by Ed Fortune
Hammer and Bolter is Games Workshop’s animated anthology series, taking stories from the worlds of Warhammer. Their latest offering is Undercity, a gritty little tale that transports us to the Age of Sigmar, a high fantasy setting filled with god-powered holy knights, delusional ghouls and magic airships. Though, as the name suggests, Undercity is a bit more down to earth than all that.
The story introduces us to Callis and Toll, a pair of heroes that fans will have previously seen in a series of action-adventure fantasy novels by Nick Horth. Toll is a Freeguild Knight, which means he’s a skilled warrior in heavy armour who doesn’t really have a boss. He’s tough, surly and permanently irritated, and tries to keep out of trouble. Callis is a Witch Hunter, which means he’s always looking for trouble. They’re a double act. They work well together but hate each other. They’re essentially Age of Sigmar’s ‘buddy cop’ pairing.
Undercity sees them investigating a series of missing person cases, which of course, goes wrong. Wackiness ensues, as does a lot of violence and a fair bit of creative swearing. Some familiar monsters are featured, and fans of old-school Warhammer fantasy stories will be delighted by the grim dark tone, which is synonymous with the Warhammer brand.
This show also sees Warhammer settle into a specific animated style, a sort of stylistically scrappy, ’80s British comic books brought to life” look that is instantly recognisable and quite pleasing. It’s smoothly done and well thought out. As always, the sound design and voice-acting are superb; Games Workshop mastered the art of audio production quite some time ago, and they use all these skills with their animated shows.
Undercity is grim, gritty and great. More of this, please.
