Forge World - What would you like to see for AoS?

[Carnelian]

2 hours ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

 

I agree that there's less need for FW to produce big models now than there used to be. IMO they need to have a long hard think about what their purpose actually is with regard to supporting the main AoS line. Historically it was all about making the big expensive monsters that the GW studio couldn't or wouldn't produce, but times have moved on the years that they've been distracted by 30K and there's no longer any need for them to fulfill that role. Ditto dynamic and detailed character models, which used to be one of FW's strengths, but which the GW studio can now knock out in their sleep. Churning out random characters and monsters with no relationship to the lore won't fly either unless they can show that they have a very strong grasp of the new aesthetic and setting, which I'm just not seeing in their recent output - unless they can improve the quality and imagination of their sculpts by leaps and bounds I really don't have much interest in seeing them produce any more characters for the time being. The fact that they've been working on this Khornate dragon for 2 years and have rescuplted the rider 3 times speaks volumes to me. They're clearly stuck in old habits and are butting their heads against a brick wall.

That leaves big mechanical structures (Ironweld and Skaven constructs), vehicles (Kharadron airships), scenery and upgrade kits, all of which they still do very well and which are not particularly well supported by the GW studio. If they play to their strengths with those things then I think the future will be very bright indeed. They just need to lose this mentality that they're the big monster guys because it's not doing them any favours.

Good points.

I think they are having a bit of an identity crisis for AoS. I do like your suggestion of fortifications and other mechanical structures

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Skarloc said:

Agreed..

But why not under a single brand and under a single web store? Not to mention the fact that FW products are not available in GW stores..

Over the past months, I ordered a few FW products, in fact only Blood Bowl miniatures: the 2 referees, the Skaven expansion pack, the Dwarf hero, ..

But on those 3 occasions, the shipment cost to Belgium was almost half the price of the miniature.s. Whereas they could have been included in other orders I placed on the GW web store as shipped from the same location, i.e. GW's Lenton factory.

"One web store to buy them all, one web store to find them, one web store to purchase them all and in one shipment to send them all"

 

My assumption has always been that Forge World is actually a third-party company that operates under license from GW. It's the only way I can explain certain weird quirks like the way they don't really seem to share any resources with the rest of GW, the way their models have a markedly different aesthetic to the main GW range, and the way the the two studio's projects and release schedules don't seem to be coordinated with each other in any way.

[hughwyeth]

2 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

My assumption has always been that Forge World is actually a third-party company that operates under license from GW. It's the only way I can explain certain weird quirks like the way they don't really seem to share any resources with the rest of GW, the way their models have a markedly different aesthetic to the main GW range, and the way the the two studio's projects and release schedules don't seem to be coordinated with each other in any way.

I believe it's just a different deparment but it's still GW staff. 

I really like the Warpgnaw Verminlord they released relatively recently. That and the Skaven Warlord on Brood Horror. 

I think it would be good for them to develop the chaos dwarves some more and Tamurkhan's Horde- like Death Corps of Krieg for 40k, it's interesting to have a totally seperate army by Forge World and would be nice to have some for AoS. 

[Thomas Lyons]

On 1/30/2018 at 3:28 PM, Gecktron said:

I too would like to see upgrade sets. 
I think Kharadrons are perfect for these kinds of sets. They can make an nearly endless amount of new units with just a few resin bits. A skypike and a shield for thunderers to make a heavy, defense orientated unit, a sniper rifle for Arkanauts or just a few turrets or guns for the three existing sky vessels (maybe even one that makes the Gunhauler useful…).
Besides that, I would love to see one of the many bigger ships GW teased in the Battletome! 

So many different ships just in one picture! The big one on the right is a bit too big I think, but the one in the middle would look like a perfect fit! 2 carabine turrets on each side, and three turrets with 2 sky cannons each could be doable in the 750-850 points range.

Just another example of some of the great ship designs. That ship belongs to Barak-Thryng, the smallest of the official sky ports. It wouldn't be hard for FW to justify a whole number of them in service of the various sky ports. 

While I would certainly love a Khrundhal class KO ship, the scale of this ship would be better served as a 6x4 realm of battle board rather than an actual model.  That said...I would buy this board, lol.

