ArchFall - The downward spiral of a demagogue.

WARNING: This blog is not the usual gaming blog. It contains discussion of a nature that may offend.


For those who are followers of YouTube, and in particular, the various 40k channels, the name 'Arch Warhammer' (or, as of this last week, merely 'Arch') will be synonymous with 40k lore videos and licensed game playthroughs.

Now, apart from the fact that some of these are poorly researched (his take on Krieg Engineers is... humorous and quite funny in its own way), he's amassed quite a following amongst certain sections of the fandom. I'm not going to denigrate the making of lore videos - for those who have reading difficulties, or where English isn't their first language, they can be a great way to get to grips with the somewhat convoluted story arcs.

However, where Arch has deviated from the standard, is his involvement in political stances that are at odds with many, and certainly at odds with how Games Workshop wish to run their business.

This can be seen in Arch's reaction to the news on June 4th. Games Workshop’s Warhammer Community Team published a statement on Twitter titled “Warhammer Is For Everyone”:

Within this they clearly state that Warhammer is for all people and they will create miniatures and lore to support this. This is the most liked and shared tweet in the history of wargaming (13K likes, 3.8K RTs, 965 comments as of 5.7.20). Our hobby grew out of groups of friends wanting to share a common passion with others. At no point was there an exclusion criteria for anyone put in place, based on skin colour, sexual orientation, religious belief, gender or disability. To now promote views that would be offensive to any one of those groups to give an advantage to others is abhorrent, this statement reaffirmed that belief and as such, I fail to see why anyone would take exception to it.

However, on June 5th Arch published a YouTube video response to the “Warhammer Is For Everyone” statement. He disagrees with the statement and expresses that it is targeting himself and fans of his content. Receiving 131K views, he is ratioed in the ratings with 52% disapproval or 9.3K dislikes vs. 8.6K likes (as of 5.7.20), which would suggest that his view is not the prevailing view he thinks it is. Of course, this stance is not new to those of us who have followed Arch with some concern for a few years - his videos expressing dismay on the covers of the Warhammer Adventures books (books aimed at a younger audience) showed his intolerance to others - claiming that they were 'virtue' signalling by having a character in a hijab (she was wearing a cloak) being a prime example:

It was at this point, that select contents of Arch’s Discord server are published on Twitter causing widespread shock and concern at the frequent use of racist language and celebration of extreme historical nationalism. One of the moderators had engaged in discussions that should have been the cause for the immediate involvement of local authorities on child protection issues. No evidence of any such action has been provided or that the moderator had been banned. 

Following the leak of the texts, and the subsequent outrage and complaints to Discord, Arch was forced to delete the entire contents of his Discord server as per his admission in the YouTube interview with Asmogan published on 7th June*. This is because he broke their terms of service on at least hate speech. Due to his complete lack of leadership oversight and the huge volume of violations this was his only way to avoid getting perma-banned. In the world of employment this is what's known as a final written warning. This was then followed by a blow to Arch's income generation. on June 21st Arch’s Teespring merchandising account is terminated for violating the terms of service on a partner website. Claiming this is for 'political reasons' Arch once again takes to YouTube to complain about his treatment at the hands of the rest of the world who don't share his views. Teespring however, claim in their response to Arch (as read out by him) that this is to do with suspected copyright infringements.

From what can be gleaned from the public information on his page, In the month following the his Discord server leaks, Arch lost around $200 per month in Patreon pledges from around $1880 to $1680. His monthly revenue on SubscribeStar is not publicly visible, so we can't comment on that.

