Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Fluffenhammer. My name is Adam White. I hope you're all doing well. This particular show is a special one in that it affords us the opportunity to finally introduce you to a new project a few of us have been working on for some time. About nine months ago, the Fluffenhammer created a brand new sister channel on YouTube called the Fluffenbusters. Now the aim of this channel was to create the sort of old-school DVD commentaries that are sadly vanishing from physical releases and are, let's face it, never included on streaming services.
Now these tracks used to be an interesting way to watch her favorite movie, adding extra context and different perspectives to something you already know. I should note that Big D and myself don't just create the tracks by ourselves, we also aim to bring on guests for which a specific film might have a particular place in their heart. Be it our ex-wrestling and streaming friend Wild Bill for Mortal Kombat, or the Fluffenhammers' own George Daniel Lee for Dark City. Now I'll be honest, we didn't really push the new channel at the start, we wanted to build our library, improve our presentation. But with nearly 20 films now available on the Fluffenbusters, it's time to reach out properly.
And yes, a link to the odd show does end up on the Fluffenhammer's main site. I'd argue that this show in particular turned into such a Fluffenhammer-style recording early on that it made sense to put it up here. But the fact is that most of our movie-based tracks will be hosted just on that Fluffenbusters YouTube, and so here is where we ask for your support. Now, if you enjoy the Fluffenhammer, and you want a quick way to help them out, go to YouTube and subscribe to the new Fluffenbusters channel. We aim to put one track out every fortnight or so, so don't worry, we don't flood you with content.
Having that extra support will help us to establish ourselves a little quicker, grow the movie discussing community, and also allow us to bring more guests on to cover more movies. A link to the Fluff and Busters YouTube will be in the show notes. So that done, let's get on to the show. A show that starts with the lovely Big D and a special guest talking about a beloved TV show, but quickly gets a little distracted by tabletop talk. Enjoy folks!
Folks, welcome to Fluffenbusters. I'm your host, Mr. D, as ever. Not joined on today's recording by Mr. White. No, no. I have roped in another of Fluffenhammer's core hosts. It's the K1 himself, host of the Moonbase 2 podcast, Mr. Andy Melman. Hello, Andy. Hello. How are you doing? Yeah, not bad. Can't complain. You know, just cracking on. Was looking at some eBay bids, but thought to myself, I need to save money, so let's not spend money. Dare I ask what you were looking at? Because I've seen some things you've looked at in recent months, and it's been frankly terrifying. Yeah, I was thinking about picking up either Magna God's Crab Droid or the Dwarf Spider Droid.
Oh, that's cool. I'm dreading the Mandalorian release in June. June's going to be bad for me because we have 11th edition 40k supposed to go to pre-order and the big Mandalorian drop for Legion. Ah. Okay, so today we are going to be having a chat over Sharp's Rifles. The first in the Sharp series of movies from ITV back in 1993. Oh my god. Yeah, I know, right? Starring Sean Bean and Dara O'Malley.
And I don't know about you, but I watched these as they kind of came out and they got me into reading the Sharp novels. I read most of what was published around the time of these coming out. I haven't read many more since then. Do you remember if the novel was much different from what the TV show adapted? There are some differences. There are more chosen men in the books because it's a much bigger roster. I mean, Harris, the intellectual, he's actually not in the original books. He appears in some of the material that's written after the Sharp movies began coming out. Right. Although, it's also still fun because Bernard Cornwall actually did, he was in the writing team for the Sharp movies.
Ah, okay. So if anyone's not aware of Sharp, it's based on a quite extensive series of novels by Bernard Cornwall, except for Napoleonic Wars, and a bit before and a bit after, following a fictional officer, Richard Sharp, who's originally a sergeant, gets promoted on the battlefield, and goes on all sorts of daring do with his band of chosen men and riflemen. And this was an interesting period, because UK programming has always been a bit weird compared to the rest of the world. American shows we're used to having seasons which are... In this period, there were like 12 to 24 episodes. Now we've become much more, much shorter. But in the UK, you'd normally get much shorter seasons of stuff. But there was a big thing for adapting books, mini TV movies, effectively, but still very good production values for the medium at the time. And Sharp was one of ITV's kind of prestige projects of that sort of thing. 93 to 97 was run. They did a couple of follow-ons in the 2000s, but generally, a lot of people have a lot of regard for them. Yes, when you say short, you mean six episodes, usually. Yeah.
which is very short, especially for now. Oh, yeah. I mean, if a British show got more than 10 episodes in a single season, you were very... That's crazy. You were incredibly lucky. And normally you'd have to wait like two years to get anything after that if you did get anything. Yep. We were much more used to having like two... I mean, in this case, the first season of Sharp is two movies. You've got this weird thing, don't you? You have the six-episode series versus the never-ending shows like Casualty, The Bill. Yeah. Same for the game shows around that time period as well, because they were usually... Yeah. Like, Gladiators was probably the most expensive game show for the most part. Then you had stuff like Devil's Eye, which is just, you know... Man, that could have been an expensive show.
Bullseye, man. Anytime you try to explain that to people, they start to look at you like you're weird. I think the difference with Bullseye always, to me, felt like it had the shittest grand prize. Like a really tiny boat. Or a kitchen refit. Anytime someone actually won the grand prize, it was never normally as good as when someone lost. Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, let's get sharp around so we can continue this data. For anyone following along, we're going to start it at the 10 second mark. Which is basically just as you can see Sharp's rifle butt appearing on the screen. It's after any pre-title stuff has appeared. So, and a one, and a two, and a...
There we go. I was doing a little bit of research. I didn't realize the guy who plays Dan Hagman actually was part of the team who did a lot of the music. Oh, really? Okay. For the series, yeah. Yeah, I was quite surprised by that. It was one of those little, oh, that's really cool. It's like, can you do the music? Yeah, I can do the music. All right, well, we're going to have you do double duty to pay you less. Yeah. To save some money, at least. Who was it? That was... So I'm just going for a quick list of actors involved in it because, man, there are a lot of people in there. John Tams played Dan Hagman right through the first 14 movies.
joined by Jason Salki as Harris, who was also the only one to make it through to the end. Oh, wow. Oh, you don't mean the actor. I thought you meant the actor. No, the actor. Jason Salki has actually just put out a book all about the filming of Sharp's Rifles. What's it called? It's called Blood. That's what I'd call it. It is called... From Crimea with Love, Misadventures in the Making of Sharp's Rifles. Do you know if it was... Have you heard of it? I haven't, but he does a decent little...
things doing the convention scene in costume. I wonder if he knew if he said it was a positive experience doing it, because it looks like it probably would have been good enough. From what I understand, yeah, I mean, they shot it on location in Crimea for the most part, standing for Portugal. There were other shots, shoots where they kind of did a lot of shooting around Europe for different locations. Yeah, I imagine that there's primary places where they're like, okay, we'll try and get as much film to here as we possibly can. Yeah, but Ukraine did quite a lot of service for various locations.
That's interesting. Yeah, it is. I dug that. Another thing I didn't realise is that originally it wasn't Sean Bean playing Sharp. Oh, who was it? Paul McGann. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought you were going to say the guy that did The Crystal Maid. Oh, Richard O'Brien. Yeah, that would be interesting. No, no, the first one. Richard O'Brien, man, he... You can't see it, can you? That'd be weird. Not as Sharp, but I could see him in the series in some role because he was always good in those. But yeah, it was interesting because...
They did two weeks of filming. They began in just new planes for football and actually would pull out. And when they started up again, Sean Bean was the only suitable actor available at short notice. Oh, interesting. So he kind of fell into the role by accident. He did. And this was kind of his signature role. Oh, yeah. I mean, if anyone thinks of Sean Bean, even with things like Boromir, it's normally sharp that people think of. And him saying, bastard. Well, when was GoldenEye? Was GoldenEye in 96?
Yes, I think it was 96. Yeah, so this is only like three years prior to that role. So yeah, this definitely had some kind of sway to pull him into that kind of role. Yeah, I mean, this was before Patriot Games, if I remember rightly. Oh my God. Yeah. So yeah, this did kind of bring him to lead in Man City. I mean, I think he'd done Lady Fatley's Love before this, which kind of brought him to people's attention, but this gave him a long-term role to kind of make his own.
It is an issue because in the books, because Sean Bean doesn't actually look like Sharp is described in any of the books. Oh, okay. Yeah, because in the books, Sharp is black-haired with a vicious scar. I mean, it's Sean Bean, who in this is exceptionally blonde. And I believe the phrase is ruggedly good-looking. Yes, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose him because he's a sexy man, and it's like, well, you can sell that. And sexy men look heroic as well, so it's like, oh, well, everyone's happy. Right?
