If every single release from GW from now on was "monopose", would you still participate in the hobby/buy the product?
For reference, by "Monopose" I mean anything from the Easy to Build kits to the current Space Marine Intercessors kit (that is, fused torso and legs, but different arm/head/weapon options).
If every kit from now on was like the Space Marine Intercessors, or the Chaos Space Marines, or the Battle Sisters from the Sisters of Battle, or the Plague Marines, would you still buy the product?
These kits, due to certain arms not fitting certain bodies, certain weapon options not fitting certain torsos, and the torso and leg options generally being one, immovable piece, are considered "monopose" on top of other things like ETB kits, or kits with near zero options like various things from Blackstone Fortress (guard, cultists, etc).
If I told you there was a 0% chance that we would never see anything more customizable than the above kits, would you still support the company by buying the product?
(This is theoretical, I'm not trying to say that this is 100% the way things will go, this is just a thought exercise. Instead of arguing with various pedantic points, try doing this thought exercise.)
The current kits are wonderful and convertible if that is your thing. The inability to kit-bash or make micro-adjustment with no effort is greatly offset with the quality of the models in both esthetics and ease of assembly.
1. "You're crazy! Nothing had changed. They're not mono-pose!" 2. "So what if they are monopose? They're not that posable now, so it's not that big a difference!" <==Cheex 3. "We like it because they're dynamic and the old ones were bad anyway!" <==Alex Troy, Daedalus81 4. "No options and nonposable is actually better for everyone/the game/etc.!" 5. "It's just nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses that you think they were posable/easy to convert!" 6. "You should be thankful there are even options at all!"
drbored wrote: If every kit from now on was like the Space Marine Intercessors, or the Chaos Space Marines, or the Battle Sisters from the Sisters of Battle, or the Plague Marines, would you still buy the product?
At least in terms of these examples, absolutely. They aren't flawless but I largely view them as an improvement on what came before.
H.B.M.C. wrote: 3. "We like it because they're dynamic and the old ones were bad anyway!" <==Alex Troy
I didn't say that. I said I like them because they are higher quality sculpts that are much easier to assemble.
I've assembled Cadian models, which was a PITA. I have a 1850 point metal Sister of Battle Army that took me well over a decade to paint. I purchased the Sister of Battle Army Box to support my army, but didn't assemble them for months. Six months after assembling the Army Box, I have a 2000 point all plastic Adepta Sororitas army.
Why you ask? Because they are a pleasure to assemble and paint. Much more fun then assembling my free form Cadians and I have more poses available in my monopose plastics than I did in my metal models.
H.M.B.C, you missed the truly important option concerning mono-pose:
Chaos Demons. "Our models for my army have -never- had posable options. What the gak are you all complaining about?"
Because some variant of "fixed [posture], but different arms/head/weapon options" is what demons had in early metal, late metal, and the plastic so far. If you're going to say "Oh, but you could bend the metal arms around, and cut the metal bits up...", it's the same thing you'd do to plastic (except you may want to get a heat gun or solvent to help out).
I'm just not really sold on the whole nostalgia for the period where you could go and buy a box of Khorne Berzerkers if you were really hard up for different leg options for the CSM squad you wanted to put together.
1. "You're crazy! Nothing had changed. They're not mono-pose!" 2. "So what if they are monopose? They're not that posable now, so it's not that big a difference!" 3. "We like it because they're dynamic and the old ones were bad anyway!" <==Alex Troy
4. "No options and nonposable is actually better for everyone/the game/etc.!" 5. "It's just nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses that you think they were posable/easy to convert!" 6. "You should be thankful there are even options at all!"
I've only gotten a few "mono-pose" kits over the years and while I was initially really bummed at the lack of customization compared to old kits, they've grown on me. It is frustrating not being able to kit out minis with whatever weapons you want, but I've gotten kitbashing and conversion out of the Battle Sisters boxes regardless and there's still enough customization options available that it's not obvious that all your minis are using the same few torsos. It even makes elaborate conversions more satisfying in some ways.
Speaking from experience using CSM (many kits of the old style, and 4-ish of the new):
The way I see it, the old-style kits only gave the illusion of poseability. In reality, certain arms and legs really only worked in a few specific poses, so the most you could really do was twist the torso or raise/lower the arms a little, but the modularity of the parts meant that they could look a little stiff. Marine left hands, for example, look very stiff the way they hold their bolters; likewise, the torsos would for some reason pivot at the belt, which has always looked weird to me.
Perhaps new-style kits swung a little hard in the other direction, but the way the parts fit together make their poses look more natural to me. There is enough variation in the kits (thinking CSM heads and shoulders here, and even the arms can be swapped between bodies with minimal modification) to make models look just as distinct as with old kits.
I think a good compromise is the way AoS Blood Warriors work. They have fully modular heads and arms, and the torsos pivot around a joint closer to their ribcage which makes the poses look more natural.
solkan wrote: Chaos Demons. "Our models for my army have -never- had posable options. What the gak are you all complaining about?"
Hey, I can swivel the heads on my Bloodletters, thank you very much!
While I prefer the full pose of the past, the fused torso is not that bad. Not the best, but I can deal with it.
Better then things like the Howling Banshee kit, where you are restricted to some faceplate swaps and exarch options. Same 5 gals for your whole army, hope you don’t want multiple squads.
Of course, I played WHFB where we ranked up big blocks of troops with the same 4 metal guys, so I guess this is an improvement?
1. "You're crazy! Nothing had changed. They're not mono-pose!" 2. "So what if they are monopose? They're not that posable now, so it's not that big a difference!" <==Cheex
3. "We like it because they're dynamic and the old ones were bad anyway!" <==Alex Troy
4. "No options and nonposable is actually better for everyone/the game/etc.!" 5. "It's just nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses that you think they were posable/easy to convert!" 6. "You should be thankful there are even options at all!"
I can update this as the thread progresses.
Sorry, but I'll take new models over the bricks of old. I'll support your desire for more posable models, but it does nothing for me.
Maybe it's because I started the game where most units were 5 pewter monopose models that you duplicated 4 or 5 times. It just doesn't bother me that much.
Plastic is much easier to cut up and change than pewter was thats for sure.
What really bothers me is the "no model, no rules" thing. This game for me was always about making your own guys, kit bashing and conversions. I do not like that every single piece of wargear has been codified. I just want my gaming options back.
And anyone who says "it's easier to for new people to get into the hobby", honestly, they can go out and get a hobby knife a learn how to work it like the rest of us did. I'm not here to let some tourists into my hobby. You're in, or you,'re out. Don't half ass it.
Hmm, not sure how to vote. Yes, I would still expand my collection but I would use even more 3rd party Minis than before to add variety. The problem about monopose is you buy every kit just once because there is no point in multiples. I expanded my DG collection despite monopose, but GW was clever enough to release 28 different Plague Marines, which I could add to my 50+ existing multipose / magnetized ones' from prior editions.
With Orks you have the option to also to take AoS / Fantasy Minis, though it's a shame they put the old greenskinz out of production that were compatible with 40K Orks. So my Boyz consist of 20 40k Boyz, 20 Savage Orks, 20 Shieldwolf Orks and a lot of Bits from Kromlech and Spellcrow. Yes, I will add new Boyz as well, but just one group of 10, no point in more of them because of clones.
Remember, relentless positivity can only come at the cost of setting the past on fire.
Its strange how it often ends up looking like relentless negativity, but aimed only at all the things that brought us to this point.
Remember, relentless positivity can only come at the cost of setting the past on fire.
Its strange how it often ends up looking like relentless negativity, but aimed only at all the things that brought us to this point.
I've been wondering about this sort of thing. A lot of people tend to make arguments about GW's path, the models that are coming out, etc, within the vacuum of GW's product line. Where there may be improvements to fidelity of detail, they are made via sacrifices to 'poseability', but then you look at the poseability of old, and you had a lot of marines and models that looked like this:
Spoiler:
Sure, it was slightly easier to put the plasma gun, melta gun, flamer, and pistols on whichever arm you wanted, but for the most part those things are still possible with a little bit of extra effort and careful clipping, minus a few options where the hands are molded around the grip, for example. The ability to rotate the torso 360 degrees was paired with the issue of the legs always looking like they were in a mid-squat pose, while with the newer models, certain special and heavy weapons can only fit on one or two bodies, and only fit on others with significantly more effort than before.
The other angle that I have been considering this is in the community as a whole. With regards to mental health, if you're surrounded by people that are constantly negative, bashing on the things that you like, or at worst even gaslighting or using other argument methods to shut you down, many mental health experts would call that a toxic environment. A toxic environment isn't conducive to the healthy growth of an individual, and is generally not where you would want to be, and yet the Warhammer community, on some sites, is exactly that. "Relentless positivity" is hammered down until those that like to look on the bright side simply don't speak up, while "relentless negativity" is praised and joined, upvoted and agreed with, whether or not it's warranted, and sometimes in the face of opposing facts.
There are certainly valid complaints and opinions out there. For example, I really feel for Eldar players still languishing with 20+ year old models, and I simply cannot recommend that new players buy kits like the Khorne Berzerkers or other aged kits that have yet to be updated. I also gave a mighty sigh when I learned that Space Marine Outriders could only be built a certain way, or that Chaos Marine Obliterators are not only stuck in a start collecting box, but also can only be built one singular way. I also am not a fan of the fact that GW seems to be more interested in printing books and that they have a pattern of letting certain products and game lines go unsupported to wither and die. These are valid criticisms when you're a long-term hobbyist. I wouldn't call anyone pointing these things out to be 'relentlessly negative', though in many of these instances it certainly feels like they're beating the same horse, and new routes of conversation might be more entertaining to have.
However, there are just as many criticisms that are stated as fact, and when someone tries to present an opposing view, the community doesn't want to hear it. Take Kill Team, for example. The volatile upset of the vocal part of the community was astoundingly negative when it was revealed that the Compendium would be a separate book and would cost more than the previous editions' core book did. Is that crappy? Yeah, it's rough to have to shell another 60 USD to get what people perceive to be the same content as what previously came in a 40 dollar book. Sure, I agree, that's mighty crappy. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the printing of so many books. That said, the same exact thing happened with Warhammer 40k and the community praised the practice: 8th edition brought with it the Indexes, and in order to be able to play all the factions, you had to buy 4 separate indexes, knowing full well that they'd be replaced later.
So, Kill Team 21 comes out, does the same thing as Warhammer 40k 8th edition with an Index, and yet gets lambasted as being the worst practice in all of miniature wargaming history. On top of that, people came out of the woodworks lamenting the loss of mixed Kill Teams, without giving any concession that the new system might actually be more lore-friendly and easier to balance than the previous system. Any opposing views, such as the game being better, the system being more balanced, and the positive view that more interesting things were on the way, were all hammered down by loud negative viewpoints.
When you talk about "relentless positivity" like it's a bad thing, I have to wonder if you'd prefer this "relentless negativity" to continue. Is it truly healthy for the community as a whole? Valid criticism, maybe even some activism to keep the company on track, is certainly healthy, but in my mind the negative voices seem to be far louder than the positive ones.
Also, don't mistake "relentless positivity" for people that just want to enjoy the hobby they spent hundreds of dollars to get into. There are people that, despite the beliefs in some of these forums, actually LIKE the hobby for what it is, despite the drama, and don't need to be told that so many things suck.
I've got RT metals that had no posability, and plastics with very limited posability.
I've 2E Starter SM with no posability.
And posable/semi-posable models all the way up to current.
Hell, I still sometimes play with army men and their 5 static poses. (Though "sweeping for mines" guy bugs me)
For me, they're colorful tokens for the game. I get more bothered that the 40K rules are in such a sad shape more than I give a lick about the posability of the overpriced models.
Cheex wrote: Speaking from experience using CSM (many kits of the old style, and 4-ish of the new):
The way I see it, the old-style kits only gave the illusion of poseability. In reality, certain arms and legs really only worked in a few specific poses, so the most you could really do was twist the torso or raise/lower the arms a little, but the modularity of the parts meant that they could look a little stiff. Marine left hands, for example, look very stiff the way they hold their bolters; likewise, the torsos would for some reason pivot at the belt, which has always looked weird to me.
Sure, it was slightly easier to put the plasma gun, melta gun, flamer, and pistols on whichever arm you wanted, but for the most part those things are still possible with a little bit of extra effort and careful clipping, minus a few options where the hands are molded around the grip, for example. The ability to rotate the torso 360 degrees was paired with the issue of the legs always looking like they were in a mid-squat pose, while with the newer models, certain special and heavy weapons can only fit on one or two bodies, and only fit on others with significantly more effort than before.
Yup.
I think a lot of the bitter old-timers who complain about this are just coping with losing the easy endorphin rush of feeling like they "converted" or "customized" something (by mixing pieces from multiple kits in the most superficial, by-design manner possible, in combinations that were almost certainly reproduced by other players elsewhere in the world doing the same thing).
That's how I "converted" models too, when I was a kid. It eventually started to feel half-assed. Especially after I saw the amazing stuff people were doing online by actually chopping up kits, raw materials, or doing their own sculpting. So I started learning how to do that, and now I can actually convert and customize my models to a degree that satisfies me, even if they originate from a monopose kit.
So, yeah, I would continue buying from an "all-monopose" line. The figures I leave stock look better than the stock figures of the past, and the figures I want to customize have a better frame to start working from.
I'm mostly on the side that says poseable, interchangeable miniatures are better than monopose miniatures. But I don't hate monopose stuff if the multipose stuff remains available. Stuff like the Dark Vengeance Chosen are cool minis that I am happy to have.
I would like it if the monopose minis were designed in a way that made them easier to alter though. The modern style of having a scrap of cloth, an elbow and the lower right quarter of the face all being one bit is NOT "easy to build", it's a royal pain in the arse. Something like AOBR Boyz and Nobz are "easy to build", looking at the sprues for the new Orks they look a good bit more difficult.
And if the only way to get a large horde unit is through a very limited selection of monopose figures, that's not good. The situation with Chaos Cultists for example is crap and should be addressed.
So I'm not a fan of the trend in general, but will buy individual kits sometimes if they suit my purposes.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Ah. So now we're gatekeeping what constitutes a "conversion", are we?
Always a class act, Al.
Yet you are rudely mocking/patronising people who have an opinion that varies from your own.
I'd rather take the conversion elitism rather than direct, straight up contempt and rudeness any day
Agreed wholeheartedly. It's not needed. I suspect it actively stifles discussion, and almost certainly doesn't help the reputation Dakka and the wider 40k community 'enjoys' in many quarters.
If you have an argument to make, let it stand or fall on its own. A strong argument does not require derision, vitriol or insult as part of it's foundation. Where you are relying on that, I think any salient, worthwhile point you may have made has already been lost.
GoldenHorde wrote: Yet you are rudely mocking/patronising people who have an opinion that varies from your own.
All my attempts to explain my reasoning are met with derision and dismissal.
How many times must I write up lengthy counter points to things like drbored's "lot of marines and models that looked like this", showing again, for the Skaven-cursed thirteenth time that having lots of mono-pose dynamic models looks weird and unnatural compared to even similar multi-posed models. Or how the accusation that multi-part minis just led to unnaturally bow-legged models when that simply. Isn't. True. (None of those kits are old kits).