This brings us to the last week or so in the increasingly unhinged life of Arch. on July 2nd Arch’s YouTube channel receives a community strike from Games Workshop Plc for causing damage to the reputation of their trademark "Warhammer". The notification demands that Arch removes “Warhammer” from his channel title and all associated products and services. Arch submits to this demand and becomes just “Arch”. Arch's entirely expected response to this is to claim he is a martyr, that he is 'taking one for the team' to avoid other YouTube channels from being affected in the same manner, when in fact, with the notable exception of one or two channels that share his worldview, the majority of channels remain silent and even distance themselves from Arch. In the reaction video he put out, it's apparent that Arch is rattled by this - his eyes are darting from point to point, his face flushed and blotchy, it's obvious his consternation is growing. This is only made worse when, on July 3rd Arch is forced by Wargaming (the creators of World of Warships) to take down a sponsored video he made promoting a World of Warships Warhammer 40,000 licensed product. This happened after concerned members of the public notified the Warhammer Community Team and Wargaming about the nature of Arch’s YouTube and other content. Following this, Wargaming posts a statement on Twitter disavowing their sponsorship with Arch and apologising for their lapse in judgement engaging with him. They state they are against any form of discrimination and this is why they terminated their relationship with Arch. 

The statement is positively received on Twitter.

Of course, the person who doesn't take this as well is Arch - claiming that GW were now 'harassing' him through their business dealings. In his video, the deterioration in Arch's cognitive state is now visibly concerning. Of course, English is not his first language, so the unnatural breaks in sentences could be down to that, but the small, forced laughs, the blotchy face and darting eyes once again become a cause for concern.

Since the take down by Wargaming, Arch had claimed to be going on vacation (I assume a staycation given the current COVID-19 situation) and that he wouldn't be posting as regularly. However, since making this comment, he has published 2 videos, continuing his rants against the world and his supposed harsh treatment.

Arch likes to see himself as a leader, and when that view is threatened he appears to react badly. I'd suspect that this situation started way before the events outlined in this blog - that his non-inclusion in the Warhammer Heroes programme dented his ego, and since then, he's been on a downward spiral, finding reasons to strike out.

It would be nice, in a perfect world, to see if Arch would take this situation as a salutary lesson, explore the aims and benefits of a diverse world, and in particular a diverse audience within the hobby I'm sure he loves, but I fear he's too far down a dark path to even recognise that as a path back.

UPDATE:

Since the writing of this article, Arch[redacted] as he is now referred to has launched an absolute tirade of abuse and bullying against those who disagree with him, and has also instituted an email writing campaign against Games Workshop, calling for the redaction of the 'Warhammer is for everybody' message, claiming that it is discriminatory against him and his followers as it doesn't allow for their intolerance and bigotry. He has also claimed that due to this, the Customer Services page for GW was broken through so many of his supporters trying to access it.

The truth is a little more sensible. Sources have told me that rather than being down to Arch's campaign, it was a knock on effect of the incredible success of the release of Warhammer 40k: Indomitus, with a huge number of customers trying to access the Customer Services team to enquire on the availability of the box set.

However, Arch's campaign has taken a sinister turn. Out of all his vocal critics - myself included - Arch has decided to focus on one person - HobbyistGirl - in which can only be taken as a sexist attack. His highlighting of her twitter comments is both cowardly and wrong, her comments being at the more tame end of the spectrum than others. His only reason to pick on her is her gender - and nothing more. By doing this, all he has done is prove the point that he is nothing more than a bigoted bully who hides behind his YouTube channel where he can espouse his hatred for anything not like him with little recourse or right to reply.



*Asmogan: ”My Interview with Arch Warhammer about the Controversy”. https://youtu.be/4V12wdNb-l0

The Company Of The Black Sun - Age of Sigmar Undead - Painted Models!

I've been busy painting undead up since I wrote their background!

First, I wanted to just spend a minute explaining how I choose an army, and then the units within it, to collect and paint.

I'm not a hugely competitive gamer, so I don't specifically buy armies to win, or even to place high in tournaments.  What interests me more is the narrative of the army - the background of the faction itself, the reason this particular army is going to war.

Alongside that is the main question that needs to be answered by the army; will I enjoy painting it?  I've seen many armies over the years which I thought would be fun to paint, but once I've built a unit or two I just have no drive to paint them (most recently these were World Eaters for Horus Heresy, Space Wolves for 40k and Hedonites of Slaanesh for AOS).  These armies quickly fell by the wayside and either sit languishing in a box in the Den O' Doom, or have been sold / traded on.

