Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Enquiring Minds

In many ways the terminators were the beginning of the end for Oldhammer. They brought us gargantuan men with "moar skullz," enough to make da most hardened orky boyz happy, with helmets patterned more after the familiar American sci-fi storm troopers than exotic English tomb brasses. But I think it was really the Inquisitors that pushed the game over the cliff in the direction it ultimately went. They gave the marines purity symbols, even more skulls, heaps of bling, and some of the first full units with seemingly no guns at all. (Yeah, they had bolters if you really payed attention, but my fifteen year old self didn't notice until I'd opened up the blister and gotten started on them. It was the gigantic space swords and axes that attracted me to these odd paladins, not the super-sized derringers concealed inside. And it is these be-ribboned goons that eventually won the teen crazed fashion wars that raged at GW.


Which forces me to admit that maybe some things never do change. While my forty-something self is loathe to admit it the difference between that and Age of Sigmar is . . . accademic. So miniature by miniature, pack by pack, I fleshed out my army of multi-colored Space Wolves with brothers on detached duty from other orders.


Eventually I came to my senses and realized that these weren't your ordinary marines, these were high muckety-muck corrupt religious nutjobs out busily converting by the sword where naptha sweet inflamatory polemic didn't suffice.


And of course these fellows, half forgotten, found themselves in the core of my nascent collection of adventurers.


But after a few trades, some dip and strips, and a bit more collecting I still found myself two inquisitors short of a complete RT era pile. The first shoe to drop was Inquisitor Augustus, almost unseen in a batch of pirates that sailed in from the Bay of E.


But finding the original inquisitor from the 1987 flyer, the one that looked more or less like the first Rogue Trader illustration, that took me a little longer . . . took me until this spring, in fact.


So in celebration of getting that last gent I've finished repainting my remaining Grey Knight and High Lord of Tera (officially OM Daemon Hunter) and gotten the whole gang together.





Did I say whole gang? That may not be quite right. The number is correct, but the models are slightly off. I apparently forgot that I traded away one of my monastic boys to a friend for . . . who knows what. Something. Terminators maybe? I used to have an obsession with those. And I later picked up a religious nutjob from a different line that fits right in with the boys in red, making the count correct, but not the identities. So ten or twelve dollars will make the set complete . . . eventually. At which time maybe I dip and strip a few of the rougher looking fellows above. But for now the gang is all here ready to smite the rebel scum.


As always, thanks for reading.

Sincerely,
The Composer.

8 comments:

  1. Ribboned Goons...can't agree more. Since the proliferation of purity seals, marines have looked liked winners at Crufts...or Labour politicians.

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  2. Well, I don't want to get into the politics. While American I suspect I'd vote for your lampooned party were I a Brit. And I bet both parties wear ribbons in equal measure when they think it will get them votes. (This is surely true here.) But yes, the inquisitors seem to stand near a sort of watershed in the look of the game. They and the orks from around the time of Ere We Go! Of course Chaos was pushing things in alternate directions as well. It was a rather profound shift from the look of the original Rogue Trader, but as I said, my teenaged self was much more taken with it than my adult self. All of this stuff was flashy and easy. The original beakies, now much preferred, were a harder sell to that same young boy. Nostalgia allows me to accept things in questionable taste that I'd likely shun were they new.

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    1. Ha ha... I'm a lefty myself. The Labour party colour is red hence the comparison with purity seals.

      Beakies (or Wombles) as they were sometimes called in the UK, are nostalgic for me. I think I bought into the Mk 7's for the same reason as you. I'm intending to put together a small marine force for Clash on the Fringe with a RT setting. They will all be modern Wombles with the odd original straggler.

      For me the setting is all around the time of Watson's Inquisitor novel, Genestealer cults, the tragedy of the Black Ships etc.

      It all went downhill after that as they tried to "standardise" everything. The Imperium went from vast and diverse to a handful of factions and clone cities (like UK High Streets).

      Your figures look great.

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  3. I find terminators of all flavours a little extra silly, due to the physiological issues, but I have to disagree with feelings on the somewhat crude, but lovable Inquisitors and Ordo Malleus Inquisitors. I like those funny old sculpts.

    Conceptually it's a toss up between Adeptus Mechanicus and Inquisitorial bands as to which defines the 40k setting better. Space Marines - and definitely Terminators - are way down the list.

    That's a nice selection of figures, and all painted too. Very nice.

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  4. I find terminators of all flavours a little extra silly, due to the physiological issues, but I have to disagree with feelings on the somewhat crude, but lovable Inquisitors and Ordo Malleus Inquisitors. I like those funny old sculpts.

    Conceptually it's a toss up between Adeptus Mechanicus and Inquisitorial bands as to which defines the 40k setting better. Space Marines - and definitely Terminators - are way down the list.

    That's a nice selection of figures, and all painted too. Very nice.

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  5. Two things. First, Thank you Cheetor! I too prefer the OM and Friar style Inquisitors. It was really the Grey Knights that were the focus of my observation. Kind of misstated myself there.

    But a minor point of difference: while I agree that the beakies don't really define the setting, they are among the most iconic of the miniatures. And they are on the cover of the book. They're not so important to the flavor of the world, I think, but they hold a quite special place in the art. And they help to define what makes it different from Star Wars or Foundation: it's not the Roman Empire in space, it's the Holy Roman Empire in space. And the OM and Inquisitors come rather close to that, so my remark was misplaced.

    Of course, in a game one shouldn't see too many beakies. They are, after all, supposed to be a bit rare. The world is much more made up of gangers, retired soldiers, conscripts, petty bureaucrats, corrupt noblemen, mutants, outcasts, aliens, and so forth. And it is their flavor that draws me back. But I've got the beakies. Not quite ready to throw them out, even if I have more than I need. And as I said, I can't quite get over my teenage love affair with the awkward terminators, even if I now recognize that they were more than a little terrible. It's purely nostalgia speaking. Not logic.

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  6. Nostalgia is always a factor and this pot wouldn't dream of calling anyone else's kettle black of course :)

    Marines are iconic, but I dont feel that they and their attitudes really define the setting all the same, despite their visual prominence. Icons, not quintessential epitomies/paragons if you get what I am clumsily trying to say.

    I picked up quite a few old single piece RT era marines over the last six months or so, after swearing off them years ago. Ho hum.

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  7. ^Cheetor: I think we can agree. Their story is much less important to the setting than their absolutely iconic look. Their status as quasi monastic soldiers has probably always been controversial. I think we can all agree there is much superstition and religion in the world. We probably don't all agree about the role it plays. And many of us likely want the marines to simply serve as the crack troops their name and original art implies, and not the fratres militant the fluff seems to require. Yes. I do believe we are on the same page again.

    ^Robert: Thank you. Indeed, so do we all. Whatever else we might disagree on, we all love the old RT stuff.

    ^BaldLea: I thought you were trying to say Labour (sorry about the earlier US spelling) looked like "beribboned goons" because they were goonish part or the beribboned part. Failed to realize the comment was literal and that I had inadvertently shown partisan favoritism in my color choices. I do sometimes paint my purity symbols blue. What color do the Torries use? I'll be sure to include that, and maybe some yellow, orange, and green to really muck things up. (I have all of these colors and more on an old flag that was inspired by a Boy Scout flag. We would hang all manor of ribbons and awards off our troop flags to demonstrate our boyish prowess . . . and to ensure the young gent carrying the flag got a good workout.)

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