How many times must I explain how the freedom to use whatever bits are in the kit in whatever manner you want is a good thing, and has been the norm for GW kits only up until recently, or why Weapon X always having to go with torso Y is not a positive step forward and is actually a step backwards.
Why must I continue to content with Dae, who thinks that GW's glut of muli-part multi-optional kits was nothing more than a "transitional phase" for GW (his words - not in this thread), as if mono-pose was the natural state of GW's miniature lines rather than this recent trend being a regression from all the leaps and bounds GW has taken over the years with their plastic technology.
Dont care. The every model has to look different era was one in which i was not involved in the hobby. Theyre still a hell of lot more poseble and variance than the mid 90s!
GoldenHorde wrote: Yet you are rudely mocking/patronising people who have an opinion that varies from your own.
All my attempts to explain my reasoning are met with derision and dismissal.
How many times must I write up lengthy counter points to things like drbored's "lot of marines and models that looked like this", showing again, for the Skaven-cursed thirteenth time that having lots of mono-pose dynamic models looks weird and unnatural compared to even similar multi-posed models. Or how the accusation that multi-part minis just led to unnaturally bow-legged models when that simply. Isn't. True. (None of those kits are old kits).
How many times must I explain how the freedom to use whatever bits are in the kit in whatever manner you want is a good thing, and has been the norm for GW kits only up until recently, or why Weapon X always having to go with torso Y is not a positive step forward and is actually a step backwards.
Why must I continue to content with Dae, who thinks that GW's glut of muli-part multi-optional kits was nothing more than a "transitional phase" for GW (his words - not in this thread), as if mono-pose was the natural state of GW's miniature lines rather than this recent trend being a regression from all the leaps and bounds GW has taken over the years with their plastic technology.
I haven't been following the discussion closely enough (it sounds like, from what you're saying, this goes beyond this thread?) but I figure past a certain point, if you're not hearing each other (and sometimes, I absolutely accept, it can be completely due to people being wilfully intractable - they won't accept what you have to say no matter how well reasoned or factually backed your point is - that can be endlessly frustrating) it's just not worth continuing to engage in the discussion with them if you can't find any common ground.
And the more frustrated people get by that, the more often it turns into something that isn't reasoned discussion any more. Your point (which may well have been right) gets forgotten, while everyone focuses on how you've escalated things out of that frustration. (I have to hold my hand up and acknowledge being guilty of this too - and recently unfortunately).
Many of us lurk (I tend to more than comment) and watch how the thread develops. You won't know it based on feedback, but very often, the point you made while it didn't reach the people you name, very possibly did reach us. You are being heard based on the merit of your argument. I promise.
I am looking for the option that says will buy, but maybe less or fewer, with third party kits now an option more than ever due to lack of choice from gw, largely in agreement wit Sgt Cortez and da Boss, above… so didn’t vote.
drbored - I figured you took the time to write a detailed post, so the least I could do is take the time to reply in kind.
drbored wrote: I've been wondering about this sort of thing. A lot of people tend to make arguments about GW's path, the models that are coming out, etc, within the vacuum of GW's product line. Where there may be improvements to fidelity of detail, they are made via sacrifices to 'poseability', but then you look at the poseability of old, and you had a lot of marines and models that looked like this:
Spoiler:
Sure, it was slightly easier to put the plasma gun, melta gun, flamer, and pistols on whichever arm you wanted, but for the most part those things are still possible with a little bit of extra effort and careful clipping, minus a few options where the hands are molded around the grip, for example. The ability to rotate the torso 360 degrees was paired with the issue of the legs always looking like they were in a mid-squat pose, while with the newer models, certain special and heavy weapons can only fit on one or two bodies, and only fit on others with significantly more effort than before.
I wholeheartedly reject this argument as it does not match up to the reality of GW minis. Above I have three links to not-exactly-old kits - Deathwatch Veterans, Rubric Marines and Mk.III Marines. I chose recent Marines examples specifically as previous Tactical Squads and the Chaos Marines you included in your post above are most often cited for why "this is why mono-pose is better!". None of those kits are dumpy bow-legged Marines like those ancient Chaos Marines (much as I love that old kit! ).
GW is at the top of their game when it comes to plastic multi-part miniatures. I cannot speak to what plasic tech in Japan is like - so please don't quote a dozen random Gundum makers at me that maybe make GW look like children* - but from a mass-market Western wargame I don't think anyone matches them as far as variety, detail and expertise. It's no accident why they're the biggest fish in the small pond that is miniature wargaming, and why other companies could never reach their heights (Mantic), why some need pre-painted pre-built licensed products to get near (X-Wing, SW Legion) or why some almost got there but flew too close to the sun (Privateer Press).
*That's directed at the thread, not you specifically.
We know what they can produce. How often have we all gone "Well I already own 20 of those, so I doubt a new kit will make me rebuy th... oh my God I must have that!!!" when they show off just how much more detail a new kit has, new weapons, new heads and really just how farwe'vecome?
GW's recent crop of minis may have the detail, but they're losing their modularity. They're becoming harder to piece together. They're becoming more restrictive. None of these three things are positive and, more importantly, none of these things are necessary because we know they don't have to do it this way.
I don't know how many different ways I can restate that, and I don't understand why anyone could see this regression as a positive. If you think this trend really is a positive, then by all means, help me understand it.
drbored wrote: The other angle that I have been considering this is in the community as a whole. With regards to mental health, if you're surrounded by people that are constantly negative, bashing on the things that you like, or at worst even gaslighting or using other argument methods to shut you down, many mental health experts would call that a toxic environment. A toxic environment isn't conducive to the healthy growth of an individual, and is generally not where you would want to be, and yet the Warhammer community, on some sites, is exactly that. "Relentless positivity" is hammered down until those that like to look on the bright side simply don't speak up, while "relentless negativity" is praised and joined, upvoted and agreed with, whether or not it's warranted, and sometimes in the face of opposing facts.
I operate on a credit where credit's due mentality. It's why you'll always see me talking up GW customer service, as it's excellent. It's why you'll see me absolutely gushing over virtually any terrain product GW puts out. But that also means I'm not going to ignore things I consider to be bad, from rules, to GW's pricing policies, business practices, to increasing amounts of mono-pose minis.
I don't think we have a problem with hammering down 'relentless positivity', because what I find is that we don't often get that here. What we get are relentless excuse making. When something is good, we see people in any thread in N&R talking about it. And I think Dakka's nature as a 'toxic' is overblown. Better this than a site where the staff stamp down on any form of discussion that doesn't fit its incredibly narrow views (I've heard horror stories about Bolter & Chainsword...). As far as the opposite, 'relentless negativity', I've come across very few here who exude that with every aspect of every post they make.
drbored wrote: I wouldn't call anyone pointing these things out to be 'relentlessly negative', though in many of these instances it certainly feels like they're beating the same horse, and new routes of conversation might be more entertaining to have.
You know? I don't disagree with you on that. But at the same time, mono-pose minis is this thread's topic, so whilst the topic itself may have been done to death, it seems odd to criticise the discussion happening within the thread where it was set up to happen.
drbored wrote: However, there are just as many criticisms that are stated as fact, and when someone tries to present an opposing view, the community doesn't want to hear it. Take Kill Team, for example. The volatile upset of the vocal part of the community was astoundingly negative when it was revealed that the Compendium would be a separate book and would cost more than the previous editions' core book did. Is that crappy? Yeah, it's rough to have to shell another 60 USD to get what people perceive to be the same content as what previously came in a 40 dollar book. Sure, I agree, that's mighty crappy. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the printing of so many books. That said, the same exact thing happened with Warhammer 40k and the community praised the practice: 8th edition brought with it the Indexes, and in order to be able to play all the factions, you had to buy 4 separate indexes, knowing full well that they'd be replaced later.
I don't have the Compendium, and Kill Team itself holds little interest for me (certainly once they decided to forgo numbers in favour of shapes for some unknown reason... ), but I think that came down to people expecting their Kill-Teams to be useable in the new rules, and not to have all their options stripped away. Y'know, a bit like when a new kit comes out and it's all mono-pose.
drbored wrote: When you talk about "relentless positivity" like it's a bad thing, I have to wonder if you'd prefer this "relentless negativity" to continue. Is it truly healthy for the community as a whole? Valid criticism, maybe even some activism to keep the company on track, is certainly healthy, but in my mind the negative voices seem to be far louder than the positive ones.
I have a quote in my sig - "Everything is fine, nothing is broken!" that I keep there for a very specific reason. It was something an old boss of mine would say years ago when everything was going wrong. It was his self-deprecating way of letting everyone know that something was broken but he was working on fixing it. When the time came to do the vehicle rules for the Only War 40KRPG I couldn't help but include that as the quote at the start of the vehicle repair section, which is where that screenshot in my sig comes from.
As I said above, I don't feel we have a lot of "relentless positivity" at Dakka - certainly no more than relentless negativity - but rather relentless excuse making. Too many people here are willing to go "Everything is fine! Nothing is broken!" whilst things regress right before their eyes. That's not positivity. That's delusion.
When GW gets something right, we should celebrate it - the new Ork terrain is phenomenal, I really love the new 1KSons Codex, I think Crusade is fantastic (but would be better if my 'Nids had Crusade rules! ). The Indomitus box finally turned me around on Primaris Marines (dumb Cawl fluff notwithstanding). Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City are two of the coolest things GW has released in a long time. 8th (and 9th) made me excited to play 40k again. I quite often express the sheer joy I get out of terrain making, even with my own blog on the subject. I just want to play 40K and Necromunda and Warhammer Quest and BattleTech but I've been stuck in a perpetual lockdown since June and it's driving me fething insane!!!
*ahem*
Meanwhile, Al, a few posts above me: "Those aren't real conversions! Real conversions involve blah blah blah gatekeeping!"
And ---I'm--- the one being negative?
drbored wrote: Also, don't mistake "relentless positivity" for people that just want to enjoy the hobby they spent hundreds of dollars to get into. There are people that, despite the beliefs in some of these forums, actually LIKE the hobby for what it is, despite the drama, and don't need to be told that so many things suck.
Completely fair call, but I can't help but point out again that this is a thread about mono-pose minis, so coming in here not expecting to find opinions in the negative of such minis is a bit like going into a discussion about a new movie you haven't seen and getting annoyed that they "spoiled" it for you.
My only real answer to your question is YES. Yes I would continue expanding my collection.
Why? Because mono-pose, multi-pose, etc - I buy models I like. Always have, always will. So, on the assumption GW keeps making models I like....
Besides, since I actually posses modeling skills? A model is really only as mono-pose as I choose it to be.
I have no problem with most of the modern kits and think, you can adjust even the dynamic poses with kitbashes and stuff so they dont all look the same. The one thing, I am really annoyed by though is the Plasmagun in the Scions kit. There is NO easy way, to have any variety in your plasma gunners whatsoever. They all will be pointing and keeping the plasma gun casual at their side.
Intercessor level is absolutely fine for me. I'm not looking back to those times where I had to put models together with Green Stuff first to see if the pose will check out with all bits attached.
As long as arms and heads are easy to attach/remove, I can my conversions work.
alextroy wrote: The inability to kit-bash or make micro-adjustment with no effort is greatly offset with the quality of the models in both esthetics and ease of assembly.
I agree with the first part. Monopose models have the major advantage of allowing more realistic dynamic poses. I massively disagree with the second part of that sentence. Multipose models were so much easier to assemble en masse because you just clipped out and cleaned up all the individual bits then assembled as you saw fit. Monopose requires you to keep track of each exact piece and all too often with GW models leads to tiny pieces being needed in hard-to-reach areas. Assembling Flayed Ones feels like some meta commentary on the nature of madness with how many fiddly little pieces you need to glue to barely visible contact points.
On balance I prefer multipose. Monopose have the additional problem that some armies just need lots of models and after a while the same 5 models over and over again look weird. It wasn't as bad in WHFB because those models tended to be in big blocks so individual models weren't as prominent on the table and a certain amount of uniformity was desirable. Yes, multipose models could all look uninspiring if assembled in the way the instructions suggested but in my experience the vast majority of people did about 1-2 squads that way then started experimenting because it was so easy to do. Just little changes here and there could give a squad character and make them uniquely yours. Conversions are still possible with monopose kits but they're a lot more difficult to do and still more restrictive.
Bago wrote: I have no problem with most of the modern kits and think, you can adjust even the dynamic poses with kitbashes and stuff so they dont all look the same. The one thing, I am really annoyed by though is the Plasmagun in the Scions kit. There is NO easy way, to have any variety in your plasma gunners whatsoever. They all will be pointing and keeping the plasma gun casual at their side.
THAT depends upon your modeling skills.
Maybe all of your Scion plasma gunners will look alike, but mine would not.
Bago wrote: I have no problem with most of the modern kits and think, you can adjust even the dynamic poses with kitbashes and stuff so they dont all look the same. The one thing, I am really annoyed by though is the Plasmagun in the Scions kit. There is NO easy way, to have any variety in your plasma gunners whatsoever. They all will be pointing and keeping the plasma gun casual at their side.
THAT depends upon your modeling skills.
Maybe all of your Scion plasma gunners will look alike, but mine would not.
But it does highlight the problem with "dynamic posing" pretty starkly.
Aye, but it's a fair cop that it requires greater modelling skill than previously, and it's okay to be a bit put out by that.
I think there's also "good monopose" and "bad monopose". Monopose is fine for stuff you're only going to have one or maybe two of in your army, or if the poses are relatively "neutral". But if you're going to have a lot of them, the repeated over the top "dynamic" poses will not look as good.
Tbh this is of a piece with a general trend in the wider wargaming hobby to make miniatures look really good for online videos or pictures, but not so great for actual table top play.
The current Kill Team models are supposed to be monopose, but can still be magnetised to switch options.
Kitbashes can still be done, and converstions just as much. Not as easily as before, but there is more variety of pose now.
Monoposability is a spectrum and the degree to which it's tolerable or desirable also depends on the unit.
Intercessors I think are fine.
They're basic troops in fairly neutral poses/aesthetics. No one's looking too closely and repetitions don't stick out anyway.
They have enough variation on the arms and head to give a good unit.
Arguably this is the ideal, fused legs/torsos don't really reduce overall number of poses but do allow for more natural poses with better sculpted detail like cloth.
Howling Banshees are how not to do it.
They're elite troops that will draw attention to themselves. They're in very dynamic poses. Repetition sticks out and looks bad.
Ork Boys are also how not to do it. In an army who's number 1 theme is being cobbled together and disorganised, it's going to look incredibly dumb when every unit has the same Nob, the same Big Shoota, etc etc.
They may be grunts so people won't look too closely, but those are very distinct elements who's repetition will be easily noticed and completely out of place in the army.
Lord Damocles wrote: But twenty five years ago the metal models were monopose, so it's fine that we're now regressing back towards that point!
It's only regression if you consider "wiggle the arms around a little" multipose a step up.
That being said, I'd gladly go back to one or two-piece models but with modern sculpting quality so I'm clearly in minority.
Bago wrote: I have no problem with most of the modern kits and think, you can adjust even the dynamic poses with kitbashes and stuff so they dont all look the same. The one thing, I am really annoyed by though is the Plasmagun in the Scions kit. There is NO easy way, to have any variety in your plasma gunners whatsoever. They all will be pointing and keeping the plasma gun casual at their side.