With this in mind, Undead have always been an attractive option to me. The idea of hordes of skeletons and ghostly apparitions unceasingly attacking their living enemies appealed to me!

Combine this with an idea that they're from a wintery region and I had an idea for both collecting and painting - cool colours with rusted metals, snow across the units and LOTS of bones...

First on the table to paint was a unit of skeletons - and the banner which ended up giving the whole army its name:

Quick and fun to paint, they've set the standard for the army!

Next up was a unit of 20 Chainwrasps - using Contrast paints and traditional styles made quick work of these:

To break the inevitable monotony of painting large units, I then painted a few characters, first of which was the commander of the Army - Sir Reikor himself, a Knight of Shrouds on his undead steed:

Alongside Sir Reikor, I painted his personal Headsman, Cornac:

It was then back to the units - Black Knights, cavalry of the undead;

And a unit of Glaivewraith Stalkers:

The final unit to be painted for this stage was a nice addition I'd forgotten I had - the Undead warband from Warhammer: Underworlds - I really like these models, they're full of character:

A thing to notice here with all of these models is a use of a very restricted colour palette, the same blue, metals and bone are used across the various units, with little change from that.  This helps pull the army together in a cohesive manner.

The Company Of The Black Sun -An Age of Sigmar Undead Narrative Army - Part One

'The Siege of Morlaix had lasted for weeks. Food was becoming scarce, not that it mattered to the golden defenders of the city, the Stormcast Eternals. It mattered to him though, he and his men, who had made Morlaix their home.

Sir Reikor had tried pleading with the Lord Celestant, but had not listened, insisting that the siege would be broken soon, and the legions of the undead turned back.  Sir Reikor was not so confident...

At the start of the 7th week, Sir Reikor made a decision that would damn him and his men, the Company of the Black Sun, forever.

Riding out across the frozen, snow covered plain with his personal guard at his side, Sir Reikor called out to the commander of the legion he saw before him, one that chilled his soul to the core, to meet him in parlay, to negotiate an end to the siege.

Rising out of the snow, he saw what he could only call a woman, dressed in bridal gowns, slowly moving toward him. He stiffened his pose in his saddle, trying to hold on to his composure in the face of sheer terror.

'I wish to speak to the Lord who commands this army, to negotiate the City's freedom' he called out, the words leaving his mouth in a stammering jumble.

'There is no Lord, Sir Knight, only myself.' The words appearing in his head, as if spoken but somehow not said

'There will be no surrender, no survival for this city, yet there may be for you and your men if you choose to serve' the voice whispered.

The mists had begun to rise, spirits forming out of the wisps, like shapes forming in clouds.  His men, uneasy from the start now visibly alarmed

'Lord, we should turn back, back to the city! There is still time!' screamed the Captain of the Guard, his words unheard by Sir Reikor.

'You offer safe passage for me and my Company, Lady? You wish to employ us? Tell me your terms'.

'All you need do Sir Reikor is embrace me and you and your Company will be safe, my Army will not touch you...'

He could see the lines of her skull through her veil, he was sure.  But, if it meant his escape from this thrice damned city surely it was a price worth paying? Surely his men would appreciate him all the more for saving their lives?

Dismounting his horse, Sir Reikor slowly walked over to where the Lady in White stood, each step as if his boots were filled with lead, until he stood in front of her, her gown billowing as if caught in a breeze.

'One embrace, that's all it will take to seal our compact, one embrace to assure you will never be harmed by any of Nagash's legions again...' she cooed, words that chilled the blood as much as they attempted to calm him...

He embraced the Lady, pulling her toward him...


He woke up. The cold hurt so much, hurt to his very core. The screams he could hear assaulted his senses, deafening him. He realised the screams were his....

He looked down, and screamed once more. Where once were the finest armour the Free People could make, now tarnished metal and ruined cloth.

Bursting from the ground around him, his men came to life, dragged from their lives by the darkest of magics, the living now dead, the dead now undead. Men who had fought together in the light, now bound in darkness forever more...

