Welcome to the sophomore installment of Goonhammer’s new regular feature about Black Library collection and display! Last time we took a look at what it’s like to chase one of the hobby’s biggest grails, and I shared one of my perpetual-work-in-progress Black Library Museum exhibits.
For many of us, a library collection is much more than just a shelf full of books. Rather, it’s a reflection of us and our love of the hobby, from what we choose to decorate the shelves with down to the very method we use to organize them. If there’s one thing you’ll notice when they share pictures of their collections online, it’s that the best ones have a personality all their own. For some it’s the almost martial display of full collections organized by size; for others, a walk through time with their books in chronological order. Sometimes there are curios and mementos mixed in, other times actual Warhammer miniatures of the characters and moments depicted in the books.
In short, every library tells its own story, and today we’ll start with one about the Mechanicum.
From the Museum: Belisarius Cawl, The Great Work
This past June saw the release of a Special Edition of Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work. Guy Haley’s much-lauded tale sees the Archmagos Dominus of the Adeptus Mechanicus visit the dead worth of Sotha, once home to the mighty Scythes of the Emperor Astartes Chapter- but now home to little but memories and sorrow. With the planet long-since razed by the tyranids of Hive Fleet Kraken, it may yet hold a secret essential to the completion of his magnum opus.
For the museum, I’ve paired Cawl with a couple of pieces from Starforged, as well as the miniature of him that I built (none of my minis are painted, at my age I’m only capable of one learning adventure at a time).
Here’s Cawl in its natural environment, sharing a shelf with the Limited Editions of a few other titles. While the Astra Militarum are getting ready to have a shelf to themselves before too long, they’re neighbors for the now.
Here’s a close-up of the lovely AdMech Starforged metal pin, and the cogs make it sit perfectly in the display seat. It’s solid and heavy, the kind of on-brand durability you’d like to see for your AdMech art. Starforged makes officially licensed Warhammer merchandise, and chances are you’ve seen some of their more common items (bottle openers, Legion banner fridge magnets, etc) on a display at your local Warhammer Store.
The ‘officially licensed’ element is an important consideration for deciding what pieces I’d like to display. There are knockoff companies out there that can offer similar-looking pieces for less, and I’d never judge someone for going that route. ‘Rule of cool,’ and all that. But for me, that means I’ve got a more restrictive list to hunt from when I go afield for adding curios to the museum.
An AdMech thurible from Starforged. A thurible is an incense-burner that you typically suspend from a chain and swing to disperse sacred smoke pleasing to machine spirits. I’ve seen these used in Mass all my life and only learned the name for them when I ordered this, go figure.
Here they are, side by side with the thurible opened up to reveal the burning grille. Starforged actually sells incense for them, and they’re shaped like little skulls. Omnissiah be praised!
The Big Fella himself. When I was a kid one Christmas I accidentally snapped the wheel of my freshly-unwrapped COBRA Rattler as I was assembling it, doing for model-building what reading Benchley’s Jaws did for my love of salt-water swimming.1
About a year ago I decided to try building Warhammer after seeing my 10-year-old manage it just fine, and I’ve been more or less hooked ever since. ‘Billy Cawl’ here was a bit of a bear, but it was fascinating to see how the different parts of him came together and what peak AdMech fitness actually looks like under the robe.
That’s it for the appetizers, here comes the main course!
“I have always found the Adeptus Mechanicus interesting,” wrote Haley last year for this printing’s introduction, noting that “contradiction” is what makes them so fascinating (and fun) to write about.
“They are a part of the Imperium yet apart from it. They are technologists who are obsessed with the past. They are archaeologists, cataloguing the lost glories of the human race, despising the technologies of the alien- no matter how superior- and decrying research. They are priests of a fanatical religion. They are jealous guardians of power.
“What they are not is scientists…Â but unlike his fellows, [Cawl] most definitely is.”