THAT depends upon your modeling skills.
Maybe all of your Scion plasma gunners will look alike, but mine would not.
Oh, I dont say its impossible. I say, given the kit and the way of the plasma gun arm, it is not as easy as, e.g. clipping a boltpistol hand off and switch it for a plasmapistol hand.
Whilst I agree that I liked being able to pose the minis in different ways, and with different weapon load outs of my choice, I also agree the current range of models are far superior and more dynamic.
What I wish is that GW could mesh their current high quality minis with the ability to be fully pose able. Or at the very least for troops or units you'll likely use multiples of.
I suspect the reason they don't do this is as ever down to money.
Don't know about you, but the best looking minis to me are almost exclusively kitbashes or conversions, where several model's bits have been made into a new whole. That will always be the gold standard, regardless whether a monopose or multipart mini bits were used.
Rank & file is always going to look like rank & file. See enough armies of that same faction, and the repetitive silhouettes will become boring regardless of monopose/multipart aspects. It's always going to be tedious coming up with fresh looking units.
I played warmachine for over ten years. Ditto for infinity. More or less monopose models across the board and limited # of sculpts. Loads of fond memories of those games and some of my favourite models I've worked on - for cb theirs are some of the best in the industry.
If gw said 'never again will we do the 'classic' modular approach' I'd be OK with it. I love the new kits, love the dynamic posing. Oh and monopole doesn't stop conversions. I've been in this hobby for 20 years. If I want to covert/kit bash, I have the skills to do it and make it look good.
I think a lot of the bitter old-timers who complain about this are just coping with losing the easy endorphin rush of feeling like they "converted" or "customized" something (by mixing pieces from multiple kits in the most superficial, by-design manner possible, in combinations that were almost certainly reproduced by other players elsewhere in the world doing the same thing).
Sure, of course. That's the only possible reason.
I like the new monopose minis. I just don't like them to make armies, even less so big armies like orks or IG. They're great to have a small set of characterful minis.
Then again, I have 3d printing and Patreons for that. I usually want HIPS minis for the customization. The less customizable they are, the less inclined I am to buy them. Particularly at the prices GW asks for.
OTOH, I am really happy with the three different Stargrave boxes I bought, and those costed me about as much as a newish GW box, so...
Lord Damocles wrote: But twenty five years ago the metal models were monopose, so it's fine that we're now regressing back towards that point!
It's only regression if you consider "wiggle the arms around a little" multipose a step up.
Nobody with an above room temperature IQ considers 'wiggle the arms around a little' to be multipose.
By that same token, why would someone consider multipose "being able to use arms set A or B in this very specific way" but not "you can use any arm here, provided is a right arm, and wiggle it around a little"?
Because the great thing of the current ork sets is how you can use everything with everything, I think.
My issue with GW's modern models is that they are often CAD jigsaws that don't possess the same utility as most old kits for kitbashing because you don't necessarily have discrete body parts anymore. If I kitbash, I need a leg. Not half a leg and three quarters of another leg that don't even go together where they don't overlap. GW has many nice sculpts these days, but the moment I look at them as a source for a conversion, it becomes apparent how much needless extra work it'll be to base the conversion on that model. So as nice as the models may be on their own merit, that's a net loss for me over the older generation plastic models.
Aside from that I'm not overly bothered by the model design itself. I'd like to have more addon bits like pouches and stuff on the sprues, though. These things have grown sparser and they're such a simple and effective way of giving people more options for customization that it boggles the mind that GW is cutting costs here. They could actually have their beautifully sculpted, individualistic models they seem to be so proud of and still give people easy options to add a measure of change to the appearance of models that are bound to be duplicated due to army size demanding multiples of the same kit to be used. It's not even like GW doesn't recognize this. They're usually pretty solid with head options. Not so much with bits to cover the rest of the body.
I guess it does not bother me. My primary army is Craftworld and the Aspect Warriors are all mono posed, minus plastic Banshees. And I found the new Banshees to be fantastic models, though I think they would be considered mono pose by many.
I've painted @100+ Guardians over the years. I really disliked the kit as each Guardian has @ 16 pieces to assemble. I used @ 20 or so of the push fit Guardians to round out the army as the assembly of a basic Guardian took too long.
I've built and painted new Necrons and newer Primaris Marine kits (and Indomitus) and found the kits to be excellent quality.
I'll agree with you on thr bits. I'd love more grenades, pouches, holsters webbing, knives and ammo clips for my models - my Raptors would benefit tremendously. As is, I tend to hunt lots of third party stuff from Anvil or reiver bits from bits sellers to make up. Frustrating!
I voted for "I haven't bought anything GW in over 3 years", but I was referring to GW's main games, 40k and AoS/fantasy. And the correct option is actually "I haven't bought any new release from GW in over 3 years". But the correct answer that I had in mind is something like "I would keep buying older kits that I like as long as they are available".
Most recently released models I've bought were Wulfen and ork Meganobz which are 6-7 years old now. When primaris were released I bought a Land Raider, Bjorn and 3 Rhinos/Razorbacks instead. In the last few years I got Empire and Dark Elves stuff instead of new SW and ork models as WHFB 6th is still popular here and now I can also join the group. Not interested in the modern GW releases for 40k and AoS because I don't like how they look or I already have legit alternatives/count as (see Buggies and the new Kommandos, Koptas, Megaboss) and I don't play AoS.
I've bought several Necromunda kits though, which are the opposite of monopose, especially now with the new sprues of upgrades.
In conclusion my answer is NO (with the exception of Necromunda), and that's a NO even for the near future, unless GW surprises me with excellent models from The Old World. In fact I'd like to get a full 2000-2500 points (in WHFB 6th points) of Beast of Chaos and Orcs and Goblins. The former I can get right now as there's still the faction's entire roster available online, and that's 10-20 years old models we're talking about, but to get the former I have to wish for new releases as most of the roster is OOP and prices on ebay are too high. That possible old school Orc and Goblins army is exactly the only thing I'd be interested from GW new releases, probably forever. I have enough orks to keep playing 40k no matter what and I'm not interested to expand my SW collection with non firstborn models, both armies are complete.
But I'm open minded, ready to change idea if GW releases some models I'd really want to get.
It is a damn shame that third party companies like Anvil and North Star can make great multipose models (NorthStar doing it for a high degree of customisation across their whole plastic line, Anvil being the mix and match kings) for gaming and GW is both making monopose models in armies with multiple instances of each guy and making the poses less than suitable for gaming.
They did it in the past, yet seem to have embraced a halfway house between the various options.
I’m happy with either monopose or fully customisable kits. I’d prefer customisable kits for characters rather than infantry, repetition in rank and file doesn’t bother me but I’d like for the command units to be more “my guys”.
I feel this poll needs another option; I'll buy less GW product and/or use 3rd party stuff, conversions etc to make sure my models are sufficiently unique.
I'm personally quite happy with the modern plague marine kit and by combining it with the other ETB kits, CSM and Blightking kits was able to build a collection of 42 plague marines with only 2 duplicate poses.
drbored wrote: If every single release from GW from now on was "monopose", would you still participate in the hobby/buy the product?
For reference, by "Monopose" I mean anything from the Easy to Build kits to the current Space Marine Intercessors kit (that is, fused torso and legs, but different arm/head/weapon options).
If every kit from now on was like the Space Marine Intercessors, or the Chaos Space Marines, or the Battle Sisters from the Sisters of Battle, or the Plague Marines, would you still buy the product?
Because you choose to use this absurd and misleading definition of 'monopose', I will to say I'd gladly buy such models. The primaris marine line and SoB line are the best models I have ever worked with, they're an absolute delight to build and customise and I can't wait to see the new BT primaris kits to add more options for kitbashing. The legs ant torso being one piece doesn't bother me at all, I prefer it. Abdomen and hips of older marine models alwys looked terrible if you ried to twist them more than couple of degrees. As an artist the anatomical awkwardness bothered me a lot. With the joint setup the dynamics of the torso and legs flow naturally, making the miniature look natural and cohesive. And as there actually are a lot of different bodies to choose from, and you can completely change the look with arm and leg poses, there really won't be duplicates.
The issue here really is the bizarre effort going on Dakka to redefine 'monopose' to mean 'has no ball joint on the waist.' This is not what it means, nor what it has ever meant. Before the primaris were a thing and certain people needed to invent all sort of excuses for hating on them, were the Skitarii or GSC models ever referred as 'monopose'? I certainly don't think they were generally understood to be such. This fetishization of the hip joint is just odd and trying to intentionally distort the meanings of words is annoying and makes discussion impossible. I am sure a lot of people wouldn't be that thrilled if all models were actual monopose, i.e. like the new ork boyz (though as addition such are fine too) but truing to lump highly customisable models like primaris and SoB full kits with that is absurd. They're certainly far closer to the customisability of the old marines than the complete staticness of the new ork boyz.
GW actually currently produces monopose and multipose versions of many models. There are monopose primaris marines and SoB in certain starter kits, then there are multipose versions in separate kits. These words serve a purpose and are useful for conveying information, but if we redefine the words so that multipose models are referred as 'monopose' too, then we can no longer communicate this difference.
What really bothers me is the "no model, no rules" thing. This game for me was always about making your own guys, kit bashing and conversions. I do not like that every single piece of wargear has been codified. I just want my gaming options back.
This.
Don't get me wrong - I definitely prefer multipose kits - but at least I can (and have) converted my own models when I want or need them.
But when the rules are just as monopose as the models, what is even the point?
The primaris marine line and SoB line are the best models I have ever worked with, they're an absolute delight to build and customise and I can't wait to see the new BT primaris kits to add more options for kitbashing.
Yeah, the Battle Sister kit in particular is the very opposite of monopose, it's in fact one of the most customizable kit GW ever released. Tons of different heads and arms, and bitz from other kits are also compatible. It's also worth mentioning that the Battle Sister kit was released to replace one-piece (hence, 100% monopose) metal figures.
The repetition of 5 sets of legs and torsos doesn't make the kit monopose, how many GW kit had more than 5 of those anyway? Kabalite warriors, wyches, firstborn marines, ork boyz, etc... they all have 5 legs and 5 torsos at most for kits of 10 man squads.
Deadnight wrote: I played warmachine for over ten years. Ditto for infinity. More or less monopose models across the board and limited # of sculpts. Loads of fond memories of those games and some of my favourite models I've worked on - for cb theirs are some of the best in the industry.
In Infinity one game might have as many models as a single squad in 40k though.
Personally I don't buy modern 40k models so I don't care that much but I do dislike how their models are becoming more and more specific to how the sprue is cut. I remember I first really noticed it with that Grey Knight SC they released alongside Guilliman who had what felt like a pizza slice cut out of him that you plugged into him. Compared to how posable and customisable the other GK infantry kits are it felt kind of weird.
Quite a lot of interchangeability between marine kits now, as the line expands it gets better.
I’m currently building the new kommandos and was initially a bit frustrated with the lack of interchangeability of parts in the kit but soon as I put a model together they are that good that I am but bothered at all anymore. They are stunning and so well posed.
There were compromises made to air the kits inter-compatible with each other and likewise there are compromises to “monopose” as defined here. Right now I prefer the newer style.
Considering the game I play the most is Underworlds, and all those kits are push-fit, I'd certainly keep buying them lol. I enjoy building any complexity of kits, I find it enjoyable regardless of how many parts there are.
The current primaris kits I find are fantastic, and I'm certainly 100% happy if they keep along that route. I find body+legs sculpts look better than those with separate body to legs anyway.
I love the Monopose Space Marines. Such greater detail and stuff like armpits and flexes in the waist and all that. Models go together and look good. And I still convert stuff when I want. Head swaps, arm swaps, weapon swaps, whatever. Plenty good.
I’m less thrilled with it for the Necrons. They didn’t really gain much from it, as they still have the same ball and socket joints with no real detail, they just are locked into specific poses. More criminally they don’t even let you turn their heads.
So yeah, if you’re cutting back on modularity to increase detail and aesthetics, great, but if you’re not gaining details from it I’d rather they didn’t.
See, this is the kind of setup that just makes it impossible for me to vote.
There are different degrees of monoposing present in current kits, and if that's not obvious to everyone, I really don't know what to say.
If you said "everything would be monopose" and by monopose you meant
"new ork boyz kit/buggies kit, you get a grand total of ZERO TO FOUR extra pieces beyond what's required to make the kit EXACTLY like it shows on the box, you CANNOT modify any miniature from the box without cutting into them and filling gaps with greenstuff, Choppa A cannot be swapped with Choppa B because Choppa A attaches to the wrist of an arm built into Torso A and Choppa B attaches to the elbow of a bicep built into Torso B"
then yeah. I'd never buy any kit more than once, pretty much ever. I'm not paying those prices to have a duplicated unit - no way no how.
If you meant "Everything is swappable except the torso and legs are joined, maybe you have to take the hobby knife you just used to de-sprue and slice off a bit of auto-positioning on the join if you want to make a pose that wasn't 'designed as intended' and you get at least a few extra heads, a few extra weapons, a few extra accessories in every kit" then I'd happily keep buying GW. By and large, the new 'intended poses' are things that simply were not achievable using the old-style fully modular kits.
To use examples from the new Kommandos:
-I can decide that I'm a person with very loose WYSIWYG standards who doesn't mind minor wargear inconsistencies, and I can build one of my kommandos with a pistol in each hand and an extra pistol on each hip (for when the first two pistols run out of ammo) because helpfully, unlike older kits, this kit comes with a mix of right and left arm versions of all the basic weapons. Neat!
-I can decide that the shirtless ork with the tooth necklaces will look cool like an end of predator/end of rambo shirtless action movie hero covered in mud and blood, and I can give him the left and right hand choppas that are bare arms with more brutal looking axes, and the bare head
-...but unlike older kits, I can also have the option for a kommando holding his slugga in both hands, looking like he's sneaking up on someone. That's an intended pose, and I probably wouldn't build multiple kommandos with that pose, but it's a cool as hell pose and I'm glad I have the ability to build a model in that pose because it would have taken a hell of a lot of effort, cutting, and greenstuff to do that with a slugga out of the old boyz kit.
If GW wants to include distinctive poses, like the 'sister pulling a grenade pin with her teeth' or the 'reiver holding his pistol stabilized with his knife hand' then that's fantastic, and actually improves the kits.....aaaas long as you have another option for a more neutrally posed model instead. The way they did it with the Sisters kit is actually the best way to do it - the designer-intended build for the 'dynamic poses' of regular sisters are the alternates for the heavy weapon sisters, so you're unlikely to actually want to end up with multiple grenade-pin-pulling sisters when you build your army unless you're for some reason building zero heavy weapon sisters and you don't want any retributors with 4x of the same weapon in your army.
Bago wrote: I have no problem with most of the modern kits and think, you can adjust even the dynamic poses with kitbashes and stuff so they dont all look the same. The one thing, I am really annoyed by though is the Plasmagun in the Scions kit. There is NO easy way, to have any variety in your plasma gunners whatsoever. They all will be pointing and keeping the plasma gun casual at their side.
THAT depends upon your modeling skills.
Maybe all of your Scion plasma gunners will look alike, but mine would not.