It was then he realised, the cruelest trick of all had been played. The undead would never touch he or his men for they were now part of the very army they sought to defend the City from... they were now one with the Nighthaunt, under the command of the Lady Olynder, Mortarch of Grief...

Now, the City would fall, now, that damnable Lord Celestant would pay for what he had done to Reikor, Knight of Shrouds, Commander of the Company of the Black Sun...

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire Undead Warband

‘The dead clawed their way out of the frozen ground, animated by hatred of the living, their souls screaming as they stood for the first time in decades... theirs would not be rest until the last enemy lay slain at their feet’...

With the current Covid-19 lockdown keeping me at home, I've been digging through my backlog!

In future posts I'll come back to the other bits I've been painting, but this time I want to concentrate on a warband I've painted that comes from the Warhammer: Underworlds Shadespire game.

Undead, and in particular Skeletons have fascinated me ever since seeing Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts as a child - when the teeth of the Hydra are sown into an instant army of skeletons, set against Jason and his crew! 


These models are a joy to paint, each one tells a story on its own - from one clawing its way out of it's grave, to one with half a skull, the victim of a previous battle perhaps?  

Painting was relatively easy - from a black undercoat, I built up the bone colour to be quite aged and worn, rather than a bright bone colour, using the following recipe:

Basecoat: Stormvermin Fur
1st highlight: 50/50 Stormvermin Fur / Ushabti Bone
2nd highlight: Ushabti Bone
3rd highlight: Terminatus Stone

The blue robes were:
Basecoat: Kantor Blue
Shade: Coelia Nightshade (this adds a deeper blue/green shade that I like)
1st highlight: 50/50 Kantor Blue / Alaitoc Blue
2nd highlight: Alaitoc Blue
3rd highlight: Hoeth Blue
4th highlight: Russ Grey

I wanted the metals to look weathered, old and rusty, as if they'd been buried for decades.  To achieve this I used:
Copper;
Basecoat: Screaming Bell
Wash: Nuln Oil
1st highlight: Sycorax Bronze
2nd highlight: Stormhost Silver

Steel / Iron;
Basecoat: Leadbelcher
Wash: Nuln Oil
1st highlight: Ironbreaker

All of the metals then had 'spot washes' - picking out dents, creases, nicks in the blades etc. of Nilakh Oxide to give it a corroded look, and then a final thin wash of Dry Rust from Army Painter.

The robes were then given a light dry brush on the edges of Tallard sand, to 'dirty' them up slightly.

The final touch is the snow - I use Valhallan Blizzard - dabbing little amounts in places where snow would collect on the miniature itself as well as the base ties the whole group together, to make them really look and feel like they've just scraped their way out of the ground and are now shambling to war!

the next thing to paint up is an army box I won from Alchemist's Workshops in a draw back in 2017 - The Blade Of The Blood Queen - more skeletons!

Im going to use the same palette of colours again, so hopefully they'll come out nice!

How Time Flies, or; Bloody hell has it been 2 years??

Well... I never meant to leave it this long!

I couldn't believe when I checked my last post and saw that it was 2018... I do apologise for that, but with real life getting in the way, I totally forgot to post updates!

However, with this bloody inconvenience of a pandemic upon us, I'm making the pledge to resurrect the old beast, and post my current projects.

So, over the coming weeks and days, I'll update here, and bring painting projects, reviews and general musings on our little hobby.

I look forward to engaging with you all once again, and hope to hear from you.

In the meantime I can be found on Twitter; https://twitter.com/ArtSteventon and Instagram; https://www.instagram.com/art_steventon_painting/

Happy Painting!

2018.- A Hobby Year in reflection.

I can't quite believe, as I sit here writing this, that 2018 is but a month away from ending!

I thought I'd take the chance to look back at the year in terms of my hobby, and look forward to 2019...

JANUARY:

I started the year with the idea that I'd paint a 1000 points of a new army before looking at any other project - and I succeeded!

