Alistair Maclean, and turns into space opera. This is a combination that's intensely Warhammer, especially if you remember that the previous novel was a post-technological Arthurian romance, which makes a wonderful combination. It's also very enjoyable, and clearly rises in quality toward the end.

There are many good characters in Legion, but the ones who really steal the show are the Astartes. In one early scene, there's an Alpha Legion marine pretending to be their Primarch, and another one pretending to be their other Primarch pretending to be a regular marine. And it only gets better from there. When I looked into 28mm Horus Heresy, I found the Alpha Legion interesting; now I'm trying paint schemes for them in 8mm.

**

So far, Legion is the best Horus Heresy novel. Do read it.

Twilight Imperium 3: Are You Threatening Me?

No longer mere earthbeings and planetbeings are we, but bright children of the stars! And together we shall dance in and out of ten billion years, celebrating the gift of consciousness until the stars themselves grow cold and weary, and our thoughts turn again to the beginning.

 - Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations With Planet", Epilogue

A little over a year ago, the Yin Brotherhood was victorious in our second game of Twilight Imperium. Now it's time for game 3.

**

After our previous game, it was suggested that last time's winner should play with one of the higher complexity factions next time. I agreed, and picked the Arborec, who I decided were basically Alpha Centauri's Planet after a transcendence victory. On my left was the Nekro Virus, and on my right the Ghosts of Creuss; opposite me were the Mentak Coalition (space pirates) and the Tyranids.

Everyone got started expanding out of their home systems.

The first hostilities of the game were between the Nekro Virus and the space pirates, when the Nekro Virus invaded Sakulag. Their faction specialty is that they don't develop technology, but rather acquire it by consuming other factions' units and betting on the outcomes of agenda votes. So they got things started by eating some space pirates.

Apparently this was by mutual agreement, although I don't think anyone asked the pirates whose part in the deal was to get eaten. While all this was going on, I built the Arborec flagship and seized the Cornholio system right next door to Mecatol Rex, and the Ghosts of Creuss spread their influence far and wide.

On the opposite side of the board, the pirates tried to grab Tar'mann, but their invasion force was wiped out by the Tyranids' upgraded space cannon in the First Cannonade of Tar'mann.

For my part, I cashed in a secret objective by blowing up a Creuss destroyer with my flagship.

The Ghosts of Creuss surprised us by claiming Mecatol Rex, which put them firmly in the lead and ushered in the agenda phase. I was second in victory points, with everyone else more or less sitting tight and building up their fleets. The space pirates sent a larger fleet, which survived the Second Cannonade of Tar'mann, and grabbed the planet.

**

I have to say that the agenda phases in this game were even sillier than usual, and we greatly enjoyed them. The Nekro Virus don't get to vote in the agenda phase, but they can pick one of the agendas to bet on. If they guess right, they get to steal technology from the voting factions. I have no idea what this mechanic is even supposed to represent, but it's damn good fun. With the Nekro Virus bets and various action card riders, it sometimes became a very complicated but entertaining process to figure out who gets what depending on which way a vote goes.

As an example, when we voted on Representative Government, two players attached riders, leaving two of us to actually vote on the outcome. That would then have been changed by Bribery, but the bribe was sabotaged.

By far the silliest vote was when we drew Public Execution, and the first thing that happened was that the Nekro Virus assassinated my representative. The matter then went to a vote, and the Ghosts of Creuss were chosen - only for them to deploy Confusing Legal Text and have me publicly executed instead.

While all this was going on, the Ghosts racked up victory points by spreading their fleet thin and using the extra mobility provided by their wormholes. As the rest of us were trying to co-ordinate an attack on them, the Creuss player picked the Imperial strategy card and won the game outright by scoring a 2-VP objective.

I came in second with 6 VP. It was a deserved win for the Creuss with a well-executed strategy. I shall henceforth refer to them as I Am Wormholio.

**

So, we saw that Creuss victory coming, but we didn't see it coming that quickly. I think some valuable strategic lessons were learned.

As the Ghosts started racking up victory points, their fleets were outnumbered by their neighbors, that is, myself and the Tyranids. However, our actions were severely constrained by our neighbors. For much of the endgame, there was a considerable Nekro Virus fleet right next to me at Thibah, and the space pirates were massing behind the Nids.

