Friday 18 June 2010

"The Rain Smelt Like Urine"

One of my birthday presents was the Dan Abnett penned Ravenor omnibus, three novels about a 40K Inquisitor called Gideon Ravenor. I had read the first a few years back and really liked the detailed insight into the Imperial worlds way behind the front lines. In many ways they are crime stories more than war stories, albeit the bodycount is always quite impressive (!). This trilogy is the second in the Inquisitorial sequence so before commencing it I picked up the first, the Eisenhorn trilogy (which includes the delightful post title as Abnett describes one run down city area!), and have been reading it as I train and plane between Paris, London and Bristol.

Like Ravenor, Eisenhorn is largely detective/police style stories as the lead character and his retinue investigate and hunt down chaos cults in the Imperium. Whilst it does have a good planetary invasion at the end of the first book, but there is enough small scale SWAT type actions to make the wargaming brain cells start plotting. Whilst I have a copy of GW's old Inquisitor game (which inspired the books) I would prefer a small scale fire team unit level game and being a bit of a Judge Dredd fan might have a look at the new Mongoose playtest Judge Dredd game for some Inquisitor or Adeptus Arbites versus criminal gangs/chaos cults games.

I don't want to incur any major new expense but have a small army of SF gang figures and militia types here and there, and I was impressed by John Lambshead's Arbites from Imperial Guard conversions so this could be a good mini project for the summer if I actually get a chance to do anything than recover from traveling!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Steve,

    I've read two of the three Ravenor books and found them very enjoyable. I am very envious of your latest birthday pressie.

    Enjoy.

    Tony

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  2. There's a lot of stuff written for Necromunda that might be of your interest. The scope of the game seems right for what you're after ...

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