EccentricCircle

Much as I love the old world, it is pretty much a textbook example of the Orientalism inherent in designing fantasy counterpart cultures. By making the humans your baseline "standard" faction, an making other non human factions orbit them, and draw on different cultural influences you sort of inevitably get the problem where your humans are all say, medieval germans, and everyone else in the world are orcs, skeletons, etc. Its great that the other human factions of the old world are finally getting some love, and it would be great to see that there are sub saharan-african inspired human nations in the south lands along with the lizardmen and orcs.

Here's a lore based one to lighten the tone. Radukar is actually a pretty good ruler, probably better than a lot of the dukes of sigmarite cities. Why? Well, I recently read the cursed city novel, and when a serial killer was loose in his city the guy personally took his secret police and investigated. He visited every crime scene at great personal risk and didn't rest until the killer had been brought to justice! Now... the protagonists certainly had an uncharitable interpretation of his actions, and thought he was just a blood sucking fiend trying to prevent anyone from eroding his power base, but really, how many leaders of human cities would take such a personal interest in police work and the public good?

Some one brought up the elves vs dwarves rivalry. I'm not convinced that there is a real disagreement in the fan base. I think most of what you see online is people role-playing the in game rivalry, and joking rather than serious animosity. I certainly like both!

Many of the older sculpts which people are desperate to see replaced are fine. I really like the old saurus and kroxigor, and think that most of the old Lizardmen resin models hold up pretty well. Beyond the initial phase when miscasts were a problem, there was nothing wrong with finecast except the pricepoint and the fact that they dishonestly marketed a cheaper material as a premium one. Resin is great for some things, terrible for others. And while I hate trying to put things together with superglue more than most since I am allergic to it... Metal is great, and makes for far more solid and characterful models than they usual do in plastic. I'd rather have five hero options in metal than one in plastic which gets to be overly detailed and has to be all things to all people. Bring back the days of looking through the blister packs in the shop to find the different variants!

The original Underworlds models were study models which had been made for various factions, and which the rules guys had kicking around. They wanted to do something with them, so designed a new game to go with them. So basically they were the stage beyond concept art, where different ideas were being played around with, and experimented with. Basically those models have always been made, and were always going to be, but they hadn't historically had a good way to releasing them, especially with fewer small scale hero and champion models than during the metal days. I would imagine that now that underworlds is popular, they are designing figures specifically for it, rather than just using study models, but its possible that some of the sculpts still originate in the concept-ing stage, and that's why they don't always end up with equivalents on the table for the mass battle game. Its also possible that some of them are a proof of concept for reworking different factions, but the results of that process could be two or three years away.

Hmm, so presuming that the next core set will also be followed by two warbands, then it means that overall there will be as many as usual, but more of them will be locked up in expensive core sets. No idea how that affects underworlds itself, but that's not so great for those of us who just like to buy the odd individual warband for painting or for AoS.

I definitely agree that the detail on the newer models has gone too far. I think I've said this recently in another thread, but I've gotten really burnt out on warhammer the last few months. I invested in some really exciting, detailed models, mostly for Warcry bands and Daughters of Khaine. In principle I love them, they look fantastic in the art, and on the boxes. I'm sure that for a professional painter, or someone trying to do impressive stuff for Golden Demon then they are great. However, I've found them nearly impossible to get finished. I'm not the best painter in the world (partially sighted and with dyspraxia, so that certainly doesn't help). It takes a lot of practice to get things looking the way I want them, and the more fiddly the models are the harder it is. I got stuck in a complete rut trying to paint my models and was genuinely worried that I was losing interest in the hobby as a whole. Then I needed to paint up some Reaper minis for Stargrave, and just rocketed through them. It was such a breath of fresh air, and I really remembered what it was I enjoyed about all of this in the first place. So I sat down to compare the models, and its not even that the Reaper ones are less "detailed" per se, rather its a range of factors. They are generally one or two piece figures. That means the poses are sometimes less dynamic (though not always, I am dubious that GW need to cut their models into quite so many strange pieces to achieve their heroic poses...) The models do have a lot of detail, however, its less fiddly (partly due to being in metal) Its less "cluttered" for lack of a better word, and there is an elegance and a simplicity to them which modern warhammer is sorely lacking. In life as a whole, I'm not overly drawn to minimalism, but when it comes to miniatures there is a lot to be said for it. These figures are at such small scale that something which would look great in real life or in a painting just isn't appropriate. A good mini should almost be a caricature of the subject, capturing the "feel" of the subject in as simple a set of expressive elements as possible. Why try to pick out every stitch or pattern when something more expressive would get the job done, be easier for the painter to paint, and look better at a distance? Less is more, and its time Games Workshop remembered that. I realise I feel quite strongly about this, because in a sense its an accessibility issue. When you pick up a box of models you implicitly want them to look as good as they do on the box. But if that isn't actually possible for a non-expert painter to achieve then that's a major problem. How many people new to the hobby will be put off when their models prove to be beyond their skill, and the only help which online tutorials can provide is inane memes about thinning your paint? I'm going to be painting older models and ones from other companies who are less cluttered for the time being. I hope that I'll one day be able to come back and finish my DoK army, but for the time being I'm not in a rush to try.

