The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

A wallpaper of the command squad of the Ultramarines 4th Company from the Sony PSP/Nintendo DS Warhammer 40,000 tactical game Squad Command developed by Finnish developers RedLynx.

The heavily adorned armour of the central Space Marine probably indicates that he’s a Space Marine Commander - could he be the legendary captain of the 4th company Uriel Ventris?

Anyway I believe that the shoulder trim for the 4th company should be green instead of gold. Then again, who really cares when these Space Marines look so cool?

© THQ / Games Workshop

I’m still trying to identify the artist who did this amazingly detailed piece - might be Alex Boyd or Karl Kopinski but I’m might be wrong

Tried running the PSP demo for this game on some of the WIP PSP emulators PSP Player, PSPE and Potemkin but couldn’t get it working guess I have to add a PSP to my Christmas wishlist this year

© THQ / Games Workshop

The third wallpaper shows a derelict fortress wall (top) which is strangely similiar to the besieged fortress (bottom) on the cover of Horus Rising illlustrated by Neil Roberts. Pure concidence?

© THQ / Games Workshop

Download the wallpapers, check out the concept art (above) and view the official trailer @ YouTube.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator - Kevin Chin (King Mong)
BrikWars - War with Mini-Figs!
Chaos Space Marines Wallpapers + Japanese Codex Download
Games Day Chicago 2007 Golden Demon
Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator - John Gravato
Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator - Andrea Uderzo
Warhammer 40,000 Vehicles in Lego

Found Frank Frazetta’s (a fantasy artist whose uhm, fantastic work I recently got acquainted with over at The Lair of the Evil DM) marvellous painting of the Death Dealer, an armoured horseman with ominous fiery-red eyes (see below) purely by chance quite a while back. This particular painting from 1973 happens to have an article in Wikipedia which is quite a feat for any piece of fantasy art.

© Frank Frazetta

After seeing this particular artwork, I think I now know where the hulking armoured champions of Chaos in Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Battles might have been inspired by. As a sidenote, Warhammer Fantasy first came about some ten years after Death Dealer in 1983, this year 2008 being its 25th anniversary.

Here I present Adrian Smith’s depiction of Karrig Sturn, Despoiler of Tzeskagrad from the Warhammer : Hordes of Chaos page @ Games Workshop UK (more artworks) as a comparision. I would love to see a coloured version of this piece

© Games Workshop

While there are definitely many similarities between the two artworks, I list below the most significant ones.

• Both the Death Dealer and Karrig Sturn have sturdy warhorses (although the hind legs of Karrig’s mount seems to be buckling due to the combined weight of both its master and its own armour) in almost similiar poses with bowed heads and gaping mouths
• Both warriors are wielding vicious axes singlehandedly with their swords still in their scabbards. They also seem to be staring straight at the viewer but the Death Dealer seems more menacing due to his glowing red eyes.

View Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer (Google Images) and Adrian Smith’s Karrig Sturn in their original resolutions.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Adrian Smith - Illustrator
Andrea Uderzo - Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator
Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning Illustrations & Concept Art
Warhammer : Mark of Chaos - The Collected Concept Art
Warrior Knight Wallpapers

Many WWII tank enthusiasts probably have heard of Waffen-SS tank ace Michael Wittmann and his famous assault on elements of the British 7th Armoured Division (Desert Rats) at the Battle of Villers-Bocage mainly because accounts of the battle were widely available in books and the .NET.

French tank commander, Capitaine Billotte and his exploits at the Battle of Stonne will be far less familiar for most I believe. I just read that Capitaine Billotte, commander of a Renault Char B1 bis tank ‘Eure’ of the 1/41e BCC (Bataillon de Chars de Combat) managed to advance into the town of Stonne frontally and destroyed a column of 13 German tanks - 11 PzKpfw III and 2 PzKpfw IV from the 10. Panzer-Division as well as two 3.7cm PaK anti-tank guns in the town without casualties. His heavily armoured tank with 60 mm and 46-55 mm armour for the hull and turret respectively, according to The Book of Tanks, received 140 non-penetrating hits. In contrast, an early variant PzKpfw IV only had armour of 30mm thick on the hull and turret front and 15mm on the sides.

A detailed day-to-day account of the Battle of Stonne (15 - 18 May 1940) can be read in David Lehman’s fantastic post at the Axis History Forums.

Image from Wikipedia.

While heavily armoured, the Char B1 bis was slow and its configuration of a fixed larger calibre main gun (75mm) in the hull and a smaller gun (47mm) in the turret was of an obsolete interwar design. However, it was precisely this design which allowed the ‘Eure’ to simultaneously destroy the lead and end vehicles of the German armoured column with the turret and hull guns respectively.

