So based on the cover alone this is what I thought was going to happen in Ironclad. Small group of Medieval villagers gets harassed by some assholes. From here on out we will call the assholes the outlanders, because they are potentially an invading army or something. At first it seems like there will be nothing they can do about this, the outlanders outnumber them ten to one and they are superior in arms and training. Cue destruction. Then, from out of the ashes rises a lowly blacksmiths son (his father dies at the hands of the leader of the outlanders) who spends literally minutes of a montage fashioning a suit of armour the likes of which has never been seen before, it is not pretty, but it is robust, and it makes him almost invincible. The next time the outlanders arrive to cause havoc he stands alone, surprising them with his swordplay and scaring them with his badass suit. The other previously chickenshit villagers rally behind him and it turns out they could defeat the outlanders with ease – but only after a nice long battle. What I thought was going to happen based purely on the cover was largely wrong though. The outlanders are sort of there, they are some sort of (Scandinavian?) mercenaries, but beyond this absolutely nothing I imagined happened. The suit of armour is just a normal suit of armour and its only worn for about six minuites. Ironclad is a wildly historically inaccurate but good fun bit of Medieva dressup, I enjoyed it but I certainly l don’t think its winning any prizes. The cover also said it had Brian Cox in it, but it let me down again when it wasnt Professor Brian Cox – he would have been amazing playing the lowly blacksmiths son, and probably has the intellect to make a pretty amazing suit of armour.