But it does highlight the problem with "dynamic posing" pretty starkly.
Except that your crowd always just fething equates everything as if it's all perfectly equal.
Scion Plasmagun that has to be at his side? CSM rocket launcher guy who MUST be holding a knife out with his other hand? Annoying as feth. These are weapons people are GOING to want to have multiple of, and GW locks them into a specific pose.
Sisters special weapons, which can be swapped in and substituted for any of the seven two-handed weapon holding sisters torsos?
How can people say that both these things are equivalently 'monopose'?
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Huron black heart wrote: Whilst I agree that I liked being able to pose the minis in different ways, and with different weapon load outs of my choice, I also agree the current range of models are far superior and more dynamic.
What I wish is that GW could mesh their current high quality minis with the ability to be fully pose able. Or at the very least for troops or units you'll likely use multiples of.
I suspect the reason they don't do this is as ever down to money.
I mean, it's pretty tough to compare kits like Deathwatch Veterans to kits like Chaos Space Marine Havocs and not see that there was vastly more you could do with the former than the latter while the latter costs 55$ and the former 38$. Same sprue count, the DW Vet kit is just like 50% more dense and with the Havoc kit GW made such fun decisions as:
-no spare shoulder pads! Sorry! just ten of those in the kit for you!
-One spare head - choose wisely kids!
-4 heavy weapons, I get that, but the Deathwatch kit includes 2 heavy weapons and 2 Honkin' model-height storm shields and 2 two-handed thunder hammers
They just decided to put more on the sprue for the deathwatch, and charged more for the chaos marines. There's no other 'alternate explanation' for that, they very very clearly just tried harder to prioritize giving the player options for how to build their models when it came to the deathwatch vets, who have 5 helmeted and 7 helmetless heads, twenty-two shoulderpads for 5 guys, left and right hand versions of the various basic melee weapons and bolters, a caped torso back that also comes with a regular torso back if you dont want to use the big cape, multiples of a couple of the optional weapons, etc.
As long as the monopose kits are plastic, I can work with that. I do however 100% prefer non-monopose kits because that means bits. And GW kits have historically been pretty good about bits being comparable across a range (space marine, guard, etc). Sure, rifle arms may be preset in position, but i can swap heads, have them standing or crouching, change torsos for armor, etc. Having collected a ton of warmachine, you learn to hate the metal monopose with no options at all. Soooooo boring to build. Why I keep coming back to GW. So, in summary:
posable > monpose
monpose w/ optional parts > pure monopose
plastic monopose > metal monopose
drbored wrote: If I told you there was a 0% chance that we would never see anything more customizable than the above kits, would you still support the company by buying the product?
My primary faction is sisters, so i'm not sure i'd notice any change. For most of my time in the hobby my units have largely consisted of the same twelve pewter models repeated over and over with a little variation for the squad leader.
Crimson wrote:Because you choose to use this absurd and misleading definition of 'monopose', I will to say I'd gladly buy such models. The primaris marine line and SoB line are the best models I have ever worked with, they're an absolute delight to build and customise and I can't wait to see the new BT primaris kits to add more options for kitbashing. The legs ant torso being one piece doesn't bother me at all, I prefer it. Abdomen and hips of older marine models alwys looked terrible if you ried to twist them more than couple of degrees. As an artist the anatomical awkwardness bothered me a lot. With the joint setup the dynamics of the torso and legs flow naturally, making the miniature look natural and cohesive. And as there actually are a lot of different bodies to choose from, and you can completely change the look with arm and leg poses, there really won't be duplicates.
The issue here really is the bizarre effort going on Dakka to redefine 'monopose' to mean 'has no ball joint on the waist.' This is not what it means, nor what it has ever meant. Before the primaris were a thing and certain people needed to invent all sort of excuses for hating on them, were the Skitarii or GSC models ever referred as 'monopose'? I certainly don't think they were generally understood to be such. This fetishization of the hip joint is just odd and trying to intentionally distort the meanings of words is annoying and makes discussion impossible. I am sure a lot of people wouldn't be that thrilled if all models were actual monopose, i.e. like the new ork boyz (though as addition such are fine too) but truing to lump highly customisable models like primaris and SoB full kits with that is absurd. They're certainly far closer to the customisability of the old marines than the complete staticness of the new ork boyz.
GW actually currently produces monopose and multipose versions of many models. There are monopose primaris marines and SoB in certain starter kits, then there are multipose versions in separate kits. These words serve a purpose and are useful for conveying information, but if we redefine the words so that multipose models are referred as 'monopose' too, then we can no longer communicate this difference.
Absolutely this - I can't vote in this poll, because monopose is so poorly defined (or rather, the definition being used here is baffling) and so my answers wouldn't fit this.
Primaris Marines aren't monopose because they don't have a ball joint waist. And if we're going to complain about "you need to use X part with Y part" kind of design, does this mean that the 30k plastic Space Marines are monopose, because of specific arm combinations?
Actual monopose models? Sure, I don't like that on mass infantry or things you'd be expected to have multiple of. But Primaris aren't monopose.
Hero, my thoughts - at least plastic is easier to cut, but… do we really need to? No… that is a choice that someone else made that also neglects both the strengths of plastic and of modern computer aided design… GW could make multipose magnetisable magic. Instead they make my life harder, and the appeal of third party minis stronger,
Are the current cadian troops monopose, under this definition?
The torso is a flat join, and if you rotate it away from 'straight forward' it's misaligned, so unless you want to greenstuff to correct that the torso only goes together one way, and the arms are paired.
Hero, my thoughts - at least plastic is easier to cut, but… do we really need to? No… that is a choice that someone else made that also neglects both the strengths of plastic and of modern computer aided design… GW could make multipose magnetisable magic. Instead they make my life harder, and the appeal of third party minis stronger,
I certainly couldn't help but think as I was building my Adeptus Titanicus Reaver Titan, where every single joint can be posed basically in any position possible and every weapon is easily magnetized....
"Every kit GW makes could be this but they playin'."
I'm having trouble with this because of the examples provided. I don't know much about the Intercessor, SoB, or Plague Marine kits, because those aren't armies I play. But I know the CSM kit. I've yet to find a combination of arms and body that doesn't work. I haven't tried everything, admittedly, but I have mixed them with arms from both the Havoc and Raptor/Warp Talons kit without problems. What combinations don't work? I'd like to give it a try.
I hate the intercessors. If I can't customize the figure, than do not force me to assemble a monopose. Just produce the complete model ala green army men. Don't make me jump through hoops.
I hate the intercessors. If I can't customize the figure, than do not force me to assemble a monopose. Just produce the complete model ala green army men. Don't make me jump through hoops.
I really liked how Riptides went together. Essentially they're fully posable, buy small tabs restrict them to the default pose.
This makes them very easy to assembled in a set way, but you can easily cut off those tabs and built them however you want.
Such a style with every limb segment being separate only really works well on a model where there's no flowing detail crossing armour plates. No capes, purity seals, dangling dohickies or anything. Any of that and it won't fit the parts properly in any way except the way it was sculpted to.
General Hobbs wrote:I hate the intercessors. If I can't customize the figure, than do not force me to assemble a monopose.
But you can customise Intercessors? The only thing they don't have, compared to older Tacticals, is the ball-socket joint at the waist - is that the only customisation that matters?
Gadzilla666 wrote: I'm having trouble with this because of the examples provided. I don't know much about the Intercessor, SoB, or Plague Marine kits, because those aren't armies I play. But I know the CSM kit. I've yet to find a combination of arms and body that doesn't work. I haven't tried everything, admittedly, but I have mixed them with arms from both the Havoc and Raptor/Warp Talons kit without problems. What combinations don't work? I'd like to give it a try.
If you have spare arms from other kits, they do work, but there are some irritating details I found personally with the new CSM kit that basically mean my CSM army is going to include 1 of the new kits and the rest of my marines are going to be alternate 3d printed versions which also fit the aesthetic of my subfaction a lot better (as still cruel and monstrous but cleaner as they're supposedly 'perfection obsessed' and with more slaaneshi mutations than the generic horns/spikes)
1) non-swappable chest plates when it would have been incredibly easy to just universalize the join right above the power armor 'belt' for all the ones that don't include tabards.
2) only one available right arm in a very distinguishable pose for the missile launcher. They could easily have included a more neutral 'arm stabilizing the missile launcher' arm in either the havoc kit or csm kit, but chose not to - all rocket launcher armed CSMs will either be holding a knife out, or holding a spare rocket out
3) the 'jumping off a rock at an angle' torso seems like it'd be pretty darn distinctive regardless of how you built it.
4) the inclusion of only 6 chainswords/pistols in a kit that can theoretically be built purely as a melee unit is quite annoying
Otherwise, though, the basic chaos space marines kit is honestly the best one out of all the new chaos kits. Certainly better than 'zero spare options' havocs and terminators that have to have zany weaponry and only come with 1 of the basic loadout.
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kirotheavenger wrote: I really liked how Riptides went together. Essentially they're fully posable, buy small tabs restrict them to the default pose.
This makes them very easy to assembled in a set way, but you can easily cut off those tabs and built them however you want.
Such a style with every limb segment being separate only really works well on a model where there's no flowing detail crossing armour plates. No capes, purity seals, dangling dohickies or anything. Any of that and it won't fit the parts properly in any way except the way it was sculpted to.
The Ironstrider kit is another recent example of this done well (as well as, as I said, the excellent Titanicus titans)
I've already moved on for the most part. Since metal and resin have superior detail to plastic, the advantages of plastic are:
Price
Modularity
Ease of Assembly
GW falls short in all three. Most of the new stuff is tedious to build because they're cut up like jigsaw puzzles; lots of pieces, lots of mold lines, lots of seams. All that work just to get a monopose model that looks the same as everyone else. GW might as well make them single piece because it would save a lot of time and effort.
By contrast building a Frostgrave/Stargrave/Oathmark kit is simple and rewarding. The end result is something that feels very personalised and dynamic. "My dudes" as people keep saying.
It's sad because GW used to be good at this. Compare the Mordheim Humans to Blissbarb Archers or NuZombies and it's like they've gone backwards in evolution.
I know that this is a taste thing, but detail isn't always a good thing. A lot of people at my store disliked how overloaded some of the newer GW models are comparing to the older stuff. I for example would have Castellan Crow, not have the flame effect on his sword.
Gadzilla666 wrote: I'm having trouble with this because of the examples provided. I don't know much about the Intercessor, SoB, or Plague Marine kits, because those aren't armies I play. But I know the CSM kit. I've yet to find a combination of arms and body that doesn't work. I haven't tried everything, admittedly, but I have mixed them with arms from both the Havoc and Raptor/Warp Talons kit without problems. What combinations don't work? I'd like to give it a try.
If you have spare arms from other kits, they do work, but there are some irritating details I found personally with the new CSM kit that basically mean my CSM army is going to include 1 of the new kits and the rest of my marines are going to be alternate 3d printed versions which also fit the aesthetic of my subfaction a lot better (as still cruel and monstrous but cleaner as they're supposedly 'perfection obsessed' and with more slaaneshi mutations than the generic horns/spikes)
1) non-swappable chest plates when it would have been incredibly easy to just universalize the join right above the power armor 'belt' for all the ones that don't include tabards.
2) only one available right arm in a very distinguishable pose for the missile launcher. They could easily have included a more neutral 'arm stabilizing the missile launcher' arm in either the havoc kit or csm kit, but chose not to - all rocket launcher armed CSMs will either be holding a knife out, or holding a spare rocket out
3) the 'jumping off a rock at an angle' torso seems like it'd be pretty darn distinctive regardless of how you built it.
4) the inclusion of only 6 chainswords/pistols in a kit that can theoretically be built purely as a melee unit is quite annoying
Otherwise, though, the basic chaos space marines kit is honestly the best one out of all the new chaos kits. Certainly better than 'zero spare options' havocs and terminators that have to have zany weaponry and only come with 1 of the basic loadout.
Can't disagree with any of this. The missile launcher arm designs are just odd. The lack of enough basic equipment for an entire squad is aggravating. But most of all I find the fact that gw, once again, decided to make all CSM look like Black Legion infuriating. Lots of Terror Squad heads and custom shoulder pads helps, but still "too much bling". But they do still have options. Unlike, as you point out, Havocs and Terminators. Which is one of the reasons I use Cataphractii and Tartaros for my Terminators.
Karol wrote: I know that this is a taste thing, but detail isn't always a good thing. A lot of people at my store disliked how overloaded some of the newer GW models are comparing to the older stuff. I for example would have Castellan Crow, not have the flame effect on his sword.
I agree with you, detail isn't always better.
And the fact remains: Metal and Resin does detail better than plastic anyway.
Goose LeChance wrote: Most of the new stuff is tedious to build because they're cut up like jigsaw puzzles; lots of pieces, lots of mold lines, lots of seams. All that work just to get a monopose model that looks the same as everyone else. GW might as well make them single piece because it would save a lot of time and effort.
These are just lies, though.
A jigsaw puzzle assembly is often 3-4 pieces, and a typical old model could be legs, torso, head, left arm, right arm, gun.
Jigsaw puzzle assemblies *hide* seams. Nearly every old kit had a visible seam at, for example, the shoulder (often disguised by shoulder pads, or something like every Ork on the field wearing a perfectly tailored and fitted tank top)
Current GW kits have far fewer mold lines than old kits.
What's the last new kit you actually held in your hands and built yourself, Goose LeChance?
Goose LeChance wrote: They could give the humans that same detail now without sacrificing the modularity.
In options maybe, not in poses. You can't have fancy poses and mix-and-match sprues, or the poses make no sense and the muscles don't line up. It was not an issue with early models with low detail, but it's much more noticeable with higher definition sculpts.
Gadzilla666 wrote: I'm having trouble with this because of the examples provided. I don't know much about the Intercessor, SoB, or Plague Marine kits, because those aren't armies I play. But I know the CSM kit. I've yet to find a combination of arms and body that doesn't work. I haven't tried everything, admittedly, but I have mixed them with arms from both the Havoc and Raptor/Warp Talons kit without problems. What combinations don't work? I'd like to give it a try.
If you have spare arms from other kits, they do work, but there are some irritating details I found personally with the new CSM kit that basically mean my CSM army is going to include 1 of the new kits and the rest of my marines are going to be alternate 3d printed versions which also fit the aesthetic of my subfaction a lot better (as still cruel and monstrous but cleaner as they're supposedly 'perfection obsessed' and with more slaaneshi mutations than the generic horns/spikes)
1) non-swappable chest plates when it would have been incredibly easy to just universalize the join right above the power armor 'belt' for all the ones that don't include tabards.
2) only one available right arm in a very distinguishable pose for the missile launcher. They could easily have included a more neutral 'arm stabilizing the missile launcher' arm in either the havoc kit or csm kit, but chose not to - all rocket launcher armed CSMs will either be holding a knife out, or holding a spare rocket out
3) the 'jumping off a rock at an angle' torso seems like it'd be pretty darn distinctive regardless of how you built it.
4) the inclusion of only 6 chainswords/pistols in a kit that can theoretically be built purely as a melee unit is quite annoying
Otherwise, though, the basic chaos space marines kit is honestly the best one out of all the new chaos kits. Certainly better than 'zero spare options' havocs and terminators that have to have zany weaponry and only come with 1 of the basic loadout.
