Fyreslayers: discussing their design

[Greybeard86]

My personal list for what I think "went wrong" with fyreslayers.

• No contrast, no joy: Frankly, I think the old sculpts are already quite dynamic and detail rich. What was awesome about the old slayers is that they really stood out in a dwarf army. They were raging naked lunatic berserkers in an army of disciplines well armored dwarves. The contrast was stark and made it look more iconic. Fyreslayers are all very samey within their army, if we take off the weapons most people probably can't tell the difference between the 3 units they have (outside of heroes, which do not stand out either).
• Weird helmets: Whereas old slayers "made sense" (dye your hair, get an axe, strip off your armor), the current slayers wear a helmet on top of a mohawk? Or is it weaved inside? What the heck is that?
• Scrawny beards: They also have lost "volume" to their beards, as if all that heat had dried them out, made they brittle and pointy looking.
• Faces have no expression: Whereas all slayers had a variety of "roaring" faces, fyreslayers have little to no expression.

 

Old slayers

New slayers

 

 

Edited January 6, 2021 by Greybeard86

[Kramer]

@Greybeard86 very mean to post a blank picture of them  

 

[Greybeard86]

6 minutes ago, Kramer said:

@Greybeard86 very mean to post a blank picture of them

It is your phone, I did post a picture of them!

But let me use this chance to say that I am well aware that this is my personal opinion and I do not claim that they are objectively ugly or anything like that. If you love them, more power to you! What prompted me to post this is other folks telling me that they are overall often voted as the least popular army.

Edited January 6, 2021 by Greybeard86

[Kramer]

4 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

It is your phone, I did post a picture of them!

But let me use this chance to say that I am well aware that this is my personal opinion and I do not claim that they are objectively ugly or anything like that. If you love them, more power to you! What prompted me to post this is other folks telling me that they are overall often voted as the least popular army.

on both phone and computer the image isn't working (the link 404's if I try to open it in a different tab)

[Greybeard86]

4 minutes ago, Kramer said:

on both phone and computer the image isn't working (the link 404's if I try to open it in a different tab)

Should be fixed now! It showed, then crashed for some reason. Thanks for the heads up!

[Kramer]

Fixed! Regarding the actual topic:

I like them. I painted 10 old Slayer models two years ago and they were some of the best and most fun models I painted the last five years. 

But their oversized hands Heroic style doesnt' work within AoS anymore. So they need something new. And Fyreslayers does that for me. 

31 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

Old slayers

This looks amazing I absolutely agree. 

 

31 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

 

But so does this and only when you field 2k of the little buggers does it become a problem. (but there weren't that many slayer sculpts either)  So yeah some new sculpts to break things up would be amazing. 
But that's just me having my cake and wanting to eat it too. Can't complain. 

Edited January 6, 2021 by Kramer

[Kramer]

On a separate note. How good are these conversions by @Anthony225

More pictures in the link below

 

[Greybeard86]

They are certainly nice; to me this points to the head as the worse part of fyreslayer sculpts. Though over the years slayers accumulated a wide variety of sculpts that did look different (I identify Garagrim in the picture, then we have the daemon slayer special, seekers, dragon slayers, etc.).  It doesn't seem that FS are getting them, perhaps due to their poor initial reception. Which is a pity!

[Jator]

16 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

What prompted me to post this is other folks telling me that they are overall often voted as the least popular army.

Wouldn't that have more to do with the price? Even the SC! isn't great value compared to other start collecting, like the Ironjawz one.

I know I like the lore and theme well enough, and even could paint 60 of them without hating them (I'm used to paint skaven, after all) but the price to collect such army is a big No for me when there are options that I like as much and offer better value.

I do agree that the old metal slayers had more personality, but IMO, that happens with most comparisions between old metal sculpts and plaqstic ones (bear in mind that I like better the old metal orcs before the Brian Nelson designs, so your mileage may -and probably will. vary!), so it's a bit unfair to blame only the Fyreslayers for this.
Same thing with your point about lack of variety: Sylvaneth and kharadron, for example, have also very samey units.

 So the issue may be more about how much you liked the old slayers, wich is totally understandable to be fair. They were badasses.

[Thiagoma]

I think they would fel more special if they were still a special unit inside of an army.

