What is up with the Stormcast's mounts?

[Killax]

I'm still wondering about their mouths. Like does the helmet mouth move when they talk? 

[MrZakalwe]

10 minutes ago, Beliman said:

and of course, it helps with the copyright (and not the other way around, like your comment suggest).

 

It was a policy that seemed to start after the GW chapterhouse breakdown (that whole thing seemed to scar their corporate culture). 

The only real exception to it has been the Star Drake.

 

You don't accidentally end up with the results they have. 

 

Edit: I very much doubt anybody is going to defend the skypug.

[Jamopower]

The copyright law is quite complicated, I would say the new designs are more of a brand thing. There might of course be some copyrighting ambitions as well, but I doubt that big knights with lighting motifs and hammers on flying monsters has really watertight protection. I bet Scibor and others have done plenty of similar models even before the Stormcast were even a thing. But if they can generate Stormcast in to similar brand as Marines, and I don't see why they couldn't when you put few years on it, and start doing videogames and such, it's a big thing for the company.

[Beliman]

1 minute ago, MrZakalwe said:

It was a policy that seemed to start after the GW chapterhouse breakdown (that whole thing seemed to scar their corporate culture). 

The only real exception to it has been the Star Drake.

 

You don't accidentally end up with the results they have. 

Nobody says the contrary. That's the policy for everyone that wants unique and non-standard products. 

[Knight Scáthach of Fimm]

I think they're running with the concept of Griffons and Hippogryphs being (somewhat) noble creatures, that are formed out of an amalgamation of others.

[Jamopower]

7 minutes ago, Knight Scáthach of Fimm said:

I think they're running with the concept of Griffons and Hippogryphs being (somewhat) noble creatures, that are formed out of an amalgamation of others.

And griffons are traditionally associated with Empire and thus with Sigmar.

[MrZakalwe]

1 minute ago, Jamopower said:

And griffons are traditionally associated with Empire and thus with Sigmar.

 

Also High Elves and Bretonnians. 

They only really became an Empire thing recently since the others got their removed - at that point they became an empire thing by default. 

[Jamopower]

Bretonnians never had Griffons, they had Hippogryffs. The griffon thing was focused more during the 8th with the demigryphs and the new griffon. But the griffon ties in to the twin headed eagle thing of the (Holy Roman) Empire. Of course back in 5th edition pretty much everyone had access to all monsters. I had a dragon for my Dwarfs back then.

[DanielFM]

1 hour ago, MrZakalwe said:

Edit: I very much doubt anybody is going to defend the skypug.

I will. I find it a cool concept and a well executed model. An original twist of an otherwise "mundane" monster.

The Mesopotamic vibe goes hand in hand with the arcane theme of Sacrosanct Chamber.

Plus using funny names for models is quite immature, you know.

PD: I like pugs ?

[MrZakalwe]

40 minutes ago, DanielFM said:

I will. I find it a cool concept and a well executed model. An original twist of an otherwise "mundane" monster.

The Mesopotamic vibe goes hand in hand with the arcane theme of Sacrosanct Chamber.

Plus using funny names for models is quite immature, you know.

PD: I like pugs ?

 

I find the concept quite cool and the rest of the model aside from the face is very nicely realised. 

The problem is that the features on the face come across to me as inbred (which might well be the case in the mutant mount breeding program you'd need to get something like that, I guess) and derpy and it detracts from what's otherwise a really nicely posed and sculpted mount.

If I had to pin down the specific problem with the face it would be that the eyes are pretty much on the side of it's head on an animal where it looks like it really shouldn't be (and some particularly inbred pugs share the same flaw) while they weren't in the concept art (in the concept art the snout has a dip on each side to allow the eyes to look forward that seems to be lacking in the finished model). 

 

Edit: with a sleeker or sleener head it would look cool as hell to me. 

[christophe]

I think they are trying to be orginal and create high fantasy animals inspired by the usual regal animals (dragon, eagle, lion...) and beasts associated with the traditional sun/sky gods (ram, bull...)

[Overread]

I think that the new casting and sculpting methods they've got are letting their creative team be far more free with their creativity. Lets not forget in the past a lot of monsters were very limited in scope- many were basic horse designs or were very thin (serpent dragons) because of the models being all metal. They couldn't afford to easily make bulkier/larger mounts because the costs were just too great.

Fast forward and today the plastic casting is of high quality able to hold good detail and the fact that its plastic lets them make bigger stuff that is hollow. I think also that the inspiration for Warhammer has changed. In the past it was very Tolkien inspired and heavily influenced by it and it almost had a "low magic" feel to many designs (even though it was never low).

 

Right now I'd say Sigmar is being very much your modern epic fantasy; complete with more creative beasts of wonder. I also think that the beasts and mounts and unique appearances are part of what draws people to the Sigmar line over others. 

 

There is some edge to GW wanting to protect copyrights as well, however much of that is more focused on the names. Daughters of Khaine got "khinari" instead of "harpies" yet I'm sure without the copyright name thing they would have had the same looks. So that's purely a name thing. 

[Jamopower]

Well there were Lammasu and Great Taurus already back in 5th edition which both came to my mind as first thing when I saw the new Stormcast beast.

[Soulsmith]

3 hours ago, Killax said:

I'm still wondering about their mouths. Like does the helmet mouth move when they talk? 

Stormcast themselves? They're masks, so nah. Makes them all the more terrifying.