Can't disagree with any of this. The missile launcher arm designs are just odd. The lack of enough basic equipment for an entire squad is aggravating. But most of all I find the fact that gw, once again, decided to make all CSM look like Black Legion infuriating. Lots of Terror Squad heads and custom shoulder pads helps, but still "too much bling". But they do still have options. Unlike, as you point out, Havocs and Terminators. Which is one of the reasons I use Cataphractii and Tartaros for my Terminators.
...I mean once again I have to point out that the variations between military units in a totalitarian empire that views any deviance from tradition heresy would probably be relatively slight, yet we have had I believe 8 different full plastic kits for bolter-armed loyalist firstborn marines, not even counting the *technically distinct* boltgun armed primaris units....
And usually not even an upgrade sprue available for such factions as:
-a bunch of alien mutants who try to foment revolutions in ANY human working-class society, nope, they allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll look like miners, SPECIFICALLY miners and NOTHING else ever
-a bunch of crazy fungus hooligans who pop up out of the ground, grab *whatever they can find* and try to use it to smash and destroy anyone nearby
-insane, decadent dilettantes from a millennia old ancient empire known for hedonistically indulging in extreme body modification, nope all those guys look the same
-warp-mutated marines scattered across time and space who could be recent renegades or barely recognizable gibbering mutants
Goose LeChance wrote: Most of the new stuff is tedious to build because they're cut up like jigsaw puzzles; lots of pieces, lots of mold lines, lots of seams. All that work just to get a monopose model that looks the same as everyone else. GW might as well make them single piece because it would save a lot of time and effort.
Jigsaw puzzle assemblies *hide* seams. Nearly every old kit had a visible seam at, for example, the shoulder (often disguised by shoulder pads, or something like every Ork on the field wearing a perfectly tailored and fitted tank top)
....which the new boyz still do, they just don't have the modularity to make up for the doofy shirts. becuase "it's tradition" now apparently.
Goose LeChance wrote: They could give the humans that same detail now without sacrificing the modularity.
In options maybe, not in poses. You can't have fancy poses and mix-and-match sprues, or the poses make no sense and the muscles don't line up. It was not an issue with early models with low detail, but it's much more noticeable with higher definition sculpts.
Yeah, I mean, we had dynamic poses before, it's not like the detail is better in plastic. Why can't we just go back to beautiful models like this?
Goose LeChance wrote: They could give the humans that same detail now without sacrificing the modularity.
In options maybe, not in poses. You can't have fancy poses and mix-and-match sprues, or the poses make no sense and the muscles don't line up. It was not an issue with early models with low detail, but it's much more noticeable with higher definition sculpts.
Yeah, I mean, we had dynamic poses before, it's not like the detail is better in plastic. Why can't we just go back to beautiful models like this?
I suppose you're being facetuous, of course but I'll just point out that I love that mini .
What's the last new kit you actually held in your hands and built yourself, Goose LeChance?
I try not to buy things I don't like, so very few to be honest. I threw my half finished "easy to assemble" Necrons from Indomitus back in the box because they were boring and tedious to assemble.
A jigsaw puzzle assembly is often 3-4 pieces, and a typical old model could be legs, torso, head, left arm, right arm, gun.
Jigsaw puzzle assemblies *hide* seams. Nearly every old kit had a visible seam at, for example, the shoulder (often disguised by shoulder pads, or something like every Ork on the field wearing a perfectly tailored and fitted tank top)
Any model where parts are cut in half, like the torsos, will have seam lines. Orlocks for example have seams running down the entire sides of their bodies because of this. As far as mold lines go; More pieces=More mold lines. It's a myth that modern sculpts hide mold lines better. New GW kits take much more time for me to clean and prep.
Seam lines are unavoidable unless they're single piece miniatures, and I'd rather have them in the armpit than across the entire body/face/legs/crotch or whatever.
Not in my experience. I just put together the Dominion box and the orlocks you're talking about and it took about three hours total with minimum cleanup. Didn't see any seams on the orlocks you're talking about.
Bago wrote: I have no problem with most of the modern kits and think, you can adjust even the dynamic poses with kitbashes and stuff so they dont all look the same. The one thing, I am really annoyed by though is the Plasmagun in the Scions kit. There is NO easy way, to have any variety in your plasma gunners whatsoever. They all will be pointing and keeping the plasma gun casual at their side.
THAT depends upon your modeling skills.
Maybe all of your Scion plasma gunners will look alike, but mine would not.
But it does highlight the problem with "dynamic posing" pretty starkly.
I'm sorry but I have zero sympathy for those who think this is a GW problem.
It's not. Model companies - GW or any other - have always made mono-pose models. Always will. Toy soldiers, cars, planes, tanks, terrain, or whatever else, in whatever scale or material.
Modeling is its own hobby. You don't like the pose? You don't like the options included in the kit? You have some unique vision? Etc.
Then get off your lazy arses & learn some modeling skills.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: Not in my experience. I just put together the Dominion box and the orlocks you're talking about and it took about three hours total with minimum cleanup. Didn't see any seams on the orlocks you're talking about.
Im talking about the Orlocks from Necromunda. Not fake Orcs.
Gadzilla666 wrote: I'm having trouble with this because of the examples provided. I don't know much about the Intercessor, SoB, or Plague Marine kits, because those aren't armies I play. But I know the CSM kit. I've yet to find a combination of arms and body that doesn't work. I haven't tried everything, admittedly, but I have mixed them with arms from both the Havoc and Raptor/Warp Talons kit without problems. What combinations don't work? I'd like to give it a try.
If you have spare arms from other kits, they do work, but there are some irritating details I found personally with the new CSM kit that basically mean my CSM army is going to include 1 of the new kits and the rest of my marines are going to be alternate 3d printed versions which also fit the aesthetic of my subfaction a lot better (as still cruel and monstrous but cleaner as they're supposedly 'perfection obsessed' and with more slaaneshi mutations than the generic horns/spikes)
1) non-swappable chest plates when it would have been incredibly easy to just universalize the join right above the power armor 'belt' for all the ones that don't include tabards.
2) only one available right arm in a very distinguishable pose for the missile launcher. They could easily have included a more neutral 'arm stabilizing the missile launcher' arm in either the havoc kit or csm kit, but chose not to - all rocket launcher armed CSMs will either be holding a knife out, or holding a spare rocket out
3) the 'jumping off a rock at an angle' torso seems like it'd be pretty darn distinctive regardless of how you built it.
4) the inclusion of only 6 chainswords/pistols in a kit that can theoretically be built purely as a melee unit is quite annoying
Otherwise, though, the basic chaos space marines kit is honestly the best one out of all the new chaos kits. Certainly better than 'zero spare options' havocs and terminators that have to have zany weaponry and only come with 1 of the basic loadout.
Can't disagree with any of this. The missile launcher arm designs are just odd. The lack of enough basic equipment for an entire squad is aggravating. But most of all I find the fact that gw, once again, decided to make all CSM look like Black Legion infuriating. Lots of Terror Squad heads and custom shoulder pads helps, but still "too much bling". But they do still have options. Unlike, as you point out, Havocs and Terminators. Which is one of the reasons I use Cataphractii and Tartaros for my Terminators.
...I mean once again I have to point out that the variations between military units in a totalitarian empire that views any deviance from tradition heresy would probably be relatively slight, yet we have had I believe 8 different full plastic kits for bolter-armed loyalist firstborn marines, not even counting the *technically distinct* boltgun armed primaris units....
And usually not even an upgrade sprue available for such factions as:
-a bunch of alien mutants who try to foment revolutions in ANY human working-class society, nope, they allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll look like miners, SPECIFICALLY miners and NOTHING else ever
-a bunch of crazy fungus hooligans who pop up out of the ground, grab *whatever they can find* and try to use it to smash and destroy anyone nearby
-insane, decadent dilettantes from a millennia old ancient empire known for hedonistically indulging in extreme body modification, nope all those guys look the same
-warp-mutated marines scattered across time and space who could be recent renegades or barely recognizable gibbering mutants
Again, not sure about the other factions you mention (but making ALL GSC miners is particularly egregious), but for CSM they could have just done the old Heresy era armour marks with some details to show that they were very old, a bit patched up, and a little bit "Chaosy" and allowed the models to be made to look more "Slaaneshy" or "Night Lordy" or whatever with what you add yourself. But instead it's lots of Chaos Stars, trim, and chainmail. So you start with "Black Legion" and have to work your way back. But that's been typical of everything gw has done for CSM since the 4th edition CSM codex, be it models or rules.
But a lot of people just want to play the game, and it is not always a looks problem either. Some of those dynamic posed models are just hard to transport. Specially if you are using public transportation or a bike.
I can't count the number of times people playing different armies cursing out their models breaking from transport.
There is also a cost thing. I don't like the flame thing on Crow sword. If I were to replace the sword I have to buy a box of models or a whole single model, just to replace the weapon. The models should be sleak and easy to build, and not look wierd. And if someone is so inclined they can do the hobby stuff and cut, sculpt and move stuff around. The start shouldn't be, we will make a wierd model with as many things thrown at it as possible, make it hard to recast and we will intreduce it for line troopers too, and then people can deal with the fact that every 5th model in 4-6 units they have does the same dynamic back flip.
I don't think it'd change my mind one way or the other. The rules are already leaning heavily into "no, build your models exactly according to the instructions or you can't play," making the models more mono-pose is just a follow-up to that.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: Not in my experience. I just put together the Dominion box and the orlocks you're talking about and it took about three hours total with minimum cleanup. Didn't see any seams on the orlocks you're talking about.
Im talking about the Orlocks from Necromunda. Not fake Orcs.
Karol wrote: But a lot of people just want to play the game, and it is not always a looks problem either. Some of those dynamic posed models are just hard to transport. Specially if you are using public transportation or a bike.
I can't count the number of times people playing different armies cursing out their models breaking from transport.
There is also a cost thing. I don't like the flame thing on Crow sword. If I were to replace the sword I have to buy a box of models or a whole single model, just to replace the weapon. The models should be sleak and easy to build, and not look wierd. And if someone is so inclined they can do the hobby stuff and cut, sculpt and move stuff around. The start shouldn't be, we will make a wierd model with as many things thrown at it as possible, make it hard to recast and we will intreduce it for line troopers too, and then people can deal with the fact that every 5th model in 4-6 units they have does the same dynamic back flip.
As you yourself love to say when talking about why space marines get 50% of the overall 40k model support:
Free market's gonna free market. If GW releases the new wave of necrons in 5th and people buy lots of the more dynamic units like triarch stalkers, wraiths, and canoptek spyders and less of the muted units like immortals and deathmarks, the next wave of necrons is gonna have big elaborate canoptek tripods and dynamically posed blade-wielding destroyer variants.
ccs wrote: ...I'm sorry but I have zero sympathy for those who think this is a GW problem.
It's not. Model companies - GW or any other - have always made mono-pose models. Always will. Toy soldiers, cars, planes, tanks, terrain, or whatever else, in whatever scale or material.
Modeling is its own hobby. You don't like the pose? You don't like the options included in the kit? You have some unique vision? Etc.
Then get off your lazy arses & learn some modeling skills...
To me it's a "GW problem" because of the wasted potential; other manufacturers often make mono-pose models because they're doing low-volume spin-cast stuff and they don't really have a choice. GW has shown us they can make less mono-pose things with more alternate builds and customizability in the kit (before someone starts shouting at me about old Space Marines I'll hold up the Exalted Sorcerers box as my gold standard for multi-pose; being able to re-angle parts helps, yeah, but just having more alternate options in the kit rather than giving us just the bare minimum to build these five guys in these poses is a bigger part of it, especially when the customizable kits are cheaper than the bare-minimum kits), but they've chosen to use all their vast technological prowess and model-making expertise to make slightly fancier versions of exactly what we get out of the spin-cast resin people for three times the price, which is what bugs me.
Any model where parts are cut in half, like the torsos, will have seam lines. Orlocks for example have seams running down the entire sides of their bodies because of this. As far as mold lines go; More pieces=More mold lines. It's a myth that modern sculpts hide mold lines better. New GW kits take much more time for me to clean and prep.
Seam lines are unavoidable unless they're single piece miniatures, and I'd rather have them in the armpit than across the entire body/face/legs/crotch or whatever.
I also showed
Uhhhh, but Orlocks are not jigsaw puzzle assemblies. Their torsos are front/back style halves... like the Tactical Marines I bought in 2002... or like the GSC kits people often praise as one of the last great customizable kits.
You were also given piece counts that illustrate how jigsaw assemblies do not have more pieces than older models.
Free tip, btw: when you're gluing pieces like Orlock torsos, and using plastic cement, intentionally overglue the seam join and let the overflow squeeze out when you press the pieces together. Let that dry (8+ hours), and you can slice off the overflow bead with very little effort, leaving yourself with a (literal!) seamless join. This is a technique more people should be using more often, because it often saves you from having to do post-assembly gap-filling with another product.
Some people don't like the Dominion Orcs because they're not proportioned like traditional WHFB Orcs. (I say screw 'em, the Dominion Orcs are the first Orc minis from anyone I've bought on purpose.)
1. "You're crazy! Nothing had changed. They're not mono-pose!" 2. "So what if they are monopose? They're not that posable now, so it's not that big a difference!" <==Cheex
3. "We like it because they're dynamic and the old ones were bad anyway!" <==Alex Troy, Daedalus81
4. "No options and nonposable is actually better for everyone/the game/etc.!" 5. "It's just nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses that you think they were posable/easy to convert!" 6. "You should be thankful there are even options at all!"
I can update this as the thread progresses.
Monopose with no options is better for the game.
Warmachine had no unit customization at all and the models only fit together one way, and that meant no trap options in a kit and no worries about wysiwyg. It meant Privateer Press had fewer things to worry about getting point-balanced correctly and more time to focus on making a tightly worded, tactically deep system that was fun to play, and the end result was a better game.
Some of the things I personally like best about 8th and 9th are things that you could reasonably argue they borrowed from Warmachine.
Any model where parts are cut in half, like the torsos, will have seam lines. Orlocks for example have seams running down the entire sides of their bodies because of this. As far as mold lines go; More pieces=More mold lines. It's a myth that modern sculpts hide mold lines better. New GW kits take much more time for me to clean and prep.
Seam lines are unavoidable unless they're single piece miniatures, and I'd rather have them in the armpit than across the entire body/face/legs/crotch or whatever.
Uhhhh, but Orlocks are not jigsaw puzzle assemblies. Their torsos are front/back style halves... like the Tactical Marines I bought in 2002... or like the GSC kits people often praise as one of the last great customizable kits.
You were also given piece counts that illustrate how jigsaw assemblies do not have more pieces than older models.
Free tip, btw: when you're gluing pieces like Orlock torsos, and using plastic cement, intentionally overglue the seam join and let the overflow squeeze out when you press the pieces together. Let that dry (8+ hours), and you can slice off the overflow bead with very little effort, leaving yourself with a (literal!) seamless join. This is a technique more people should be using more often, because it often saves you from having to do post-assembly gap-filling with another product.
They are torso + legs, some have a separate leg. The seams run down the sides of the vests and into the crotch. The point is that they are cut up like jigsaw pieces and fit together one way.
