Jump to content

Macragge's Honour - review and spoilers

Toxichobbit

By Toxichobbit
in + AGE OF DARKNESS +

Recommended Posts

Toxichobbit Venerable Brother

Toxichobbit

Posted
Posted

My copy arrived on Saturday and I don't think i've seen anyone else spoil it yet, so i'll give it a go. Before the spoilers start though, I want to talk about the graphic novel itself.

First, lets get the price thing out of the way. Yes, it's very expensive for what you get. Yes, it's too expensive for the majority of people. Yes, lots of you will think i'm a fool for buying it. But you know what, I don't care. I made the decision last year that the HH was going to be my thing (in books, not miniatures) so i'm going all out on collectors editions for it. I've read all of the novels at least once, listened to all of the audio books, read all of the Eshorts etc - having the collectors edition of a series that I like so much (even if there are a few black sheep novels in there) is worth my money ... and they look awesome on the book shelf. Books mean a lot to me, especially books that don't "age" (eg background books compared to rule books). I'm willing to pay more than their generally perceived worth for a series of books I really like and this lead to my decision of my foreseeable hobby funds being books rather than miniatures. Besides, I have a lot of miniatures, approximately 99.9% are unpainted and i'm running out of room. Books take up less space. That's not me making an excuse for why I bought these books. I don't need an excuse, i'm an adult and I can make decisions on what I spend my money on. I don't need the internet's permission nor do I need it's approval. I'm just trying to head off the price vs perceived value conversations before they happen, which is inevitable with a high luxury product such as this. Now that's out of the way, i'll get off my soapbox and get to something you all actually care about.

The presentation of the books is superb, but lets face it given it's price tag and the previous books in this style (Betrayal & Massacre from Forgeworld and Visions of Heresy I/II from Black Library) we should expect nothing less. It's the same leather bind with gilt edged pages and a colour piece glued to the front cover. In essence, the cover is identical to the volumes listed above and sits nicely alongside them on the book shelf. Unfortunately the long title and thinner volume combine to make the writing on the spine vertical rather than horizontal, but that's not the end of the world.

The inside cover of the books is a nice technical-style representation of Macragge's Honour. Black on white in the front cover and white on black in the back cover. I'm not sure on the exact class, but it looks like the child of an Emperor Class and a Battle Barge, although bigger than either. There aren't any text details like those you'd find in a technical drawing, just the actual image of the ship itself. My friend who is into rendering space ships on some 3D program or something got very enthusiastic about this image.

After the standard HH intro pages and the legal stuff we have a Dramatis Personae. There's significantly less characters in this than in the normal novels and very few of them are on "screen" for more than a page. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things as only three of them are of any import and then only two are what i'd deem major characters, those being Marius Gage - Chapter Master of the Ultramarines 1st Chapter and Kor Phaeron - 1st Captain of the Word Bearers? I can't remember what his rank was or if he indeed had one in First Heretic & Know No Fear. At this point his rank is pretty much irrelevant anyway. The third person of minor import (in the series as a whole, not this novel) is Ouon Hommed, Shipmaster of Macragge's Honour after the events in Know No Fear. There's then a selection of other Ultramarines of various ranks and a few of the Macragge's Honour bridge crew as well as the bridge crew of Infidus Imperator and Kor Phaeron's retinue (all human/cultist). There is another Word Bearer named, but like most of the Ultramarines he's named only in this novel (I think) and isn't in it for long. One thing that does set the Dramatis Personae apart from the other novels is that all of the characters mentioned have portraits, which helps a lot because most of the Marines aren't referred to by name in the novel itself. Then again, most of the Marines aren't in it for any length of time, so the Dramatis Personae is more there for the sake of having it, rather than a reference for any character development. As most of the Marines wear their helmets all the time (one tends to do that when battling in the void) to differentiate between them they all have slightly different styles of helmet, some recongnisable styles/Mks, some custom and new.