I'd not even thought about the book. Sadly I never did get my own copy of Tamurkhan to go with my models! Edit: Goes to check Ebay to see what the prices are like these days... Nope. Sadly I never did get my own copy of Tarmurkhan....

Speaking as someone with a forgeworld Chaos Dwarf army, the price point is not comparable to other WFB armies from the time. The Battleline troops were hugely expensive compared to regular troops (though AoS models have since caught up. I have one unit of each, and never even considered getting any more, because it was far easier to fill out the army with cheaper alternatives from other companies. Every other model is close to being a big centrepiece, which again was less common back then. They are great, and I love them, but they were in no way an easy army to collect, so its no surprise that more affordable alternatives are common. As to AoS vs WFB. I've often summed it up thus: The Old World is a bad idea executed to perfection. It is a carbon copy of earth crammed with a mishmash of fantasy cliches. It shouldn't work, except that some talented game writers spent thirty years adding so much hidden depth that it became a classic. You only have to scratch the surface to see how it cleverly deconstructs and plays with its most cliched tropes. It will always be beloved. Age of Sigmar is a brilliant idea, executed quite badly. It has massive potential, and they have really done well at fleshing out as much of it as they have as quickly as they have. The scale and scope of the setting, and the diversity and variety which it allows really makes it stand out. However, its still in its early days, and is still haunted by the legacy of the undefined vagueness, which put people off at the start. The silly names and unclear history make it a very hard sell for a lot of people who would love it if they gave it a chance.

True, but the point Neil is making isn't so much that they were more popular than they seemed five years ago. Rather its that their popularity has actually improved in the years since they have been gone. I think this is likely true, and that there are a few reasons. Clearly total war has made a lot of those old world factions very popular with an audience who wasn't really aware of them during 8th edition. Nostalgia is also a thing, and I think Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. There will be people who always thought "I'll play tomb kings, some day" or "as soon as they replace the derpy skeleton warriors and make everything the same quality as the snakes I'm in!" Those people never got that chance, so if it comes back will likely jump on it. Even as a solid collector of Tomb Kings before hand, I feel my appreciation for them increased when it was clear they were going away. They were always in my top three factions, but that last scramble to finish my collection really pushed them to the number one spot, and they kind of remain there to this day. Some of that is wanting to be a bit maverick and have a dead faction as my favourite, as I joked in my first post. But also, their squatting makes them this rare and valuable thing, which wasn't true when they were on the shelf.

Yeah, I think that is most likely. That said they actually still sell a surprisingly large amount of metal models, mostly for Lord of the Rings (and Skaven). I could see them going the LotR route actually, for that game the gradually rotat e the models which are on sale, keeping the core stuff in production and then rereleasing niche factions like dunland and the ruffians to go with the relevant campaign books.

I need to get the book out and check the map, but the tomb king icon likely marks the tomb from the 2e Whfrp adventure "Lure of the Liche Lord" which is about a Nehekharan mummy hiding in the border princes. I'll be delighted if Tomb Kings are involved im the old world campaign. If we end up getting both them and Chaos Dwarfs in the space of a few years then those of us who obsessively clamour for the niche discontinued factions will be overjoyed! ( and then promptly have to start obsessing over the return of gitmob grots or something!)

All the listed metal models ultimately got converted to finecast with the exception of tomb swarms. Those are the versions I have, and when they did a made for order of Settra and Khalida it was resin. I'd love them to make new models in any medium though.