 

I dont dislike the design but i dont like it enough to paint a 100 of then. I bought the warband and was good enough for me.

They could be pretty awesome if they were expanded into different units that are not "more naked running dorfs", same could be said about Ironjaws.

 

Oh and they should wear pants. Cmom.

[Overread]

Fyreslaers simply suffer at present like a lot of AoS armies in being too small. Because they've such a small range of models it means you have to take a lot of swarmy multiples of the same/similar models. It's not a unique problem to them alone and its partly because of how AoS launched with so many new factions (some new some fragmented new) all at the same time. It wasn't the best way to launch a new game in many respects and the result is that there's a lot of "incomplete" forces running around. Mechanically they do work, but visually they are less interesting. 

 

Heck I was the same with genestealer cults in 40K; they didn't look right. Esp because in their case most of the army was just regular Imperial Guard units with a Tyranid symbol on them. Fastforward to the second wave and suddenly the cult army becomes its own thing; the IG element is reduced and you get far more of the uprising miner and abused human joining the mix. You get more characters, more vehicles that blend will with the established design (a repurposed car looks odd next to tanks but repurposed cars next to bikes, quads and industry vehicles works great). 

 

I think Fyreslayers are so much the same;' just like Ossiarchs, Lumineth, Flesheaters, Daughters of Khaine etc.... They just need a very solid second wave of models to bulk them out and steady additions to flesh them out with more variety. They need more than a one-trope design theme that they have right now. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I voted dislike.

But that's not necessarily surprising, because I am unexcited about dwarves at the best of times. However, I think I can still weigh in with an interesting opinion.

I believe if Fyreslayers appeal to anyone, it's people who are already into dwarves. In that respect, they are, to me, dfferent from Kharadron Overlords. From my perspective, there is no way I can see that I will ever start collecting Fyreslayers. They just have nothing that makes them more appealing than regular dwarves to me. KO, though, have a lot that sets them apart with their technology, airships and mercantile aspects. At the same time, I can see how all that plays off of established dwarf tropes, which I can appreciate.

In order of appeal to me, KO are at the top (might collect at some point), Dispossessed in the middle (not excited about them, but don't mind them either) and Fyreslayers on the bottom (would avoid them even if it hurts my list). And because I am a sucker for ancient civilizations, if chaos dwarves ever come back with babylonian aesthetic, those would be pretty high up, too.

tl;dr: If being a dwarf is a drawback for you as it is for me, I think Fyreslayers have very little to offer to help overcome that drawback.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

10 minutes ago, Jator said:

Wouldn't that have more to do with the price?

I don't think most people are talking about sales here. In the other thread the question of Fyreslayers popularity came up in reference to the Warhammer Weekly aesthetics and gameplay surveys. Fyreslayers were the least popular army in the aesthetics survey as well as the least picked main army in the gameplay survey. You could make an argument that people not having them as their main army is due to price, but aesthetics has nothing to do with that.

[Greybeard86]

5 minutes ago, Overread said:

Fyreslaers simply suffer at present like a lot of AoS armies in being too small.[...]They need more than a one-trope design theme that they have right now. 

I think that they do suffer from some "unappealing" design elements, aside from the sameness. For instance, their "stoic" faces. I was hoping this would start the conversation on some of these details. There is no right answer, but I would hate for slayers to disappear because they remained unappealing to a wide audience.

[silverstu]

28 minutes ago, Kramer said:

On a separate note. How good are these conversions by @Anthony225

More pictures in the link below

 

I love those conversions - the slayer models aren't that far-off-trousers, no raised tattoos and no helmets make a big difference. Hoping for proper slayers/norse dwarf bezerkers for the new WFB.

I wanted to love them because I love slayers but to me these are slayers- I love the fact that they were deranged/punk rock dwarfs with Mohawks not crests. Fyreslayers are Mercs- they are more 300 than slayers. I agree the old slayers had loads of character and the new Gotrek is amazing. I'm not sure where they aregoingto take them either- as a range they need more variety. Its funny -I like the helmet designs, just not on slayers and they really, really need trousers[pants for our American friends]... I also think the embedded runes are too much- it breaks up the flesh too much making it tricky to paint. Slayers came from the norse dwarf berserkers -so the crazed fury is part of them, I don't think the faces or the awkward poses of the current slayers capture that.  The Mohawks were punk as well, a crest is just too formal, so they added two things -formality and cold stoicism which are the direct opposite of what slayers are. I think folks can like them as an interesting dwarf faction, but not really slayer faction, more a dwarf Spartan faction, which is fine but doesn't scratch the slayer itch for me. They could evolve the design away form that a bit with added elements of the culture that we haven't seen or have evolved [Gotreks return could spark that maybe?]. 

