Weekender XLBS: Warhammer End Times & Halloween Top 5’s!
October 26, 2014 by lloyd
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I woke up before the posting of xlbs.. Long live wintertime 🙂
Happy Sunday!
Watch “The Cabin in the Woods”. It is ScoobyDoo meets Cthulhu and has ALL of the tropes.
A good read for Warhammer would be the ‘Ambassador’ novels by Graham McNeill. They had the right blend of politics and battle that attracted me in a pre-Game of Thrones kinda way! 🙂
They were very good, but kind of limited in scope I would say for an introduction to Warhammer. Then again, I haven’t read them in years.
I’d tell someone to put an rpg group together, track down copies of 1st ed WFRP, The Enemy Within, Shadows Over Bogenhafen, Death on the Reik, and Power Behind the Throne, and then play through them. If you don’t like the setting after that, then it probably isn’t for you.
I think that if WFB wants to appeal to a new audience it needs to construct a new game from the ground up. I’m hoping that End Times is the first step in that process.
WFRP is great! For the campaign you mentioned I would strongly recommend to anybody who wants to try that…and you really should…you only play it with a really good and experienced GM to enjoy them. A novice GM would probably be in over his head and that will most likely kill of the hole thing of quite fast. Oh boy…how nostalgic 🙂
I was going to say something along exactly these lines, and it reveals actually one of the difficulties for getting in to WFB, which is that over the years it has changed a great deal. For a long time now Warhammer has been a very high fantasy, hero-centric, over the top, super-power fueled setting… which really doesn’t interest me in the way that the Fantasy Roleplaying Game did. Which is kind of ironic, as I think the change has been driven by GW’s desire to justify more large and expensive kits and to make it a less generic setting and one it’s harder for 3rd party manufacturers to make alternative models for.
I wouldn’t have much interest in trying to get someone into the modern, high fantasy setting, but if I was trying to get players involved in the setting as it used to be, the roleplaying game would definitely be one way to go. I’ve never read any of the Gotrex & Felix novels, though did really enjoy some short stories about them (by Bill King) back in the day, so Sam is probably right that they’re a good entry point.
The other way to describe the setting just to describe it: late medieval/early rennaisance Europe with an undercurrent of weird, Cthulhu-esque dark magic and cults. To me that sounds super-cool and in just a single sentence has me hooked.
Even back in the 80s, there was disconnect between WFB and WFRP because of the mediums they operated in. That became more pronounced in 1992 when WFRP was dumped and 4th ed took the WFB setting in a different direction. As you say, WFB now has moved more into high fantasy territory. The difference between Karl Franz in Empire in Flames and Karl Franz in the current WFB fluff succinctly sums up the differences. All of that said, I still think that anyone who plays the campaign, will still be left with an affection for and understanding of what the setting is, even if they do have to adjust a bit.
Yes, I agree. And in fact, my own views are not actually as black and white as all that. If I had a proper Warhammer Army these days, I would be very tempted to play some games in the End Times campaign. I’ve bought some of the plastic kits for converting to a (40K) chaos daemon army. And I would have bought both of the End Times books if they hadn’t both already sold out.
That will be a test of GW’s commitment to the game I reckon: will they reprint the books to allow other players to get in on the action? Or is that it? If so, it suggests that this campaign is really an extended version of the Space Hulk style of ‘one off cash grab’ that will have little lasting impact once it’s been and done. You can’t have a long term, setting defining entrance to the game being unavailable.
If the End Times lives up to its name then GW won’t need to keep it in print. If it clears the decks for 9th ed then it’ll have served its purpose.
@redben (can’t seem to reply to your latest comment directly) “f the End Times lives up to its name then GW won’t need to keep it in print. If it clears the decks for 9th ed then it’ll have served its purpose.”
I agree. But if that is what they’re doing with it, it will come as quite a kick in the teeth to everyone who a) wasn’t able to get involved and b) who finds the system reset will make their ‘End Times-compatible’ armies obsolete.
If they reset everything back to how it was as if nothing happened (like they did, more or less, after the Storm of Chaos), then they’ll lose a lot of the goodwill they seem to be generating by moving the story on and drawing in interested players. If the new setting is ‘post-End Times’ then I would have thought there would still be a lot of players who’d like to get the End Times campaign books.
If a) is people who missed out because they got interested after the fact, then I don’t see that as a problem. GW shouldn’t have to keep outdated material from an earlier edition in print for latecomers and it usually isn’t hard to pick oop books up off the secondary market. If it’s people who want to play now but can’t because they can’t get the books then that’s a different issue and it would make sense for GW to meet that demand.