Cleaning seam lines removes them? Thanks for the hot tip. You can clean the seam lines at the arms too, now that we've solved that mystery can we have modular kits again?
As you yourself love to say when talking about why space marines get 50% of the overall 40k model support:
Free market's gonna free market. If GW releases the new wave of necrons in 5th and people buy lots of the more dynamic units like triarch stalkers, wraiths, and canoptek spyders and less of the muted units like immortals and deathmarks, the next wave of necrons is gonna have big elaborate canoptek tripods and dynamically posed blade-wielding destroyer variants.
Very possible. But prior GK models didn't have wierd flames on their swords, yet GW decided to add it to the Crow model. And of course in the end looks get trumped by how efficient stuff is. Doesn't change the fact that for someone who doesn't play in events, having to deal with something like GW flight stands is not a good thing to expiriance. Or models snaping off, because someone decided to make a model dynamic.
That is why I really like how models like regular or assault intercessors look like. No wierd stuff on them. And even the marine stuff with extra stuff are okey, like the blade guards.
ccs wrote: ...I'm sorry but I have zero sympathy for those who think this is a GW problem.
It's not. Model companies - GW or any other - have always made mono-pose models. Always will. Toy soldiers, cars, planes, tanks, terrain, or whatever else, in whatever scale or material.
Modeling is its own hobby. You don't like the pose? You don't like the options included in the kit? You have some unique vision? Etc.
Then get off your lazy arses & learn some modeling skills...
To me it's a "GW problem" because of the wasted potential; other manufacturers often make mono-pose models because they're doing low-volume spin-cast stuff and they don't really have a choice. GW has shown us they can make less mono-pose things with more alternate builds and customizability in the kit (before someone starts shouting at me about old Space Marines I'll hold up the Exalted Sorcerers box as my gold standard for multi-pose; being able to re-angle parts helps, yeah, but just having more alternate options in the kit rather than giving us just the bare minimum to build these five guys in these poses is a bigger part of it, especially when the customizable kits are cheaper than the bare-minimum kits), but they've chosen to use all their vast technological prowess and model-making expertise to make slightly fancier versions of exactly what we get out of the spin-cast resin people for three times the price, which is what bugs me.
Aye. When you consider the absolute lack of options in the new Chaos Lord and Sorcerer kits in comparison to the wealth of options available in the old Terminator Lord/Sorcerer kit for the same price, it's obvious that they can do better.
AnomanderRake wrote: To me it's a "GW problem" because of the wasted potential; other manufacturers often make mono-pose models because they're doing low-volume spin-cast stuff and they don't really have a choice. GW has shown us they can make less mono-pose things with more alternate builds and customizability in the kit (before someone starts shouting at me about old Space Marines I'll hold up the Exalted Sorcerers box as my gold standard for multi-pose; being able to re-angle parts helps, yeah, but just having more alternate options in the kit rather than giving us just the bare minimum to build these five guys in these poses is a bigger part of it, especially when the customizable kits are cheaper than the bare-minimum kits), but they've chosen to use all their vast technological prowess and model-making expertise to make slightly fancier versions of exactly what we get out of the spin-cast resin people for three times the price, which is what bugs me.
This. GW's monopose models aren't a result of technical limitations or small production scale. They are a conscious choice by the company... a wrong turn that they took after years of producing models that had just the right level of customizability and "kitbashability". F*ck outta here with the "Hey it's better than it used to be back in the nineties!" argument. We should expect things to move forward, or at least not backwards.
"Even customizable models end up looking the same!" some have said. Perhaps, but the trend towards highly dynamic poses only exacerbates the monopose issue. When two models are performing the same acrobatic leap, their sameness is a lot more obvious than if they were just walking while holding their guns. I don't mind it for characters, but for troopers, it's irksome.
Any model where parts are cut in half, like the torsos, will have seam lines. Orlocks for example have seams running down the entire sides of their bodies because of this. As far as mold lines go; More pieces=More mold lines. It's a myth that modern sculpts hide mold lines better. New GW kits take much more time for me to clean and prep.
Seam lines are unavoidable unless they're single piece miniatures, and I'd rather have them in the armpit than across the entire body/face/legs/crotch or whatever.
Uhhhh, but Orlocks are not jigsaw puzzle assemblies. Their torsos are front/back style halves... like the Tactical Marines I bought in 2002... or like the GSC kits people often praise as one of the last great customizable kits.
You were also given piece counts that illustrate how jigsaw assemblies do not have more pieces than older models.
Free tip, btw: when you're gluing pieces like Orlock torsos, and using plastic cement, intentionally overglue the seam join and let the overflow squeeze out when you press the pieces together. Let that dry (8+ hours), and you can slice off the overflow bead with very little effort, leaving yourself with a (literal!) seamless join. This is a technique more people should be using more often, because it often saves you from having to do post-assembly gap-filling with another product.
They are torso + legs, some have a separate leg. The seams run down the sides of the vests and into the crotch. The point is that they are cut up like jigsaw pieces and fit together one way.
Cleaning seam lines removes them? Thanks for the hot tip. You can clean the seam lines at the arms too, now that we've solved that mystery can we have modular kits again?
AnomanderRake wrote: To me it's a "GW problem" because of the wasted potential; other manufacturers often make mono-pose models because they're doing low-volume spin-cast stuff and they don't really have a choice. GW has shown us they can make less mono-pose things with more alternate builds and customizability in the kit (before someone starts shouting at me about old Space Marines I'll hold up the Exalted Sorcerers box as my gold standard for multi-pose; being able to re-angle parts helps, yeah, but just having more alternate options in the kit rather than giving us just the bare minimum to build these five guys in these poses is a bigger part of it, especially when the customizable kits are cheaper than the bare-minimum kits), but they've chosen to use all their vast technological prowess and model-making expertise to make slightly fancier versions of exactly what we get out of the spin-cast resin people for three times the price, which is what bugs me.
This. GW's monopose models aren't a result of technical limitations or small production scale. They are a conscious choice by the company... a wrong turn that they took after years of producing models that had just the right level of customizability and "kitbashability". F*ck outta here with the "Hey it's better than it used to be back in the nineties!" argument. We should expect things to move forward, or at least not backwards.
"Even customizable models end up looking the same!" some have said. Perhaps, but the trend towards highly dynamic poses only exacerbates the monopose issue. When two models are performing the same acrobatic leap, their sameness is a lot more obvious than if they were just walking while holding their guns. I don't mind it for characters, but for troopers, it's irksome.
.
A wrong turn? Any evidence to support that? I see only increasing profits for GW, which would suggest to me they made the right turn...
I think there's always been a mix of multi-pose and mono-pose kits across the various ranges. I don't know really whether this has become better or worse over time. I remember a lot of the old second edition minis being terribly mono-pose for example, but at the same time, completely get the argument that a lot of kits today are limited in terms of options, sans modelling and converting skills on the part of the hobbyist.
I suspect a lot of this is economic in a sense? GW want to sell us miniatures, they make many which are very appealing and have some talented individuals designing them. I think often, it's probably quicker and easier to limit the options available to the consumer in that design process? They release something that most people think looks great, because it's designed and pre-posed by a pro, and job done. It sells, and it's less of a headache to have to plan additional options within the kit.
GW's plastic Imperial Knight kit for example, is terribly mono-pose from the waist down. You can articulate it at the waist, move the head and arms some, but otherwise it's entire static unless you're willing and able to take a hobby saw to a £100 model. Compare that to the design of FW's Cerastus Knight kits. Just about every element of those is posable - right down to the fingers and 'toes'. It's far harder to assemble in comparison due to this, but you really can appreciate the greater amount of planning and thought that must have gone into this aspect of it's design.
Design isn't just aesthetic, it's also about the way a kit can be assembled. I think there's often corner cutting by GW in this aspect. Anyone that's ever put together one of Bandai's higher end model kits for example, can tell you how beautifully executed they are in this manner. They generally don't even require glue - they fit together flawlessly, and with really elegant and obvious thought about hiding the joins and purely structural parts of the model.
I see those dominion orks as quadrupedial rather than bipedal.
The thing about "monopose" stuff is if you take the tacticus armoured marines, there is something like 23ish(I think) different poses spread across a bunch of sources. DI intercessors & hellblasters, Indomitus, reg boxes and etb minis. Which is enuff to spread them around into different squads.
The unfortunate thing is that for the rest of the factions, they dont have the depth/variety of "new" sculpts. When they do, you get the CSM, Ork, Guard situation where they're thrown a bone now and then. Thing is, it's not the bone anyone wants. Even when eldar players got Howling Banshees/exarch + deldar got incubi & Drazhar it was very backhanded. Like ha-ha funny, not funny funny.
Not true at all. 5 minutes on several GW themed subs on Reddit will show you that.
Loads and loads of new GW kits with obvious seams that need filling.
It is true. You read the claim "jigsaw puzzle assemblies hide seams" but you seem to be responding to the claim "jigsaw puzzle assemblies hide all seams" (which you self-generated).
As long as we are building multi-part models, there are going to be seams. There are fewer on jigsaw designs than on old designs.
Not true at all. 5 minutes on several GW themed subs on Reddit will show you that.
Loads and loads of new GW kits with obvious seams that need filling.
It is true. You read the claim "jigsaw puzzle assemblies hide seams" but you seem to be responding to the claim "jigsaw puzzle assemblies hide all seams" (which you self-generated).
As long as we are building multi-part models, there are going to be seams. There are fewer on jigsaw designs than on old designs.
If you say so mate, I've seen plenty of new kits with glaring seams quite visible. Contrast paints hide nothing.
Some quite egregious ones on the DI Plague Marines. But those don't exist, right?
I miss some of the poseability, but tbh I feel the new models look much better (for the most part) than older ones.
Some of that is down to improved tech allowing for crisper details, some is down to the actual model design itself (Primaris look better than stock Firstborn), and some is that the reduced modularity gives the designers more abilities to make a model look more natural and cohesive.
That said, I do have some pet peeves. I don't like the way that so many models have terrain built into their bases where real work is required to put them on a plain base, I don't like having truly monopole models with 'look at me' poses (though I don't mind it with neutral poses), and I don't like when basic troops are designed with each having a completely unique assembly where it's not really possible to modify them without completely rebuilding the model from scratch.
Intercessors are absolutely fine for troops, Blightlords are fine for Terminators, and basically every character model GW make are fine (at least, as far as variability is concerned).
Not true at all. 5 minutes on several GW themed subs on Reddit will show you that.
Loads and loads of new GW kits with obvious seams that need filling.
It is true. You read the claim "jigsaw puzzle assemblies hide seams" but you seem to be responding to the claim "jigsaw puzzle assemblies hide all seams" (which you self-generated).
As long as we are building multi-part models, there are going to be seams. There are fewer on jigsaw designs than on old designs.
If you say so mate, I've seen plenty of new kits with glaring seams quite visible. Contrast paints hide nothing.
Some quite egregious ones on the DI Plague Marines. But those don't exist, right?
I've never assembled them. They're easy-to-builds, right? Most ETB kits will have gaps unless you de-ETB them by trimming or removing the alignment pegs.
I've also seen plenty of new kits with seams. Nobody has said we live in a perfect seam-free paradise now. What you should be looking for, if you want to buttress your point, isn't new jigsaw kits that have seams, but rather old, non-jigsaw kits, with the same approximate level of bodily complexity + detail as a comparable new kits, that *do not* have seams.
I thought this thread was about some of the gakky poses they give character models. Huh.
Didn't realise this was a thing with the multi-part plastic primaris squads. :/ That was the wonderful thing about old SM/CSM (and any variants), you could just mix everything easy. While this doesn't stop converting entirely, it does extra steps which could be irritating. However, cutting stuff with a saw and gap filling with putty isn't too bad. Obviously if this gets worse then it gets harder to convert and more involved so fewer people might try and so less variety in armies.
Edit: gotta saw I hated the primarus character and necron in w/e the recent 40k "start collecting" magazine. Ended up cutting off all the push-fits as they ended up giving massive gaps.
Rihgu wrote: ...A wrong turn? Any evidence to support that? I see only increasing profits for GW, which would suggest to me they made the right turn...
Obviously the only possible data point for whether the game's improving or not is its profitability. The fact that it has a vastly greater marketing budget than anything else in the industry has nothing to do with it, and the fact that it's been very successful at rebranding itself as an accessible entry point into minis games is entirely because of decisions that cut down on game balance and player choice, there'd be no way for the game to be more open and more accessible.
We all knowGW's profits are increasing. That doesn't mean that every single thing they do is the sole cause of their profits increasing and changing anything would kill the magic super-formula of bloat, more Space Marine releases, loss of player choice, increasing abstraction, increasing push to tournament-centric design, and soft-squatting old models so they can get us to tell each other to buy new models instead of saying "oh, we're discontinuing (X), but you can replace it with (Y)!" themselves that all compose the entire reason people like 40k.
Didn't realise this was a thing with the multi-part plastic primaris squads. :/
What was?
That was the wonderful thing about old SM/CSM (and any variants), you could just mix everything easy.
You still can with the primaris. Literally the only thing is different is that the legs and torso are one piece so that the abdomen doesn't look like crap if the torso is not facing the same direction than the legs.
Goose LeChance wrote: They could give the humans that same detail now without sacrificing the modularity.
In options maybe, not in poses. You can't have fancy poses and mix-and-match sprues, or the poses make no sense and the muscles don't line up. It was not an issue with early models with low detail, but it's much more noticeable with higher definition sculpts.
Yeah, I mean, we had dynamic poses before, it's not like the detail is better in plastic. Why can't we just go back to beautiful models like this?
One of my favs and beyaaahtch to customise… use as an exarch now.
Didn't realise this was a thing with the multi-part plastic primaris squads. :/
What was?
The mono-pose.
That was the wonderful thing about old SM/CSM (and any variants), you could just mix everything easy.
You still can with the primaris. Literally the only thing is different is that the legs and torso are one piece so that the abdomen doesn't look like crap if the torso is not facing the same direction than the legs.
At the moment. Obviously swapping a primaris legs onto a normal marine chest might look off... XD But still there is some benefit to being able to rotate/tilt the torso a bit when making the pose of your model.
Rihgu wrote: ...A wrong turn? Any evidence to support that? I see only increasing profits for GW, which would suggest to me they made the right turn...
Obviously the only possible data point for whether the game's improving or not is its profitability. The fact that it has a vastly greater marketing budget than anything else in the industry has nothing to do with it, and the fact that it's been very successful at rebranding itself as an accessible entry point into minis games is entirely because of decisions that cut down on game balance and player choice, there'd be no way for the game to be more open and more accessible.
I mean that is how we've chosen to organize our entire society, so dunno what to tell ya. We give the most power and capability to produce things to the companies that make the most profitable products.
The best movies are the ones designed by a focus group to strategically appeal to and be understood by audiences in every single country (but especially asia and the united states) and which have the most recognizable actors playing the most recognizable characters that you know.
The best music is the music you can easily predict the lines to upon first listening and which is designed to get stuck in your head.
The best video games are the ones that use the psychological concepts of skinner boxes to produce seratonin, ideally when the consumer makes small purchases using real-world currency.
The best tabletop games are the ones that convince the most people to buy new armies the most often.