Before you get into the novel proper, there's a short paragraph taken straight from Know No Fear that sets the scene with Guilliman telling Gage to hunt down and destroy Kor Phaeron.



The artwork throughout the novel is very nice. Here's a few things that I noted;

- Ouon Hommed looks strikingly like Grand Moff Tarkin. Not identical, but similar hair style and posture.

- Void shields seem to be a hex-based shield.

- Ships have a lot of guns. A hell of a lot - more than I imagined going off past experience (Battlefleet Gothic miniatures). The space battles wouldn't look out of place in Star Wars, lots of pew pew going on, and like Star Wars the good guys and bad guys have different coloured lasers. Odd when you think about it in reality, but necessary to give the reader an actual idea of what's going on. Plus it looks cool.

- Boarding torpedos seem to have large chain blade looking things down their sides to grind their way into ships.

- Walking the plank is still possible in 30k. Well, they don't actually make people walk the plank or anything silly like that, but alongside the "conventional" methods of boarding a ship (boarding torpedos, extending docking tubes etc) they also have boarding bridges that extend from one side of the ship towards the opposing ship and are open to the void. So theoretically you could make someone walk the plank into the void. ADB, make it so.

- The Warp is a scary place. It's like a gigantic bad LSD dream (going off second hand info, never had LSD personally). It's all psychedelic colours with weird censored.gif going down - planets dribbling into one another, giant eyes and mouths appearing from nowhere, skull shaped planetoids (otherwise it'd be too bright-dark), planets hemorrhaging all over the place, shoals of dead suns. There's some "regular" planets too, in all kinds of exciting colours.

- There's a lot of Marines being Marines (rather than Marines fighting on a planet). Boarding actions and fighting on the exterior of the ships makes for some awesome scenes that are pretty epic in scale.

- More HH era daemons, which are not linked to any of the Gods (in any recongnisable way at least). I enjoy the way Daemons have been expanded in the HH to have more unique entities rather than the codified versions we see in 40k.

- More images of Volkites firing in the same style as Star Wars blasters "set to stun" - ie energy rings going out from the weapon. This matches the depiction on the cover of Tallarn: Executioner. Also, flamers working in the void. Whether that's because they are a promethium thrower and don't need oxygen or because the fighting is on the side of the ship and still within the environmental envelope i'm not sure. But to be honest, it looks awesome, so who cares.

- 30k ships can "roll out the guns" in the style of a galleon. The main broadside guns are stowed behind what looks like large blast doors which are opened before engaging and the guns then extend.

- Dorsal lances are censored.gif huge.

After the main story is finished there's a section on the making of the novel with concept art and storyboards as well as a short bio on author and artist. It shows the concept version of Hommed who was even more Grand Moff Tarkin (confirming my earlier suspicions) as well as something called a ram gun, which looks like it belongs in a 70s sci fi show. I don't think it actually made it into the finished product though. My favrouite of the concept boards is the concept for Gage's "I'm sick of these :cuss daemons on this :cuss ship" scene, which is described through a combination of "Metal Marine" (think heavy metal pose striking) and "Here be dragons". An amusing insight into the genius madness of the minds behind the HH books. Alas, there were no devil's horns going on.



Now the actual story itself;


- Macragge's Honour, commanded by Hommed, is in pursuit of Kor Phaeon onboard the Infidus Imperator and is gaining on her despite obstacles (three Word Bearer's cruisers to be precise) being put in their way.

- Kor Phaeron is recovering from having his heart torn out by Guilliman, using what seems like a combination of standard apothecarion procedures with warp sorcery to speed up the process. He awakens and orders the Imperator to come about and face it's pursuer.

- The Macragge's Honour manoeuvres into boarding position. You can clearly see how it dwarfs the Imperator, despite the Imperator being a battle barge.

- The boarding forces, lead by Captain Mesaror, seem to be composed of solely cataphractii. Lots of cataphractii. They discover cultists aboard the Imperator performing some sort of ritual, but are unable to stop it and are all but wiped out by the resultant warp energy.