Haley has been a longtime staple of the Black Library, with his first short story The Rite of Holos appearing in the digital publication Hammer and Bolter in September of 2012. He took the opportunity to reflect a little on his place in helping shape this shared universe.
Writing novels for the Warhammer settings is often a process of making sense of the ideas of a multiplicity of people (though it is important not to make too much sense- mystery must be maintained, but that’s a topic for another time). On the gaming side of the universe elements might exist in isolation, but a novel will bring them together. Organisations, cultures, religions, machines…all these things provide brilliant colour to the wargame, but in a book they need deeper investigation to satisfactorily explain how they operate together, and what the natural ramifications of their coexistence would be. This is something that I regard as a key part of my work for Black Library, and it’s a lot of fun.
I think I can safely speak for many when I say that when it comes to fun, on balance being able to read it is at least a close second.
Beyond being an important work in the canon, this is a beautiful Special Edition and a no-brainer for the collection.
Now, speaking of beautifying your collection…
That’s So Metal
Displate was founded in 2013 in Poland, specializing in easily-mounted art printed on metal plates. Things began to take off for them four years later when they snagged a licensing agreement from Disney, and the growth continued from there.
Then in May of 2023, an interesting exchange happened in the Displate subreddit.
This all seems a bit prophetic in hindsight, as only five months later Displate announced they’d added Games Workshop to their stable. Not only that, but take a guess what one of their first limited edition releases was.
If you said “the Emperor of Mankind,” a winner is you!
Flashing forward to the present, Displate recently launched their latest limited edition, Sanguinius in Memoriam. Limited to 1,000 pieces, it sold out within the first day. I went ahead and nabbed one for the museum. Total price including shipping, taxes, and fees came out to just over USD $173.
Here he is, fresh out of the box after arriving yesterday. The first thing I noticed about it was the heft, being much heavier than the thin tin plate I’d been anticipating. I wouldn’t want to drop it edgewise on a toe.
Same picture, but with a book to give you an idea of the size of the thing. Much too big for one of my display cases unless I turned it sideways, which means it’s going up on a wall somewhere.
One of the problems with the Limited Edition of Jude Reid’s Fulgrim: The Perfect Son (review here) was that while lush and gorgeous, the book’s treatment didn’t seem to photograph very well. More than a few librarians (myself included) expressed pleasant surprise with how it looked in person rather than in the official pictures, and more than a few who turned their nose up at it initially endured non-buyer’s remorse.
I was reminded of that here, as I tried to angle the plate in the light to show off the high level of texture on Sanguinius. There is a lot going on here.
On the back is the Certificate of Authenticity, a nice touch.
Hand-signed and numbered. By the way, those “secrets” are mainly compositional and “biographical” details of the series (“Golden glitter on the frame,” etc.)
So, final verdict? A regular, flat-print Displate is around fifty bucks, so the question is whether or not it’s worth triple the price for the deluxe treatment. To put that in perspective, a Black Library hardcover currently retails for around $30. Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work’s Special Edition was $75, or 2.5 times the price of a regular hardcover.
Consequently, I’d say the value is comparable, and the degree to which this is worth it depends on how much you treasure what you’re getting. As I’m not a Blood Angels fan, this was an extravagance that compares somewhat unfavorably to being able to add another FUFU & GAGA display cabinet to the museum (opportunity cost 101 here).
I did feel the quality was very high on this, though, so I’d definitely snap one up if they ever did Konrad Curze.
One last word to the wise for Displate. As with any limited-availability consumer good, scalpers are a blight. This individual alone bought 1% of the available supply, and has shifted ten of his eleven units already. Something to think about.
Featured Collection: Ryan Nox
Someone else who might be keen for a Kurze Displate is collector Ryan Nox of California. Ryan’s the co-host of the tabletop gaming podcast The Weekly Scroll– and a fellow fan of the VIIIth.
“I just love how sad, angry, and broken they are,” he shared. “And I love that they
weren’t ever really FOR Horus during the Heresy, they were just more against the
Emperor. They aspired to a ‘No Gods No Masters’ philosophy, even if they’re basically
just scavengers 10,000 years later.”