Simple as that. Don't complain about any flaws in that system or that's politics.
Rihgu wrote: ...A wrong turn? Any evidence to support that? I see only increasing profits for GW, which would suggest to me they made the right turn...
Obviously the only possible data point for whether the game's improving or not is its profitability. The fact that it has a vastly greater marketing budget than anything else in the industry has nothing to do with it, and the fact that it's been very successful at rebranding itself as an accessible entry point into minis games is entirely because of decisions that cut down on game balance and player choice, there'd be no way for the game to be more open and more accessible.
I mean that is how we've chosen to organize our entire society, so dunno what to tell ya. We give the most power and capability to produce things to the companies that make the most profitable products.
The best movies are the ones designed by a focus group to strategically appeal to and be understood by audiences in every single country (but especially asia and the united states) and which have the most recognizable actors playing the most recognizable characters that you know.
The best music is the music you can easily predict the lines to upon first listening and which is designed to get stuck in your head.
The best video games are the ones that use the psychological concepts of skinner boxes to produce seratonin, ideally when the consumer makes small purchases using real-world currency.
The best tabletop games are the ones that convince the most people to buy new armies the most often.
Simple as that. Don't complain about any flaws in that system or that's politics.
I long ago gave up crusading for my own sense of what was good or not, I think around when Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released. The game didn't appeal to me at all, and I thought it was a wrong turn, and surely Bethesda would suffer for their dumbing down/whatever other complaint I had with it. "The true fans of the Elder Scrolls will see this as garbage!" I probably thought at the time.
It turns out Bethesda can just release Skyrim 20 times and people will keep buying it (not sure if it's the "true fans" I thought I belonged to. More likely the ones buying it are the TRUE true fans). Clearly my idea of what's "good" is not public opinion. If GW's profits are going up, they are making good decisions because apparently the majority of people agree with what they're doing.
I will admit, AnomanderRake is correct. Monopose could very well be a wrong turn, but not a large enough wrong turn to show alongside all of the other right turns they are making re: marketing, whatever else. There isn't any way to cut that little bit of data out of what we know so neither side will ever know whether they're right.
Anyways, sorry if I gave the impression that one shouldn't complain about the flaws in that system. Obviously, I don't agree with it (I've only bought Skyrim once, after all! And gotten it as a gift once, too, but that's besides the point). I just think it's funny/odd when people take the position that things that they disagree with, despite all evidence, are "wrong turns".
They aren't. The lack of ball joint on the waist doesn't make something monopose. That's a definition that has been invented on these forums to bash Primaris marines. No one used to think that Skitarii or GSC were monopose.
At the moment. Obviously swapping a primaris legs onto a normal marine chest might look off... XD But still there is some benefit to being able to rotate/tilt the torso a bit when making the pose of your model.
But with the old models the abdomen looked wrong if you rotated the torso. In the new design it doesn't. And as there are multiple bodies to choose from, you can just choose the one that has the tilt you need.
I've always wanted to do an infantry spam army where every single model that has the same pose. Like, every model is the sister of battle biting the pin out of a grenade, even the Canoness/Palatine(just glue some swords to them) and seraphim (glue jumppacks to them).
Good take imo. There also another factor to consider, namely that there is a significant trend towards convenience. I never understood why YouTubers would do all of these "How to paint an army in one day" or "How to play a game of 40k in 40 minutes" style videos, as it was pretty much the polar opposite of why and how I enjoy this hobby: a slow and intricate buildup of miniatures with a heavy focus on customization. I'd rather leave my stuff unpainted for another month before making sure that I get the paint scheme exactly right. Same for playing games, these would take up half a day back when I still wanted to engage with that side of the hobby – and that wasn't considered a nuisance but rather a feature in our community. It's not even a particularly peculiar thing in my experience, because this culture was fostered first and foremost in our local GW stores.
I had this revelation shortly after the release of Contrast paints, where I couldn't fathom how anyone could possibly go for such an obviously subpar product, because time and convenience never entered the equation for me. I expected it to fail spectacularly, a product that was inherently contradictory to the supposed "goal" of putting the most well crafted army on the table one could manage. The reality, however, seems to be that convenience and time efficiency do play a large role for a significant part of GW customers nowadays and I believe monopose kits are another symptom of this development.
But monopose kits aren't necessarily even easier or quicker to put together. Some of the modern monopose GW kits are a massive pain to assemble. It really varies from kit to kit both re: how much of a pain it is to assemble, and how truly monopose it is.
drbored wrote: If every single release from GW from now on was "monopose", would you still participate in the hobby/buy the product?
For reference, by "Monopose" I mean anything from the Easy to Build kits to the current Space Marine Intercessors kit (that is, fused torso and legs, but different arm/head/weapon options).
If every kit from now on was like the Space Marine Intercessors, or the Chaos Space Marines, or the Battle Sisters from the Sisters of Battle, or the Plague Marines, would you still buy the product?
These kits, due to certain arms not fitting certain bodies, certain weapon options not fitting certain torsos, and the torso and leg options generally being one, immovable piece, are considered "monopose" on top of other things like ETB kits, or kits with near zero options like various things from Blackstone Fortress (guard, cultists, etc).
If I told you there was a 0% chance that we would never see anything more customizable than the above kits, would you still support the company by buying the product?
(This is theoretical, I'm not trying to say that this is 100% the way things will go, this is just a thought exercise. Instead of arguing with various pedantic points, try doing this thought exercise.)
I don't actually care that they're monopose.
Like, seriously, there's only so many discrete ways to pose Guardsmen or older kits anyway, and even then, they still look all the same. It's only actually noticeable when you have a model that's uneccessarily distinct, like the Infiltrator with the pistol out.
Also, like, it's infantry. Who cares? There's between dozens or hundreds of the guys on the board, and also, it's infantry.
Rihgu wrote: ...A wrong turn? Any evidence to support that? I see only increasing profits for GW, which would suggest to me they made the right turn...
Obviously the only possible data point for whether the game's improving or not is its profitability. The fact that it has a vastly greater marketing budget than anything else in the industry has nothing to do with it, and the fact that it's been very successful at rebranding itself as an accessible entry point into minis games is entirely because of decisions that cut down on game balance and player choice, there'd be no way for the game to be more open and more accessible.
I mean that is how we've chosen to organize our entire society, so dunno what to tell ya. We give the most power and capability to produce things to the companies that make the most profitable products.
The best movies are the ones designed by a focus group to strategically appeal to and be understood by audiences in every single country (but especially asia and the united states) and which have the most recognizable actors playing the most recognizable characters that you know.
The best music is the music you can easily predict the lines to upon first listening and which is designed to get stuck in your head.
The best video games are the ones that use the psychological concepts of skinner boxes to produce seratonin, ideally when the consumer makes small purchases using real-world currency.
The best tabletop games are the ones that convince the most people to buy new armies the most often.
Simple as that. Don't complain about any flaws in that system or that's politics.
I'm not. I'm complaining about what I see as the insistence that the vast edifice that is 40k is built on some giant fragile house of cards and if you change one tiny detail the whole structure will come crashing down and the game will start losing money. 40k is profitable right now, sure. Is that because the minis are mono-pose or in spite of the minis being mono-pose? Would making the minis less mono-pose make the game less profitable? More profitable? Who can tell? I don't know. You don't know. What annoys me here is the idea that "the game's profitable so shut up" has become such a default answer to any criticism of anything GW does. I know the fact that they're making loads of money means they don't have to care about anything, but changing something small like putting a few more alternate arms into a kit isn't going to magically make GW's vast empire of cash go "poof," and "the game's profitable overall" doesn't mean it does every single thing perfectly.
tl;dr: I'm not complaining about the profit motive, I'm complaining about peoples' poor understanding of cause and effect.
Rihgu wrote: ...A wrong turn? Any evidence to support that? I see only increasing profits for GW, which would suggest to me they made the right turn...
Obviously the only possible data point for whether the game's improving or not is its profitability. The fact that it has a vastly greater marketing budget than anything else in the industry has nothing to do with it, and the fact that it's been very successful at rebranding itself as an accessible entry point into minis games is entirely because of decisions that cut down on game balance and player choice, there'd be no way for the game to be more open and more accessible.
I mean that is how we've chosen to organize our entire society, so dunno what to tell ya. We give the most power and capability to produce things to the companies that make the most profitable products.
The best movies are the ones designed by a focus group to strategically appeal to and be understood by audiences in every single country (but especially asia and the united states) and which have the most recognizable actors playing the most recognizable characters that you know.
The best music is the music you can easily predict the lines to upon first listening and which is designed to get stuck in your head.
The best video games are the ones that use the psychological concepts of skinner boxes to produce seratonin, ideally when the consumer makes small purchases using real-world currency.
The best tabletop games are the ones that convince the most people to buy new armies the most often.
Simple as that. Don't complain about any flaws in that system or that's politics.
On a basic level I enjoy The Lighthouse as much as Pacific Rim. They just fill different emotional needs. Pacific Rim made more money, because it's marketed and accessible to all audiences and, most importantly, fun.
At the same time, because The Lighthouse wasn't a major financial success doesn't demean its value. It just didn't appeal to as many people.
40K appeals to a lot of people and it's fun. As part of that fun the visual aspect of the kits likely contributes - few people are going to turn away, because the kit isn't multi-pose.
Goose LeChance wrote: They could give the humans that same detail now without sacrificing the modularity.
In options maybe, not in poses. You can't have fancy poses and mix-and-match sprues, or the poses make no sense and the muscles don't line up. It was not an issue with early models with low detail, but it's much more noticeable with higher definition sculpts.
Yeah, I mean, we had dynamic poses before, it's not like the detail is better in plastic. Why can't we just go back to beautiful models like this?
Thank you for proving my point- the old model has basically no visible details of musculature. Not sure why you posted it, we know old models had low res details, but I guess it visualizes what I meant?
alextroy wrote: I didn't say that. I said I like them because they are higher quality sculpts that are much easier to assemble.
I am with you on the former, but must disagree on the latter. I am assembling some of the new Flayed Ones, and they are the most tedious, finicky kits to assemble I have ever seen from GWS. The 6 armed cowboy necron guy was not as fiddly, but certainly much more complex than any previous Necrons.
They are beautiful, sure... but very much not easier to assemble, let alone "much easier to assemble".
Good take imo. There also another factor to consider, namely that there is a significant trend towards convenience. I never understood why YouTubers would do all of these "How to paint an army in one day" or "How to play a game of 40k in 40 minutes" style videos, as it was pretty much the polar opposite of why and how I enjoy this hobby: a slow and intricate buildup of miniatures with a heavy focus on customization. I'd rather leave my stuff unpainted for another month before making sure that I get the paint scheme exactly right. Same for playing games, these would take up half a day back when I still wanted to engage with that side of the hobby – and that wasn't considered a nuisance but rather a feature in our community. It's not even a particularly peculiar thing in my experience, because this culture was fostered first and foremost in our local GW stores.
I had this revelation shortly after the release of Contrast paints, where I couldn't fathom how anyone could possibly go for such an obviously subpar product, because time and convenience never entered the equation for me. I expected it to fail spectacularly, a product that was inherently contradictory to the supposed "goal" of putting the most well crafted army on the table one could manage. The reality, however, seems to be that convenience and time efficiency do play a large role for a significant part of GW customers nowadays and I believe monopose kits are another symptom of this development.
Contrast is basically magic for bad painters.
I am a bad painter. I've been a bad painter for almost a decade now. It's very likely I will always be a bad painter. The 'most well crafted army I could manage' pre-contrast just straight up isn't as good as what I can achieve now with a metallic airbrush basecoat and some Talassar blue or Blood Angel red.
It's not a trend towards convenience, the desire for more convenience has always been there, especially with painting. It's also not the only thing products like contrast and 'How to paint an army in one day' offer. For YOU(in your elitist mindset, and yes, it is quite clearly elitist) these products represent a dip in quality or a dumbing down of hobby, but for new players, gamers, or people who just aren't good at the painting side, they represent an increase in convenience AND quality.
Painting keeps more people out of the hobby than anything else. More than price(although price is a close #2 and loses out when you net players gained BY painting), more than rules, more than bad community experiences. It is unbelievably daunting for new players to jump into. Things like Contrast and quick paint videos help make the entire process seem less impossible to people who aren't familiar with miniature painting.
Goose LeChance wrote: They could give the humans that same detail now without sacrificing the modularity.
In options maybe, not in poses. You can't have fancy poses and mix-and-match sprues, or the poses make no sense and the muscles don't line up. It was not an issue with early models with low detail, but it's much more noticeable with higher definition sculpts.
Yeah, I mean, we had dynamic poses before, it's not like the detail is better in plastic. Why can't we just go back to beautiful models like this?
Thank you for proving my point- the old model has basically no visible details of musculature. Not sure why you posted it, we know old models had low res details, but I guess it visualizes what I meant?
He was being sarcastic towards the original poster by including a photo of a rather terrible model.
yukishiro1 wrote: But monopose kits aren't necessarily even easier or quicker to put together. Some of the modern monopose GW kits are a massive pain to assemble. It really varies from kit to kit both re: how much of a pain it is to assemble, and how truly monopose it is.
alextroy wrote: I didn't say that. I said I like them because they are higher quality sculpts that are much easier to assemble.
I am with you on the former, but must disagree on the latter. I am assembling some of the new Flayed Ones, and they are the most tedious, finicky kits to assemble I have ever seen from GWS. The 6 armed cowboy necron guy was not as fiddly, but certainly much more complex than any previous Necrons.
They are beautiful, sure... but very much not easier to assemble, let alone "much easier to assemble".
Somehow GW models are getting more monopose but also more complicated to put together. It's genius! Haters gonna hate.
alextroy wrote: I didn't say that. I said I like them because they are higher quality sculpts that are much easier to assemble.
I am with you on the former, but must disagree on the latter. I am assembling some of the new Flayed Ones, and they are the most tedious, finicky kits to assemble I have ever seen from GWS. The 6 armed cowboy necron guy was not as fiddly, but certainly much more complex than any previous Necrons.
They are beautiful, sure... but very much not easier to assemble, let alone "much easier to assemble".
Somehow GW models are getting more monopose but also more complicated to put together. It's genius!
It's like the rules. Simpler, yet somehow in being simpler they become more complicated.
ERJAK wrote: Contrast is basically magic for bad painters.
I am a bad painter. I've been a bad painter for almost a decade now. It's very likely I will always be a bad painter. The 'most well crafted army I could manage' pre-contrast just straight up isn't as good as what I can achieve now with a metallic airbrush basecoat and some Talassar blue or Blood Angel red.
It's not a trend towards convenience, the desire for more convenience has always been there, especially with painting. It's also not the only thing products like contrast and 'How to paint an army in one day' offer. For YOU(in your elitist mindset, and yes, it is quite clearly elitist) these products represent a dip in quality or a dumbing down of hobby, but for new players, gamers, or people who just aren't good at the painting side, they represent an increase in convenience AND quality.
Painting keeps more people out of the hobby than anything else. More than price(although price is a close #2 and loses out when you net players gained BY painting), more than rules, more than bad community experiences. It is unbelievably daunting for new players to jump into. Things like Contrast and quick paint videos help make the entire process seem less impossible to people who aren't familiar with miniature painting.
