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Are Games Workshop models "the best"?


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On a purely technical level, I'd probably say "Yes" from my largely ignorant Western-only perspective, but I'm sure that judging by things I've read there must be some Gundam kits or similar that still beat them out.

From a design/personal taste perspective... ehhhh... it becomes a lot blurrier. There's been plenty of GW designs in recent years that I genuinely think look terrible and very little that has blown me away, to the point I go "It's brilliant!" I think the last time a range did that was probably the Kharadrons. There's plenty of models from other companies that aren't as technically impressive, but I think look much better overall than many of GW's offerings.

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1 hour ago, Clan's Cynic said:

There's been plenty of GW designs in recent years that I genuinely think look terrible and very little that has blown me away, to the point I go "It's brilliant!"

Most of the current SCE Dragons fit the first category, and the upcoming ones definately fir in the "It's brillaint" column.

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2 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:

On a purely technical level, I'd probably say "Yes" from my largely ignorant Western-only perspective, but I'm sure that judging by things I've read there must be some Gundam kits or similar that still beat them out.

Bandai releases some unbelievably engineered kits and at varied price points resulting in different scales and degrees of engineering. I think the biggest difference is that they are designed with parts separation and decals in mind rather than painting. In a way they are kind of like apples and oranges comparatively as much of the most amazing engineering from Bandai is focused on articulation and model building. Whereas GW is designing statues to be assembled and painted to represent a military force. 

On this subject I would trade all my Warhammer models for a miniature Gundam game. But then again I did write a paper about Gundam merchandise in University so I am a little biased. Which is strange as I do not typically collect Gundam Merchandise and have no model kits. 😕

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10 minutes ago, Sartxac said:

Yes, their models are bigh meh...

 

True story:

Yep, the starter box (first one, Spires vs 100 Kingdoms) was a bit meh. I'm a bit off with resin and some miniatures have some gaps after being assembled.

And yes, theu have some awesome models too (I can't wait for City Stats!!). Imho, they are behind GW, and I'm not alone saying that.
 

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43 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Yep, the starter box (first one, Spires vs 100 Kingdoms) was a bit meh. I'm a bit off with resin and some miniatures have some gaps after being assembled.

And yes, theu have some awesome models too (I can't wait for City Stats!!). Imho, they are behind GW, and I'm not alone saying that.
 

They are smaller company with less budget.  Is normal stay behing GW. But as you say some models are in the same level of GW and are cheaper. 

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11 minutes ago, Sartxac said:

They are smaller company with less budget.  Is normal stay behing GW. But as you say some models are in the same level of GW and are cheaper. 

Completely agree. there are some units that are really nice, not sure if they can compete with GW top sculpts (even if Conquest has a bigers scale), but they are not far behind.

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Conquest had some utterly horrific early sculpts, but they've come leaps and bounds since then. You'd be hard pressed to believe the people who made the Militia Spearmen released the Ice Jontar and Bow Chosen just over a year later.

Granted, the paintjobs on their site don't always do them any favours either.

jarl.jpg

nords-bow-chosen.jpg

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Edited by Clan's Cynic
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Just had a first look at Conquest, and while models like the, I assume, old Longbowmen are quite generic and boring, other stuff is outright amazing and reminds me a lot of Rackham's Confrontation. But some if these models are so intricate and detailed that they must be a nightmare to paint whole units of. And here I thought Dawnriders were a chore... 😂

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Let’s face it, a lot of us have extreme pro GW model bias. It is normal, we worry about other model lines fitting with our current collections. Also, will that random miniature with a very specific look get discontinued when The company fails, leaving us with the inability to continue building a collection around it?

Plus a model it is not a model, it is also the story behind it, that we know and feels more unique that whatever random fantasy sorry someone comes up with for a game that, again, might fail in a couple years.

I guess it is no surprise that many companies build around GW aiming to be a close substitute, as opposed to trying to replace the entire system. 

Personally, I fall for all of the above and the sad part is that I know I am playing right into GW s strategy. Which is then used against me charging higher than average prices and the whole FOMO, inconsistent support and so on.

For this reason, I am making an effort to look into alternative models for GW backgrounds. The cold one riders we linked so many times are an excellent example of that. If enough of us did that, maybe we d breath life into other companies and might get us a true competitor in the market, which can only be good for us.

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On 9/29/2021 at 8:39 PM, Nos said:

Which is why I really dislike the little grots and the big monsters and the Underworlds warband- they make sense thematically for the KB, but artistically they're obnoxious and cluttered in opposition to the tensile menace of the gutrippaz and hobgrots

Thank you Nos! Your thoughts helpt me to understand, why I like the Murknob and Gutrippaz but not the various Killabosses. 

With this in mind I started a uncluttered version of the Killaboss and it really worked wonders.

Now I need to paint this guy...

PXL_20211003_135145611.jpg.05f530cbcfc1472f8214ca94c34501f5.jpg

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1 hour ago, Sonnenspeer said:

Thank you Nos! Your thoughts helpt me to understand, why I like the Murknob and Gutrippaz but not the various Killabosses. 

With this in mind I started a uncluttered version of the Killaboss and it really worked wonders.

Now I need to paint this guy...

