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| At last! I can tell you about some of the very exciting things that I know about and that you don’t, or rather didn’t know until now! Today I can finally reveal not one, but two of my Black Library novels. In case the picture above doesn’t give it away, one is Skarsnik, about the infamous night goblin warlord. I’m a big Warhammer fan, as you might know. I started playing in 1984 with the first edition of the fantasy game. That’s right, when there was none of this new fangled Warhammer 40,000 business and Toughness values were represented by letters. I was 11. I’m now 39, so I’ve been playing for 28 years. And I still play. I love it. (Playing for so long puts on odd perspective on things – I bought myself a little birthday gift on Wednesday, a box of plastic bikers for my 40k ork army. I’ve wanted these for ages. To me they are “new models”. They came out five years ago). I’ve always been a massive greenskin fan, leading orcs and goblins since day one. For years they lost, but the last half decade has been kind to my green minions and they now win more often than not. It helps that Skarsnik himself is my army general. Want to see my army list? Here it is. Skarsnik’s Stabbas 29/10/2011 Lords (Max 500) Skarsnik 275 Night Goblin Great Shaman 140 Heroes (Max 500) Night Goblin Big Boss 115 BSB upgrade 35 Bad Moon Banner 50 Night Goblin Big Boss 80 Great Cave Squig 50 Core (Min 500) 46 Night Goblins 243 Boss, standard bearer, musician 30 3 Fanatics 75 40 Night Goblins 225 Boss, standard bearer, musician 30 Short bows 3 Fanatics 75 Special (Max 1000) 560 4 Spear Chukkas 140 Squig Herd 180 18 Cave Squigs 144 12 Night Goblins 36 10 Squig Hoppers 120 2 Goblin Wolf Chariots 120 Extra Wolf, extra crew Rare (Max 500) 8 Stone Trolls 360 1998 (I date all my army lists when I draw them up. This is the most recent variation on Skarsnik’s army, but it really doesn’t change that much. The last game I played with this was 7/5/2012. It represents but a small proportion of my greater goblin horde. No, I don’t have any orcs in my army, although I have Ruglud’s Armoured Orcs prepped for painting because they are very cool. Other orcs can go feed my squigs. Literally). Naturally I was well up for it when Nick Kyme at The Black Library suggested I write a novel about Skarsnik. Nick worked for me when I edited White Dwarf magazine, now I kind of work for him. A strange reversal, but a fruitful one. Our earlier association means he knows full well how much I like my goblins. I’ve put up a page on Skarsnik here with a brief breakdown of the plot, so I won’t repeat myself, but I will tell you some of what I am trying to do with the story. A lot of people see goblins as funny, comic relief characters (why, just check out The Black Library’s own blog post to see how prevalent this attitude is). Granted, they are funny, but they are also vicious, wicked, baby-eating horrors of the first degree. “Ooh! Look at the funny goblins”, gamers say. Yeah well, you wouldn’t want to be bound to spiky stick in a stinky cave with a lot of them standing around you. They’d have knives, and they’d be laughing. Not so funny now, are they? Come to think of it, you probably don’t want to face mine on the battlefield either. |