[Ollie Grimwood]

Yep Forge World are part of GW they’re in the same building at Lenton as well. They function in quite a different way to GW proper though much more approachable and open (not so pronounced these days) in my staff days you could just walk down to their offices and they’d show you what they were working on (as did the specialist Games dept).  You couldn’t do that with the GW design studio. FW have always been more forth coming with upcoming releases and stuff.  They were basically “new” GW all along. 

Making stuff in Resin makes them viable. Plastic models involve an expensive industrial process which is only viable for volume products. FW makes cool but low volume products which wouldn’t be profitable in plastic.  However due to the lower volume its much easier for them to quality check and take more care of the casting process which is why they didn’t have issues finecast did.  

 

[Kyriakin]

I would like to see them fill-in some of the worst GW sculpts (e.g. Salamanders, Fell Bats, Bat Swarms, Black Coach, Furies, Zombies, Nightrunners, etc.) that are putting people off these factions.

Obviously, this is on the assumption that GW dont have any plans to do so themselves in the following 1-2 years.

In addition, they could get more out of what they do already have, with more faction-specific keywords for the monsters (e.g. COLLEGIATE ARCANE for the Carmine Dragon) and allegiance abilities (etc.) for Legion of Azgorh.

Finally, Fimir.

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Yep Forge World are part of GW they’re in the same building at Lenton as well. They function in quite a different way to GW proper though much more approachable and open (not so pronounced these days) in my staff days you could just walk down to their offices and they’d show you what they were working on (as did the specialist Games dept).  You couldn’t do that with the GW design studio. FW have always been more forth coming with upcoming releases and stuff.  They were basically “new” GW all along. 

Making stuff in Resin makes them viable. Plastic models involve an expensive industrial process which is only viable for volume products. FW makes cool but low volume products which wouldn’t be profitable in plastic.  However due to the lower volume its much easier for them to quality check and take more care of the casting process which is why they didn’t have issues finecast did.  

 

If FW is such a close-knit part of GW-proper, any idea why the FW aesthetic is so obviously different from the main studio? I'm thinking 'organic' character and monster sculpts here, rather than vehicles (which seem pretty closely aligned). It's always bothered me. A huge part of GW's dominance is the fact that they have such a distinctive and characterful house style, so it baffles me that this doesn't seem to be enforced for a lot of FW products.

[Ollie Grimwood]

23 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

If FW is such a close-knit part of GW-proper, any idea why the FW aesthetic is so obviously different from the main studio? I'm thinking 'organic' character and monster sculpts here, rather than vehicles (which seem pretty closely aligned). It's always bothered me. A huge part of GW's dominance is the fact that they have such a distinctive and characterful house style, so it baffles me that this doesn't seem to be enforced for a lot of FW products.

They aren’t particularly close knit and the absence of the usual GW control has been a bit of a hallmark for them (though suspect they do have a conversation of two with the main studio) . Their purpose is to make stuff that does vary from what the main studio makes. Cool stuff that is a bit different, if they just made the same stuff as the main studio there’d be no point to them. Yes the Imperial vehicles do have more of a theme but they kind of have to STC and all that.  

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

They aren’t particularly close knit and the absence of the usual GW control has been a bit of a hallmark for them. Their purpose is to make stuff that does vary from what the main studio makes. Cool stuff that is a bit different, if they just made the same stuff as the main studio there’d be no point to them. Yes the Imperial vehicles do have more of a theme but they kind of have to STC and all that.  

Personally, I don't think the aesthetic should be allowed to stray so significantly from GW's house style - that just smacks of poor brand management to me. Absolutely they should go wild and dare to dream up concepts that break the mould (not literally!), but the execution of that concept should result in a model that looks like it belongs alongside the main studio's output, not like something made by a third party with its own look and feel. There's stuff in the FW range that would look more at home alongside Mierce Miniatures or even (*retch!*) Mantic rather than Citadel, and that can't be right.

[Ollie Grimwood]

15 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

Personally, I don't think the aesthetic should be allowed to stray so significantly from GW's house style - that just smacks of poor brand management to me. Absolutely they should go wild and dare to dream up concepts that break the mould (not literally!), but the execution of that concept should result in a model that looks like it belongs alongside the main studio's output, not like something made by a third party with its own look and feel. There's stuff in the FW range that would look more at home alongside Mierce Miniatures or even (*retch!*) Mantic rather than Citadel, and that can't be right.

