Hammer and Bolter Review Thread - Death's Hand

[Petitioner's City]

Hi all, as Hammer and Bolter is written by the BL team (John French, Guy Haley, etc), I thought here is a good place for a review thread. 

 

Today, three episodes are fully viewable on W+, this is the thread for Death's Hand.

• It was animated by Farside Features (a sister company to Sun and Moon Studios), a company co-directed by Louis Jones and Dylan Shipley.

 

I'll add the writer once confirmed.

 

Also Warhammer Community posted an article about this episode yesterday:

 

 

 

 

 

You Have Questions. The Emperor’s Tarot in Hammer and Bolter Has Answers

 

 

The ultimate Warhammer+ subscription service launches tomorrow with three episodes of the animated anthology show Hammer and Bolter. One of those episodes, Death’s Hand, concerns a dramatic reading of the Emperor’s Tarot, but what is this cryptic practice? We knew you’d ask. The cards told us, you see.

 

What Is the Emperor’s Tarot? 

 

The Emperor’s Tarot is one of the few accepted methods of divination employed in the superstitious and close-minded Imperium of Mankind. The deck is made up of cards that each have an image and a name – like The Fool and Harbinger. 

 Check out the John Blanche-inspired artwork on the cards.

The most precious (and expensive) decks contain wafers of psychically active material, so many Inquisitors and sanctioned psykers believe that the Emperor uses them to communicate with Humanity cryptically. 

 

Psykers of all stripes* can learn how to become attuned to the cards and interpret the spreads – using them to glean information about future events. This episode of Hammer and Bolter gives us the chance to actually see a reading for the first time.

 Who is the mysterious blind psyker performing the reading? Watch Death’s Hand tomorrow to find out.

How Are the Cards Used?

 

As with modern tarot decks, the Emperor’s Tarot is split into four major arcana. The number of cards, and even their names, can vary between packs. 

 

The images on each card represent a dazzling variety of meanings, from specific beings and places to abstract concepts. As the reader draws the cards and lays them out, their position in relation to the other cards in the spread creates a complex weave of associations and suggestions. 

 

Anyone can draw the Emperor’s Tarot cards, but interpreting the meanings and explaining them to others is another skill entirely. A convincing reading can influence all manner of Imperial policy, from something as mundane as the planning of a celebratory ball to the more dramatic deployment of military forces. 

 

The Emperor’s Tarot in Fiction

 

The Emperor’s Tarot often appears in the annals of Black Library, though its use remains mysterious. Psykers hint at the tarot with warnings, omens, and prophecies – but rarely do we discover the meanings of individual cards.

 

Guy Haley explores a rather unusual reading in his novel Avenging Son. Interwoven through this epic introduction to the Indomitus Crusade runs an intimate tale of a lowly Imperial adept on Terra, who inadvertently creates a perfect tarot spread when she knocks her deck to the floor. 

 

 

This scribe realises the reading is no coincidence and spends the rest of the novel trying to spread news of the omen. Read the book to see how it all turns out. 

In the upcoming Hammer and Bolter episode Death’s Hand, the Emperor’s Tarot appears in the story of an Inquisitor’s retinue. We have no skill with the cards ourselves, so you’ll just have to watch the episode to see what the reading portends – though from this still of the episode, it appears to be bad news.

 Maybe this Inquisitor didn’t like the implication of The Fool card after all.

 

 

 

What did you all think?

 

EDIT: Adding the following WHC article on making the art of the series:

 

 

We wanted to take a closer look at some of that great art, to see how background scenes and character concept art come to form the worlds you see on screen.

Let’s start with some background visuals. Touching on humble Imperial scribes, paranoid Inquisitors, and the hero of Armageddon facing down Ghazghkull Thraka, production pieces like this are essential for establishing the atmosphere of the scene while integrating details that seasoned fans of the 41st Millennium will recognise.

It looks rather cosy, doesn’t it?

