Games Workshop City Walk Celebrates First Anniversary

SANDY SPRINGS, Ga.--Games Workshop City Walk celebrated its first anniversary Sept. 29 with cake and a gaming tournament.

Kenneth Meade, who operates the store, said the shop was part of Games Workshop's expansion in the United States. Games Workshop is a British gaming company known for its Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000, and Lord of the Rings tabletop games. The Warhammer 40,000 property have been adapted into books, video games, and even an animated movie.

"It's one of the better-performing one-man stores," Meade said when asked how business had been during the prior year. Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy are the two most popular properties, but Meade anticipated the Lord of the Rings games selling better as the release of The Hobbit drew near. The best-selling items were the "core sets" that introduce players to the setting and come with enough miniatures to allow two people to play. The store also stocks the many tie-in novels set in both the 40k and Fantasy universes, many of which will be released there weeks before they appear in more general bookstores like Barnes and Noble.


The event lasted from noon until 9 p.m. Meade described the turnout as "great." Part of the event was a gaming tournament using the newly-released sixth editionof Warhammer 40,000. By 3:40 p.m., 12 people had played a game using the Dark Vengeancestarter set. Meade expected more to play as the day went on.

In addition to the gaming tournament, the celebration featured miniature-painting, special items on sale,  giveaways of promotional items like backpacks, and even a cake from Henri's Bakery.

Hutch Jackson came up from his home near Emory University for the event. A 40k player, he has a Chaos Space Marine army he purchased with the sixth edition as well as Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Necron forces. During the three games he had played before 4 p.m., he played as the Chaos Space Marines. Jackson enjoys the game's extensive back-story and collecting and painting the models.

Jackson gets most of his Games Workshop materials from Games Workshop City Walk. If he needs something, there's a good chance Meade has it.

Paul Jarvis of Milton has shopped at Games Workshop City Walk since February 2012.

"I was online and I found there was a store in Georgia," he said. "I decided I would go check it out."

He said the people who frequent the shop are very friendly and helped him out. Because of that, he's come back for more.

Jarvis plays both 40k and Fantasy. In 40k, he plays as the Ultramarines and has an attached Imperial Guard unit. In Fantasy, he plays as the Dwarfs.

"It's fun to put [them] together, to make your own models," he said. "It's just fun playing around, meeting nice people."

Movie Review: "Ultramarines" (SPOILERS)

For Christmas, I received the collector's edition of the Ultramarines animated film.  After my younger siblings were done with Inception, I settled down to watch the film.  Here's my review...

The Good

Although there were some quibbles on the forums and the like about the animation quality, I thought it was very good, with one exception (see later). 

Understanding the storyline also didn't require a whole lot of advanced knowledge of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.  There's a nice bit of voice-over during the opening credits explaining the whole "in the grim darkness of the far future" thing.  There are little references here and there to the wider universe, like the really cool stained-glass image of the Ultramarines fighting the Tyranids aboard the Ultramarine ship, but they don't play a role in the plot.

Although the return of Captain Severus from his apparent lethal fall while battling a demon was predictable, his body being possessed by the demon he was fighting, returning to rescue the squad from what appear to be Khorne berzerkers (Chaos Marines who charge enemies wielding chain-swords and handguns rather than fighting like ordinary soldiers), and then rampaging around the Ultramarine ship wasn't.

The film also included the more unusual aspects of the 40K universe, like how Pythol removes the gene seed from the bodies of the dead to be used in later Marines.

There's also a good "Chekhov's gun" moment (in which something introduced early on becomes important later), or shall I say, a Chekhov's hammer.  :)

The Bad

The characterization needed work.  Due to the similar haircuts and facial structure, it was often difficult to tell the individual Marine characters apart, with the exception of the Apothecary Pythol (white armor), Sgt. Crastor (the robotic replacement eye), and Captain Severus (his voice and mannerisms). 

(That's the animation issue I referred to earlier.  When it's hard to tell characters apart, that's a problem.)

There also wasn't enough characterization in terms of personality, beyond the new Marines being eager for combat and the Apothecary, who has to put them back together again when they're wounded and retrieve their gene-seed when they're killed, being more cautious.

The early parts of the film were also rather slow.  There is an action snippet in the very beginning depicting the Chaos Space Marine assault on the shrine-world from the point of view of one of the defending Marines and then we're introduced to the characters, they land on the planet, and then spend a long time marching to the shrine before they find the desecrated bodies of the defeated Imperial Fists.  And after that, it's awhile before they first encounter the actual Chaos Space Marines.

It would have been better for the squad had been attacked repeatedly on the way to the shrine, but we didn't know who exactly was doing it.  That would have been less boring and built up the suspense more.

The Verdict

I will give the film itself (I haven't watched the extra stuff, like how the film was made) a 5.5 out of 10.

However...

Since this is the collector's edition, it came with a comic book elaborating on what happened on the world of Algol, something referred to in the film.  The Ultramarines were fighting an infestation of the Tyranids on the planet, a hive-world with a population of eighteen billion, and the squad sent to investigate the Chaos attack on the shrine world consisted of Ultramarines who were neophytes (trainees who had not undergone the final transformation into Space Marines) on Algol and were griping about not participating in real combat.