Absolutely. Oh, and Brian Cox. I can always forget he's in the first of these. Yeah, I think he's only in like, well, this one and maybe the next one and then they show him off to somebody else. Yeah. I was surprised when I put this on and went, oh my God, it's Brian Cox. What's he doing here? Yeah. I mean, and I didn't realize that Daniel Craig's in one of the latter ones as well. He is. Yes, he vehemently hates shop. And Daniel Craig looks so disgustingly young. He looks like a baby. I caught an episode of, do you remember there was a show that Scott Ridley and Tony Scott did, The Hunger, a horror anthology series. No, I didn't. It was like the late 90s, early 2000s.
I mean, it's tied to the hunger of the film. So they lean into a lot of bad aesthetics. So more than a little trashy, let's say. But there's one episode which has a young Daniel Craig and a young Lena Headey. And they both look so young in that. It's terrifying. Daniel Craig in that episode of Sharp at least, his hair's like baby blonde white and his eyes are piercing blue. Yeah. He looks a little natural. It's still weird when I watch, was it the second Tomb Raider movie?
Oh yeah, he's in that as well, isn't he? Yeah, it's not a great American accent, if I remember. You need to ask an American if that was a good accent. In fairness, he has leaned into the crap American accent full-heartedly now with Benoit Blanc, so fair play. Yeah, maybe they just think that's how he sounds, and they're like, oh, yeah, it's fine. It's just how he sounds. It's weird. It's fine. Yeah. So what was your first interest to Sharp, Andy? Just out of interest. I heard people talk about it for years, and I was like, you know what? It was only last year, probably, that I watched it, the year before, and I was like, you know what?
I'm starved for decent entertainment in 2025, 2026. So why not go back and watch something that's pretty well regarded if I can find it? I was looking on Amazon and you can get all of the sharp things and it's like 40 quid for it. And I'm like, ooh, that's a bit steep for my blood. And I was able to find it through, I think it was just up on YouTube for free. Yeah, there's a surprise amount of stuff. You might have told me about it, actually. I think you might have told me it was on YouTube for free. And I went, oh, well, go and have a watch. Might have done, yeah.
It wasn't through ITV, it was through somebody... I don't know what the channel was. It might have been Now or something. It might have just been a dodgy upload that YouTube's not cold, because that happens as well. You can sometimes just find full movies on YouTube. Not that I advocate it, of course. I mean, hell, I found it. There's a whole wiki that is just films that are out of... What's the word?
Yeah, like Night of the Living Dead, you can put that up and stream it for free on any Twitch channel if you want. You never know what to find, because you can find stuff that is surprisingly modern, and then you realize it's modern. You think modern, and it's actually 40 years old. I was going to say, the original Christopher Reeve Superman movie edging towards that copyright thing. I think it is, if it hasn't hit it already. I'm sure I remember hearing it. There's things like the original Mickey Mouse stuff, which should be, but thanks to the power of money, isn't. I think...
Steamboat Willie is. Yes, that is, but there's other Mickey Mouse-esque things. I think the way it's working is that someone put together a really good infographic on stuff that's coming out of copyright for the next 10 years or so. Oh, okay. And what it is is that some of the stuff is still copyrighted because it was actually invented later. So like, I think Winnie the Pooh and his red shirt. At the moment, Winnie the Pooh is out of copyright, but you can't use the red shirt because Disney added that, so it's still in copyright. Yeah, yeah. So there's these weird things. I think...
superman batman and wonder woman very very specific versions of them that are coming up and being available like batman with a gun is probably free to use i'm guessing i.e. og batman all right i'm not sure if he's yet but he's going to be soon yeah so it's really interesting the world of uh I'll be right at the moment. I was going to say it's annoying and stupid like the war is. Oh, yeah. It's annoying and stupid, but it's also fascinating to see stuff where the companies, they kind of can't do any more to eek it out because they've done as much as they can. Yeah. And even the governments can't be bought that much. Well, never say never. Yeah, true. Yeah. So what do you think of Sharp overall?
I haven't finished all of it. I can't remember where I stopped around, but I needed a break because a lot of the stories kind of blend together. They go through a lot of the same story points. Sharp finds woman. Woman is on the run or captured or in danger. There's a very generic romance. She either dies or leaves. It doesn't start off that way because we have, I think she's introduced in this episode, right? Yeah, Tracer, Comtessa, yeah. Yeah, she lasts for maybe two of these and then kind of goes away and is replaced by someone else for like an episode. She comes back in the second season.
No, she dies. Oh, sorry, yeah, the second, the quote-unquote season. Yeah. Because then she comes back and then she dies and it's like it's over. Because she has a, spoilers, she has a daughter and she dies during the siege? Is that the Daniel? No, that's not the Daniel Craig one. No, that's the Pete Possifoid one, I think. I think they both appear in the same episode. Possifoid is Obadiah Hakeswell, which is just a brilliant, a brilliant name. Quality. Yeah, my main issue with this is it feels like a lot of the stories kind of get retread over and over again with only slight differences. There is a bit of that in fairness.
there's a certain framework these stories have to fit within. And it doesn't help that Cornwall's also trying to fit these stories into an ongoing historical narrative. So he's actually very careful where and when stuff takes place. Yeah, I think the locations are generally fine. It's just the main story beats, get to be a little bit repetitive, which I do think is, I don't know if it's a problem with the TV show or the novels or whatnot, but it is a thing. If you binge it like I was doing, you go, oh, this is maybe a little bit too similar. I think if you do binge it that way, then yeah, it will probably show us.
It'll probably highlight the similarities more than anything. Yeah, I'm sure when it aired it was fine because there was, what, two or three years between each one? 93 to 97, you had four batches of episodes. I think it was two in 93, four in 94, and then you had the other batch, two batches. I know that when they came back and did them in the 2000s, they did two stories, but it's two-part feature-length episodes. So they were...
four hours each, effectively. Otherwise, I was pretty impressed by the costuming and the filming of it. It all seemed pretty high standard, to be fair, which I was like, oh, that's good. It didn't feel cheap. It didn't feel crappy. Sometimes it can be cheap and crappy with British TV, like Red Dwarf was known for. Yeah, I mean, British sci-fi has always had that kind of vibe to it, and the best ones kind of lean into it. Red Dwarf, they had no budget, and they manned if they do what they could of it, and they leaned into how crap the effects were. Oh, yeah. They really...
You can see that they put the time and care into... The costumes are pretty spot on. Yeah, and there's a lot of extras, and there's horse work, and I'm sure that's all pretty expensive to get all that stuff as well, to be honest. Yeah, and doing stuff like this, Napoleonic warfare, is actually kind of difficult to do. I mean, a lot of sharps tends to play around in more of a skirmish toolbox, as we would think of it, so they can get away a bit better. It is funny, because we've now got...
the old war games at lancic is doing their own licensed war game based on it oh really on sharp specifically yeah it's yeah uh it's why they've been putting out um minis so they've they've done sharp as he appears in this episode harper's just come out and harris and they said that they'll do uh they're going to do more based on as the books evolve okay so you'll have harper at the moment the ministry done is rifleman harper but eventually it'll be sergeant and Harper and Captain Sharp and the whole shebang. Are they going to do this version of Sharper? No shirt and a bottle in his hand? No, sadly they've got him as he appears towards the end shooting his ramrod out of his rifle. See, I think naked Harper with a bottle would actually be like, you'd have that sat at his really good close combat. That'd be a hell of a special edition mini to do. I bet it would sell. You could draw the little kind of tricky bum hair around his boobs and his nipples and whatnot. That'd be funny. Absolutely.
Decent minis as well, because you get a 54mm mini and a 28mm one in there. Oh, okay. Are they different games, or is it just like, you get a big one and a small one just for funsies? I think the big one is kind of more as a display piece. And then the idea is that the 28mm ones will be for the game, because they do... Oh, it's Julian Fellows. The one on the left or the right? The left. Ah, okay. I'll be honest, the first time I saw the guy on the right, I thought that was the Kurgan. When I first saw it, I was like, is that the Kurgan? It's like, it's not. As soon as I heard him talk. I mean, I...
I would have given money to have seen Clancy Brown in an episode of Sharp. That could have been quite brilliant. I do think the guy on the left looks like, he looks like a stereotype, right? Oh, yes. He looks like the stereotypical British officer of kind of that era, because he basically has no chin. Oh, yes. I mean, that's one of the main elements of antagonism in these series. Sharp is, he literally, he is the jumped up.