While there are a lot more stormcast than there need to be at this point, I think they fall short of having the space marine problem. The issue in 40K is that the ideas of having an army of Vikings, vampires, crusaders etc in SPAAACE! are generally good ones, but by making them all different flavours of Space Marine they make it so that there really isn't much if you don't like that power armoured aesthetic. While GW have made a lot of stormcast they basically all have the theme of crusading knights, and when they do release vikings, vampires etc, they have a much more varied look to them. This keeps the game as a whole a lot more varied, but it does mean that there is less space for Stormcast to develop into, because they can't just make stormcast versions of other faction's archetypes without it seeming weird. In 40K so many of the factions are space marines already that making a new faction more power armoured super-soldiers doesn't seem out of place, and they can make more unique variant units.

My thoughts exactly. Its not the best bloodbowl team ever made, but maybe if lots of people want it that will encourage them to make new plastic tomb kings for bloodbowl. And I can always use a few more skeletons... That space marine box set looks hilariously sparse. Are they actually going to charge everyone the >£100 ticket price that box sets usually go for for ten guys and a dreadnaught? I know they put a lot of value in special edition books, but in general the community seems t not exactly agree. Surely however good the models are, it can't be worth a boxed set price?

I would absolutely love a massive dwarf campaign, pitting an alliance of all of the orderly Duardin against their chaotic kin. Chaos Dwarves are one of my all time favourite armies, and classic dwarves aren't far behind, so its the perfect rumour to catch my attention, and if it comes true might, just might, get me to care about 3e.

Wow, 3000 pages! I remember marking 1000 and thinking that that was a lot. i wonder how many actual true rumours we've had in all that time?I'm going to guess maybe 30?

So this has been being discussed on and off in other threads, and I think it deserves its own topic. (Especially as its currently being chatted about in the NDA thread, and I can't really be bothered to keep reading that one at this point!) So, obviously this has the potential to be a slightly controversial topic, where people are going to have radically different opinions. I'm about to argue that this is really, really subjective... so basically everyone should try to think before they type when replying. You can love GW to bits and still dislike their artistic direction, or hate their guts but acknowledge that they make nice toys. So this doesn't need to become an argument. So it is often said that Games Workshop make the best toy soldiers around. Generally this is said by GW, but a lot of people seem to believe it, and it has more than a little basis in fact. Others have been asking "so who else is as good" and a lot of the responses can point to other companies which do a better job than games workshop in one or two areas, but maybe not all of them at once? The current batch of warhammer models are really impressive, both on an artistic level, and a technical one. They have a lot of very small, crisp detail which just wouldn't have been possible even a few years ago. The poses are more dynamic than ever before, and the shift to digital sculpting has clearly allowed them to push the medium. However, there are numerous independent (or just smaller) sculptors who are doing equally impressive things (artistically speaking) as part of stl download packages and other computer aided design projects. I'm not a 3d printing expert, so I don't know whether even the best, most detailed STL can actually match what GW can do with injection moulded models when printed on a home set up. I'd be interested to hear someone's thoughts. In a digital space though, a lot of that stuff is stunning, and shows a level of creativity and risk taking which GW maybe doesn't always match. Art is massively subjective, though. One person's best thing ever is going to be another's garbage. I'm pretty sure I'm on record here as saying that while I appreciate what GW are doing with their art, its not always to my taste. I think that a lot of the newer sculpts are actually too detailed, and overworked. I kind of prefer a "less is more" approach, and like the classic themes better than some of GW's Newer, more experimental ranges. That doesn't mean that they are bad though, just not my kind of thing. However, a toy soldier isn't just a sculpture. It has to stand up as a piece of art, especially when it serves as a basis for painting competitions, hobby projects and the most creative of conversions. However, it also has to work as an enjoyable model kit to build, and as a functional gaming piece. This is the point at which I feel GW are actually lagging behind their rivals, and for me, the drive for artistic excellence is actually hampering the other aspects of the model's intended purpose. I have models which are so thin and spindly that i've broken them while trying to build and paint them. The end result is a great display piece, but not something I would want to put on the table and game with. A lot of people on here complain about transporting and storing their models, so clearly this isn't just me being curmudgeonly. Its a downside to the dynamic models which a lot of us struggle with. They are also increasingly complex to build and paint. The instructions are often challenging to follow. Often the models are impossible to paint well except in sub assembly, and at the end of it you have a basic monopose model which could have been cast in three pieces if they'd wanted to, instead of ten. Newer kits lack a lot of the customisability and interchangeability of their predecessors, and while that makes them nicer models to look at, it detracts from the fun of building them, at least for me. This is also going to be very subjective. I'm sure some folks really love their models to be a really complicated 3d jigsaw puzzle, and if so then that's great. I find it frustrating though. Then we come to painting. The quality of GW's art is generally seen as being a fixed value. We all look at the box art, and the golden demon winners and judge a model by that standard, even if we could never match that standard ourselves. However, warhammer models aren't just for golden demon winners, they are supposed to be built and painted by everyone who wants to participate in the hobby from little kids on up. I'd wager that the majority of people who paint a given sculpt never come close to being able to make it look like the box art, and adding ever more fiddly details just moves the goal posts further away, and makes trying to improve one's skill level frustrating. I know this is personal and anecdotal, but I've spent months banging my head against a wall trying to paint some of the new warcry models. They are sculpts which I love, and when I bought them I thought they were some of the best GW had made. However, I've really soured on them, as I've realised that I have no hope of making them look as good as I'd like them to (at least without another ten years of practice and skill development I guess). The other week I needed to paint up some old 90s metal goblins, and a crew of Reaper minis for Stargrave. I expected them to take forever, just like the warcry figs, but actually shot through them and realised that I was enjoying painting for the first time in months. I hadn't previously realised just how much I hadn't been enjoying the process before. I think I'll be sticking with reaper and osprey models for a while, and reminding myself why I like this hobby before I try to go back to the Games Workshop figures. So what do you think? What criteria are most important when you assess the quality of a model? Is it all about the art in its "purest" form painted by professionals? Is accessibility and usability an important factor too? Do you love hyper-detailed models? No one is right or wrong, but by discussing this, we can find out what the zeitgeist is in our bit of the hobby and maybe re-examine what we like and don't like about these models!

