Skaven Resources Update (Links)

*Squeek*

Every good Warlord can learn from others, regardless of the part of the hobby that they prefer. 
Personally, I don't get to play a lot of battles so I am more into the hobby aspect, and over the last couple of years I have learned huge amounts from the blogs of other gamers (of course). In short, there is a huge amount of useful information on the Warhammer hobby out on the web from many different sources.

Games Workshop has also supported the hobbyist over the years through their publications and their website (as well as through in-store support, of which they offer a lot). When I first started collecting the Skaven super race I found the GW website incredibly useful. Recently, I found myself discussing GW support over a game of 40K. My starting position was that I had noticed less and less hobbyist support from GW recently (in terms of articles). White Dwarf seems to be becoming more a super-large brochure than a home for articles and learning, and my impression is that www.games-workshop.com is the same.
(It sounds like a real "in my day" moan eh?)

But is it true that there is less? Or am I am just a cynic and an inveterate grumbler? To get a better idea, today I revisited a blog entry from January 2011. In "Skaven Tactica and Resources at Games Workshop" I listed-up some very good Skaven resources available on the GW website. Below you will find an updated version of that list which I hope you will find useful.

GETTING STARTED:

• Skaven: Getting Started (an introduction to the Children of the Horned Rat...)
• Jeremy Vetok Talks Skaven; Your Skaven Models ("What's new today" entry)

TACTICS AND ARMIES:

• Skaven: Tactica (Short article by Jeremy Vetok)
• Skaven: The Ravenous Hordes - Sample Armies
• Skaven: Island of Blood - Skaven Sample Armies
• Skaven: Magic Tactica
• Skaven: Warmachine Tactica (Warp Lighting Cannon, Plague Claw Catapult, Doomwheel.)

PAINTING:

• Skaven: Hell Pit Abomination Focus (Includes design notes, painting and battlefield use)
• Skaven: Painting the Hell Pit Abomination 
• Skaven: Painting (3-step painting guides and guides for a couple of interesting Clans)
• Skaven Doomwheel Stage-by-Stage 
• Skaven Screaming Bell Stage-by-Stage 
• Skaven Doomwheel Focus
• Skaven Screaming Bell Focus

FEATURES & OTHER:

• Seb's Ikit Claw & Tretch Craventail Designs and Mark Bedford's Hellpit Abomination
• Hell Pit Abomination feature 

MEDIA:

• Skaven: Art of the Under Empire and Wallpaper Download
• Skaven Banners PDF (to download and print)
• Skaven: Battlefield Challenge PDF (scenario to download and print)

*Disclaimer*
I could not find the missing articles on the GW site. I used the search function. I looked for links from the Warhammer section of the site. I checked through the "Painting and Modelling" articles and the White Dwarf articles archive etc. This does not mean they aren't there somewhere, (or elsewhere on the internet) but I couldn't easily find them on the site of the company that makes the related products. Maybe there are more? (Let me know if you find them!)

So, it appears there are plenty of Skaven GW articles that have moved or are no longer available (happy to correct that if you can find them). To be fair, there could be good reasons for this:
- An entirely new range of paints with different names.
- The old range of paints being discontinued.
- A website reorganization?
- etc.
In the book industry (the one I work in) most companies don't list things that are related to discontinued items on their sites. It has the potential to cause no end of grief both for the consumer and staff (and distributors and other business partners.)

However, I do think it would be a shame to lose resources that existed to date. The images alone serve as inspiration. How about archiving them on the website as PDFs or pages? That site and each article could start with a disclaimer about the paint names and a link to the new paints/ conversion chart.

I may grumble a lot, (Finecast, I'm looking at you) but that is my right as a consumer. I actually think that GW does many things right. Whenever I walk into a GW in Japan or the UK I am impressed by how helpful the staff are. Just this week I got very quick turn around from UK customer service regarding my email settings (I wanted English as well as Japanese). 
As a hobbyist, it would be great to see GW, a company that is so successful in the hobby world, categorize, archive and share all their visual and written resources (including the older ones) with the wider community (and who knows, maybe those plans are afoot?)

Robot Scribe. Visit www.printeresting.org for more info

Cheers,
*Squeek*