For b), if there’s a quick turnaround from End Times to 9th ed which in turn invalidates all the minis that were sold for End Times, then that’s a pocket-raiding bait and switch and I can understand why people would be upset. There’s no reason why 9th ed couldn’t accommodate the End Times minis though. Then it’s just the books that would be outdated, and the people who bought them would still have gotten to play through the storyline and have them to keep coming back to if they wanted (or they could sell them to those late-comers in point a lol).
Some more Phantasm, any hammer horror, the stuff, the keep and i could go on….
Happy Sunday.
Vampire: The Masquerade was the original Word of Darkness game, and spawned by far its most successful line. In it, vampires existed in a shadow society across many of the world’s major cities an engaged in mighty behind-the-scenes power struggles with each other. There were thirteen different vampiric bloodlines (which were like character classes) and seven of them had banded together to form the Camarilla. The Camarilla enforced the Masquerade which was designed to ensure that human society never discovered the existence of vampires. As Sam says, earlier interactions with human society, such as the inquisition, hadn’t gone well for vampires which is why these seven clans decided to create the Masquerade. You played a vampire from one of the seven Camarilla clans and campaigns tended to be set in a particular real-world city (vampires weren’t keen on travelling or living in rural areas). Your character would attempt to scheme his or her way towards improving your standing in vampiric society, whilst usually just winding up being a pawn in a more powerful vampire’s plans.
V:TM also pushed what it called “personal horror” as a big part of the game. You had a Humanity stat, and doing certain “inhuman” acts lowered it. A big point of the game was that you didn’t want this to happen and surrender to your inner beast. The problem was it was very hard to avoid doing these and still do things like feed (which you to do to survive). The game intended that you would struggle to balance these two elements and hence the personal horror (think Angel in Buffy when that character is first introduced). In reality, few groups actually played this and most games wound up being about super-powered creatures fighting each other. As the line of source books developed it played up to this by introducing a range of new powers and clans/bloodlines for you to play, including the ones who don’t live by the Masquerade. Spin-off games like Wereworlf, Mage, and Changeling, added a host of new supernatural types for people to throw into the mix. The effect was very much like watching True Blood (which itself comes across like a glorified AP of someone’s crappy World of Darkness campaign).
That aside, it was a great setting, it was ahead of its time in pushing the narrative elements of rp-ing (even if the mechanics didn’t always support it), and it was a great setting.
I’ve used bloodlines in the third sentence when I meant clans. Bloodlines are related to clans but slightly different.
The game sounds awesome though 🙂
In case I didn’t mention it, it’s an amazingly good setting lol. I spent much of late-teens to early-twenties gaming in it.
“I spent much of late-teens to early-twenties gaming in it.”
Aha, the target demographic. 😎
Indeed I was. It made a great success of picking up post-school age rgp-ers, as well as well as female gamers.
Most of the WoD games, old and new are awesome.
My longest running setting is my Vampire the Requiem game set in Manchester UK.
http://darkerdaysradio.blogspot.de/2010/06/vampire_6651.html (formatting is a bit fubar given these were posts recovered from my old blog on livejournal).
Also, for ultra creepy, Changeling the Lost is excellent. That one I wrote an entire fan ebook setting using Venice as the location.
Started VtM when it first came out in August, 1991. Didn’t stop until 1996 (Camarilla, Sabbat, Independents, you name it), and by then I was already deep into its companion games Werewolf the Apocalypse and especially Mage the Ascension.
@redben is absolutely right, these games were epic back in the day. Vampire in particular played up the whole personal tragedy theme, letting you start with far more power than most RPGs do, but also saddling you with all these crushing weaknesses and the knowledge that . . . sooner or later, you’d “Fall to the Thirst.” This “you’re doomed from the start” idea put some people off, but I guess they just didn’t understand that the point was to eke out as much storytelling drama in your descent as possible.
I also agree that True Blood is indeed train-wreck version of World of Darkness . . . except that most of what’s in True Blood isn’t secret anymore, so what’s the point? another pop-media disaster that helped wreck the setting were the Blade movies. Suddenly the game was flooded with players who wanted to be sword-wielding vampiric superheroes . . . with no weaknesses. I kept wanting to smack them over the head with the VtM book, yelling . . . “You feel that? That was a BOOK! Have you read the BOOK?”
Sadly, I must also agree with @brianparker about the target demographic. Nowadays, he’s right . . . just please remember that these games came out long before True Blood or Blade or Twilight or Vampire Diaries or (retch, vomit . . . yawn) any of that trash. Originally, it was a lot more adult. Nowadays, though . . . yeah, it’s a younger crowd.
Rants aside, this Gothic-Punk (later World of Darkness) system was so great it pretty much “ruined” me for any future RPG system, nothing else could hold my interest once I had experienced the spectacularly flexible and scalable system what White Wolf had produced.