[Ollie Grimwood]

In think the great variation of Stormcast mounts is something to be lauded. It adds greater variation to the line and better represents the variety of the Mortal Realms. The Deepkin dofairly well on that score as well, Eels, Sharks and Turrtles provide nice variation from each other. 

The naming of products is more about Trademarking than IP protection it’s so that people will be directed to GW products when looking for GW products 

[Urauloth]

6 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

Well there were Lammasu and Great Taurus already back in 5th edition which both came to my mind as first thing when I saw the new Stormcast beast.

Right? It's like Sigmar brought the Great Taurus back, but in goat form. They both clearly draw on a Sumerian inspiration, which suits the sacrosanct chamber better than it did the Dawi Zharr imo.

[Nin Win]

5 hours ago, Tenshi said:

What baffles me is that the Stormcast, specially the first wave, had very prominent lion heads on their armor.  But no beast of theirs follows the lion (or even Chimera) theme.

I would have absolutely loved it if the flying creature for this release had a lion head in the style of iconography.

[GeneralZero]

The positive thing for me is that those heros fill a gap in the SCE units choice: there was a big hole between a hero/dracoth and the super sized Stardrake. Now, we have intermediate choice (hopefully multi kit).

On the dark side, I'll have to do huge efforts to like the weirdo faces of those mounts

[sandlemad]

4 hours ago, MrZakalwe said:

It was a policy that seemed to start after the GW chapterhouse breakdown (that whole thing seemed to scar their corporate culture). 

The only real exception to it has been the Star Drake.

It was there before the chapterhouse mess. If you look back to the designers' notes for the old Ogre Kingdoms there was a lot of talk about how they wanted 'distinctly Warhammer ogres', not just generic stuff. Same again when they redid Bretonnia, they talked about making them uniquely part of the warhammer world, not just French knights, and then again when they brought in the thundertusk /stonehorn instead of generic mammoths. It was clearly coming from a desire to differentiate and push GW's own stuff over the alternatives being produced by other miniature makers. This isn't really a good or bad thing in itself and AoS does give the designers more lee-way.

Then came chapterhouse and it turned into obsession. This is where this impulse starts manifesting as all these weird copyright-able names as well as distinctly GW-brand designs. I think theoretically you could have seen these mounts or something like them before the chapterhouse lawsuit in some form, albeit with better names.

EDIT: Come to think of it the 7th/8th edition 'gothicisation' of Empire models was probably part of the same drive. Makes GW stuff a more attractive option than the cheaper historical miniature equivalents.

[MrZakalwe]

3 minutes ago, sandlemad said:

Then came chapterhouse and it turned into obsession. This is where this impulse starts manifesting as all these weird copyright-able names as well as distinctly GW-brand designs. I think theoretically you could have seen these mounts or something like them before the chapterhouse lawsuit in some form, albeit with better names.

 

It was around this time they seemingly became scared of horses. 

[Overread]

23 minutes ago, MrZakalwe said:

 

It was around this time they seemingly became scared of horses. 

that and lets face it, the traditional GW horse was very bare-bones boring for the most part. It was born both of a desire to make sure the mount wasn't too big for material and production costs (which is why most are closer to pony size than actual war-horse size) and also to fit into a rank and file base structure so it wouldn't clash with models infront/behind/beside. 

We are only now getting mounts that are probably closer to a better scale size for what they carry and it does make me wonder if we'll see new larger horses. Then again there's a lot of legacy models, so it might be easier for GW to steadily drip feed new monsters in rather than have horses of two or three different sizes.

[MrZakalwe]

2 minutes ago, Overread said:

that and lets face it, the traditional GW horse was very bare-bones boring for the most part. It was born both of a desire to make sure the mount wasn't too big for material and production costs (which is why most are closer to pony size than actual war-horse size) and also to fit into a rank and file base structure so it wouldn't clash with models infront/behind/beside. 

We are only now getting mounts that are probably closer to a better scale size for what they carry and it does make me wonder if we'll see new larger horses. Then again there's a lot of legacy models, so it might be easier for GW to steadily drip feed new monsters in rather than have horses of two or three different sizes.

 

Games workshop horses are actually freakishly large - I think people massively overestimate how large warhorses were. It fits with the heroic scale but they are anything but small.  

 

 

[Overread]

Maybe its the shape of them then rather than their height. 

[Urauloth]

Horses are in a weird position in the Mortal Realms now. They crop up in a few places with Sigmar's mortal followers, but they're uncommon. Aelves seem to be the most common riders of equines as far as the Order grand alliance goes, but some of theirs are... not quite horses (hello warlocks) and I think overall you're most likely to see the horse in the service of the Ruinous Powers. Of course, Nagash probably commands more horses than anyone else, but those have seen better days, or at least fleshier ones.

[Ollie Grimwood]

38 minutes ago, Urauloth said:

Horses are in a weird position in the Mortal Realms now. They crop up in a few places with Sigmar's mortal followers, but they're uncommon. Aelves seem to be the most common riders of equines as far as the Order grand alliance goes, but some of theirs are... not quite horses (hello warlocks) and I think overall you're most likely to see the horse in the service of the Ruinous Powers. Of course, Nagash probably commands more horses than anyone else, but those have seen better days, or at least fleshier ones.

Might be they aren’t native to Azyr? More likely they can’t breed ones big enough to carry 8ft tall Super Soldiers in massive suits of armour