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Compared to the Catachans they're akin to Michelangelo's David.

Balance wrote:GW's mini quality is usually pretty good, at least from a technical stand point. I'm a bit burned out on the aesthetics of GW's lines, but that's my problem.

I think you got it there mate. Its not that the figs are bad, its how the same stuff has been rehashed for years. It kinda limits the oooh factor for me too.

Some of the heavy metal paint jobs have worked very hard to make the fig look rubbish. Also, I believe that Gary Morley has been buried some where (thank god) as some of his figs were terrible - who ever gave him Eldar/Elf models to do should be dragged out by the sc*&%$m and stoned to death with unsold Gary Morley sculpts.

The thing I appreciate about GW's minis is their convertability. They just seem to respond well to mad science/alchemy/blasphemous inter-breeding/wacked out genetic engineering.
Whereas, while I'll concede that minis from Rackham (for example) are often stunning, I never really feel inspired to dis- and re-assemble them.
Inspired or, really worthy of the challenge, I suppose. They're just too damn pretty to mess with.
And messing with the minis has become probably my favorite aspect of the hobby.

Delephont wrote:Sisters of Battle.....can GW actually sculpt a female? I mean, I can understand your average GW employee having never seen a woman in the flesh, but with the amount of porn on the net, theres no excuse....
.

The wealth of porn online probably explains the most recent additions to the SOB line.

Repentants and Death Cult Assassins...
The breasts are porn star big.
Bondage masks (which is good since I don't think I've ever liked a GW female face.)
and other bondage gear.

Like really.


Only GW female that looks female is the Tanith Guard model.

"these are warrior women. They're not meant to be pretty. They're meant to kill stuff in the name of the Emperor."

Well actually to raise a point from history sparta was known as the land on beautiful women. This was because the women were indeed trained to fight as a last defence and they believed that a healthy body made healthy babies. So I find your analysis wron. In the respect that because they are warrior women they should be prettier than the average female. (though in regard to the original posters comment about the ugliness I do find their faces to look somewhat neanderthallish/whacked with a mallet in appearence.

Delephont wrote:I was just wondering if anyone else felt the same....if not, then fine, ignore my rant.

I tend to agree. I dislike, and always have done, Citadel's "heroic" proportions - banjo hands, pumpkin heads etc. Of GW's entire catalogue I ONLY like the LotR range, and of that range I only like sculpts by the Perries and Brian Nelson as a rule. Gary Morely's style is just horrible.

But of course that's only a personal value judgement.

Alongside (for instance) Hasslefree's gloriously perfect style for example:



GW's often look crude and unoriginal. To my eyes at least.

GW stuff works as a good "starter", but really there ARE better models out there and there are also CHEAPER ones. You just have to look.

I would argue that some of the alien models, particularly the Tau infantry, the Kroots and various Tyrannids, are good for any SF game.

The Imperial, Eldar and Ork stuff however is too typecast and "silly" to be much use without a lot of converting. This is personal aesthetic judgement, of course.

And don't even get me started on how @$$ ugly the Imperial Guard tank models are. The dilemna is that most model tanks of the same scale are just as expensive, and GW's vehicle models are usually made quite well (unlike some vehicle models, I'm looking at you Tamiya). So you can get awesome, real world tanks (Tigers or Abrams for example) and risk a crappy model, or get ugly as sin GW kits, that are well built.

Well, the tanks are a matter of personal preference. For my part, I really like the anachronistic, promethium-punk look GW uses. Really conveys the gothicity of this sci-fi, if you see what I mean.
To each his own, I guess.

Delephont wrote:Well, I did ask for opinions.

Theres certainly some valid points. I think the theme recuring here is the fact that I didn't give examples of what I consider to be poor...so fair point.

Snip
Tyranids...awesome, but how far wrong can you go with an alien race.

Snip.

What do you mean? All people should putt happy cap just for looking at carni kit! This got to be the most versatile kit from GW ever!