I swear I would still get back into Mage the Ascension if I had the right crew.
New WoD has its merits, I can’t deny it . . . (standardization and cross-over balance, for one) but maybe I’m just nostalgic in my preference for the older first-generation White Wolf games.
On Darker Days Radio, we did some rapid fire overviews of some of the games a while ago. Descriptions for three of the games can be found here http://podcast.darker-days.org/e/darker-days-radio-episode-29/
I’ll see about running us all a game of it some day Warren. One condition, you can’t play as a Malkavian. We’d be there until Gehenna if you were given free reign over a completely insane character.
A wise house rule. Malkavians were one of those ideas that was a lot better in principle than it played out on the table.
The Malkavian I played for a Dark Ages game was a French noble, who was a seer, and his madness was OCD where he wrote in his journal before sun rise. I actually kept a little journal for exactly that reason. And even I couldn’t read what I wrote half the time.
A few diableries later (totally unplanned) he was in the Church of Caine, and had learnt how to cause madness either by the written word, or by music. Thus he had turned half an army by writing in blood a sigil on banner, and blowing a horn gifted to his troupe.
Madness does not need to funny haha.
I knew I’d get at least one reply along those lines. Doesn’t change the fact the most Malkavians were painful to rp with.
Yeah, Malkavians, or most attempts at playing “mad” characters are generally tainted by poor research by a player on mental illness.
I don’t know about anybody else but for me, 40k as a game has lost that x factor that made it fun, I just don’t enjoy playing it like I use too. I still enjoy the story etc though. but fantasy on the other hand I’m enjoying heaps at present and the end times is exciting, it has shaken things up a lot. looking forward to getting my hands on the second book specially since I play warriors of chaos, daemons and beastmen. The hordes of chaos have returned.
When I read Warhammer fluff – particularly the novels – I find it pushes me towards WFRP, Warhammer Quest or Mordenheim.. smaller, more personal games where anyone can be the protagonist – there is no cardboard cutout of a space marine with sign that reads “You must be this tall to matter”. I know there are some pretty epic events in the Warhammer universe e.g. Storm of Chaos but apart from the satisfaction of assembling and painting (hah!) a large army, I don’t find myself drawn to those larger battles.
The Warhammer Fantasy timeline is as rich as the Warhammer 40,000 one – if not more so, in my opinion anyway. While you think the Horus Heresy is the most epic storyline the time of Chaos where High Elves shut down the massive maelstrom and the following story to do with the High Elves and Dwarves is one of he defining and epic stories out there.
Nevermind the fact that you have even bigger moments with the Nagash story that spans hundreds of years from his time as a young man to the battles against Sigmar that set him up for his vanishing act soon after.
There are lots of big ‘key spots’ in the Warhammer storyline that are perfect for getting people interested in the world. If you like Dwarves and High Elves, read The Great Betrayal series. If you like the Undead and the Empire read The Rise of Nagash. If you like Skaven and creatures of the underways then read the Black Plague series where you also seen the rise of Van Hal which is how Sylvania turned into the Vampire-ridden land that you’ve wanted to enjoy.
I think the fluff in the Warhammer Fantasy books is top notch and you get a real sense of a deep and grim dark world.
If you want to get into the world of Warhammer Fantasy then these would be my suggestions.
– Gotrek & Felix
– Mathias Thulman the Witch Hunter (great story about a Witch Hunter and his nefarious schemes)
– The Great Betrayal series
– The Sigmar series
– The Nagash series
– Malus Darkblade (amazing if you want a scheming world of intrigue)
I think people give Warhammer Fantasy a rough ride because Forge World and Black Library seem to have this bent towards Horus Heresy. If these companies put as much love and attention into Warhammer then it would be loved just as much.
If they’d carried on and done the ‘Warhammer Fantasy: Black Fire Pass’ people would be ALL over it.
BoW Ben
“I think people give Warhammer Fantasy a rough ride because Forge World and Black Library seem to have this bent towards Horus Heresy. If these companies put as much love and attention into Warhammer then it would be loved just as much.
If they’d carried on and done the ‘Warhammer Fantasy: Black Fire Pass’ people would be ALL over it”
To be fair to Forge World they did put the same resources into Warhammer Forge as they did with Horus Heresy. Unfortunately HH just blew WF out of the water in terms of sales. I have no interest in HH and Tamurkhan was the last thing GW did that engaged me with WFB. I’d have loved to have seen BFP but it was given a level playing field with HH and the sales didn’t lie.
Couldn’t agree more Ben, the WFB storylines are fantastic and nearly every major event has massive implications on a global scale compared to 40K were it doesn’t matter if a Nid fleet eats a world because there are billions of more worlds, while the spread of the chaos wastes means that towns and cities are lost forever.