PXL_20211003_135145611.jpg.05f530cbcfc1472f8214ca94c34501f5.jpg

My pleasure! That's an excellent conversion, love it.

This is mine, when I get round to him, hopefully in orctober. Very simple, just stripped the weird forklift prongs from his shield and replaced the chandelier on his hat, but I think its a big improvement. Keeps the main things the main things basically. Although I like the fact that for a first time the chief orc is *really* much bigger than the others, his size is slightly over the top I think. But not much can really be done about that.

Screenshot_20210813-220856_Messenger.jpg

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15 hours ago, Maogrim said:

Just had a first look at Conquest, and while models like the, I assume, old Longbowmen are quite generic and boring, other stuff is outright amazing and reminds me a lot of Rackham's Confrontation. But some if these models are so intricate and detailed that they must be a nightmare to paint whole units of. And here I thought Dawnriders were a chore... 😂

The scale makes them a joy to paint. Conquest is supposed to be more grounded than AoS which is high fantasy so things will seem more "generic", rules wise, they definitely beat out GW. The resin models are incredible and don't even compare to Forgeworld or Finecast. I was able to paint 150 models from the Conquest human line, and ended up selling my LRL by the 3rd Dawnrider... lmao. 

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2 hours ago, Tervindar said:

I was able to paint 150 models from the Conquest human line, and ended up selling my LRL by the 3rd Dawnrider... lmao. 

Yeah, some modern GW stuff arguably has too much detail, to the point where it's just kind-of painful to actually try to paint up a whole army up. LRL definitely fall into that category. Slaanesh mortals too. 

Sometimes it feels like they lean too far into "we can do this" and don't stop to ask "should we do this?" Painting a character with that level of detail is a pleasure; painting 30+ Sentinels is not, at least not for many of us. 

I'm sure the larger scale on Conquest makes painting detail a bit more manageable, but I don't think I'd want to paint a 60+-man LRL army in any scale, TBH. 

Edited by yukishiro1
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3 hours ago, Tervindar said:

The scale makes them a joy to paint. Conquest is supposed to be more grounded than AoS which is high fantasy so things will seem more "generic", rules wise, they definitely beat out GW. The resin models are incredible and don't even compare to Forgeworld or Finecast. I was able to paint 150 models from the Conquest human line, and ended up selling my LRL by the 3rd Dawnrider... lmao. 

Just had another look at Conquest. While the Hundred Kingdoms and some of the Nord feel like more classic medieval knights versus Barbarians stuff, the Dwarf faction and the Spires don't come across as 'grounded' in any way. There might be less realm gates and floaty crystal islands in the world, I guess.

The Dwarves are basicslly already the soup between Kharadron Overlords and Fyreslayers that some see coming for AOS, but with added grimdark. And The Spires are, at least aesthetically, a strange mix between Tyranids, Genestealer Cults, Ossiarch Bonereapers and the Alchemists from Confrontation. 

The minis mostly look really nice, but I personally didn't find anything that holds up to some of GW's bangers like the Black Coach, Eltharion, the Mountain Spirits, Teclis, Archaon, Morathi, Gordrakk etc. But to each their own. If you like Conquest more that's a fair assessment to make. 

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1 hour ago, Maogrim said:

And The Spires are, at least aesthetically, a strange mix between Tyranids, Genestealer Cults, Ossiarch Bonereapers and the Alchemists from Confrontation.

That's so fun because the Spires seems to be the High Elfs and the Weavers seems to be the Sylvaneth/Wood Elfs.

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A site I use often for reviews is https://www.chaosbunker.de/en/ quite a neutral review with good pictures comparing the reviewed mini to other brands.

The first time I went there was for Frostgrave minis. I love the minis, but the pictures Nick made for his own store are very bad and don't show of the strengths of the kit (I love my sexy sprue pictures).

Edited by zilberfrid
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7 hours ago, Tervindar said:

The scale makes them a joy to paint. Conquest is supposed to be more grounded than AoS which is high fantasy so things will seem more "generic", rules wise, they definitely beat out GW. The resin models are incredible and don't even compare to Forgeworld or Finecast. I was able to paint 150 models from the Conquest human line, and ended up selling my LRL by the 3rd Dawnrider... lmao. 

The thing that puts me off them is that every pic of them I've seen dosen't really distinguish between material on the fugure, it all looks soft and organic- clothes, armour, weapons. 

The stuff like the Jo'tun and the similar viking dudes and anyone with a lot of skin on show look good though.

The weird creepy guys just look weird, they have no centre to them. 

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2 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

A site I use often for reviews is https://www.chaosbunker.de/en/ quite a neutral review with good pictures comparing the reviewed mini to other brands.

The first time I went there was for Frostgrave minis. I love the minis, but the pictures Nick made for his own store are very bad and don't show of the strengths of the kit (I love my sexy sprue pictures).

It doesn't seem to get the traffic of the more well known Youtubers, but I always check out Obscurities in Miniature on Youtube for reviews of different minis and have even discovered some cool 3rd party companies via his reviews.   

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Material is probably the biggest consideration for me (obviously price is a factor too). HIPS plastic is just so far beyond resin and metal in terms of how nice it is to work with.

Wyrd Miniatures (Malifaux) have been making better plastic models than GW for some years now.

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