Having already built and painted a Word Bearers army for Horus Heresy (and got matching tattoos for it...), I decided that I needed a 40k version!

Of course, I had to start somewhere... Given that the Ultramarines have now got Guilliman back in charge, I chose to take Lorgar in his 'ascendant' form as the WB's Daemon Prince!

By the time I was finished with this army, I'd amassed 4000 points... and it's still going!

FEBRUARY:

February saw the Heresy / Necromunda Weekender in Nottingham.  This was the first 'residential' weekender I'd been to, and I loved every minute - from the seminars where we heard about the future of the Heresy and Necromunda lines, to the quiz and chilling with other hobbyists who became good friends.  I'm looking forward to next year's event! At the event I picked up the new Orlock gang for Necromunda, which I couldn't wait to get painted!

MARCH:

With the onset of March, we expected Spring... and what did we get? SNOW. But with inclement weather, comes the excuse to stay indoors and spend time on hobby!

I decided to spend March revisiting my favourite faction, and my biggest army, my Craftworld Alaitoc Eldar army.

After putting a requests out, I managed to grab several 'classic' units to add to the army, alongside some new stuff - Forgeworld Superheavy tanks among them!

I now have over 30,000 points of Eldar - from the humble Guardian Defender Squads, to a Phantom Titan... and have plans to add even more in 2019 (did someone say Drukhari?...)

Next up: April to June - Necrons, Praetorians and a new Edition of Age of Sigmar..!

When claiming support = equals abuse, Spikey Bits Crosses The Line.

If you've been around the GW hobby for even just a short while, you'll have encountered a website called 'Spikey Bits' (SB for short throughout this article).

Once upon a time, SB was a 'go to' rumour site, with it's creator, Rob Baer, Harvesting tidbits of information from all over the web, adding in articles about modelling, painting, tactics - a really nice and useful support tool.

However...

Somewhere along the way, it changed. It became bitter in tone, biting the hand that fed it (Games Workshop) to a certain extent as GW retreated from social media, putting out harsher and harsher critical articles out, on everything from pricing to model choices, rules to background.

There are also many occasions where gamers themselves needed to challenge SB for their actions - allegedly stripping pictures from blogs and reposting them without credit, refusing to remove them when the owners asked hiding behind ephemeral 'TOCS' which are posted on their website as if they absolved them from their legal obligations (Something I came a cropper of not so long ago).

But that's pretty tame stuff compared to the newest 'article' SB have deigned to publish - The Most Alarming Trend In GW Tournament Play

Criticism, at it's purest form, should provide communication, feedback which can improve the product, service or information and force the reader to evaluate how they think (for more on how good criticism works, this article from the Guardian is a good start ).

This article by SB does none of those things, and in fact, goes one further - it offends and makes light of a serious issue.

Lets look at their claims:

• Spikey Bits is an industry pundit, we call it like we see it for all companies, especially our friends in Nottingham with whom we stay fiercely independent from GW for that very reason" - This is a risible claim. I can't think of one person, website or publication that would consider SB to be an 'industry pundit' - they barely rank in the lower leagues of websites let alone aspire to the levels of say, Geek & Sundry, Beasts of War or Den of Geek - in fact, they're little more than a click farming fanzine (anyone who visits their page without an adblocker functioning will attest to the amount of popups, malware warnings and dodgy ads that occur so often it almost renders the page unreadable).  As for 'calling it as we see it' - that may be as they say, but it's often wrong, misdirected or just plain false. As for staying 'independent of GW' this I suspect is a dig at those sites and bloggers who now work in partnership with GW to promote new releases in a quid pro quo to receive promo copies early - something that SB isn't included in.

• Some of you new kids that started in the last couple years can be forgiven for this. You're exempt, you can leave - just how condescending to a wide portion of the hobby community can they be? 'You're not a vet therefore you don't understand' - this is pure gatekeeping.