This was an excellent example of the strategic concept of the fleet in being: the fleet at Thibah was a serious problem for me, as I didn't know what it was going to do. If I moved decisively against the Creuss, there would be nothing to stop them from grabbing several of my systems. So I'd have to take a serious risk to stop the Ghosts from winning, and make myself vulnerable to the Nekro Virus.

So far, I'd say our games of Twilight Imperium have been characterized by the security dilemma. Each player sees their neighbors building up their fleet, and feels threatened, and therefore builds a larger fleet. Their neighbors see that, feel threatened by it, and build more starships and space cannon. And so it goes, with large sections of the board paralyzed into mutual deterrence.

The overall strategic lesson I'm taking with me from this instance of Twilight Imperium is that if you camp, you lose. I still feel like the pace of the game is slightly faster than I think, but I'm getting a better handle on it. I like that the game rewards aggressive play for victory points, and I hope we get to play it again!

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 6: Descent of Angels

It begins on Caliban.

 - The Horus Heresy: Descent of Angels, Mitchel Scanlon

The sixth book in the Horus Heresy series isn't available in print, so I bought it as an e-book from Black Library. I got a perfectly decent epub file for my money, and it was a good thing to read on my phone. Descent of Angels is Mitchel Scanlon's only book in the series, and it's a bit of a strange one.

**

Descent of Angels starts on Caliban, the future home world of the Dark Angels, well before first contact with the Imperium. The protagonist is a (very!) young knight called Zahariel, and we follow him as he joins Lion El'Jonson's knightly order. The knights wear primitive power armor and go on quests to rid the forests of Caliban of terrifying beasts. The first half of the novel is basically a post-technological Arthurian fantasy, and I really liked it. The knights' campaign culminates in a sort of medieval-Napoleonic siege and storming of the castle of an enemy knightly order, which at times is pure Sharpe, with the heroic warriors climbing up the breach in the walls with their standard waving. It's great stuff.

Then the First Legion and eventually the Emperor himself show up, and sadly, the story takes a decided turn for the worse. There's some decent stuff as the knights are tested and many are inducted into the I Legion, now the Dark Angels. There's a definite attempt to foreshadow some coming splits in the Legion, but the story feels artificial. There's a sub-plot where some disaffected knights try to assassinate the Emperor, and it's just poorly done throughout.

In the last part of the novel, Zahariel is a full Space Marine, and their chapter is sent to enforce compliance on the world of Sarosh, replacing some White Scars. Given the nature of the assignment, it's a bit of a mystery why a Primarch would be sent to do it. I'm also not too keen on the return to the theme of virtuous warriors versus corrupt civilians. It's a bit too militaristic for my taste.

I do like that the flagship of the Fourth Expeditionary Fleet is called the Invincible Reason, it's very French Revolution of them. I could definitely see a pre-Heresy Imperial ship called the Droits de l'Homme. L'Empereur Souverain? Tyrannicide, I think, would suit my Word Bearers better.

Even though the initial description of Sarosh isn't bad, this last quarter of the novel is clearly the worst part. It turns out everything on Sarosh is not what it seems, and after some events, the Dark Angels have to haul a psychic bomb into a cave on the planet. Again, the whole thing feels rushed and poorly done, and the attempt to foreshadow what everyone who knows their 40k lore knows will happen to the Dark Angels is just kind of clumsy. I've rarely read a book where the quality of the story, and even of the writing, dropped so sharply.

There's also a bit of a discrepancy between Descent of Angels and some of the previous books. In Horus Rising, one of the Luna Wolves is possessed by a daemon, and this is considered unbelievable by almost everyone, and needs to be carefully suppressed. In Flight of the Eisenstein and Fulgrim, daemons are treated as ridiculous superstitions. But in the last part of Descent of Angels, the idea of daemons entering the material world is discussed entirely matter-of-factly, without a 30k Scully in sight. So I'm quite confused as to what's supposed to be going on with this.

**

I've always liked the Dark Angels, not least because the excellent 1993 Space Hulk video game, where you play as the Deathwing, was a formative Warhammer experience for me. So I very much wanted to like Descent of Angels, and as a Dark Angels fan, I definitely enjoyed the first part of the book. It gave me a lot of ideas for fluff for my traitor Dark Angels. But unfortunately there's no getting away from how disappointing the last part of the book was.

On a broader note, the e-book experiment was successful, and I think I might try another one.