Yeah, it's class warfare. I'm not sure that would work in America because America doesn't really have class... I don't want to call it warfare because it's not really warfare. But there's not a real disparity between classes as there is in the UK. The UK's always had it. And I don't know about Ireland and Scotland, but the UK's always kind of been drawn along that line. It's not really as much of a thing in America because obviously they went over there and it wasn't a class system. It's just if you were rich or poor rather than your station in the country, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, that's fair. But by all accounts, this series does. It is a popular note. It has had spurts of popularity because, like I say, it is...
It's well made. It's entertaining. And honestly, it's a period for... You don't get as much fiction, especially on TV, as you'd think, in fairness. No, not really. Usually when I think about if you're going to do a historical thing, it's usually going to be World War I or II. And that might just be because of the education we've had over the years. At least history for me was just World War II and the Tudors and a very small amount of the Romans, and that was about it.
Yeah, I didn't read too much on the Tudor period. Yeah, no, I was just stupid-duper late. I mean, this period is what I would have loved to have learned more about in school. It'd be interesting, yeah. Yeah. The 1800s is kind of important for our history, just because, how to put this, the 1800s is the century of the British Empire, at its peak. You had the 1700s, yeah, you did have East India Train Company, you did have Varage, they were a thing, but this was the war that kind of...
The Napoleonic Wars, Battle of Trafalgar, they're what kind of established Britain as the global superpower of this century. Yeah. And better or worse, that has kind of shaped the globe as we know it today. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. It is a fascinating period, the more I've learned about it. And honestly, a lot of it has been because I enjoyed this. And I know that I'm not anywhere near as well-read as I probably could be. To be fair, there's a lot. If you want to do historical research, I'm like, 100 years? A lot happened in that 100 years. Oh, yeah. And even just if you just look at...
this slice, the Napoleonic period, and the whole thing, just like the Campaigns of the Peninsula Campaign, the 100 Days Campaign, it boggles the mind slightly, in all fairness. Yeah, because I guess the world hadn't seen stuff like that before, to that extent. The Romans did, I guess, the closest conquest to that at that point. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to do a disservice to the other European powers of the period, and even the powers we weren't aware of at the time in Asia, who had their own quite substantial empires that we kind of gobbled up.
From what I've read and seen, it's not an unfair thing to say that the British Empire was the closest to being an empire of the same ilk as Rome. Oh, yeah, certainly. Same sort of level of dominance and impact. Because I think Rome, people forget, had competitors. There were others before it ascent. I mean, there were the other Italian city-states of the period. It wasn't just Rome. There were others. I mean, you had Carthage.
the Grecian city-states were still a thing. There was a lot going on. But once you reach something of dominance, an empire, it gets interesting. Leave it that way. I will confess, I have been tempted to wargame in Napoleonic's. Not so much Rank and Flank, but there's a lot of smaller scale games that you can play with.
I'm pretty sure that's like a pretty popular wargaming era. Which era did Peter Cushing play in? Wasn't it Napoleonic? I'm trying to remember the videos I remember seeing of Peter Cushing. I think he was doing mainly Napoleonic. He might have had a bit of Crimean War stuff in there as well. It was a very similar, there were advances between the two conflicts, but not as much as we would kind of think. But yeah, I mean, before kind of fantasy and science fiction wargaming, Napoleonic was really the main tale of wargaming. Oh yeah.
There are companies still today that sell the stuff they were making decades ago. But then you have the newer companies. I mean, the Perrys have made it. That's what made their name, doing historicals. They do so many good plastic Napoleonic kits. It's crazy. Warlord, they might be more well-known for their World War II stuff, but their Napoleonic is quite good as well for that sort of stuff.
But, I mean, I've been looking at things like Silver Bear Net, which is a skirmish war game with a horror bent in this era. Oh, okay. What's the horror bent? Is there just two forces, like the Legion of the Dead and normal people? Well, the idea is that it's basically this era, but...
there are things arising. So... Like, is there a Cthulhu aspect? What do you mean by things arising? Well, I think people don't know. Oh, I actually don't mean it. It's a game designed by Joe McCulloch, the frankly ridiculous number of war games that he puts out. And it's designed to be played between two people with warbands of not more than 10 models each, if that. But it's often not a straight up fight. Instead, they're normally, they're operatives on a mission.
So they're actually investigating or trying to achieve a specific objective rather than fight the enemy. And normally there will be other elements in play. So you might be investigating a churchyard and there will be ghosts. And most of your men can't do anything. But if you've got a soldier you've bought silver shot for or their sword has a silver edge. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that all comes out of your budget of how you build your force. But you can buy experts who know. So you have your standard infantry choices of the era.
but you have other options to pick from as well. So, yeah, it's an interesting little system. And you can get dedicated minis, but a lot of people kitbash their own as well out of existing kits. To save money or just to make it a bit different, make them their own? Make them their own, really, because minis aren't expensive in the grand scheme of things. I mean, I bought some metal minis off a company called Tangent, and they are literally Sharp and His Chosen Men, The Countessa, and Major Ducco. How'd they compare to the war game Atlantic Plastics? Which do you prefer?
It's a tough one. I do like the metals. I do like them, because I just bought them in one hit, and it was the entire force effect. It was all of them. All the Chosen Men, sharp. So you like it for the convenience? It was good for convenience. They are really good representations as well, though. They are a little fine in the detail, and for pewter metal, that is not always a particularly good thing. Yeah. Because sometimes they can be... I have found a couple of the rifles can be very flimsy. Oh, because they're thin, I'm guessing. Yeah, because they tend to be realistic.
You don't get as much out of the plastics. So that's something at least. I've got a feeling I'm going to try and use them for two different things. So I might use the metal ones for a game called Chosen Men, which is a skirmish. It's one of Osprey's blue books. So it's a very... It's not one of these miniature agnostic ones, but it's just a set of rules for playing skirmish games in the Napoleonic period. And because it's called Chosen Men, it's clearly inspired by Sharp. Yeah.
Have you ever gone down to Birmingham NEC when they had the big gaming... UK Games Expo? No, I really want to at some point, though. I'm actually annoyed I can't get to Salute this year because I was hoping I'd be able to. Is that the same thing or is that a different thing? Salute is the largest dedicated war game show in the UK. So it's different from the Game Expo? Yeah, UK Games Expo is kind of everything. It's board games, war games, the whole shebang. So is Salute like our Adepticon? Yes, so Salute is a bit more Adepticon. Although there's not really tournament play or anything like that.
It's purely a convention, so you have stallholders, you'll have display games, demos, but no competition element. It's a chance to go to a dedicated wargaming convention. It's actually a massive hall they use now. It's pretty great. It used to be they had one hall in...
I've got the name. Mate, it's tomorrow. Just go tomorrow. It's in London. I know. I was just having a look now and I saw London. London. Yeah. It's in London and I'm broke, which is the real kicker. Yeah, that's usually a bad combo. Yeah. I mean, I have driven to it before. Oh, you don't want to drive there at the moment with petrol prices. No. And then pay for parking.
and then pay for stuff there. Yeah, man, that's expensive. Yeah, I've spent more than a few pennies there in the past. It's dangerous going to salute as a WarGames fan. Very dangerous. At least the ticket price isn't that bad. No, they're not. That's very good considering TF Nation, which is pretty expensive. And they do a goodie bag as well. First 5,000 people through the door. Oh, okay. And honestly, it's normally really good. What do they usually have in it? They have an exclusive miniature for the con.
The last couple of years has been a plastic one. Before that, it was in metal, but it's always themed to whatever the theme of the convention that year is. So this year's cavalry, so it's a miniature of Saladin. Oh, okay. But there's also... They normally throw stuff in, so I think one year there was a special mini for another war game that was one of their con exclusives of that year. You might get sheets of transfers. There's all sorts of stuff you might find out. It's not sort of a DepthCon or GenCon levels of good, but it is normally...
a decent surprise if you get one. I can tell you it's cheaper for us to get to than it is to Adepticon. Well, yeah. Because we don't need to fly to America. Quite. Yeah. Which is a shame, because I'd love to go to Adepticon or Adepticon just once, you know? Yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting, even if it isn't, like, Milwaukee, which is not, like, a place I'd be, like, jonesing to go. The event looks kind of interesting. Hmm. Absolutely. But money. Yeah. Money, money, money. Filthy money. Yes, which, I'm surprised, is why I bought two lucky dips of 90 or millions. Well, I hope you win.