- The ritual damages the Honour and teleports Word Bearers boarders onboard, as well as summoning daemons. The Imperator uses this as a distraction to escape. Gage deals with a rather large daemon personally.

- The Imperator once again escapes and diverting all power to her drives, the Honour pursues. Kor Phaeron (who spends almost the entire novel hooked up to medical devices) uses a Shard to cut a warp breach for the Imperator to escape through, giving no censored.gif about going into the warp without coordinates plotted as, in his own words "we are the warp".

- Gage wants the Honour to pursue and after some deliberation, Hommed gives the order. The Honour finds itself completely lost with the Imperator it's only point of reference.

- Despite the damage done so far, the Honour seems to be in better condition than the Imperator and as such the bridge crew of the Imperator is unsure that they can outrun the Honour. Kor Phaeron, upon being informed that it's likely that the Honour is relying on the Imperator as a point of reference, decides that their best strategy it to loose the Honour and then attack her while she's blind.

- Chase scene in the Warp.

- The Honour runs into a swarm of daemonic entities, They get through the Geller Field and the Ultramarines fight them on the outside of the ship. Some very nice looking battle scenes, with the Ultramarines ultimately victorious but almost wiped out. Gage comments that boarding actions are no longer an option.

- The Imperator has used the distraction to once again escape and can no longer be detected on the Honour's sensors, due to warp magick.

- The Imperator makes attack runs past the Honour, slowly destroying her. The Honour is unable to fight back due to being unable to detect the Imperator.

- After a few passes the Honour is able to lock onto the locator beacon of Captain Mesaror, who survived the ritual and is still on board the Imperator fighting off Word Bearers. The Honour uses this the beacon as a target for it's dorsal lance batteries.

- The first volley of the lances cripples the Imperator, the second volley destroys it. Kor Phaeron (in true evil overlord style) escapes before the ship is destroyed, fleeing through a cut in reality using the Shard and ending up with his retinue and assorted Word Bearers on a planet called Sicarus, within the Eye. Macragge's Honour is left lost in the warp.

This is definitely a novel for eye candy over story. Not that the story is bad, it isn't. But it's out-shone by the artwork, which I guess is why it's a graphic novel and not a shrot story/novella. Seeing the ships in action, the warp and Astartes fighting void battles makes for really epic set pieces, so I think the decision to use this format was a good one. There's no major reveals in this story, other than the fate of Kor Phaeron/Infidus Imperator and Marius Gage/Macragge's Honour. Oh, and of course Kor Phaeron discovering the world that will eventually become Lorgar's daemonworld. However it does leave for some interesting options, the Macragge's Honour could theoretically pop out anywhere, at any time, as they are truly lost within warpspace, while who knows what Kor Phaeron will get up to now he's in the Eye.

The low point for me was actually the finale. It's not that it was inconceivable, it's that more details would have made it more believable. Some mention of why the Honour was suddenly able to destroy the Imperator in just two volleys (besides the deus ex machina of the locator beacon) would have been nice. I can come up with reasons, but I feel that I shouldn't have to be filling in with head canon. Maybe the Ultramarines wanted to ensure that Kor Phaeron didn't escape by boarding, rather than destroying the Imperator and only resulted in destroying her when they were unable to board (due to the warp entity attack) and were in a position where the only option was to destroy her (almost destroyed by the Imperator's attack runs and having limited time before Mesaror was killed and they lost the beacon). In addition, it's entirely plausible that the Honour out-classed the Imperator and despite the damage both ships had sustained, would still have been able to swiftly destroy her in a straight up ship duel. The only reason the Imperator had survived that long was due to Kor Phaeron's warp sorcery. It's also possible that the Imperator was putting all power to it's guns, assuming that because the Honour was blind to them they couldn't retaliate so no shieIds were needed. I'd guess that the Imperator was probably not taking any kind of evasive action either and the Honour's attack caught it off guard and did more damage than would be expected had the ships been dueling conventionally. I have no issue with any of these explanations as to why the ship duel ended so suddenly, but wasn't ended sooner despite the Honour clearly having the power to do so, but it would have been nice if it was explained or hinted at within the novel itself. Maybe it was and I just missed it. I'll give it another read over the next few weeks and see if that's the case.



