The hot new thing in 40K is a £100 plastic trenchline called the 'Wall of Martyrs', except it's not a trenchline of course* because as Dave Andrews suggests in the new WD, very helpfully shown in this photo at Tale of Painters, that would mean persuading the buyers to buy deeper boards, which could more difficult to store, and to stock, and even design.
Dave Andrews, on the same pages, calls the raised shield or fire port a 'mantlet', a term still used today for the small shield at the base of a barrel on a tank. It's always good to see a less common word. But is it the best word? We wargamers can be quite rigorous.
Two other options might be truer. The first is 'pavise', the function of which goes back at least to the mind(s) of Homer. The second is 'balistraria', often used to mean 'arrow slit'.
I can see why GW might avoid 'pavise', and 'mantlet' does have a clanking sound, but it's fairly close to 'Mantic' too. They could have tried a 40K8 coining like 'Balistarium'. Maybe even 'Hole of Glories' for that fire port, to follow up the 'x of y' format of 'Wall of Martyrs'?
And how about that last option? Would it be an acceptable term - casually - for the kind of product that players often call 'plastic crack'? Is 'plastic crack' itself a suitable term..?
Whatever. Say you then mantlet, pavise or balistraria? I'm interested in new options too.
* This non-trenchline trenchline is cleverly explained in-universe by having it brought down to the surface on landers. That's near-civilised in a people that apply exterminatus - a kind of nuking from orbit. The Imperium really ought to turn that logistical magic to something useful, like jobs fit for heroes in galaxy-class industries.
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5 comments:
It's an expensive beauty!
To use any of the words would lend some historical kudos to what plainly aint historical.
A pavise is a movable shield a mantlet, a wooden wall on wheels or a wooden addition to a castle wall so they are both out. Balistraria..as you say, a slit for firing arrows (and such like) through so that doesn´t fit either.
If it´s sold in japan it will cost about 40,000 yen so..a 40k 40k wall.
Cheers
paul
@ The Angry Lurker - As with so much of what GW do, I wonder why it wasn't done 10 years ago, even if in a more limited form. They often seem to me to be behind the curve, as if they're either missing a trick or just overly cautious. I'd probably have snapped this up back then and gone to town converting it, but now I just feel the lost time. Think how much more they could have explored since then, or kept up with. They're only now properly into the Heresy for example, but we could be 10,000 years further back than that by now, or 10,000 years further ahead, even forgetting about all the other possible options for pure 40K, and all the things that these days hardly get mentioned.
@ Paul's Bods - It seems reasonable to adapt a traditional term, for familiarity at least, but for me too the problem is that none of them quite work, or rather the insufficiency of each is roughly equal. Maybe because of that sense of anachronism, while I was looking at them pondering alternative terms I actually started redesigning them in my mind. It could be that the language is too far behind, but also that the design here isn't far enough ahead, leaving us stuck in between.
I like "Balistarium". But one concept in the background of 40k is that of "lost knowledge". Therefore, using a noun that has one meaning to ourselves may be completely different to our descendants later on in time. Take for example the word "hussy" which has undergone a significant evolution in its meaning.
So for that reason, I can accept the term "trenchline" as a descriptor, even though its blatantly wrong to ourselves! :)
That seems fair enough, and maybe as good a reason as any. With so many systems, supplements and individual editions making up even the official 41st millennium, and so much purer fiction, pretty much anything can go, from the earnest and inconsequential to the goofy and grand.
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