Does the fantasy range have a particularly set style though? I suppose it has more so since we’ve had more and more AoS releases. WFB didn’t it was all over the place steampunk, historical, LoTR depending on the race and sometimes in the same race.  Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen many AoS releases from them in that they’re having trouble finding the tone. If I had the time I’d go to an Open day and ask them, if any part of GW would answer that it’d be FW.  

Of course it is quite ironic me saying how free wheeling they are supposed to be with Warhammer stuff and they do the Hobbit line where they’ll have very specific instructions. 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Does the fantasy range have a particularly set style though? I suppose it has more so since we’ve had more and more AoS releases. WFB didn’t it was all over the place steampunk, historical, LoTR depending on the race and sometimes in the same race.  Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen many AoS releases from them in that they’re having trouble finding the tone. If I had the time I’d go to an Open day and ask them, if any part of GW would answer that it’d be FW.  

I do think GW (or Citadel more specifically I suppose) has a distinctive style, although I'd have difficulty articulating exactly what it is. I think it comes down to a range of subtle things that add up to more than the sum of their parts - the heroic proportions of the miniatures, a certain sense of humour, an eye for detail and texture, repeated use of iconic visual cues, etc. Put a Citadel miniature from any era side by side with a miniature from another range and I think you'd be able to tell the difference. Equally, put a Citadel character or monster miniature next to a Forge World one and I think you can see a very clear difference there too.

I think it's become even more pronounced in the last few years, perhaps with the strides made in digital sculpting. I've heard GW say, for example, that each new AoS faction has a library of assets that they can essentially cut, paste and embellish to ensure that the models all share a certain aesthetic and visual consistency. Stormcast iconography was the specific example used, but I'm sure it applies to other factions too. I wonder if they share those resources with Forge World, or if FW are even using the same digital sculpting methods.

[Ollie Grimwood]

@Jamie the Jasper yeah I guess so. I suppose the CAD process is responsible for that. When they used to sculpt by hand each sculpter had a more personal style. 

[flemingmma]

6 hours ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

I do think GW (or Citadel more specifically I suppose) has a distinctive style, although I'd have difficulty articulating exactly what it is. I think it comes down to a range of subtle things that add up to more than the sum of their parts - the heroic proportions of the miniatures, a certain sense of humour, an eye for detail and texture, repeated use of iconic visual cues, etc. Put a Citadel miniature from any era side by side with a miniature from another range and I think you'd be able to tell the difference. Equally, put a Citadel character or monster miniature next to a Forge World one and I think you can see a very clear difference there too.

I think it's become even more pronounced in the last few years, perhaps with the strides made in digital sculpting. I've heard GW say, for example, that each new AoS faction has a library of assets that they can essentially cut, paste and embellish to ensure that the models all share a certain aesthetic and visual consistency. Stormcast iconography was the specific example used, but I'm sure it applies to other factions too. I wonder if they share those resources with Forge World, or if FW are even using the same digital sculpting methods.

Seeing how the stormcast heroes are all based around similar "chassis" so to speak i can definitely believe that.

[Kaleb Daark]

15 hours ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

@Jamie the Jasper yeah I guess so. I suppose the CAD process is responsible for that. When they used to sculpt by hand each sculpter had a more personal style. 

that's still an easy excuse to hide lazy sculpting though.  I work on cad all day, and there's no excuse for lazy design.  Sure, you can have an asset library, an why wouldn't you - giving you the basic skeleton for proportions and stance things like weapons and skulls etc.  but dynamic posing and good modelling should come first.  Look at the shadespire stuff - brilliant.

Factoid for you.... they were models sculpted for two things; one, the scultpor wanted to prove it could be done.  Two, they were originally intended for the paint starter boxes

They are beautiful, dynamic and inspirational models in every way.  I've picked up skeletons again based on those alone.

Whereas I consider things like the blood thirster very lazy and a bit rubbish.  The GUO and lord of change again are brilliant, you'd look at the FW and the GW ones and it would be based on what you like the look of, as they can happily stand toe to toe on the looks good stakes.  The thirster is no contest however, the FW one every single time.  the GW one for me is just so dire that it's embarrassing  - I'm just not a fan of leaping kitty ballerina thirster.    For me, the thirster, like mortarion, like nagash fall down because the sculpter has tried to copy the still from the artwork.  In doing so it just hasn't translated very well, the reposed Nagash on his throne that won golden demon however is just jaw dropping.  Imagine how brutal, fearful and sinister Mortarion would look in his new form if they had carried over the FW pose from his 30k primarch.