All in all i'm pleased with the graphic novel. It has high production value, good artwork throughout with some stunning visuals, nice little extra touches with the behind the scene concept boards and a solid story with few faults. Plus it does look spiffing on the book shelf.

Edit: Fixed tags

Toxichobbit Venerable Brother

Toxichobbit

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Glad you enjoyed it Tox By the way how is the Deathwatch Squad coming along.whistlingW.gif

Well.....

I'll fess up, I haven't painted or modelled anything in the last 8 months or so. But they aren't forgotten! One day, hopefully soonish, i'll get back into painting and they're high on the list. I'd actually like to get them done before this years ETL, but knowing how slow I am and how easy I am to distract, that might be just a pipe dream :p.

SteelPaladin Veteran

SteelPaladin

Posted
Posted

I came home from work to find my copy of Macragge's Honour sitting on my doorstep. Now that I have had a chance to sit down and read it, my overall opinion is positive, but there are a few areas that did not work all that well for me. Just a couple of random thoughts:
 
- The art is unbelievable. Simply awesome. It is very similar to his Heresy covers, but has more of a hand drawn feel, which makes it better IMO.

 

- The plot feels way too rushed. This is supposed to be THE naval duel of the Heresy (well, one of the most infamous anyways), but it felt too short. I guess this is partially my fault for building up my own head cannon for the engagement, but I had imagined a hit and run style duel that lasted for weeks. Now, passage of time is hard to explain in comics, so maybe it does take place over a longer period of time and we just skip over most of it.

 

- Overall the battles go by in a flash, they are over before you know it. One certain battle in particular goes by way to quickly

The open void battle with the daemons on the hull of the ship

There is a cool page with many small panels showing the fighting, and then its over and you find out there has been

88% casualties

! That just did not flow well.

 

As I read this back, I kind of feel like I sound overly harsh, because I really do love this book. To me it was definitely worth the $, if only because I have wanted to see a 30k comic since I read the IA articles back in 3rd edition. I'm a huge comic book fan anyways, so this is a dream come true.

 

Now, Mr. Abnett and Mr. Roberts, pretty please do another one! If this was the first in a series of HH graphic novels, I would die a happy( and broke) man.

karden00 Veteran

karden00

Posted
Posted

I have a feeling we'll see more of the Macragges Honor. It was noted to be one of the most notable duels in Imperial history..So...It wouldnt be history if its story was not told to the rest of the Imperium :D :D :D One can hope. Also, BL just loves putting little bits of Ultramarines all over the HH. Im sure the Honor will pop up again. Given the scale of the battle above Terra, it wouldnt be at all strange if it showed up there and we just never heard about it. 

Thanks for the review!

  • 1 month later...
mc warhammer Veteran

mc warhammer

Posted
Posted

seems rushed but it isn't. its the nature of the medium. graphic novels are not cheap to produce, which means the page count is limited. i'm sure that the writer and the artist would have loved to expand on each scene but they had to work within constraints.

 

and i think they did a gret job of it.

 

i wanted more of the battle on the ship exterior against the warp daemons too, but when i try to inagine what could be sliced from the rest of the story to make room, i can't find any fat to cut. it's not that graphic novels can't provide depth (look at From Hell or Watchmen), but you're going to need a helluva lot more pages to do that suffiently. so for the (somewhat compromised) work that it is, i think it hit its mark.

 

there are certain things that a graphic novel can do that prose can't, and for that, this book is worth the read.

 

"incoming!"

 

"maccrage's honour!"

 

"it's in pursuit! ITS IN PURSUIT!"

 

that got my adrenaline up in a way the novels haven't.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.

  I accept