As for the topic, GW like any company does good and bad models, it really depends what your after... for example i do love infinity models for my scifi mood, then old rackham models for my fantasy kicks, warmachine for ze steam necessities and lots of diferent companies for just painting stuff like freeboter minis etc... GW stuff is great for convos and sculpt all kinds of gribbly things.
I dont see that one company range should kill the interest of other, at the end of the day if you enjoy good models you can find them spreaded everywere so why not collect them all?

Nothing at all really bothers me about GW's products. If it did, I wouldn't be spending hundreds of dollars on em.

IMO they produce a quality product that looks good and the game, in spite of it's rule problems, is still very fun to play. The moment it stops being fun for me, I'll move on to a new hobby. That has yet to happen though and it's been 14 years for me...

I've never had a problem with a Tamiya kit. I've had some dissapointments with really old Airfix kits.

In my experience, GW kits are somewhat lower quality than the old Frog kits from the 1960s. I mean, the best GW kits I have made (Tau) are the worst kits I've ever made in terms of detail, fit, construction, price and options.

I hear some of the other GW kits are much worse -- truly shocking. The Landspeeder is notorious.

Of course it is RANK HERESY to suggest that GW might do better to put part numbers on a £60 kit like the Baneblade.

I still buy (or bought) plenty of GW kits, but let's not suggest they are anything more than mediocre at their best.

I do not a great deal of experience with larger GW plastic kits, but mostof them (Landraider, Dreadnaught, Carnifex, Leman Russ) have been easy to assemble, with little to no warping or pieces that required any adjustment before assembly. After building model plane and tank kits that would barely fit together with welding, the ease of assembly came as a surprise to me.
That being said, I have seen Tau kits and the Necron Monolith that aren't that great. So I guess it's hit or miss.

Scout wrote:And don't even get me started on how @$$ ugly the Imperial Guard tank models are. The dilemna is that most model tanks of the same scale are just as expensive, and GW's vehicle models are usually made quite well (unlike some vehicle models, I'm looking at you Tamiya).

That is utter nonsense, I had to read it through several times to makie sure I'd got it right. Tamiya are not made well?! Some of their kits were a little ropey in the 70s (the 1/35th Sheridan come to mind) but their modern stuff, while being expensive, is second to none.

I love GW and their minis, i cannot understand all this hate and unfair critism, IMHO.

This is the only hobby that has some fantastic modeling and painting

Squig_herder wrote:I love GW and their minis, i cannot understand all this hate and unfair critism, IMHO.

They do get far more than their fair bit of 'mould-slippage'. Why this it the case I don't know because the mould should align exactly and cast figures should not have a huge step in them, which is far harder to correct than a bit of flash. It's not so bad when you can see the figure in a pack, but when it's in a box you're buying blind. Yes you can probably get a free replacement from customer services but you shouldn't have to chase things like that up, a company like GW should have better quality control. My guess is that they are producing too much too quickly.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

Squig_herder wrote:I love GW and their minis, i cannot understand all this hate and unfair critism, IMHO.

They do get far more than their fair bit of 'mould-slippage'. Why this it the case I don't know because the mould should align exactly and cast figures should not have a huge step in them, which is far harder to correct than a bit of flash. It's not so bad when you can see the figure in a pack, but when it's in a box you're buying blind. Yes you can probably get a free replacement from customer services but you shouldn't have to chase things like that up, a company like GW should have better quality control. My guess is that they are producing too much too quickly.

You have a good point on that. 1 to you, lol. but in all seriousness for such mass production they do a great job over all, im not saying that there are parts that lack but there are parts that excell. I sort of agree that they need to slow down abit and take there time but they are a multi country hobby and theres always a demand for soming new from them.

Squig_herder wrote:I love GW and their minis, i cannot understand all this hate and unfair critism, IMHO.

This is the only hobby that has some fantastic modeling and painting

What about Napoleonics? What about wargaming in general outside GW? Huge choice, and excellent work being done by lots of participants.