Also the Tamurkhan book was simply stunning beyond words, and we can only imagine how Black Fire Pass would have turned out if not for GW running Rick out of town.
I found it interesting that Warren picks the Horus Heresy as the way in to 40K. It’s a part of the setting I love, but it’s actually pretty different to 40K, being both Greek tragedy epic quests and distopian futility of war.
Whereas 40K is in a way actually more distinctive. It’s become a cliche now, but the mix of fantasy tropes and looks, with the crazy religious authoritarianism with the Star Wars frontier-esque technology may not have been entirely original when it was created, and it is in turn ripped off by others these days, but it’s still quite a distinctive setting.
As for Warhammer, again this ties in to my other comment about there being an older, more low fantasy vision or version of the setting and a more modern, less interesting (in my view) high fantasy version.
The original however was strongly based around the Empire, which was itself quite strongly rooted in a real period of European history, and the struggle with chaos – both the external wars on the borders and the internal struggle against cults. Defining moments would be the collapse of the polar gates which let chaos into the world, the rise of man and the alliance with the dwarfs, and the smashing of the orcs and goblins. Many centuries later you have the growth and then decline of the Empire, with the Great War Against Chaos and Magnus the Pius’ uniting of the Empire’s peoples and a new beginning. And then in recent decades the corruption and decline of the Empire as the enemy within and without grows stronger day by day.
For me it was that growing menace, that sense that things were building up to disaster, that was interesting, rather than one dull battle after another. An interesting setting gave a great context for battles. I find ‘everyone fighting everyone all the time’ to be pretty uninspiring.
I believe the Horus heresy gives a very clear underpinning for 40K and why things are as they are.
I certainly understood 40K a hell of a lot more after reading some of the Horus heresy not to mention they are much more readable than a lot of the codices etc 🙂
Yeah, I understand. I just think it’s funny that for a setting with so much written about it the best way in is to read an alternative setting!
Also funny how much opinions vary about the GW books. I think the quality varies a great deal. I hated some of the ones I read years ago as a teenager and only started reading GW fiction again because I wanted to know what they were doing with the 30K setting. And then I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Horus Rising.
From there though, it goes all over the place. I’d probably give Horus Rising 8/10, False Gods 5/10 and Galaxy in Flames 3/10. Throughout the series as a whole some are so bad that Battle for the Abyss gets a 1/10 from me – and it only gets that 1 for the cover – but others I’d rate as highly as 9/10.
One other thing about the Horus Heresy… Perhaps one of the reason’s it plays such an important role in opening the setting up to you is because it’s about the Imperium and Chaos. And for me, those are fundamentally what the setting is about. Everything else is a tangent – the Eldar, Necrons, Tyranids, whatever… It’s the Imperium and Chaos that is the structure that everything else hangs off of.
Which is also how I recommend getting in to Warhammer, even though it’s probably more controversial to suggest it: accept that the setting is the Empire and Chaos, and that everything else is just an extra.
Happy Sunday!
Sam and Redben nailed it down for me. The Gortrek and Felix books are some kind of adventurous travelers guid through the “Old World” as is the “The Enemy Within” RPG campaign. For me those are the possible starting points to get to know more about Warhammer Fantasy background. Great to see GW didn’t skip Fantasy.
Cheers Tuskar
I’d like to see those unpainted first.
I have loads of PlastCraft stuff, and the surface detail is nowhere near that. At least in their older models their idea of a wooden shack was that you paint in the planks. No embossing, no nothing, you want surface detail, you paint it in.
Don’t get me wrong, I like their stuff. But a little truth in advertising wouldn’t hurt.
List rant time (you deserve it for posting lists 😉
Games:
– Betrayal at House on the Hill. You want your cliches thick and fast, from an age where an older doctor/professor and a crazy lady accompanying children of different ages to an abandoned house was ‘just a bit of fun’. If he was Irish he’d be able to say “You t’ree explore the ground floor, I’m taking this young boy upstairs!” (…see what I did there?). Most betrayal scenarios that I’ve played have ended up very tense/close.
– Pandemic: Can we just call it Ebola?
– Game of Life (any edition – I have 4 from the ages): guaranteed to terrify any youngster into wanting to stay at school.
Movies: I like the ‘unseen’ type of suspense so anything that hides the monster until close too the end…
– Alien (the one and only)
– Trollhunter (Norwegian, Blair Witch Project-ish with a Fantasy tie in. The Norwegian with sub-titles gives it a certain authentic feel)
– The Shining (allused to in the weekender, an abandoned/cut-off hotel as a great setting for a game)
I love Troll hunter 🙂
Pushed all my buttons!
Ah I should have included Troll Hunter, love that film
The WFRP Books are the best place to get into Warhammer in my opinion.