I live in hope. I'd settle for four or five numbers if nothing else. I'm not greedy. I'm not greedy. No, no. I mean, if you did win, you know, you wouldn't complain either, I'm sure. Oh, God, no. No. Hey-o. Oh, I do like that as well. The middle think I likes you. Best I can be sharp. Yeah. Well, he's trying his best to try and get them on board because we're still at this kind of like wobbly period of they don't like their new commander. Again, because he's not the right class. Yeah. It is kind of fun of watching this and you can really see some of the reasons why people compare sharp to, well, you can compare Gaunt's Ghost to sharp. Hmm.
I'll have to take a word for it. Have you never read one? No, no. I've been told by people it's worth going for, but yeah, I haven't got around to it. You know what? If it's a case of you just can't find the time to read them, the audiobooks are excellent. Oh, I only do audiobooks. I only listen to audiobooks when I go out in the car. Fair enough. Yeah. But no, I do rate the guns, but they get much better as they go on, more complex. But the initial ones, there's a lot of foundational material in them.
Oh yeah, I bet you can't just jump. You need to set up your characters and everything like that. Absolutely. But it's quite funny that some of the team at GW kind of lead into the comparisons. Because Gaunt has always described as being blonde. But up until maybe 10 years ago, most of the artwork always depicts him with black hair. So reverse of the sharp thing. It's a little thing, but it's one of those cute little gags that is fun. So, yeah, dudes. Yeah.
Oh, that's something I was going to ask you, dude. What brought you into the Fluff and Hammer? The Fluff and Hammer? Yeah. You mean the show? Yeah. What brought you into your bit of Mr. Gruff? Oh, okay. How did I meet Gruff or how did I become part of the Fluff and Hammer? A bit of both, really. I became part of the Fluff and Hammer because Gruff said, you want to come on the show? I went, yeah, okay. And I met Gruff when randomly Dave...
Dave from Calo Prime from TF Nation. I was friends with him at the time. And he said, oh, do you want to come into Newcastle? I went into Newcastle and there was this hairy man with a cowboy hat on called Mr. Gruff. And that was how I met him for the first time. Many, many years ago at this point. Over 10 years at this point, I would say. Crumbs. Yeah. Yeah. And somehow we, I don't know how, but somehow we kept hanging around each other and just became friends. I can't really remember how it happened. You know, one of those things where it just happens. Just kind of went. Yeah.
Not a rip-roaring exciting story, I'm afraid. Especially how did I join the Fluffenhammer, if you want to be honest. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Oh, just kicked him nuts. Because my concern about joining the Fluffenhammer was being on with George and Gruff, and they obviously know way more than me. I'm like your basic grandma going into a Warhammer store saying, oh, I like this one. This one's kind of pretty. I remember it from back in my day, but only loosely. Okay. Well, that's interesting. I get what you're saying about the intimidation factor, because when we had George on to do...
Please them grapes. Yep. He solved that pain as well. You assume he didn't do it for real. I mean, you never can tell with some of his actors, can you? Yeah. You really never can tell. No. I wouldn't describe it as intimidation. It's just more like, well, what can I bring? You know? Yeah, yeah. I don't know as much. It's like, okay. So I have to be the cynical one. I have to be the Debbie Downer. Be like, yeah, I just got a poo. You know what? I was wondering how that came about. It's not an act, but not an arc, but I haven't noticed that.
you do tend to be the cynical but you do also tend to ask people to justify why they're why they enjoy something yeah yeah make me understand that's actually not a bad thing to have because just saying you like something it's like okay there's more to it than just because you like it there'll be an aspect of it whether it's whether it's really basic or whether it's deep you know that's up to up to you the person but the easy answer is to just be like yes i like it it's like well what about it is it that you like Yeah. That's the interesting point. Absolutely. Because sometimes it can help if you're actually forced to think a bit harder and go, well, why do I like this? Yeah. Sometimes you don't even really think about why you like something. Yeah. I've been guilty of it. I mean, I know I tend to be Mr. Positivity wherever I can. Because I tend to take, not necessarily the opposite, but I always tend to try and think of things in the best light. I try and think of, well, I know people put work into this.
so what am i missing or what what can i find what can i pull out of this that is a positive rather than a negative yeah and that's not always easy it's not always possible but equally being having someone coming from your angle again well you said you like you said this is good or you dig this give me why that's really useful to have as well it gives you a less context hard to get across sometimes. A good example, I guess, of a recent thing is the new Jump Pack 2, the Assault Marine. Oh, it's not an Assault Marine. Oh, the Vanguard veteran, yeah. Yeah, I looked at that and went, man, it's... And then I looked at some pictures of the older metal ones, and they've got all this innate detail, and it's way more interesting visually to look at. And this new one just kind of looks like the previous edition one, but with an old-style helmet on. And I'm like, I don't understand why people would like that, because it's effectively the same just with a head swap, which anybody could do if they had an old Warhammer model kit. Absolutely. I mean, that's what people got pointed out about.
The Intercessor they revealed, the first one, they showed off, and it's like... not only have i done that with some of my stuff already you did that in two separate kits yeah yeah it's weird because with the intercessor last year they've obviously changed the helmet and then they've very very slightly modified the body but only very slightly like i think the the um the little lift on the knee the little bit of arm around the knee pad yeah it's a little shorter that's been adjusted slightly yeah but it's like it's barely noticeable like if you if you showed like a child on the street what's the difference they wouldn't pick that out it's only like a proper person who's paying like 500 intercessors that would notice that kind of really small detail and it's got the little chin armor which I think is a little different as well, but not massively. And I would have just got rid of that. The gin armor always looked a bit on the weird side. It's bizarre. It's like a not great kind of mushing of the two design aesthetics to try and say this like, it's like when you mix two colors that shouldn't be mixed together and you kind of get this muddy kind of mush between the two and you're like, oh, it's not really what I was looking for. When they could have just done the old armor or just like harder lent into it. Maybe I would have been happier if they just gave the old jet pack. Maybe that would have made me happy at least.
That's fair. I mean, the Primaris Jump Pack is... I actually do like how it sits on the current intercessors. I think it's the design aesthetic, which I don't like, which is everything's very smooth now. It's not a lot of hard angles. Yeah, there's not as much greebleness to it. Even the grill on the mouth is... It's not the same with the Jump Pack dude that we've seen recently. Here's the actual triangle part at the top. That's quite sharp, but on the intercessor, it's a bit more curved, strangely enough, which I don't know why they went that way with it. It is. And it's a bit of a shame, because...
They're revealing something every Monday for the next month and a bit, and I think that may be a mistake on their part. Nah, you want to release in one big blob, I would say. You do the Space Marine side, you do the Ork side. Or maybe do a unit a week. Yeah, not a mini. Show us the full Assault Intercessor squad. Yeah, that'd be an idea. I'm behind that. Show us the full mob of boys. Give us a better idea of how this is going to look. Yeah, one Ork boy is not...
thrilling to see i i don't think no i mean it's nice that they finally have solved their own issue that's been three years now if they've not resolved it the revamped boys mob not oh they can't have a shooter oh yeah okay yeah yeah you couldn't build a mob all the shooters are all with sluggers right and choppers you have to have a mix yeah which i think is why they still haven't taken the the york boys kit that came before that off sale because someone realized oh wait we can't our rules aren't making that legal. Oh, God. What a mistake to make. I know, right? And that's an expensive mistake to make. It's one you could easily fix with a rule change, but you can't really fix the models you've already made. Yeah, but it's a rule change, but they've made it now, and it's like, this took you two editions? Yeah, no one picked up on it. Oh, no, people knew about it. Oh, yeah, they didn't fix it. Yeah. And we've seen them do bigger changes, but... Yeah, it's odd. Yeah, because for rules reveals I quite enjoy, but the model reveals... Yeah, about a solid successor. I mean, I've got...