When a Marine squad is smashed by the Tyranids, its sole survivor, Crastor, is made a sergeant and placed in command of the neophytes, who then undergo the final surgeries to become Space Marines.  Captain Severus and Typhol had known about the neophytes' griping and, as you say, "be careful what you wish for."

If the events of the comic book had been included as the finished film there would have been a lot more action (especially in the beginning) and a lot more characterization--we see a lot more of the relationship between Severus and Pythol, more development of Crastor's character, and a rivalry between Proteus and another Ultramarine.  Plus we'd get more Tyranids than just a picture on a wall.  :)

Given this is the first movie based on the Warhammer 40,000 property, one can understand why it wouldn't be perfect.  Hopefully future 40K films will take the criticisms of the first movie into account and make improvements.

I will comment on the behind-the-scenes material later...

My Last DragonCon Post, Featuring Mike Lee, Food, and Other Stuff

I've been busy working on Escape from the Wastelands and stuff that caught my attention, so I haven't yet put up everything from DragonCon.  This post won't be as long and detailed as my last one because in the "What Women Want" panel, I spent more time writing down ideas for Escape inspired by the panelists' discussion than writing down what they actually said.

At DragonCon, there was a panel on writing for gaming universes that featuring Warhammer 40,000 author Mike Lee (who is absolutely hilarious and fun to talk to) and a father and son, one of whom was a writer and the other a graphic designer.  Here are some things I learned...

Firstly, gaming companies consider the licensed novels a marketing tool primarily.  Novels are timed with product releases--a novel about the Black Templars Space Marine chapter would be released at the same time as a new Black Templar gaming codex.  Time is tight--Black Library often gives writers 90 days to put out a novel.  Around three tie-in books come out per year.

Secondly, established characters are products and gaming companies are very protective of them.  It is rare for book characters to enter the game-canon (i.e. appear in codices, become playable characters, etc.) 

This is something I was already somewhat aware of due to writing for the BattleTech universe--new writers are advised to avoid using "name characters" like Victor Steiner-Davion because what they've been up to is documented to the nth degree.  Good stories have been rejected because they feature established characters doing something when established canon has them somewhere else.

That's why, in "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," I invented an entirely new Oberon Confederation MechWarrior named Arnold Hoefer to be my protagonist and his Clan Wolf antagonists were names from the Clan Wolf codex who didn't have any established back story.  I intend to write more stories about Hoefer and the Clan Wolf characters and I can't imagine them crossing paths with any canon characters with the possible exception of Phelan Kell (who served as bondsman to Ulric Kerensky, the ruler of Clan Wolf, and was inducted into the warrior caste for saving his life) and then it would be very brief.

A fun fact I learned about Games Workshop's headquarters in Nottingham, UK, is that it is locally known as "the Reichstag."  It's a huge black building with a giant Imperial eagle (symbol of the Warhammer 40,000 Imperium) on it.  One can ask a local cabbie to take you to "the Reichstag" and he'll take you to GW.

During the discussion of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and the different strength levels of the diffferent factions, Michael Coker said something that at the time was absolutely hilarious:

"Every time the Necrons show up, the Imperium gets its ass handed to them.  Because they're the goddamn Necrons."

But back to writing stuff.  Lee described having to rewrite part of his novel Warhammer: Reaper of Souls to feature a character being near a burning city in order to accomodate a poster that depicted one of the characters from the novel near a burning city.  I guess this was to ensure continuity between the novels, the gaming canon, and the promotional materials.

The "What Women Want" panel gave me lots of interesting ideas for Escape, including elaborating on one character to make her a "strong female character" and making the racial situation in one of the nations more diverse.  However, as I said earlier, I was too busy writing those down to get a whole lot of the general advice.  The one bit of advice I can remember is that a trait women like in male characters is fatherliness/being a father.  I think they said there were too many "boy-men" in fiction.

I also got into a brief argument with one of the panelists about whether Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox's character from the live-action Transformers films) could be considered a strong female character or not.  My contention was that she was, based on her combat capability (hotwiring a car to pull a wounded Bumblebee back into the fight in the first movie and crushing the Decepticon imposter-bot "Alice" in the second).  I probably should have planned what I was going to say more before stating my disagreement, since I neglected to mention her loyalty to her father to the point of getting criminally cited for not testifying against him and her ruthlessness in torturing the Decepticon spy in the second film.

The author, whose name I cannot recall, said in response to my kill-the-Fembot defense that anyone could have done that, that her intelligence/mechanical skill was not elaborated on enough, and that she ended up needing to be rescued.  I don't agree with any of those points--in fact, I could make the argument that Mikaela is even more hard-core than Sam himself.

(I distinctly recall her referring to Sam as a "little girl" at one point.)

Also, if you're ever at the Peachtree Center building in Atlanta, be sure to check out Cafe Momo.  It has a buffet there where you can buy food by the pound.  This means meals are a bit on the pricey side, but they're really good and you can get a balanced meal (fruits/vegetables), which is pretty unusual at a mall food court.  When I was at DragonCon, I had at least two meals there and they were good, with the exception of some marble cheesecake I had to pay extra for.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, I went to the Metro Cafe Diner.  The first time, I went with members of my Lawrenceville writing group and didn't eat anything.  The second time, I had a chicken-and-cheese quesadilla at the bar.  I now know that both salsa and honey mustard both make good sauces for the quesadilla, which was really good in and of itself.