Edited January 6, 2021 by silverstu

[Carnelian]

I like em but they clearly need more variations within the army.

When are we getting salamander riding fyreslayers GW?

 

 

 

[Jator]

14 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I don't think most people are talking about sales here. In the other thread the question of Fyreslayers popularity came up in reference to the Warhammer Weekly aesthetics and gameplay surveys. Fyreslayers were the least popular army in the aesthetics survey as well as the least picked main army in the gameplay survey. You could make an argument that people not having them as their main army is due to price, but aesthetics has nothing to do with that.

Thanks for clarifying.
Then I guess more dwarf players feel like Greybeard: The Fyreslayers looks are similar enough to the old slayers and took their place, but they aren't the" real deal". While for those who don't like dwarf they're still to close to classic dwarfs, like you pointed out.
 So they're liked by neither the dwarf lovers or the haters?

PD: I wasn't a fan when they were released but I still felt cynic about AoS back then. Reading realmslayer has really warmed up my feelings towards them.

[NotAWzrd]

Kharadron Overlords took the isolationist nature of fantasy dwarves and turned it on its head by taking them to the skies, giving them lots of fresh and interesting design avenues to go down. Fyreslayers seem to be extrapolated from a single unit and stretched out into an entire army rather than being a reinterpretation of that army. I much prefer them to Old World slayers (I didn’t play Fantasy though so I am bias) and they have some great artwork in their battletome, but they definitely lack variety.

 

If they doubled down on the monster slaying, trophy collecting aspect like the guy above, they could really expand some of the lack of variety in characters.  Unit wise as people have already mentioned, salamanders of various kinds would work for cavalry and monsters. For elites and / or more basic core troops something like ancient suits of dwarven armour powered by living magma could be another idea. 
 

The issue is I think they might just end up getting folded into a larger Duardin book if and when Grungni gets his own faction, similar to the destruction battletomes. 

 

Edited January 6, 2021 by NotAWzrd

[Sance]

The models looks great but as an army ... They look all the same to me, all the units (except the dragon mount they ride) are naked little buffed dude with axes

[Clan's Cynic]

Trousers honestly make a massive different to the aesthetic. All of that naked flesh next to lighter (typically red) beards really just blurs the visuals together into a sort of weird nothingness. Paint some trousers 'on' to a Fyreslayer and then hold it far away enough that the lack of non-skin texture isn't obvious and you can see what a difference it really makes. Even the Old Slayers compared to Gotrek's model, if you look at them from such an angle their trousers are obscured they lose a lot 'pop' to them. Presumably it's in the contrast or something.

It's been repeated numerous times, but the lack of difference between them is the biggest problem. Magmadroths can only do so much to breakup having to paint 30-60 identical naked Dwarfs which occasionally have different weapons. Give them some more heavily armoured models (forged from Ur-Gold or something) to really break it up, maybe some Golems or even artillery pieces. I've mentioned before that I'm not big on 'Baby Magmadroth Cavalry' because you just turn them into Lizardmen at that point, but anything that's not naked-Dwarf-infantry can only be an improvement.

The price was/is a big obstacle to their success too. They had the extremely unfortunate distinction of being one of the new AoS armies released at the very tail-end of the Kirby Era, meaning you get absurdities like 10 Vulkites being £35 - without things like Primaris' sheer size to justify it - and their characters being £18-£20 individually. You can tell GW knew they messed up because the Kharadron and Idoneth releases afterwards were cheaper (Arkanauts and Namarti being £28, blisters being £16, etc). 

Edited January 6, 2021 by Clan's Cynic

[MitGas]

Regardless of whether you like the redesign of slayers, the army needs more units and visual diversification. They're in the same boat as Ironjawz (and FEC, etc.). Those two don't feel like real armies to me personally, which is a damn shame as they're big parts of Warhammer's identity. I hope they'll get major updates with their new battletomes, they could really need it. It's the obvious drawback of GW turning everything into its own mini-faction. That's why I'm kinda annoyed that Lumineth get a second wave this early and these factions got nothing since their release despite having fewer kits than the first wave of Lumineth did.