I've got a squad of the gold metal ones and probably another squad in a bag somewhere I've not done anything with yet, and I kind of prefer those. Metal intercessors, did you say? No, the Vanguard vets I meant to say, sorry. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I was like, hang on. I wondered if you meant the tactical marines from the past. No, no metal tactical marines. No. I have to say, I wouldn't have minded if they had just updated the...
get rid of the divide between primaris and firstborn so just upsize the firstborn marines and maybe have mark 10 armors mixed in amongst all the other armor marks but in true scale yeah we just kind of forget about primaris we'll just ignore that point because it was always a very silly idea story-wise so we'll just ignore it it didn't happen not really we'll just move on from there we'll just say they're all just space marines and that's fine yeah there's no awkward story because there's no like why is dante uh not a primaris even though he's still alive it's like we don't need to worry about that he's just dante we're good yeah Just smooth over cracks. Yeah. Recon. It would be a Recon which I'd be happy about because it would kind of be returning to normal. And it wouldn't even be the biggest Recon they've done. Let's be honest. No. And like I say, a Recon to kind of push the time back, the idea back to what it was, that's perfectly fine. Yeah. Absolutely. I would be very, very up for that because I do like my tactical squads. Yeah.
yes oh yeah that's the idea if we just pushed it back to just having tactical assault marines uh devastator squads if we could have those names back as well because they're just better they're just a more decisive name that just makes more sense instead of like you have um intercessors but with the is this right intercessors but with plasma guns hellblasters no that's the hellblasters that's the hellblasters uh so it's a devastator squad which are just plasma cannons which is like we just call it that anyway you have assault you have intercessors assault intercessors and jump pack intercessors which ones are assault intercessors they're the ones they're the ones with bolt heavy bolt pistols and chainsaws but not with jump packs So they're... Oh. Okay. They're the ones that came out in the... The Death Company. Kind of. They're the night division of the Marines. Okay. Yeah, they're basically the Death Company. Okay. I wouldn't recommend that. I think if you're going to do your close combat squad, the ones with the shields and the swords, it's a little silly, and I think should probably be kept to specific Space Marine Legions, just obviously would make them all fanatic. Yeah. I mean, I like the Bladeguard as a concept, as an extra bit of... as a bodyguard unit. It's just funny now that you do have, like...
multiple bodyguard units in the space marines across different blade guard and then you have all these extra ones as well yeah they're variants right that's right yeah yeah i think you could kind of boil that down to maybe you only have one squad of them and they are maybe maybe it's only for the ultramarines you redesign the shields to make them look like roman legionary shields you know i mean that would be a better idea I mean, they kind of did that with Halgard's two Victrix bodyguard when he got Primarist. Although, bizarrely, they're now gone because they've legended that mini and his sidekicks. The Victrix now are back to how they were originally, so...
When did they go? Did they go in like 10th edition or something? It was before Christmas when they did the 500 Worlds book. Oh no. Just before, in fact, when they gave us Kalgar and Terminator armor and Sicarius and the Victrixguard in plastic. So they only lasted a couple of editions then. Well, they lasted one edition and then a little bit of this next one. That's a bummer. I mean, they came out in eighth. Oh, eighth. Okay. So they managed... My assumption was nice. Two editions they made it, pretty much. Two and a half. Okay. Which...
God, we've had stuff last short periods in the game. I know that for certain. Yeah, GW, if you make a unit, you should try and keep it alive for a little bit before you kill it off, because that's going to annoy people. I mean, getting shot of the old Captain Sicarius data sheet, fine. That model is 22 years old. That's fine, yeah. And the new Sicarius is a much better mini, and yeah, whatever. As long as the old Captain Sicarius model is playable, like if you could put them on a bigger base, that's perfectly okay. I mean, yeah, you can do. That's perfectly an option. Yep, no issues there. I don't know. Basically, Captain Sicarius doesn't exist anymore and you go, oh.
I mean, some people would not mind if Cato Sicarius were holding to the eye of terror, to be honest. That's true, that's true. The man, the myth, in his own mind, the legend. Well, is he a Gary Stu? Well, I suppose most of the older Marines are a Gary Stu. He only kind of ended up that way because he was the second company captain and for like most of 4th through to 7th edition.
he was captain of the second company. So anytime they did a new model, it was normally painted up as Sicarius. Okay. So you had, they did that special lightning claw captain. That is actually a model of Sicarius, different to the normal version. And he showed up in a lot of lore because that's the company that they used for almost everything. Which edition was this? Was this the infamous, what was it, fifth, where they pushed Ultramarines hard? He showed up as a distinct character in fourth. But that was, see, that was interesting because then the idea of that Marine Codex.
Because that was when they expanded the offering characters out. So you had... So Sicarius had been named, but he hadn't had a model before. Now he did, but they also brought in the tank commander and Talion, the scout sergeant. And the idea was that each of them represented an archetype. So you had Kalgar was the supreme commander of the mastermind. You had the priest in the chaplain. Keep forgetting his name. Has the kill team, but he's the old bastard. The chief librarian, Targaryen, was the wizard. Sicarius is the knight, or the paladin. Yeah.
The tank commander is literally a knight, and Talion is the old mentor. Each one represents an archetype, and the idea was that... And they stated this, actually, in the Codex, that you could use these specific characters in any Codex Space Marine chapter, built to use in Codex Space Marines. That was the intent of that Codex. That was the whole reason for it. Because you had all the other... You had Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Marines with their own special Codex. You had Black Templars as well at that point. So they all had their own special characters. They wanted to make it so that if...
you were doing your own chapter and they had rules in the back so you could kind of give your own chapter some special bonuses at the cost of you lost some units like the Imperial Guard Codex did so you lost some units but you could buy them or special abilities back with a certain pool of resource points that were available if you were doing a custom force but then these characters were intended to you could do your own version of them. You could paint from your own, you could convert them. You could build another model entirely and just use this character's stat line in your chapter as this was their kind of version, so to speak. It was their version of this archetype. And then fifth, they kind of punted that out of the pool completely and just said, nope, these are Ultramarines characters. You can only play these characters if you're playing Ultramarines. Ah, that's fun. Yeah. Now, this is not entirely Matt Ward's fault because he wrote a lot of codexes in that era and some were actually quite good.
and there were other folks who wrote very bad ones it just happened he wrote a couple of really powerful ones yeah broken ones right yeah and that's not his fault that's the fault of GW for not playtesting these books thoroughly enough before putting them to print yeah of course this was the period where GW had pulled back quite a lot from their social media presence as it was they had almost very little online and so updates were not I mean the way they work nowadays where sometimes you're even getting day one patches for codexes I mean I know it can be frustrating for a product can be invalidated before you've used it but equally they're seen with those issues and correcting it that's man 16 years ago i'd have loved that i guess you could say though we're at that point with gw making as much money as it does and being like the the top of the the war gaming industry we shouldn't still be at that stage where um they make the mistake and they expect you to buy their product and then say to you with like a day later oh what you bought you can put that in the bin yeah it's invalidated like that's that's not great like if i had like a return policy where you could then bring back the book and get your money back that would be a different story you know that would entirely i mean
It didn't really affect me as badly because I don't really... I wasn't really playing the game as much until fairly recently. But the Dark Angel, Custodian, and Admech codexes and datasheets, they've been completely... There's no point using those because they bear no results to how those armies play in the current meta, so to speak. Which is kind of bonkers when you take a moment. There's a good argument to be made for... Well, two points of view. There's a game called Infinity.
And that one, the rules for it are completely free. Is that the one-page rule, people? Or is that someone else? No, Infinity is why Corvus Belli, a Spanish company. Ah, okay. It's a sci-fi war game with a real anime aesthetic to a lot of things. Is that the one that has the lizard men, but they're in power armor? Or they've got, like, white bits of armor plopped on the, basically, the saurus bodies? No, they do have a couple of alien spaces. One species that is, like, they're almost a race of artichokes. And another that's, like, the...
God, I've forgotten about the bad guy. The Covenant. But without the religious overtones. Much more ruled by AI instead. But there's a real clean... You know the aesthetic of Dominion Tank Police and Appleseed? Yeah. There's a lot of that vibe to things. So Power Armor, which looks a bit realer in some respects. A bit more hard sci-fi. But the rules are all free. And when they release the new edition of the game, N5, you have a box set that gives you a start of rules and talks you through how to play the game.
But the full rules, you get them online. You can access the app. There's a wiki that's linked to everything that shows you terms and things. Free online army builder. And the only thing you have to buy is the minis. And if you want, a slipcase book that's got law in it. There's no rules in that book. It used to be they'd put it out so you'd have a rule book and a law book in a slipcase for the last two editions. But now they've made it so it's just a law book.