The Hammer and Bolter episode, Bound for Greatness, is a rare look into the daily drudgery of an Imperial adept, surrounded by sweeping gothic architecture and icons of the Emperor’s faith. What might seem like a safe and easy life is anything but.

It wouldn’t be the Imperium if even the bookcases weren’t the size of cathedrals

This episode takes place at the very heart of Imperial civilisation, and great care was taken to ensure that every last detail drips with Warhammer atmosphere. Naturally, this means that skulls and aquilas adorn every surface, even down to these delightful-looking feeding tubes. Here we see how moving elements like the character’s hands and delicious grey gloop layer over the background artwork to create a complete scene.

We often wonder whose skull was chosen to eject gruel for eternity

The characters themselves are drawn by hand, so even hunched and crooked Astropaths explode from the screen with their presence.

Despite being blind, the Astropath has a good sense for atmosphere

Concept art is an essential part of production work, and is often used to workshop character designs, which are finalised through a process of iterative feedback until the final character looks just right. 

Concept art like the pic below for one of our favourite characters, Old Bale Eye’s Runtherd Dursnang can be referred back to throughout the production process to ensure that he consistently maintains his role as Old Bale Eye’s wizened storyteller during every moment of the finished animation.

A lot of effort must have gone into trimming all of those squigs into such a luxurious beard

There’s one thing we love about him that you may not have noticed on a first watch of Old Bale Eye. Orks like to accessorise themselves with hair squigs. If you look really closely, you can see one of his hair squigs blinks while Dursnang gives the yoofs his opinions on ‘pointies’.

  What exactly the squig gets out of this symbiotic relationship is a mystery

 

   

Edited August 30, 2021 by Petitioner's City

[Brother Captain Arkley]

I really enjoyed this one, off the bat the animation is a little rough/janky the writing was good.

 

It was nice to see some Assassins get a limelight, the Assassins have always been something in the lore I liked.

 

My only real negative is the animation, at times it just didn't feel as smooth as I would have liked it..

 

Still a good 1st episode.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Wolf Guard Einar

[Ldorte]

This was my favourite of the three episodes, I feel that they would have received a lot less criticism over the last week had they put this one up as the free episode (although I wonder whether the sheer volume of gore was the reason they didn't).

 

Although the animation still wasn't perfect it definitely seemed more consistent in quality than in "Old Bale Eye" and I'm certainly looking forward to further episodes.

[Knockagh]

How long are the episodes of each animation?

[Ldorte]

How long are the episodes of each animation?

 

Roughly 18-20 minutes

[DukeLeto69]

Isn’t this whole “janky” low frame rate animation a stylistic decision akin to animated graphic novels?

 

Possibly also a budget decision as less frames means less artwork which means work which means less cost?

[byrd9999]

I would guess they are related: finances were a big influence on it looking like a graphic novel.

 

But it has really grown on me. Accepting it on its own terms, rather than what I wanted it to be, makes for a very enjoyable experience.

 

This was a great episode. If I had to guess an author (or the main author of a team), I would say John French for this one.

[StraightSilver]

Yeah, I really enjoyed this one.

[Ldorte]

Isn’t this whole “janky” low frame rate animation a stylistic decision akin to animated graphic novels?

 

Possibly also a budget decision as less frames means less artwork which means work which means less cost?

 

It is budget and time, it's why in less key moments the number of drawings for a movement (a few of the walking instances) drop even lower.

 

Any kind of animation is a horrific time sink, but frame by frame drawn animation even more so. I would imagine they were set a fairly strict budget for their 20 minute episodes and as such would have had to cut the number of frames per movement to accommodate this. You can get away with 12 frames per second with hand drawn animation but even then, for a 20 minute episode that is still 14,400 frames which is a lot of drawing. To get around this you take shortcuts, for example, only animate faces when a character is talking (it looks more unnatural but means you get more bang for your buck as you can pump out more drawings at a much quicker rate) things like walking down a corridor (which are some of the worst instances of animation in this) can also be done with less effort as they are not key to the story and means you can spend more time working on "hero shots", which is why the big fight was a lot smoother than chunks of the rest of the episode.