I would love to see warhammer rejigged and restarted, a skirmish game and then a larger battle game (but then I’d like to see a more indepth skirmish game for 40k and a epic style game again)
Revealing my age…
In Starsky and Hutch, Hutch = David Soul. 70’s actor and “pop” artist. Thank god for the 80’s.
lol
We’ll I gotta admit Warren some of those movies are on my list. Surprised to not see a couple mentioned though –
5. Pet Cemetary
4. The Amiteville Horror
3. Salem’s Lot
2. The Excorcist
1. The Entity
Enough to scare the crap out of anyone ;0)
Happy Sunday guys!
Warren, is this the film you were thinking of? The Video Dead: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Video_Dead
By Jove man I think you have found it! lol
Well if I can find it I know what I’ll watch for Halloween 🙂
Rpg – Ravenloft
– Call of Cthulhu
– Aliens rpg
– Lord of the Rings RPG mines of Moria, or the 2nd age during the rule of Morkoth
– the original judge Dredd rpg – night of the were-wolves
Video games – The Dead Space series (PS3)
– Cold Fear (PS2)
– Blood Omen – the legacy of Kain (PS1)
– the evil dead series (PS2)
– the first 3 of the Resident evil games
Movies – the Halloween ( original)
– the evil dead series inc the latest remake
– both of The Thing movies
– Friday the 13 th series / nightmare on elm st series
– the George a Romero dead movie series
– special mention The Outpost
How about Re-Animater (an version of the strange case of Charles Dexter Ward) – the scene with the dead cat is great. The second film had a head with wings attached. too.
great xlbs guys, in thinking with WFB that they may re do the whole game and setting, either on another planet / plane of existence or on an apocalyptic aftermath setting of whats left in the old world.
Great movie choices some i had completely forgotten about gonna have to dig them out again and watch. 🙂
If you want a ton of horror check out Spanish cinema, massive fans of Lovecraft there as well giving us not only del Toro’s work but also films like REC (not to be confused with the shite american remake) Dagon, The Devil’s Backbone, Here comes the Devil and the awesome La Sombra Prohibida.
Can’t believe CoC didn’t make the grade, everyone loves a bit of CoC!
Finally easiest way to introduce someone to Vampire the Masquerade is to ask have they seen Underworld? If they answer yes then congratulations you pretty much know everything about the WoD vampire society you need to and can pick up the rest on the fly, Underworld borrowed heavily…very heavily from WoD. In contrast Kindred: The Embraced, was a terrible travesty of a show, and while lots of roleplayers would have went, aha he’s using earth meld *nods knowingly to friend with smirk* , their friends would have replied, “this is poorly acted and terribly written piece of crap, it’s like a feature length halloween episode of one of those American soaps like Days of our Lives. I’m off to the pub *stands up and slaps the back of your head*
Oh! Dagon! I’ve been meaning to watch that for ages. I hear it is the.. er least awful of the movie adaptations.
Another to scare the crap out of Sam – The Amityville Horror (as it’s “allegedly” based on true events) 🙂
Yes I know the story behind that. It is based on true events in a way. There was an investigation carried out on the house, and the occupants did tell stories. The researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren carried out the investigation on the house and hired a horror fiction writer to write the account (as opposed to someone who writes journalistic reports). The writer said that many of the accounts were conflicting and he was encouraged by the Warrens to ignore inconsistencies and work it into a story. With good reason too, it’s the story that made them famous.
The Frighteners.
I missed getting a movie in ,but TRICK R TREAT has become one of our HALLOWEEN favorites these last few years . It’s four short stories tied to one,Warren will love it . It is classic American Halloween small town legend 70s feel, not to gory but maybe not good for little ones, or Sam
That’s one of the ones a friend of mine is intending to make me watch this month
oooo, I never gotten a shoutout before, that made my day. Should check out the other ones I recomended too as i doubt as many people have seen them.
1993’s Dark Water’s is a very gloomy and oppressive film. the atmosphere is brilliant, and it is definitely lovecraftian. Just make sure you get the right one as there are a few films with the same name! Make sure it’s the one set on an island monastary.
Eraserhead is just really messed up. It’s like watching somebody elses nightmare, classic Lynch weirdness.
Videodrome, like the thing – I saw it as a kid and it utterly scared the heck out of me. I barely understood it but the visuals are crazy.
El Topo is another what I like to call “mindf**k” film, which isn’t as well known as the above two but well worth it, it’s like a weird mix of Western and surrealism, very messed up.
From Beyond and Necronomicon are admitedlly pretty bad as serious lovecraft adaptations, but they are a lot of fun, they are more along the lines of Reanimator – but have more squiggly tentacley fun and lots of classic 80’s creature effects. Yep.