And I guess doing it that way means that there's... It's an issue if you want to have the rules, but I suppose you could print them out for free. And it means if any changes need to happen, okay, fine, you've just made them. It's not affected you. Changes tend to be much cleaner or more cleanly highlighted. It's just a bit easier. I mean, you do lose out on having a physical set of rules, which... It's always nice, yeah. It is. But then you also not have to deal with rules being invalidated the day you buy them or...
rules that may have issues being updated in good time. So, swings and roundabouts, to be fair. And the differences for the company is, like, we could either give you something for free, or you could give us £50. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the other approach is War Machine. That's when that dropped off, because I remember there was a big push for, like, a couple of years. It was apparently doing really well, and I haven't really heard anything about it for, I don't know. War Machine's funny, because that was the competitive game for the longest time, because it was built as a competitive system. And it's what inspired a lot of what GW now have been using for the last few years. It inspired a lot of people.
unofficially then GW took it on themselves. War Machine had issues for a couple of... Third and fourth edition especially were not good times for War Machine. Didn't help that Privateer Press were trying to move across to hard plastic, which didn't work particularly well for them. They started off with metal. Is hard plastic the stuff they originally used for Legion? That kind of plastic? Is that what that is? No, hard plastic is what we think of as GW plastic. Ah, okay. It's a bit of a catch-all term. But hard plastic is...
what you would think of as what you would use. It's what you can use polystyrene cement for. Or should I say, what you can use it on. Whereas what Legion used initially, and what Privateer used in War Machine and Hordes for the longest time, as the main non-metal material, was what people call restic. It's a bit of a misunderstanding, because technically resin is on plastic as well, because of how the chemical engineering works. But restic is... It doesn't function the same way as hard plastic. It doesn't function quite like resin. You can still bend it, heat it, and reshape it. So...
It is a useful material. And you can get a lot. It was a good, cheap way to do things as well. And it didn't have some of the downsides of things like fine cast, for example. Right. But it had a fridge, so you couldn't really file it because the surface would burr up. You had to use a knife to clean everything or a knife edge to get mold lines and stuff. And you can only use super glue on it. You couldn't use poly cement or anything. So it wasn't ideal. And they tried to move across to either full resin and also into hard plastic.
But between that and some steps of rules, the game suffered. So I think it was two years ago now, they sold it to Steamforged, the guys who used to do Guild Ball, which itself started as a spin-off. The guys who made it were fans of War Machine, and Guild Ball is basically their interpretation of it in a lot of ways. But they were offered by the team of Privateer. Privateer offered to sell them their full line, Kit and Caboodle. And so Steamforged have been making quite good inroads in the game, from what I understand.
is gaining back in popularity. The rules, if you pay a subscription for War Machine App, which is like £5 a month, you have full access to all the rules for every faction. No need to buy another codex with code in it. You just have all the rules and the faction rules available in one place. And that has been doing pretty well for them. So there are models that GW...
probably won't use, but you know, they're not stupid. They do pay attention to what's going on. Yeah. It'd be nice if they did kind of edge towards it as well, because it would be customer friendly. Absolutely. Creative use of ramrod there. If it works, it works. Really would. What was the spit meant to do, actually? I never quite knew. I love it just shoots the howl. I think it was just to kind of give a bit of extra... Was it meant to lube up the ball? I think a little bit, yeah. Okay.
the rifle rifles have always been a bit of a in this era the rifle was particularly noteworthy because um you couldn't load it as quickly as a musket because musket's a smooth ball and the rifles they're rifles so the ball has to work its way down the grooves right and you need the grooves because that's what makes it more accurate because um back in the one of the things is that musket engagements are normally you could stand 20 meters from each other in a firing line and you could still miss yeah with whereas a rifle they could be exceptionally accurate but you couldn't fire at the same rate of you couldn't do the same rate of fire as you could have a musket right slower but more accurate hmm yeah it was actually a long range weapon rather than the musket which was just a yeah well you know roll a d20 we'll see if you hit yeah i mean we're talking accurate for this era yeah still not exactly you could do some decent things but uh you're not hitting someone a quarter of a mile away put it that way you still you still
probably 100 metres at best. You're not going to be assassinating, basically, either. No. And you're certainly not getting a double tap on someone. No. Well, you might if they just don't move afterwards. Yeah. Once they're dead and then you shoot the corpse again, it's like, eh, that counts. Ten minutes of waiting. Man, that'd be hilarious. Got him. Got him. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Nearly. There it is. Yeah. I mean, in fairness...
the riflemen of British Army could still fire their rifles at a surprisingly quick rate. I mean, the show they run in the series is that at least Sharp's unit can get through pretty quick. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the trademarks for British Army of this period, and right through to the end of... You got to the point where, do you remember in Zulu, you have the first rank fire, second rank fire moment, when Zulu's breached the farm. Well, that's kind of what came down as the mad minute. And it was a tactic that...
the British army used for most of the 1800s. And like I said, we do see it in a couple of the later episodes of this. The idea that you would have multiple ranks and they could fire and reload at such a rate, you would have almost a solid minute of fire happening where there was just nothing but lead coming your way. You could not stop it because it was just, as one rank reloaded, the other one fired, rank behind was readying. It became...
It was quite a fearsome thing to witness. Ah, there, yeah. Yeah. It was limited, but couldn't be used in every situation, but when it was available, frighteningly effective. And then you had a strange recall on the 95th Rifles, who were really one of the first units to also use camouflage. Oh, okay. Is that why they're in green? Pretty much. And it's part of the reason they were so, they were looked down at by large parts of...
the officer corps of british army in particular because there was great pride in those red in the red jackets in the red uniform the idea of a unit that sculpted around in green and shot from unseen positions that that always kept that was looked down as being um not gentlemanly that's dishonorable right which is not not entirely untrue but rather not dead so you know and it kind of was a way of trying to the thing is also especially this british army a lot of men were Not press gang so much, but they were there because they had no other choice. It wasn't what we think of today as a professional army in that regard. The officer corps was a lot of people from nobility or wealth who had bought their commissions. That was how you progressed. You bought your commissions. Yeah. And as an officer, you had to pay for everything. So you had to pay for your... Unlike the enlistment who their uniforms were pretty much given to them, they were still taking out their wages. An officer had to buy all of their kit. Everything was... So it's part of the reason why it was regarded as only for...
for well off because an enlisted man who promoted would be an officer would get an officer salary but that would not be enough to cover all the like the the mess fees for the officer's mess yeah uh you would have you're expected to have to pay for basically for a servant effectively to have someone available to do that stuff for you so yeah it was a weird period to put it mildly yeah that's uh that's the wind blowing and it's closing the door I thought somebody had gone awry there. No, no, no. No. Fear not. Nothing's broken. The comedy of this scene is quite funny how you can see the chosen man all anxious to get some food and the priest just keeps on going. Yeah. Oh, there it is. To be fair, I wouldn't mind having that tonight for my meal. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's some meat and bread, so that's never bad. Fresh bread too, I would imagine. That's chicken? Probably chicken. More than likely. Oh, they're right stuck in. Go on.
There's no need to waste the booze, though. They're just dribbling it all over the shop. Come on, now. Absolutely. Oh, yes, that was the officer's hall, and that was the men's hall, and this is the gentleman's meal, isn't it? The upstanding citizens with manner and decorum. Yes, and looking down on simple affairs, shall we say. Yes, yes, exactly. Oh, there's a sentiment, death of the French. A quality British phrase. Well, I mean...
We've been kicking each other asses for a thousand years plus now. Yes, no need to stop now. True. I mean, in fairness, we've been kicking each other asses on this island, English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, for far longer than that. It's just so rude when other people get involved, you know? Yeah, exactly. We've got our own thing to do. It is a fascinating little depiction of this period. What about it is fascinating, do you feel? Just that it doesn't do a bad job to get across how different elements of society lived. And did it under occupation as well.
Exactly. The Peninsula Campaign is called out because Napoleon had conquered Spain and most of Portugal. Yeah. He'd done what hadn't really been done for a very long time. Yeah, not since the Crusades? Crusades were a bit different because they were... I'll try it to the Crusades, I should say. Technically, the Holy Roman Empire was most of Germany through to the...
the Baltics and the Balkans, if I remember rightly. The Ottomans took over Spain and Portugal for a long time. Then the Crusades came around and they kicked them all out. Well, not quite. The Ottomans was... Hang on, I'm trying to get my... Because it wasn't the Ottomans. Oh, what is it? It's a very specific term for it. The Ottoman Empire was more... Was basically what was the Western Roman Empire... Well, the Eastern Roman Empire from Byzantium across. When Byzantium fell and became Istanbul, it changed again. And yeah, that gets real weird.