• If you’ve been playing this game for a minute, then you remember the dark days when it took years for a Xenos army to get a new codex, or for that matter, new models (8 years for the one Ork book IIRC). You remember GW scaling back community engagement, closing down their tournaments and events, and shutting down the major company hubs.  This is correct - to a point. GW did scale back the US and RoW events, but the UK events carried on, as did the tournaments at Warhammer World, which sold out (and continue to sell out) in minutes of going on sale. I'm not going to say it was the right decision to do so, but the decision was made.

• Basically, you remember the days when GW abandoned the community and left you all alone. There you were in your dark house with your superglue and your clippers in your hand wondering what to do with yourself. As with the previous point, it's hard to not agree to an extent - GW decided (I'd bet) that the wider US community did a better job than they could - after all, events such as GenCon had been running well before GW became the prime mover in the war-games scene.

But these points are the shallow end of the article, the preamble so to speak - this is where my problems begin...

Your Stepdad Came Home and Begged You to Let Him Back In

• Then like every victim that enables your abuser, when Kevin Rountree showed up and turned the company around, he started handing out a quality product and re-connected with the community. That’s when you threw open the door and let him back in.  “This is the new GW! Don’t worry baby”.  An estimated 1.9 million adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse in the last year, according to the year ending March 2017 Crime Survey for England and Wales (1.2 million women, 713,000 men).  ONE POINT NINE MILLION PEOPLE. Yet somehow, SB think it's appropriate to equate the return of a games manufacturer to the tournament organising scene to the brutal treatment of women, children and men at the hands of their families - be it husbands, brothers, boyfriends or cousins.  This is disgusting - it shows a lack of respect for the victims (70% of which are women in regards to cases resulting in homicide) and a lack of understanding of the seriousness of which Domestic Violence should be taken.

You Hobby Like Your Buddy With the Controlling Spouse

• Remember when you used to go out with your one friend all the time, and you were best pals. Then he met up with that new significant other and he started changing. You eventually figured out that you saw him less and less because she didn’t like his friends and you least of all? Remember when you thought, “well if that’s what our friendship means and that’s how easy it is to get rid of me, then screw you too.” Remember that?  So, not only do SB think that domestic violence is somehow a minor thing to be equated to GW coming back to support the tournament scene, SB decide that perpetuating the 'controlling spouse' trope is a good thing to use - to make out that women are harpies, harridans that want to do nothing more than remove a man from his social circle - a form of domestic abuse itself - and such a cliche as to be parody. This tone deafness, this sexism - misses that a good portion (some say as high as 50%) of the gaming community are women! To perpetuate this outdated misconception is to ignore their input into the community, to relegate their status to just 'the girlfriend' and is in no way helpful or constructive to their argument. This is also shown in the next point...

Who’s A Grown Man?

Listen to cops, because they tell you to obey the law so that you don’t go to jail.

• Listen to your boss, so that you keep your job and he keeps paying you.
• Listen to your lawyer, because he needs to keep you out of jail to get paid.
• Listen to your accountant, because he needs to make you rich to get paid.
• There’s a lot of people in your life you should listen to you, either because they pay you to listen to them, or you pay them for good advice.

So do you listen to people to tell you what to do with your spending money on your toy soldier budget? Yeah, maybe if you’re a child and you get your allowance from mommy. If you’re a grown man though, your money should buy the best product on the market regardless of the manufacturer or who told you that you could or couldn’t use it.

It’s a plastic toy, not a surgical prosthetic heart valve or a precision instrument on a space rocket. 

Sigh. How many times does SB want to ignore the fact this is a unisex hobby? Do they need to be presented with women gamers, painters, designers until they believe it? 

Maybe this is the problem - they don't see women in gaming in their social circles - so using outmoded tropes and language is OK - they can't offend those they don't know! But to the rest of us? To those of us who have groups that are unisex? This kind of article, this kind of language and this kind of website should be consigned to the skip of history.

If you want to know more about the the statistics involved in this article, the Office for National Statistics provides a report every year on domestic violence.

If you are a victim of Domestic Abuse, or need to talk to someone about DV, The National Domestic Violence Helpline are there to help - it's a freephone number in the UK - 0808 2000 247