[Harpo2]

I like Fyreslayers, I just really dislike the default colour scheme they have.

Models that have samey looks and are mostly organic (as in not wearing armour ) I find can benefit a lot from variation in skin tones, and hair colour in making them look more natural and alive.

It also does not help that GW selection of oranges is one of their weakest paint ranges.

 

Edited January 6, 2021 by Harpo2

[Beastmaster]

I notice they don’t show much face to begin with. Hard to give them any expression at all if they are basically just eyes and nose. The old models at least had eyebrows and a forehead that weren’t covered with a helmet.

[Skreech Verminking]

Fyrselayers have an amazing look. There’s just one small problem.

they all look alike.

as a Faction they just are well considerably one of the worst when it comes to  looks.

In the end they are basically slayers from the old world.

With the broken realms we seem to be getting new rules and sometimes even new subfactions.

what would be great I think is to maybe be able to field a mixed force of duardins, that well are looking to take back their karaks from the devilish chaos-things.

It may not make the fyreslayers faction in total more interesting, but could be a start in seeing some of these units being used in other armies more constantly.

[sandlemad]

So this is long but I think there's a few things here and it's possible to like or appreciate some, see some as ok in theory but poorly executed, and see some as just unfortunate contingencies that come with the existence of a new dwarf faction based on a conceptual/aesthetic subsection of the old dwarf range.

CONCEPT

The point about nude and brightly coloured Slayers standing out from the rest of the (earthy, clothed) dwarf army is a fair one, and ultimately if you are going to have a whole faction based around the elements that made them stand out, you're not going to get that contrast any more. It raises the fair question "should a faction be so heavily based around a narrow sub-concept of an old WHFB army?" As you say, you lose something of the Slayers' distinctiveness by making them the whole deal for an army. I can see arguments that it's not a good idea but if you look at e.g. Nighthaunt or Kharadron, you have examples of how it can be done vividly and fruitfully. 

Unfortunately Fyreslayers aren't really that, sadly. As NotAWzrd put it they "seem to be extrapolated from a single unit and stretched out into an entire army rather than being a reinterpretation of that army." Ironjaws had the same lack of conceptual depth, but the better sculpts sort of make up for it. Flesh-Eater Courts and Beastclaw Raiders were also pretty one-note but to my mind the delusions and Everwinter concepts are striking enough to make up for it. Fyreslayers have a poor concept and indifferent sculpts, along with the unique burden of the original dwarf Slayer concept being an absolute banger, one of GW's few original(ish) ideas, and hard to live up to.

Background-wise, they suffer from being one of the first factions for AoS and show the signs of a pretty half-assed "uh, they're warriors who go Super-Saiyan from gold runes and are also mercenaries" concept without much thought given to anything deeper than that; the models are the faction rules are the background, just like most early AoS armies. It's been gently nudged into a slightly deeper "warrior cult society" direction since but there's still not much there compared to the Kharadron or the Ossiarch or nearly any WHFB faction. There's a way it could be done better, perhaps by emphasising that while the cult of Grimnir is dominant in Fyreslayer society, it's not there to the exclusion of everything else. The Kharadron have different strands (the crews, the Grundstok company, the guilds), why not do something like that?

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

With that in mind, it's possible to imagine a Fyreslayer-like force which still has orange-bearded nude warriors at the core led by lineage-focused heroes on magma-monsters, all venerating Grimnir, but has other elements too. Elements like:

• Zharrgrim Priesthood: robed and masked priests, including female priests. It is a lodge, after all. Make it cultic, make it dark, pick up the Chaos Dwarf threads. Old rituals under the mountains, all fire and the glimmer of gold, the eerie side of runecraft as opposed to the more scientific angle exemplified in the Kharadron. They want to rebuild Grimnir and we know they're keeping it at least a bit secret. Maybe have some sort of small temple guard unit as well, or even summoned/bound Fire Elementals between the old K'Daai Fireborn and the Molten Infernoth, or fire-powered magical golems. Retool the Grimwrath Berzerker to something like the temple champion, a living weapon of the priesthood, a dwarf whose body is barely holding up under the throb of runic power, completely apart from the normal concerns of the rest of the lodge.
• Non-cult troops: How about Fyreslayer "civilians", the miners and farmers of the society rather than the professional religious mercenary-warriors. The term "Fyrd" originally meant militia or levies, go for something like that: lay members of the cult of Grimnir rather than full initiates like the Vulkite berzerkers. Fighters who don't have dragon helmets, who wear trousers and scale-mail coats so they're distinct from WHFB dwarves. Maybe like the Infernal Guard but lighter, without helmets and with bare arms. They fill the roles cultists don't. How about a missile unit to replace the Auric Hearthguard? True warriors of Grimnir should be getting stuck in, leaving the backline defence to the Fyrd Gunners or Magmapikes. How about some portable war machines, bolt thrower versions of the fyresteel javelins.
• Auric noble cavalry: Everyone seems to want small magmabeasts so cool, go for it, dwarf monstrous cavalry (think juggernauts, mournfangs) would certainly be fresh for GW. Make it another cultural/social thread in the faction: the fyreslayer nobility. Of course all of them are senior in the cult but they also have this angle of temporal/'secular' politics as well, it's already been hinted at with different runesons. The Auric caste, the dwarf nobility of the lodges, riding variously mini and regular magmadroths, and competing for glory as much as for their faith/ur-gold.. Throw in a heavy chariot too, maybe give it an alternate build with a Zharrgrim Runcaster on it.

This is the sort of thing that can't really be retconned in now but would have, I think, made for a more interesting and broader faction that would still keep what's best about the current look and feel. It takes some of the Slayer ideas and marries them to a kind of fundamentalist version of dwarf society where tradition, ritual, worship are even more important. As far beyond old Karak Hirn from WHFB as the Kharadron are beyond the WHFB Engineers. Runes and magic and brawn rather than gunpowder and clockwork. On the tabletop, it's still a CC-focused dwarf army with more visual variation.

Also... fix the naming scheme. Call the nobility the 'Auric' or something and use that as a signifier; Auric Lodgefather, Auric Lodgeson, Auric Magma-Riders, maybe Auric Hearthguard as the bodyguard unit. Keep the 'Rune' prefix for more obviously priestly stuff; Zharrgrim Runemaster, Zharrgrim Runesmiter. Vulkite becomes the rank-and-file of the cult warriors, the current Vulkite Berzerkers and maybe some other Vulkite unit, as well as the Vulkite Battlesmith. Fyrd becomes the term for non-cult troops: Fyrd Gunners, Fyrd Magmapikes, Fyrd Bolt Thrower.
 

AESTHETICS

Beyond that 'what might have been' speculation and putting aside what's missing, even within the limited range we have they're pretty rough. Other than weaponry there's practically no difference between the sculpts for the Vulkite Berzerkers, Hearthguard Berzerkers and Auric Hearthguard. The two elite units (out of a total roster of three units) look 99% the same as each other and probably 97% the same as the basic troops. It's just a sea of nude dwarves with no significant variation outside of the occasional magmadroth island. It's just so dull. Even FEC have more visual variation going for them: little ghouls, big ghouls, big flying ghouls, monsters.

Sculpt quality is maybe another thing. The metal sculpts in your first pic, the old giant/dragon/daemon slayers, are better than the fyreslayers but they're certainly also a lot better than the later (7th ed?) metal trollslayers they're lumped in with in the second pic. You're spot on about the faces and general emotion/feel/character and there's also something there about beards as well as a few other ropey sculpts like the Runefather and the poses on most Vulkite berzerkers. 

One positive note I'd throw in though is that the Fyreslayers range does a particular kind of curved dwarf axe (which GW largely dropped around 7th ed in favour of right angles everywhere for dwarf designs) extremely well, better even than the giant slayers. That's largely down to casting technology but it's a nice feature.

I didn't vote yes or no because as bad as the execution was - and a lot of that is down to half-assed early AoS problems, above and beyond what other factions got - I still think there's potential there. Cultic traditionalist dwarves that use pieces of their god to go Super-Saiyan is a decent idea at its core and the mercenary angle is a delightful paradox. It would need a sizeable expansion though and something of a conceptual reset, which is probably above and beyond what GW will give it.

Edited January 6, 2021 by sandlemad