© Tamiya

Only chanced upon this account after visiting the Tamiya website where photos of a recently released 1:35 kit of a Char B1 bis kit were displayed. Unfortunately the kit does not provide decals for the legendary ‘Eure’ because it was half destroyed (probably by its crew) after damage to its sprockets according to the excellent French site www.chars-francais.net (Google translation) .

www.chars-francais.net also happens to contain a meticulously prepared list of all Char B1 bis tanks complete with names and photos as well as an article by Antonie Misner on markings (Google translation) for the Char B1 bis (including side profile for Fleurie, also of the same 41e BCC as ‘Eure’)

© Games Workshop

As a sidenote, I think the Leman Russ tank of the Imperial Guard (Warhammer 40,000) bears more than a passing resemblance to this French tank

Read more about the exploits of the ‘Eure’ @ the Axis History Forums.

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The Book of Tanks
Motofumi Kobayashi - WWII Tank Art
Kyoshi Harada’s 3D Renders of WWII War Machines
WinSPWW2 - Free Turn-based WWII Armour Warfare
Sega Tiger I Paper Model

© Games Workshop

The Disciples of the Dark Gods supplement for the Warhammer 40,000 pen & paper RPG Dark Heresy, has been officially announced as the last product from the Games Workshop subisidary Black Industries which also probably means the end of Black Industries but not the Warhammer Fantasy & Warhammer 40,000 RPG since Fantasy Flight Games is officially the new publisher for these products. Yeah!

© Games Workshop

Dark Heresy is rather interesting as it allowed players the chance to delve deeper into the Imperium and play as Arbitrators, law enforcers of the Imperium (see ilustration of a grim Arbitrator armed with power maul by Andrea Uderzo above) or as part of an Inquistorial retinue as seen in the Shattered Hope, a demo adventure downloadable for free on the Black Industries site.

Preview assorted artwork like the cover for Shattered Hope (above) illustrated by Adrian Smith or check out the imaginative character art by Dave Gallagher - if you ever wished to know how some of the rarely illustrated characters in Warhammer 40,000 like pest controllers, Imperial cultists (below) or Imperial Chiurgeons look like, now you can

© Games Workshop

© Games Workshop

There’s also previews (above) of the lavishly illustrated and formatted 400 page Core Rulebook but it’s already sold out. Fantasy Flight Games will be reprinting the rulebooks and stuff soon

Download the demo adventure (11.4 MB) or view the artwork for Warhammer 40,000 : Dark Heresy.

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Andrea Uderzo - Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator
Kevin Chin - Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator
Warhammer 40,000 : Medusa V Booklet + Codex Catachans

Wallpapers for the upcoming expansions to the two more recent Games Workshop PC games, the first being Soulstorm, the third(!) expansion to Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War, CGW’s RTS of the Year in 2004. Sadly Iron Lore Entertainment, the developer of Soulstorm and Titan Quest has gone under.

Enjoy these four official 1600×1200 wallpapers from Dawn of War : Soulstorm kindly provided by Relic Community Manager Allie Henze (Buggo) on the RelicNews Forums, where you can usually get more updated info than from the official Dawn of War website itself.

© Relic Entertainment

For those who haven’t tried out the 1.12 GB demo (downloaded mine from GamersHell), it’s worth downloading simply to witness the total decimation of enemy infantry made possible by the Dark Eldar’s relic unit Dais of Destruction’s Dark Scythe ability. Plus the animation’s pretty cool too (see this Youtube video by lurdk)

GameWallpapers.com, my favourite makers of high quality, high resolution unofficial wallpapers, have released three wallpapers for the upcoming Battle March expansion for Warhammer Mark of Chaos. The first one is my favourite and strongly reminiscent of the fabulously detailed artworks for Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning illustrated by Alex Boyd and Paul Dainton.

© GameWallpapers.com

The last wallpaper reuses rather old art by Adrian Smith done in 2003 for the actual tabletop game. It’s still available from Games Workshop as a wallpaper but who needs it when you can have it in glorious 1600×1200 from GameWallpapers

Download the Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War :Soulstorm wallpapers from RelicNews Forums and Warhammer Mark of Chaos : Battle March from GameWallpapers respectively.

UPDATE 08 March 2008 : The Dawn of War website has been updated with the wallpapers for the original game and the three expansions.

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Dawn of War : Dark Crusade Wallpapers @ Relic Forums
Dr Badman’s Cute Warhammer 40,000 Avatars
Blur Studio - Incredible Cinematic Trailers for Warhammer 40,000 : Dawn of War, Transformers : The Game, Halo Wars
Kevin Chin - Warhammer/Warhammer 40000 Illustrator from Singapore
Karl Kopinski - Concepts for Dawn of War : Winter Assault