Society (1989) is another weird body horror movie with all kinds of metaphors about fitting in and being a member of Society.
The 1980’s version of The Blob is pretty fun – not as great as The Thing, but has some cool ideas in it and the Blob is well realised (you can see the skeletal remains of it’s victims still trapped inside it’s sticky slimey body)
Jacob’s Ladder is another in the “mindf**k” genre, with lots of weird trippy visuals that will mess with your head.
Heres another list, if you want proper creepy, dark, menacing and scary music – you can’t go wrong with my recomendations. It’s Industrial/Dark-Electro/Aggrotech ect
my top 10 Halloween albums :
1) Skinny Puppy – Last Rights
SP are legends of the industrial scene and have done lots of good albums, but Last Rights is the one that is the most darkest and horrifying I think. It’s demented, menacing and utterly insane. layers of sounds and noise, treated samples, electronics and synths, orchestral and Ogres trademark vocals at their most intense. A lot of the music evokes a cinematic feel that would accompany any good Cthulhu mythos game! Fave track is “Scrapyard”, but “the Killing game” is a classic too.
2) Coil – Themes from Hellraiser
Coil did a soundtrack for Hellraiser that was eventually not used. I love the original soundtrack, but this one is good too. It’s very very creepy and experimental.
3) Leaether Strip – Serenade For The Dead
was tempted to recomend one of their normal albums like solitary confinement, but this one is all instrumental and has a strong symphonic feel that could fit all kinds of games be it a zombie survival or Mallifaux.
4) Lexincrypt – Of Unsound Mind
This is just straight up dark, evil, gloomy and heavy dark-electro. Horror esque melodies, dark ambience, distorted whispered vocals and lots of horror movie samples of murderers and people dying. Definitely good for a horror survival game or if you want to escape a maniac on the loose.
5) yelworC – Trinity
If your looking for an album that sounds like a descent into hell itself, you can’t go wrong with this one. It’s got a strong symphonic and orchestral feel, mixed with tribal and electronic elements that come together to create a very hellish atmosphere. “Triune Junction” is a great track.
6) Hocico – El Ultimo Minuto
You could pick any Hocico album really, but if you want something more danceable and straight-up evil, then any of their albums are good. Aggrotech at it’s best – spooky trance melodies, fast heavy beats and evil sounding screamed vocals mixed with a dark horror atmosphere! Standout track is “Vile Whispers” which sounds like a really evil version of the Dr Who theme tune!
7) Suicide Commando – Implements Of Hell
Wouldnt be a horror themed music list without some SC. This guy really really loves Zombies and serial killer movies. It’s pretty cheesy but a lot of fun if you just want something catchy, stompy and danceable. All of his albums are great, but this is my personal favourite. Fave track : “Die Motherf**ker Die”
8) Allied Vision – MMBO (Man Must Be Overcome)
If you want something more on the Science Fiction horror side, You can’t go wrong with this album. From the outset you get samples from Alien, Terminator and The Thing are all in this one. It’s dark, angry and very apocalyptic sounding with an overwhelming sense of dread and oppression wrapped up in a dark cyberpunk intensity.
9) GGFH – Disease
80’s industrial band with a strong horror sound. Pretty messed up. It’s like if you took Bad Taste or some Troma movie and turned it into a music album. Fave Track is “Room 113”. Theres lots of messed up samples, 80s synths and creepy melodies on here.
10) Ruinizer – Mechanical Exhumation Of The Antichrist
If the big giant robot demon on the front cover doesnt clue you in, nothing will. It’s the perfect soundtrack for Event Horizon or Doom. Hell in space! Great for 40k Chaos Players too. Death metal vocals, epic orchestral/symphonic arrangements, heavy dubstep electronics and industrial grade heaviness. Fave song : “Soulgrinder”
You’re so right with not being able to limit your list to 5 movies! I LOVE scary movies, and I’ve never seen the Entity- I’m going to have to check that out! A few more good ones for me are the original Halloween & Friday the 13th movies. I actually love the story in Halloween 5. Then there’s Witchboard- which used to be a slumber party movie of choice that freaked everyone out. Then there’s Something Wicked This Way Comes! I LOVE this movie! I could go on and on, lol, so I will stop there. 🙂
I’ve been collecting WF for about 15 years mainly for the backstory because their is so mic going on, but to know the WF world you have to read all the fluff to understand what it going on. An example of this is in the High Elves book they claim that they alone stopped the tide of choas, but if you read the Lizardmen book they where aided by the Slann to erect the great vortex. The crossover between books and also over the years from older books and rule books that for a new player in WF might get confused about the WF because it is so large and parts contridict themselves. But my advice to anyone starting now with WF would be just to read the End Times books, see what direction the WF is going then look at the armies left because I feel that all the old fluff may become irrelevant.