I think the issue with GW's women is that they really haven't sculpted one in a long time. All of their girls that look reasonably female (or unreasonably female) are pretty recent. I am thinking of the Repentia and some of the Eldar, though I don't know them too well. I think the issue with the standard Sisters is that they are really old, and single peice pewter has a very checkered past.
That and the heroic scale "giant head" doesn't really scream "girly!"

HEhe and TS, I think your gamer girls are different from mine. All the ones I know consider painting Sisters such that they don't look like trannies to be a sign of skill.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Squig_herder wrote:I love GW and their minis, i cannot understand all this hate and unfair critism, IMHO.

This is the only hobby that has some fantastic modeling and painting

What about Napoleonics? What about wargaming in general outside GW? Huge choice, and excellent work being done by lots of participants.

Furthermore, what about modelling in general? There are masses of people painting 54mm figures or making kits in 1/72, 1/48 and 1/35th who easily come to the standard of things entered at Games Day, you just have to look around. This is the roblem with the "Games Workshop hobby", either by accident or design on behalf of GW, many people involved seem oblivious of modelling at large.

I've never really had a problem with the quality of GW models from an imagery perspective - I think most of them look pretty cool.

There is, however, a phrase within our group that gets repeated time and time again:

'GW make good looking models, not practical models'

I actually like the Russ (scale issues aside). But I hate the Russ kit. The needlessness of the tracks and the wheels and the track links and UHHH! It's horrible. I own 31 Russ Hulls and 24 Chimera Hulls, and believe me I was quite happy when I finished the last one - I even took a photo of the final Russ track I would ever build.

Occasionally they make something that is just perfect - I love the Land Raider kit, it is perfect - but there are so many metal and plastic models where we have to sit back and go 'Why did they put the join there?' or 'That's never going to hold!'


Forge World's worse. I still haven't worked up the effort to repair my Stormblade. Those tracks... God... and you thought the Russ Tracks were bad. The resin Baneblade tracks don't even reach one another - there are huge gaps between each one. I can't even imagine what it would be like to super-glue the plastic tracks to the Malcador kit. The combination of fiddly little tracks, super-glue and Forge World's 50% chance of warping my mini out of proportions... It's the primary reason I've not bought any.

BYE

Howard A Treesong wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Squig_herder wrote:I love GW and their minis, i cannot understand all this hate and unfair critism, IMHO.

This is the only hobby that has some fantastic modeling and painting

What about Napoleonics? What about wargaming in general outside GW? Huge choice, and excellent work being done by lots of participants.

Furthermore, what about modelling in general? There are masses of people painting 54mm figures or making kits in 1/72, 1/48 and 1/35th who easily come to the standard of things entered at Games Day, you just have to look around. This is the roblem with the "Games Workshop hobby", either by accident or design on behalf of GW, many people involved seem oblivious of modelling at large.

I agree 100% GW is really just a small fraction of the modelling and painting hobby world. If you havent figured it out that yet better open your eyes because your missing the party!

http://theminiaturespage.com/

Yes, there's a lot out there beyond GW. And it's not all Ancients or Napoleonics either. Check out the Pulp and Horror gaming.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Forge World's worse. I still haven't worked up the effort to repair my Stormblade. Those tracks... God... and you thought the Russ Tracks were bad. The resin Baneblade tracks don't even reach one another - there are huge gaps between each one. I can't even imagine what it would be like to super-glue the plastic tracks to the Malcador kit. The combination of fiddly little tracks, super-glue and Forge World's 50% chance of warping my mini out of proportions... It's the primary reason I've not bought any.

Mine have stuck together remarkably well, actually. I used two-component epoxy, which took AGES, but has lasted fairly well in gaming conditions fair and foul. It's still among my favorite vehicles, aesthetics-wise, though I got some annoying warps and a bit of transit damage. Still, it came together into a solid, durable vehicle that is at least as sturdy as any Chimera you'd care to name.