Saracens. The Saracens, I think, were the ones who took Spain. Portugal and Spain, right. Yes. And then the Crusades were main... I'm trying to get it in my head, because the Crusades were always a little bit more spotty on. The Crusades were more... I guess it depends which Crusade you're talking about, because there's a couple of them. Like Abaddon. Saracens and the Moors. Yes, that was it. Ah, okay. But the Crusades were more about... They tended more to go... They didn't go through Spain so much, if I remember. They tended to go through...
mainland Europe and cross either via the Mediterranean ports of France and Italy, or even going the even longer way around, down through Bohemia and that sort of way, through what we now call heading towards Greece and across the straits that way. The Crusades get weird because some of those ended up going nowhere near the Holy Lands. It's all real, real weird. As is the way for these. Apparently, according to a quick Google search, the liberation of Spain from the Muslim rule Al-Andalus was not achieved by a single crusade, but rather through a century-long series of military campaigns known as the Reconquista, the Reconquest, which lasted roughly 718 to 1492. Going to a Wikipedia article. When the Reconquista was largely political expansion by the northern Christian kingdoms, it was heavily influenced by the crusade's movement from the 11th century onwards with the...
the greeting crusade status and spiritual reward indulgences of those fighting in Libya, apparently. Going to a quick AI Google search. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah. And of course, the old papal indulgences is the reason all that stuff got started in the first place. Or the idea is that a lot of crusades were undertaken because those involved were basically given the understanding that they had... How should I put this? They had...
The church condoned it and guaranteed anyone who partook was guaranteed a place in heaven, no matter their sins on earth. Which, honestly, for some folks, that's a pretty heady incentive to march off and start slaughtering people. Yeah, I guess that was the religious motivation. Apparently, again, according to Google, there was a request for help from the Byzantines appeal. It also says geopolitical and social dynamics controlling violence. I'm just reading the bullet points. I'm not going to read any more than that. Territorial and economic interests and the Papal influence, whatever that is. PayPal. PayPal. Yes, the PayPal influence. Yes. Apparently, those were the reasons why. Again, we're quick at Google search, at least. Yeah. I mean, in Venice, the Spanish Reconquest or...
had other... It was literally a reconquest. The Spanish lands were taken. The Spanish want them back. It's one of the oldest motives anyone could have to take back what was taken. There's a little bit of what's happening here in Sharp as well, I suppose. It's not to the same extent, but the Spanish were fighting back against the French trying to gain their independence, right? Which is why they were helping British. Yeah. It always gets a little murky because... At least that's what's presented in Sharp, at least. Absolutely. Man, I always forget Brian Cox. He's such a good actor.
Is he still around Brian Cox or is he... Yeah, he's not shoved off yet. I imagine he won't go before Trump had a pure spite. I can't remember the last thing I saw Brian Cox in, though. He was in... He quit working or is he still... No, he was in that big Emmy Award winning series Succession for a few years. Okay. He's in a film out soon, actually, with Alan Cumming, which I think is more of a slightly lighter family drama slash comedy sort of affair. Okay. They play a pair of...
Highland Brothers, which actually sounds quite fun, to be fair, so he knows to do that. I think he's also got some directing lined up. I haven't looked too close into that one, to be fair. But he is still working. He still pops up on stuff quite often, because the man's opinionated, and if he sees someone being an ass, he won't hesitate to say it. An actor in Hollywood, opinionated. I've never heard of such a thing. No, actors in Hollywood definitely keep their cards close to the chest.
I mean, he has spent the last few years playing basically Rupert Murdoch and makes no bones about the fact that he despises the man. Fair enough. Oh, no. Well, at least he had an apple before he died. I was going to say, upside down. Nice apple. Yeah. Depending if he starts coughing up blood, then he's going to have bloody apple, which wouldn't be very nice tasty. Yeah, that's true. So hopefully he swallowed the apple. Well, if you swallow the apple and then you start coughing up blood, you might cough up the apple along with the blood. That wouldn't be good either.
So I guess the best bet is to start chewing the apple, and then as soon as he gets stabbed, spit out the apple. So it doesn't ruin it for you, right? I mean, I suppose you kind of have to be expected to be stabbed, which... If you're working on the assumption that any pretty young lady who gives you an apple is then going to turn and stab you, I suspect you may have some deeper-seated issues you may need to seek attention for. That's true. Oh, I do remember this set is used as well in another episode for another location. I can't remember which one, but I definitely remember this location being used again in a future episode. I think it's the episode, spoilers, where the young kid who's part of the Honored Men die, unless that's this episode. I don't think it is.
I think he makes it through. Yeah, it is because it's the one where Harper gets really annoyed at the traitor and kills him because he was an Irish dude who turned and he wasn't happy about that. So yeah, they do reuse the set again wherever this is. Which I don't know if it's an actual set or if it's just a historic town that they used for a location set. I'm not entirely sure. No. It looks real. If you look at the wall, it doesn't look like it's made out of papier-mâché. It looks like it's actual stone. It would be way cheaper to use an old Spanish medieval village than it would be to try and make one. Very true.
And, I mean, if part of the reason they've gone to Crimea to shoot is because we're still building settlements like this around, then that makes sense. It's understandable. He's so short. He's like a whole head smaller than Sean Bean. Look at those lovely epaulettes. That's true. He's very Italian, I suppose. Or Spanish. That man needs a haircut, bless him. I can't comment. I resemble that remark. Well, you're frint in the front and long in the back.
I'm long everywhere with the hair at the moment. That's not the same, because he's got a short cut right at the front of it. It's not a mullet, but it's edging towards mullet-y areas. That's true. I read that more as his hair was a bit thin that way, which I'm kind of that way inclined. He is thinner at the front, but it's thinner and then also short. It is, isn't it? That's a look. It's a look, yes. A half mullet? I don't know. It's weird. I think he has Sean with his thick fashion. Yeah, wow. Yorkshire man's hair.
Oh, the Colonel does have an excellent moustache. He does, he does. He's even tweaked the ends just a little bit as well, it seems like. We've had a reasonable, decent amount of action scenes in this show as well so far. Just this one episode for a pilot. We have. It's done. It's given you a decent feel for what to expect, you know? Yeah. Oh no, children. Oh no. The worst of all of God's creations. I mean, you do sometimes have to wonder. I'm all for people indulging in their faith, but...
You're saying there's a time and a place. You're literally walking amongst the corpses of a battle that's still ongoing. Yeah, we've got stuff to do, you know? I suppose. You know, God's not going to praise himself, is he? They got in in time before the battle actually started, so it's okay. They probably have done a Monty Python joke where they're just looking at the watches like, come on. You know, I'm kind of surprised what the Monty Python ads didn't tackle.
something in this era. Ah, yeah. I mean, if we could have got more Monty Python stuff, I wouldn't have been against it. That's actually very true. Yeah. No, not the hay. Can you just shoot a box of hay and it's set on fire with a rifle bullet? Well, that's the thing. He wasn't actually firing a bullet. Oh, what was it? I didn't know. I thought it was a bullet in there. From my understanding, that's literally just firing the gunpowder. Ah, okay. So it was the powder but without the bullet in. Okay. That makes sense. So you get a flash. Yeah, the heat. Yeah. It might have been possible to do it with the bullet, but I think they probably would have just...
to be on the safe side because waste of a waste of a musket ball yeah yeah yeah that makes sense okay i just looked at that show and hang on did i miss a part where they just laced it with alcohol or something i know it's hay and it's hay's flammable but you know come on yeah effectively this ball ends as a capture the flag um mission does doesn't it yeah i mean it's it's a pretty good action scene for for this for this year as well yeah for a british show which probably didn't have a huge budget compared to like your american things yeah of the time yeah my name is inigo montoya who killed my brother i am your brother prepared to die You never shared your toys. Look, I wanted to be the leader of the house, and when you became leader of the house, I thought I'll betray my entire family so I could win and become the leader of the house or something. I'm jealous. That's the reason. Hi-yah, flames. Hi-yah, bullet. That goes intended. The sword work here is a little bit a new hope Star Wars fighting. Yeah.
And I think it's the actors who haven't been choreographed desperately extensively. Obviously, that's fine. But it is just a little tussle. Yeah. I mean, it gives the fight a little more, not realism, but sometimes if you see a fight that's really well choreographed, it can even take you out of things. I don't think we would have had that in this era, though. No. I mean, honestly, at this point, the best sword fights you're going to get were on Highlander the series. Oh, man. But they took their sword play very seriously. Yeah. I completely forgot Highlander had a series.
A lot of people do. I remember the cartoon series, but not the TV show. Yeah, the TV show is surprisingly good a lot of the time. Are you hopeful for the next movie? I think I am. Okay. We haven't seen trailers for it yet, though, have we? Not yet. I don't think I've finished filming yet. Ah, okay. I wasn't sure when it was meant to be out. I've seen people talk about it. Yeah, I mean, we've had some behind-the-scenes stuff. Some, you know, single shots of the actors and whatnot. I'm cautiously optimistic. I mean...