Yeah, the more about it I see the more encouraging it looks. I love those lantern airships!

Ooh, I really hope we get some of that as old world models!

There is actually a lot of metal still, its just mostly in the Lord of the Rings range. So most folks who are just into AoS or 40K assume that its almost all been phased out and are really surprised at how much skaven still have.

That would make a lot of sense actually. I'd be happy with pretty much any dwarf release for fantasy or 40K, but Chaos Dwarves are definitely top of my list. I just hope that its a proper update and expansion like Gloomspite, Soulblight or Lumineth, and not a drastic reimagining like Ossiarchs. I want my sinister assyrian fire priests, bull centaurs and steampunk warmachines!

Ooh, Chaos Duardin are seeming ever more likely! Between them and dragons they are making my resolve to not bother with this edition waver! I thought the hobgrot lore was encouraging, but had figured regular dwarfs more likely. Its crazy that we've had rumours of United Duardin, Chaos Duardin, and 40k squats all within a few months. I don't think it'll all happen, but if it does it would be about time for us dwaf players to get our time in the sun again!

Do I love to see fully painted models, and set up battlefields which are basically miniature dioramas? Absolutely. I don't personally like to play with unpainted models if I can possibly help it, I'd far rather see them fully painted, and don't really consider the grey ones to have "souls". But I absolutely do not insist on anything from my opponents, because really its none of my business. There are a myriad of reasons which someone might have for not finishing painting an army. Its a big job, and doing it well enough to get results which you are happy with can take hundreds if not thousands of hours. I quite enjoy painting, even though I'm not technically very good at it, so that is worth the effort for me. For a lot of people here it clearly is too, but there is no reason why it should be for everyone. Maybe you have small kids, or a busy work schedule, perhaps you have an illness or a disability which limits what you can do. For that matter paint is expensive, perhaps you could only just afford to get the models you needed, and making them look nice will need to be budgeted for later. A random opponent you meet at a store doesn't necessarily know your life story, so they have no right to look at your unpainted models and assume you are just lazy. And if you are just lazy? So what? Its a hobby. Its supposed to be a fun diversion, not a second job! Just because you like models, and like playing the game doesn't mean you want to dedicate your entire existence and most of your (perhaps limited) spare time to the all consuming behemoth that is the "Games Workshop Hobby". There are a lot of people for whom warhammer isn't their main hobby, its a second or third interest, or something thy do occasionally. That is absolutely fine, they are still a part of this community. Never making progress on your army because you work long hours should not be a "better excuse" than never making progress because you wanted to play skyrim that weekend instead. Life is too short. Do what you want to do, and be happy doing it. If you only play a game every couple of months, and maybe pick up a paintbrush when you're on holiday, it doesn't mean that you have any less right to be able to get a game when you want to as someone who has won golden daemons and plays in every tournament. Warhammer is for everyone, however they want to engage with it. Edit... ( And don't get be started on the three colours and done "requirement". If you want to paint your models, paint them, if you don't don't! you shouldn't be forced to apply a certain volume of paint haphazardly in order to qualify to play with them.)