What do want? BL Artbooks! When do we want them? Well, now would be simply super.

How do?

More ramblings from what I'm regularly assured is a brain.

Now, once upon a time, Black Library treated us to some absolutely gorgeous artbooks. You may be familiar with them, you may not. But here's what they were (and I'm almost certainly missing some)

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzAyWDQwMA...WxE~h/$_57.JPG

Which featured various and sundry autopsies/vivisections of lots of Xenos creatures. Some familiar, others first introduced in this book

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon....SR230,320_.jpg

Mostly a Fantasy affair, but with hint and snippets of 40k - treatises on each of the four gods, by a completely insane author. Very evocative, very cool. I've got the hardback edition. No I'm not selling it :p

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....4,203,200_.jpg

And one for the Skaven. Again, yes I do, no it's not :p

In fact, on balance, Warhammer Fantasy did better out of these. Which is oddly disappointing. I mean, The Old World is cool and everything, but there's so much more to play with in 40kland. So much is unexplored and unknown.

Take The Ghoul Stars. We know it's forbidden. We know even the Great Crusade struggled to make much progress there, which really suggests something. But....for me that's not good enough. I want tantalising glimpses. Perhaps a Rogue Trader's memoirs, replete with 'remembrancer' style sketches and pics.

In short, we need these in our hobby lives. They do what games and traditional novels can't. They can show us Xenos species which will never make it to the board What do I mean by that? Well, case in point, courtesy of Xenology

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20111221195925

Cool Alien concept.....but would make for a rubbish looking army. But I still want to know more about them. These books were a way for us to explore the wider galaxy in a cheap and effective manner - and they all completely sold out (sadly, a I leant Xenology to a friend, who moved, then moved and again, and moved again for a third time, and it now can't be found :'( )

We need these. So why not join me in slightly hassling BL over email and that to see if they'll reprint, even digitally, or do new editions.

I'd love a Xenology 2. I want to know more about the Slaugth, Saruthi and Ssylth especially. The Three S's.

I'd retcon the umbra just being black balls though and have them more like that art I've shown you, with a spherical "core" but with the weird, horrifying stuff growing out of it. Much better.

I'd like a good eldar art book.

On Eldar, id love to see some art of how they looked during the war in heaven especially. Or a modern piece depicting a craftworld fighting an enslaver plague. Someone should send this thread to some 40k artists.

I bought a couple - Inquis Exterminatus or some such - Liber Chaotica - and I think something about Dave Gallagher's art. I always thought Insignium Astartes was pretty cool but never bought.

Of course if you want off the wall art specifically, the old Realm of Chaos books are right up there...

I enjoyed Xenology and the Horus Heresy ones. I also got the Armageddon and Sabbat Crusade ones although they were probably more background books rather than art books.

I guess that 40K had the Forge Wirld books being released which was why BL tended to do more WFB releases.