I also dislike the archaon for the same reason, technically an amazing model but he looks too flat, when he could have been some massive dynamic sprawling pose in his own right.  How great would he have been having a zombie dragon-esque pose straddling a mighty ruin.  (which is why I won't buy him as I know I'd be hacksawing him apart to re-pose him)

I stress, all the models above are technically amazing and I'd say the best out there, but I do feel that the technical edge that GW has is the very reason it shouldn't be lazy about dynamic design.   But that's me, and we are all different.

 

However, I do believe FW do still sculpt in an oversized scale then scan and reverse engineer in cad - that way they can get really nice split lines and parts mating together spot on.

From what I understand, this is partly the reason why they never shipped or supplied to stores because the increase in output would be something they wouldn't easily cope with.

 

But so not to derail the thread...

Anything over and above a quick warscroll update done in a lunch hour really! (and the khorne dragon... and... )

I see the Legion of Azgorh as the AoS equivalent to the red scorpions as the Forgeworld family army.  A decent campaign book or battle tome would be great, as would the fimir expanded.

I'd love them to do another monstrous compendium for AoS - properly done.  The scrolls of binding would work really well in AoS, and also the chart that was in the original Monstrous compendium would work great as well.  Magma dragons with the Legion of Azgorh is just such an obvious choice for example.

Oh and as always.... kaleb rant about marked war mammoth and skin wolves!

And last of all, maybe a poll or even a "one time only" on older stuff that's now OOP, much like GW has done in the recent past with taking orders for oop models with a cut off date and then producing a run of that model.  This would really work well on the very high cost stuff like mammoths where perhaps an order of fifty or so would make a one off production run viable.  I'd be all over the war mammoth and the curs'd ettin - I missed out on one a few weeks ago, I'd put a ceiling of 150 on it and it went above that.

[DantePQ]

I think that new named characters for every faction would be AWESOME ! scale and style of HH Hero series would be great. I'd love such minis for AoS. 

[Killax]

I agree with the above, character series for AoS would be awesome. By large because it always feels like your willing to pay a little extra for such models, as long as their sculpt is great. Other than that I'm hoping the Khorne Lord on Dragon will be finished in 2018, but as is typical of FW I can see it turn into a non-Khorne related model eventually also.

[DantePQ]

Also what I like with extra characters :

- some reinforcements for existing armies like some cool Kurnoth Hunter captain or Tree Revenant Lord who remember World that Was. 

- they could be flashed out in novels or even short stories. GW is doing excellent job with Malign Portents. 

- I think AoS still is lacking a little bit if personal stories and cool characters especially with minis. We have named God's etc but I would love more grounded characters like Malus Darkbalde, Elthation, Gotrek&Felix to name few. 

[The Door Master]

Fimir.

That is all for me.

[Ulgzhakar]

Battletome for Chaos Dwarfs, Dawi Zharr, Legion of Azgorh, or whatever they want to call them in the Age of Sigmar.

[Barbossal]

I kind of hate myself for saaying this, but they should probably start producing Stormcast equipment variants, ala the space marine chapter changes for 40k. Other chambers and unique designs.

Also, I could actually see Tomb Kings make a return via Forgeworld.

[sol invictus]

11 hours ago, Barbossal said:

Also, I could actually see Tomb Kings make a return via Forgeworld.

I like this idea. I would love to see FW do a new look for Settra.

[Sharkbelly]

Do you see these being complete new models, or add-ones to other kits?

[Aelfric]

On 01/02/2018 at 3:19 PM, Jamie the Jasper said:

My assumption has always been that Forge World is actually a third-party company that operates under license from GW. It's the only way I can explain certain weird quirks like the way they don't really seem to share any resources with the rest of GW, the way their models have a markedly different aesthetic to the main GW range, and the way the the two studio's projects and release schedules don't seem to be coordinated with each other in any way.

Like a latter-day Marauder Miniatures.  Still have most of mine.  

[AnchentChoppa]

Greenskinz battletome and more models for them.

[bsharitt]

I'd actually like to see Forgeworld stay out of most of the normal armies except for truly ridiculous models(i.e. Titan sized). GW is doing pretty good with the big plastic centerpiece models and I'd like to see them continue with that and also pickup things like the chaos mammoth just to make that stuff more accessible. Outside of ridiculous stuff, I'd prefer to see FW focus on specialty armies, whether it's Chaos Dwarfs, Fimir, or something else.