I think this is something GW could do a lot better. They could use the army book fluff to reveal the setting and the storylines. The old Legend of the Five Rings clanbooks did this really well, as do the God of Battles army lists (albeit they’re all contained in the same book). Even back when I was buying every army book I rarely read the fluff. It was poorly written and it didn’t add anything to the game.
I am surprise for the top 5 movies for halloween no one as mention the Hallloween movies with the terrifying Mike Myers or Classic like Frankenstein the movie made from the Marie Shelly book or Dracula from Bram Stokers, and for my 4th and 5th i would have choose the thing
( both of them ) and probably intervew with a vampire or nigtmare on Elm street
Trick r Treat…….a childhood fav “The Gate” and “Ghoules II” 😀
the film is called ‘The Video Dead’
It’s only available on US import Blu-Ray twin pack with ‘Terrorvision’
Hi all, my five fav films for putting shivers up my spine are:
Nightmare on elm street.
The omen.
The thing.
The exorcist.
And, The Fog.
I’ve actually been at the house where the omen was filmed and it has a very eerie feel to it, especially at night. The funniest one I’d vote for would be the re-animator, the cat scene is a classic!!
You guys forgot the Howling
Yeah the Howling popped into my mind after the show along with: Hellboy 1 and 2 and the new-ish Hansel and Gretel movie.
I agree it’s much harder to come up with a defining story or event for Warhammer like you can point to the Horus Heresy in 40k. In 40k the only viewpoint that matters is the Imperial one, which covers over half the armies. In fantasy every race has a different timeline and viewpoint. If I were giving advice to a new player I’d tell them to pick an army based on its aesthetics or gut feeling. Then read the army book and maybe a novel or two that are relevant to that race.
Black Library has the Time of Legends series which is trying to emulate the success of the Horus Heresy novels. Rather than being a never-ending stream of novels they are mainly doing trilogies on key points in the warhammer history (e.g. the sundering, the great betrayal, sigmar, etc). They did three trilogy simultaneously, then started a second set of three. Strangely this second set got 7 of the 9 books then seems to have stopped. I feel like I’ve been waiting ages for the great betrayal and vampire bloodlines trilogies to finish. The latest time of legend book to come out looked to be stand alone and was about some event I’d never even heard of before.
The End Times stuff is really interesting to me, a long time Warhammer player, but I don’t think anyone in my gaming club seems enthused by it. There are still many warhammer players who play other games every week, and our upcoming campaign will not be using any of the End Time rules or lists. It also has annoyed me that the Nagash book has only recently sold out, but the Glotkin book sold out in a few hours. Could it really be that much more popular, or are there far less books available? The staff at my local GW store were taken by surprise too. Turns out the people who know how the releases work don’t work over the weekends – a slight oversight for a company that only does weekend releases.
I’m finding GWs current release schedule to be very draining. I collect both 40k and fantasy and I struggle to keep up. In the past there was usually a few months between new army books or codexes so the game progressed gradually. Now it seems new rules come out faster than I can get games. At this rate they would have to put out a new edition of each game every two or three years. I’m sorely tempted to switch to another gaming system where I wont feel pressed to purchase one ore more rulebooks per month to keep up.
I agree. Even though I don’t play Warhammer any more, I’d like to have bought the End Times books for old times’ sake, as collectibles and because I still have an interest in the setting, even though I don’t like a lot of what they’ve done with it over the years. I can imagine how much more annoying it must be for people still playing who’ve missed out. I hope that their popularity will make GW think about doing a reprint.
I agree with you about the release schedule too. Obviously intended to suck money out of customers at a faster rate than before (and presumably successful with some of them), it must be putting others off. There’s just no time to get into something before it’s been and gone.
There have been 40K releases that in the past I’d likely have picked up, but now, because I haven’t had the cash on a particular weekend, a few weeks later the urge to buy stuff has gone as the releases have faded into the distance. In some ways that’s good for me: it’s helped me come to the decision not to buy any more 40K codexes, even for armies I play(ed). I’m not at all happy with the way they’re done currently, so having them appear ‘new’ and then be old news in a couple of weeks has helped enormously in resisting the temptation to buy.
Great show are you going to start a collection for SAM because by the time @warzan is finished he will may be a gibbering fool in a room with cushions’ on the walls if he survives the night you could always calm SAM by showing Saturday the 14th ?
Oh, damn! My movie list was named the “ultimate” by Warren! Not the most original idea I’ve had, admittedly, but it came from the heart. 🙂 Thanks for the shout-out! Great episode as always.
Lloyd was thinking of Practical Magic with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
My vote for a scary, but fun Christmas movie would be Foreign Import (a Norwegian or Finnish flick about caribou herders trying to catch an evil Santa Claus).