 

I can certainly sympathize with them, having studied animation for a bit and also having done a little myself, it is an extremely tedious process and if they had been given an unlimited budget things would look a lot different. However, what we got still looks good for the most part and is an entertaining show so props for them to that!

Edited August 25, 2021 by Ldorte

[Petitioner's City]

Just watched this; it does indeed feel very "John French". I do want to know more - what is

 

the assassin's mission on Terra?

 

I also 

 

wish the Callidus was less female and rather more intersex once revealed

 

But there was also so much love for Inquisitor in this - the smalll party conflict, with the chrono-gladiator especially - and it was very well done, very brutal. Perhaps I wanted a bit more of allusions to the divides within the ordos - but it was so very dark. 

 

Finally, I loved the animation for this - it was very evocative, claustraphobic even in the grandest of spaces, excellent mise-en-scene. The way the central inquisitor dominated space was very smart too - hubris, indeed. The flashbacks were very striking too, although possibly too pastiche-y of something like Beasts of No Nation or The Bourne Supremacy, for example.

 

A very impressive short. I would rather enjoy a sequel to this, on screen or on the page.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Petitioner's City

[Trokair]

Was the Vindicare lying on the prow of another spaceship? Little perplexed as to the relative locations. I had assumed it was the Inquistors ship, hence the above question.

 

Also the reveal of the scribe identity, the first dodge I was unsure if it was lucky, or if he had been hit, by the second round I knew something was up and with the flames I though daemonhost for a moment before the actual reveal.

[Indefragable]

 

Also the reveal of the scribe identity, the first dodge I was unsure if it was lucky, or if he had been hit, by the second round I knew something was up and with the flames I though daemonhost for a moment before the actual reveal.

That’s my favorite part of this one. The first “miss” I was like “either this retinue sucks or this might be an A-Team episode where bullets go everywhere but the people.” Then the second “miss” and and the dual pistol guys snarls…..I went back and re-watched it and it’s more of a surprised snarl than an angry snarl. Great little touch. Awesome reveal. 

 

I liked this one overall and the

assassin

angle was unexpected (have I been living under a rock?). I honestly was expecting the whole thing to be an Inquistor-trying-so-hard-to-defeat-Chaos-he-is-ensnared-by-Chaos trope.

 

I hope this continues and we follow these characters more. I am interested in seeing more of his investiture storyline.

 

Also, he shot of retinue vs retinue made me realize how much I want episodes dedicated to the Catachans, Scions, and Arbites.

 

Lastly, megs bonus points for the Inquisitorial Trooper in red and black with the flamer at the beginning.

Edited August 26, 2021 by Indefragable

[Felix Antipodes]

Just watched this one and can only echo those above.  For my tastes it was great story, if a little sparse.  Not my favourite style of animation but passable enough ie it didn’t distract me from the story itself.

 

Another vote for a continuation of the storyline in either animated or prose.

 

I wonder if GW will extend their “In all formats, eventually” to these and do prose adaptations in their inferno! anthology or as digital shorts?

[byrd9999]

I liked the inclusion of the "Amalyn Shadowguide"-style Aeldari ranger in the Inquisitor's retinue :) 

[Mandragola]

I liked a lot of this but there were a couple of slightly odd things about it.

 

Basically it seemed the assassins had this whole convoluted plot to replace this inquisitor. Why, and why like that? If they wanted to replace him with a Callidus then they could have done that in pretty much the first scene where he's alone with the tarot reader. Just replace the tarot reader. Because getting a Callidus assassin to infiltrate another inquisitor's retinue, then fight a big battle in which both retinues are almost wiped out and the Callidus is captured, seems like a very high risk and high cost approach.

 

And then we aren't told why they've even bothered. Who wants to be this inquisitor on his way to Terra anyway?

 

I did like the animation, the combat and the style of the whole thing. It seemed to suit 40k well. The backstory/montage was cool.