Henry Cavill, as Connor McLeod, has this potential there. He showed that with Geralt. He can do Grizzled Swordsman. And if they lean into some of the flashbacks, that will give them a chance to show off some additional chops. Dave Bautista as the Kurgan, though. That I really... Because the thing is, the images they've shown, it looks like they're potentially leaning... Because Clancy Brown discussed this in interviews. His original intent for the Kurgan, in the present day, he wanted him to be... So when he first appears...
not be the punk but to be you know completely suited and booted you know mister i have the money of god and i can do whatever i like you know yeah and as the film goes on in the present day he he gets more and more he strips layers off until he's back to being the warlord kind of barbarian right yeah that would have been interesting to see it would i so it looks like i could be wrong but from what we've seen it looks like they may be leaning that way with batista's take on the kurgan which i i'm actually generally excited to see how he does was highlander a book originally uh Was it made up of something? Because I was going to say, if it goes down that trail, is that more accurate to the original source material or not? That is a good question. I remember... No, it wasn't based on a book, but it was begun as an undergraduate script writing project. That's an assignment. And the guy who did it, he drew information from Ridley Scott for Jewelists. Oh, okay. But no, it's interesting.
Yeah, so he started off with the idea of two swordsmen fighting over decades and just expanded it out long-term and then visited the Tower of London and Scotland and saw some armor displays and just kind of pieced it together from there. Right. Which is Gregory Wyden, this guy who wrote Highlander. Oh. But it's kind of fascinating that something he wrote as a student project has had that much life to it. Yeah, yeah. Well, a good movie will do that for you, I suppose, won't it? Yeah, absolutely. Something that hitches itself into culture.
One good movie with a banging soundtrack. And then The Quickening. Well, no one talks about The Quickening. No, you missed the way you're going to talk about it at some point. Yeah. Wasn't there a third one as well? There were five Highlander movies. Oh, God. Yeah, there was Highlander 3 The Sorcerer with Mario Van Peebles. Was that the third one? Yep. Okay. There was Highlander 4 Endgame, which is the one that brought in Adrian Paul from the TV series and saw off Connor.
And then there was The Source, which is a film... I don't have the words. I only own a copy of it because I bought it for like pence as an ex-rental copy. S-A-U-C-E or S-O-U-C-E? S-O-U-R-C-E. The Source. No, that's a shame. It should be The Source is in like a carbonara source. That would be funny. This is a film that's so cheap, they can't even use the original Queen version of Princess of the Universe. Oh, really? Okay. They have a really bad cover instead. No. Yeah. It's...
Yeah, man, that was so weird. Just because the series is actually quite good for most part. Did it last long? I want to say seven seasons. Okay. I mean, the first episode was one of these feature length pilots they did in that era, and they got Christopher Lambert in as Connor to ask for Torch. Okay. I mean, it was quite hit. I mean, hell, Hardest was so popular in France that the funding for the series meant that they had to shoot half the season each year in France. Oh, damn. Because the French...
dug the series so much, which is kind of funny. I do love... That's sharp! Yeah. Yeah. That's a mission statement quite nicely, I think, with this one. Daring do. The chosen men are all on the same page as their lieutenant. Yep. Nicely tied up in a bow. Absolutely. And he got the girl as well. He did. Or she got him and then left him. Well, quite. She just wanted him for his body. What a bitch. I mean, in this era... And more than a piece of meat, says Sean Bean. I mean, sadly, Sean, in this era, well...
You've only got yourself to blame for that, mate. But yeah, that was quite an entertaining little demo, isn't it? Yeah. We still need to do the Nightmare on Elm Street. I mean, if you want to do Nightmare on Elm Street, we can do. Well, that was what we originally planned at one point. We were going to do Dream Warriors because you hadn't seen it. That's true. Yeah. But then you told me you were watching Sharp. So I thought, oh, that's a good idea. I'm going to tie that into some war games as well. But no, we might have to potentially look at it.
doing more than just that one, possibly doing all of them. Oh, God, no. Oh, my God. Oh, God. Look, I'm sorry. My brain is very much one where if you put me on a subject, I will... I think most of them are bad. Most of them are bad. Three is really good. The first one's an interesting idea. Two's not great. I don't remember if there is a good one after three. I don't think there is. I think the next good one after three is Freddy vs. Jason. Isn't New Nightmare quite well regarded? It's boring. There's some ideas in there, but it's really dull.
It's a little bit like a bad version of Scream in some ways. In some ways. Kind of a bit of a test run for what they do with Scream. Maybe. I mean, Wes Anderson pops in as Wes Anderson. Wes Craven. That him too. Yeah, he's there as well. Yeah, Wes Craven's in there. As himself. You know what? That would not surprise me if the idea for Scream came from what they did on New Nightmare. And it was like, well, what can we do with this? Yeah, it came first, didn't it? Oh, yeah. And then Scream came out. Yeah. Yeah, that was a good...
God, at least five, six years, I think, between the two. Oh, God, was it that long? Oh, my God. Something like that. Okay. I can tell you I'll never do every Friday the 13th movie because they're even more boring. Yeah. There's only two good Friday the 13th movies. One's Jason X. Well, three. One's Freddy vs. Jason because that's just fantastic. And the other one I say isn't too bad. It's not great, but it's fine. Shockingly, it's not Michael Bay, but Michael Bay's company did the remake. And that was okay. It's very good, but it's fine.
it's like the most like ready salted packet of crisps you've ever had for a horror film with a slasher in it of that era that's fine okay that's an interesting weight endorsement of the film yeah it's it's kind of like um when they did texas chainsaw massacre at the beginning the same company the same michael bay company is very i remember it being very much a packet of crisps and just being like yeah i'd like something but yeah house of wax with paris hilton now that's a movie now that's a funny movie that's a good one to do oh you know what we could have you seen that i haven't it's weird my it's My horror credentials as a film viewer are shockingly light in some areas. Well, to be fair, you see yourself from a lot of bad movies, I would argue. I mean, there is that. Yeah. I've always been more of a sci-fi and fantasy kind of guy or straight drama, whereas horror, I've watched some. Yeah. But a lot of things that people would think are kind of like obvious horror hits to have watched, I haven't. Oh, like what? I mean, I haven't watched most of the Child's Play movies. I haven't watched most of, well, I said Friday the 13th. I haven't watched most of Nightmare on Elm Street. I've watched the first one. I haven't watched things like The Exorcist.
Oh, okay, okay. There are some films where I probably, when I mention it to people, they're like, really? Yeah, yeah. I still, to this day, have not gotten around to watching 28 days or 28 weeks later. Oh, you don't want to see... I owned them both on DVD. At one point, I borrowed them off a friend of mine for about a year, and I still never go around to watching the damn things. Days is pretty good. Weeks is, like, so convoluted and stupid. It's really bad. You know what you should do? You should do The Exorcist or one of The Exorcist sequels with George. George would like that. Totally good at that. We have been brainstorming ideas.
You can ask which Exorcist movie, because it's either going to be the first one, or I can't remember which is the other good Exorcist movie, but there is another one, which people are like, it was badly regarded when it came out, but now it's actually, I think it's the third one, but I'm not sure. I think he might be right on that score, yeah. Yeah, either way, I think you might be able to wrangle George with that. That's not too bad. Probably. Honestly, he seems to have had a whale of a time with what we did on, which one did we do with him? Dark City. He was incredibly engaging on that one.
We got the feeling afterwards he would be right up for doing something else. The Matrix, he'd really love that. What we do for that one, we tell him if we're going to do one film and then we... Oh, it's actually The Matrix. Oh, I'd be so pissed. Yeah, that'd be great. He would. Yeah, I like it. Great idea. But I don't want to do it because I want to keep doing deeper dives with him because I enjoy doing that. If you're not pissing off the maze, you're not doing it right. He'll boot me off the server if I do that. Just go back. Just open the negative space. No, that's true.
It's like a black hole, it just pulls you in. It does. The gravity of this all this... Yes, yes. But anyway, that was Sharp Rifles, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us if you're still here. Andy, where can folks find you if they're that way inclined? I'm on Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube as DecadeAndy. I do streaming and stuff every now and again, and also on the Moonbase 2 Transformers podcast. Moonbase 2 Transformers podcast. Yeah. You're on that sometimes. Sometimes. We get to reminisce about toys that are either way better than we remember, or way, way better. Yeah.
Always a good time back. On which note, folks, if you've gone this far, thank you as always for listening. Thank you, Andy, for joining me. This has been great fun. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. No worries. And I'm not sure what we'll be doing next on Clufferbusters, but we hope you'll be there to listen to it. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.