I think the best food for Halloween is themed drinks.
Spiders (Ice cream and soda) etc
And anything else that looks like a witches cauldron is a cup.
Dry Ice smoke effects in the drinks gets extra points.
Warren is this what your looking for “Video Dead”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Terrorvision-Double-Feature-Region-Import/dp/B00A429Y56/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414380199&sr=8-1&keywords=video+dead
Also no Rocky Horror Picture Shoe. And Sam Nightmare Before Christmas IS a Halloween movie. It say “Before Christmas” Thus its NOT a Christmas movie.
If you guys haven’t seen FEAST you deffinatly have to. It’s about a group of people stuck in a desert bar while beast monsters try to get in and eat them. Lots and lots of gore.
For the sci fi horror crowd I’d go with ‘Event Horizon’. I went and saw that in the cinema with a mate thinking it was just normal sci fi movie and it scared the s@&t out of me. But then I’m a bit like Sam and hate horror movies.
Please someone beat Sam´s arm for not to havent saw Beetlejuice.
I know right!
Sorry guys but when it comes to horror Italians really do it better (or maybe just weirder) 😉 If you haven’t watched the following i strongly invite you to do so whether u like horror or you just love cinema. Let’s say it’s an introduction to italian horror in case you are interested:
Dario Argento:
deep red (1975)
suspiria (1980 – this is a psychedelic piece of art that really has no equal)
Mario Bava:
black sabbath (1963 – the band took their name from this edgar allan poe art-horror; one of the first that mixed experimental art movies with horror)
the girl who knew too much (1963)
blood and black lace (1969)
Ruggiero Deodato:
ultimo mondo cannibale (1977 – alternatively in english cannibal holocaust)
International i agree, alien is a true masterpiece and so some others that you listed. I would add at least hitchcock’s the birds, the omen, and the awakening. They are all incredible masterpieces!
Ps. i guess Pasolini’s 120 days of sodom is also someway an horror movie and it’s truly truly frightening. But this one is definitely not for kids.
My top five horror movies are
5. Freaks (1932)
4. Poltergeist
3. An American Werewolf In London
2. Evil Dead
1. John Carpenter The Thing
I would like to put in there a TV “event” which I thought was real at the time BBC’s Ghostwatch a British reality–horror/mockumentary television movie, first broadcast on BBC1 on 31 October (Halloween), 1992.
I’m on Sam’s side of the divide in that I’m not much a horror movie fan, although there are a few I do enjoy.
* Sleepy Hollow
* Van Helsing
and
* Tucker And Dale vs Evil!
Easily the funniest “horror-ish” movie I have ever seen.
I have to agree with Sam with regards to the Return of Nagash novel. Anyone reading that isn’t going to really want to play Elves or Humans (Dwarfs just about get away with it). It’s a real good guy bashing fest and while overall the story was good, it paints a picture that’s just a little too grimdark. I’m not averse to stories about a society’s most desperate hour, afterall the biggest acts of heroism are performed in just such a scenario but this just goes a little too far; even the Empire Strikes Back left you with a feeling that there was at least some hope for the good guys in the next film! I know you could argue that this book is just setting the scene but it doesn’t leave you, as a reader, that the Empire or Bretonnia have much a future, having been utterly ineffective thus far. But it also shouldn’t take an entire book just to set the scene for another book.
Having read the Return of Nagash I’m having second thoughts as to whether I really want to read the Fall of Altdorf because it kind of sounds like more of the same. Do I really want to read another story that is essentially a cull of major good characters? I’d like to see the tables turned just a little.
I think I probably will read the Fall of Altdorf, after that I will play it by ear.
Did no one mention John Carpenters Halloween?…
And on the subject of John Carpenter, his version of the Thing wasn’t the original, that was made in 1951!
I’m surprised no one mentioned the movie Cube or Resident Evil. Also, @warzan one of the creepiest things about the entity movie is the fact its based on a true story…
Party food…. Mmmm… got to be boiled quails eggs for a jar full of eyeballs, being smaller makes them creepier! Passionfruit for a sweet treat, just because it looks like vomit lol.
Pumpkinhead is a pretty good Halloween movie for a good, gory laugh.
I hate to admit it, but I sort of agree with Sam here. I never have liked “scary movies”. Even at the tender age of 41, the trailers on TV still creep me out. 😛
Although, even *I* have seen The Shining, Sam. Shaun of the Dead is also fun. Gotta love Simon Pegg.
Has anyone mentioned Let the Right One In, best horror film I think I’ve ever seen, capturing the heart of horror which isn’t really at all about just being scared. Also I think the zombie movie Warren was talking about is The Video Dead.
Salem’s Lot = David Soul