Ryan’s been building his Black Library in earnest over the past couple of years, which he blames on reading the Horus Heresy. “I was trying to read it using the library
system, but some books were pretty hard to find that way and once I started buying
them it was all downhill after that.”
For Ryan, the Night Lords books take pride of place in his collection.
It’s not hard to pick out highlights here as we’re spoiled for choice, but one of the things that really jumped out to me right away is the display of six books at the bottom of that first picture.
While strictly speaking they weren’t the first of their kind, but the runaway success of Bantam’s Choose Your Own Adventure books in the 1980’s was a natural cross-pollinator for gaming companies to explore. TSR leveraged its Dungeons & Dragons property to produce the Endless Quest series in 1982, while that same year Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (themselves co-founders of Games Workshop in 1975) kicked off their Fighting Fantasy line with Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
In 1999, Games Workshop got in on the page-flipping action with the six-book Warhammer Warriors gamebooks, with players assuming the role of notable characters Kal Jerico, Captain Leonatos, Khârn the Betrayer, and Ephrael Stern (plus an Eldar Exarch and Tyranid Warrior). All six were written by Rick Priestley, co-creator of Warhammer itself.
With these typically trading hands on the secondary market at around $25 apiece, they’re hardly the priciest item in Ryan’s library (that honor he accords to the Limited Edition of Dante, by Guy Haley), but they’re not the most common sight and are relics of a wonderful era in gaming history.
Ryan’s collection is mature, meaning that most of what he’s wanted to obtain for it he now possesses. “I’ve found most of my grails,” he shared. “There are a few things I would still like to grab though, mostly some of the bigger boxsets. The Fall of Cadia, Ahriman, stuff like that. Oh, actually, the paperback Boxtree version of Harlequin from Ian Watson. That’s top of the list right now.”
Speaking more broadly about his passion for Warhammer, we easily found common cause in our appreciation for the lads from Nostramo. “The Night Lords series from Aaron Dembski-Bowden are hands down my favorite Warhammer books. And ADB is my favorite Black Library author. His work in the Horus Heresy is easily the best, after Horus Rising. First Heretic, Betrayer, Aurelian, Prince of Crows. Master of Mankind was great too.”
Thanks for opening up your library, Ryan!
And finally, since we’re on the topic of the Night Lords…
Misprints & Oddities
Seldom when it comes to printed collectibles is a misprint a feature and not a bug, but there are some notable exceptions. There’s an entire subculture in Magic: the Gathering devoted to finding cards that were born bad, and for others a noteworthy misprint almost becomes something to add to the collection.
The Black Library has in recent years been running polls of the community, allowing them to vote for older titles deserving of a reprint to come back as “Reader’s Choice” offerings as part of the Black Library Celebration in February. For 2024 the voting public selected Riders of the Dead, Dan Abnett’s 2023 Warhammer Chronicles story as well as Si Spurruer’s 2005 Lord of the Night.
If the Ghostbusters taught us anything it was to ‘not cross the streams,’ but somehow cross they did. At the printer’s an unknown number of copies of Lord of the Night had pages replaced with pages from Riders of the Dead. Cover to cover, you get this:
- Lord of the Night, pages 1-144
- Riders of the Dead, pages 97-144
- Lord of the Night, pages 193-208
- Riders of the Dead, pages 193-240
- Lord of the Night, pages 257-396
My copy in the museum came to me courtesy of a book swap with a fellow member of the wonderful Black Library subreddit, u/Dima170104, that allowed him to complete his Horus Heresy collection. Imagine my delight when I opened up the box to find not only the books he’d sent me, but also this exceptionally-painted Night Lords miniature.
Straight into the Museum it went. Ave Dominus Nox indeed!
Footnotes
- And fresh-water, if I’m being completely candid. Not even large pools felt safe, though to my credit I still managed to buck up enough courage for the bathtub.
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