Yeah, making painting more accessible is great and the Contrast paints are very good for that.
But I still want to debunk the common misconception that they're 'noob paints' and no serious painter would touch them. Whilst I may not be anywhere near Golden Daemon levels, I'd certainly consider myself to be a pretty damn decent painter, and I use Contrast paints a lot. Using translucent layers is simply a different technique, it is more like working with water colours. Now obviously I use normal paints in addition to them, but they're a valuable part of my toolkit. They also help speeding past the boring parts and getting to the more interesting detail work.
Yeah, making painting more accessible is great and the Contrast paints are very good for that.
But I still want to debunk the common misconception that they're 'noob paints' and no serious painter would touch them. Whilst I may not be anywhere near Golden Daemon levels, I'd certainly consider myself to be a pretty damn decent painter, and I use Contrast paints a lot. Using translucent layers is simply a different technique, it is more like working with water colours. Now obviously I use normal paints in addition to them, but they're a valuable part of my toolkit. They also help speeding past the boring parts and getting to the more interesting detail work.
I probably wouldn't have started a new 40k army recently if not for Contrast to help speed up some of the rank & file units. Wish they'd been around before I painted 200 gaunts!
H.B.M.C. wrote: drbored - I figured you took the time to write a detailed post, so the least I could do is take the time to reply in kind.
drbored wrote: I've been wondering about this sort of thing. A lot of people tend to make arguments about GW's path, the models that are coming out, etc, within the vacuum of GW's product line. Where there may be improvements to fidelity of detail, they are made via sacrifices to 'poseability', but then you look at the poseability of old, and you had a lot of marines and models that looked like this:
Sure, it was slightly easier to put the plasma gun, melta gun, flamer, and pistols on whichever arm you wanted, but for the most part those things are still possible with a little bit of extra effort and careful clipping, minus a few options where the hands are molded around the grip, for example. The ability to rotate the torso 360 degrees was paired with the issue of the legs always looking like they were in a mid-squat pose, while with the newer models, certain special and heavy weapons can only fit on one or two bodies, and only fit on others with significantly more effort than before.
I wholeheartedly reject this argument as it does not match up to the reality of GW minis. Above I have three links to not-exactly-old kits - Deathwatch Veterans, Rubric Marines and Mk.III Marines. I chose recent Marines examples specifically as previous Tactical Squads and the Chaos Marines you included in your post above are most often cited for why "this is why mono-pose is better!". None of those kits are dumpy bow-legged Marines like those ancient Chaos Marines (much as I love that old kit! ).
GW is at the top of their game when it comes to plastic multi-part miniatures. I cannot speak to what plasic tech in Japan is like - so please don't quote a dozen random Gundum makers at me that maybe make GW look like children* - but from a mass-market Western wargame I don't think anyone matches them as far as variety, detail and expertise. It's no accident why they're the biggest fish in the small pond that is miniature wargaming, and why other companies could never reach their heights (Mantic), why some need pre-painted pre-built licensed products to get near (X-Wing, SW Legion) or why some almost got there but flew too close to the sun (Privateer Press).
*That's directed at the thread, not you specifically.
We know what they can produce. How often have we all gone "Well I already own 20 of those, so I doubt a new kit will make me rebuy th... oh my God I must have that!!!" when they show off just how much more detail a new kit has, new weapons, new heads and really just how farwe'vecome?
GW's recent crop of minis may have the detail, but they're losing their modularity. They're becoming harder to piece together. They're becoming more restrictive. None of these three things are positive and, more importantly, none of these things are necessary because we know they don't have to do it this way.
I don't know how many different ways I can restate that, and I don't understand why anyone could see this regression as a positive. If you think this trend really is a positive, then by all means, help me understand it.
drbored wrote: The other angle that I have been considering this is in the community as a whole. With regards to mental health, if you're surrounded by people that are constantly negative, bashing on the things that you like, or at worst even gaslighting or using other argument methods to shut you down, many mental health experts would call that a toxic environment. A toxic environment isn't conducive to the healthy growth of an individual, and is generally not where you would want to be, and yet the Warhammer community, on some sites, is exactly that. "Relentless positivity" is hammered down until those that like to look on the bright side simply don't speak up, while "relentless negativity" is praised and joined, upvoted and agreed with, whether or not it's warranted, and sometimes in the face of opposing facts.
I operate on a credit where credit's due mentality. It's why you'll always see me talking up GW customer service, as it's excellent. It's why you'll see me absolutely gushing over virtually any terrain product GW puts out. But that also means I'm not going to ignore things I consider to be bad, from rules, to GW's pricing policies, business practices, to increasing amounts of mono-pose minis.
I don't think we have a problem with hammering down 'relentless positivity', because what I find is that we don't often get that here. What we get are relentless excuse making. When something is good, we see people in any thread in N&R talking about it. And I think Dakka's nature as a 'toxic' is overblown. Better this than a site where the staff stamp down on any form of discussion that doesn't fit its incredibly narrow views (I've heard horror stories about Bolter & Chainsword...). As far as the opposite, 'relentless negativity', I've come across very few here who exude that with every aspect of every post they make.
drbored wrote: I wouldn't call anyone pointing these things out to be 'relentlessly negative', though in many of these instances it certainly feels like they're beating the same horse, and new routes of conversation might be more entertaining to have.
You know? I don't disagree with you on that. But at the same time, mono-pose minis is this thread's topic, so whilst the topic itself may have been done to death, it seems odd to criticise the discussion happening within the thread where it was set up to happen.
drbored wrote: However, there are just as many criticisms that are stated as fact, and when someone tries to present an opposing view, the community doesn't want to hear it. Take Kill Team, for example. The volatile upset of the vocal part of the community was astoundingly negative when it was revealed that the Compendium would be a separate book and would cost more than the previous editions' core book did. Is that crappy? Yeah, it's rough to have to shell another 60 USD to get what people perceive to be the same content as what previously came in a 40 dollar book. Sure, I agree, that's mighty crappy. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the printing of so many books. That said, the same exact thing happened with Warhammer 40k and the community praised the practice: 8th edition brought with it the Indexes, and in order to be able to play all the factions, you had to buy 4 separate indexes, knowing full well that they'd be replaced later.
I don't have the Compendium, and Kill Team itself holds little interest for me (certainly once they decided to forgo numbers in favour of shapes for some unknown reason... ), but I think that came down to people expecting their Kill-Teams to be useable in the new rules, and not to have all their options stripped away. Y'know, a bit like when a new kit comes out and it's all mono-pose.
drbored wrote: When you talk about "relentless positivity" like it's a bad thing, I have to wonder if you'd prefer this "relentless negativity" to continue. Is it truly healthy for the community as a whole? Valid criticism, maybe even some activism to keep the company on track, is certainly healthy, but in my mind the negative voices seem to be far louder than the positive ones.
I have a quote in my sig - "Everything is fine, nothing is broken!" that I keep there for a very specific reason. It was something an old boss of mine would say years ago when everything was going wrong. It was his self-deprecating way of letting everyone know that something was broken but he was working on fixing it. When the time came to do the vehicle rules for the Only War 40KRPG I couldn't help but include that as the quote at the start of the vehicle repair section, which is where that screenshot in my sig comes from.
As I said above, I don't feel we have a lot of "relentless positivity" at Dakka - certainly no more than relentless negativity - but rather relentless excuse making. Too many people here are willing to go "Everything is fine! Nothing is broken!" whilst things regress right before their eyes. That's not positivity. That's delusion.
When GW gets something right, we should celebrate it - the new Ork terrain is phenomenal, I really love the new 1KSons Codex, I think Crusade is fantastic (but would be better if my 'Nids had Crusade rules! ). The Indomitus box finally turned me around on Primaris Marines (dumb Cawl fluff notwithstanding). Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City are two of the coolest things GW has released in a long time. 8th (and 9th) made me excited to play 40k again. I quite often express the sheer joy I get out of terrain making, even with my own blog on the subject. I just want to play 40K and Necromunda and Warhammer Quest and BattleTech but I've been stuck in a perpetual lockdown since June and it's driving me fething insane!!!
*ahem*
Meanwhile, Al, a few posts above me: "Those aren't real conversions! Real conversions involve blah blah blah gatekeeping!"
And ---I'm--- the one being negative?
drbored wrote: Also, don't mistake "relentless positivity" for people that just want to enjoy the hobby they spent hundreds of dollars to get into. There are people that, despite the beliefs in some of these forums, actually LIKE the hobby for what it is, despite the drama, and don't need to be told that so many things suck.
Completely fair call, but I can't help but point out again that this is a thread about mono-pose minis, so coming in here not expecting to find opinions in the negative of such minis is a bit like going into a discussion about a new movie you haven't seen and getting annoyed that they "spoiled" it for you.
I'm not as savvy with the quote system so I'll just respond to a few points.
I DEFINITELY took the conversation off the rails, mostly because I had an ulterior motive when it came to creating this topic, which was to gauge certain emotions of the forum under the guise of a thought exercise. In my mind, certain complaints that are purely in the realm of opinion tend to, when people discuss them in comments, veer towards the negative, but as you can see from the poll above, there's generally a larger number of people that would continue to buy into the hobby as it is, and as it could be. I don't at all feel 'spoiled' about a certain range of opinions. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of what I'd expect.
My own brainspace has been a bit tumultuous. Dealing with negativity in my own local community has driven me away from that community, but not from the hobby. As I actively build and paint my models, I find myself enjoying the hobby, while I tend to not enjoy time spent talking about the hobby. Much more breath is spent complaining about a variety of issues, from 'what is monopose' to 'is this tolerable' to 'everything is awful all the time' than it is on conversation focused on the lighter side. There are of course a couple points to be made there alone.
A. People in general tend to find some catharsis complaining, whinging, and griping about issues in their lives and circles.
B. Progress on the Warhammer hobby is generally slow. In the span of a week, a hobbyist may make a little bit of progress on a squad, or play one or two games. In other words, conversations on the positive aspects of the hobby are simply fewer, and the void in between those conversations is filled with whatever topics may be at hand, which tends to be some form of GW drama. I more blame our need to consume social media to fill that void as the issue, but I'm sure it differs from person to person.
As to the "relentless excuse making" I think that's a matter of perspective when it comes to the nature of opinions. In regards to the mono-pose issue, there's certainly a challenge when some bodies within a model kit can't be easily equipped with certain special weapons. The Chaos Marine Missile Launcher is an example that pops to mind, since I built it recently. On some of the bodies, especially the running ones, but also some of the regular standing ones, the missile launcher arm simply... struggles to fit on many of the bodies, or looks quite awkward indeed. On one or two out of the 10 bodies, it works decently well, and out of maybe another one or two, you could shave some plastic away to make it work well enough, but it's still pretty clear that it's meant to fit in a certain way on those first two body options.
Someone who likes the kit regardless might say a variety of things, like "You don't need that many missile launchers anyway!" or "just get the Havoc set, and use some of those as missile launchers instead!" which misses the point of having options in the first kit completely. These excuses, I think, come from the same sort of emotion as someone trying to swat a fly away with their hand and missing. They send out excuses hoping that one of them will strike true and the opponents of the model kit will shut up with all of their "relentless negativity" and go away, or somehow change their mind and see the light (we all know that nobody changes their mind on the Internet).
Meanwhile, someone that doesn't like the kit for the aforementioned reasons will suggest "GW can do better!" or "The range of options is worst than other kits of the past and present!" But what I've found is that instead of pointing people to the source, many will often use highly aggressive and derisive language to describe the issue, with your choice of curse words or colorful language sprinkled in for flavor. This makes the person arguing for a better model kit seem simply grumpy and inconsolable, likely because they've dealt with too many of the excuse-makers and know that anything else would land on deaf ears. There's another issue, however. The issue is simply that, well, the model kit is out. By the time it's revealed by GW, there's little say that we have in what we get. The legitimate complaints that we may have about models that are coming out today may not actually go into effect in the cycle of design-and-release for another 3-5 years, and even then it's very unlikely that GW will remake a modern kit to appease complainers or those that want more options in their kit. Because of these things, complaints tend to pile up even though fans of a particular kit or faction are buying it up anyway.
In either situation, you've got opposing views that will never meet eye-to-eye unless opinions change (which they do, contrary to my previous statement. My own have changed several times over the course of my hobbying, as I've gone from my 20's into my 30's even here on this very forum. It tends to take a decent measure of self reflecting, life events, and various catalysts, like GW suggesting you can slap the old resin sonic blasters on new chaos marines to make Emperor's Children Noise Marines, instead of giving us a fething Noise Marine update, ffs).
The result: a forum where people argue, where those with one kind of opinion view the other side as toxic. A forum can choose the course it takes, as Bolter and Chainsword clearly wanted to foster a more pro-GW attitude, which, honestly, I appreciate. It's nice to have a place I know I can go to where I can read a thread and not have to deal with these arguments, especially when so many other places people are free to complain to their hearts content. Having different communities can be healthy for the Community as a whole, as people can find the cliques they fit in with and won't feel forced to stick with certain attitudes around them at all times.
When I was younger, I lived in a town with only one game store. If you wanted to play anything, from 40k to Magic the Gathering, you went to that game store. If you didn't like someone, you had to play nice, because there were simply no other options. Now, I live in a place with twelve game stores, and the ability to fit in with a certain group that matches your opinions/playstyles is a blessing. You're not stuck losing game after game with your narrative army against a group of competitive players, you can go find the other narrative players and have a better time. In my mind it's better to be able to find a place where you can fit in, so where someone might say that a forum like B&C is 'restricting of free speech', I see it as a save haven for people that just want to have fun with their miniatures that they spent hundreds of dollars on without being in a community that's more likely to give them feelings of buyer's remorse.
My personal hope, honestly, is not to change anyone's opinions about the validity of the current path of GW's model making or business decisions. I actually have much more fun trying to figure out the root cause of people's butting of heads, even when it's my own head being butted against. I have no great dreams of changing the community, but if I can figure out my own viewpoints through conversation, either personally or online, then I can better direct my energy into what's actually important to me. It was this sort of thing, butting of heads included, that got me to leave one community in my local area in favor of another. So, hopefully I'll just have a better time. I'd hope that more people try to do that, to improve their situation if it needs improving, and that includes considering why you get so much catharsis over complaining, or if your excuse-making is falling on deaf ears, or anywhere in between.
ERJAK wrote: Contrast is basically magic for bad painters.
I am a bad painter. I've been a bad painter for almost a decade now. It's very likely I will always be a bad painter. The 'most well crafted army I could manage' pre-contrast just straight up isn't as good as what I can achieve now with a metallic airbrush basecoat and some Talassar blue or Blood Angel red.
It's not a trend towards convenience, the desire for more convenience has always been there, especially with painting. It's also not the only thing products like contrast and 'How to paint an army in one day' offer. For YOU(in your elitist mindset, and yes, it is quite clearly elitist) these products represent a dip in quality or a dumbing down of hobby, but for new players, gamers, or people who just aren't good at the painting side, they represent an increase in convenience AND quality.
Painting keeps more people out of the hobby than anything else. More than price(although price is a close #2 and loses out when you net players gained BY painting), more than rules, more than bad community experiences. It is unbelievably daunting for new players to jump into. Things like Contrast and quick paint videos help make the entire process seem less impossible to people who aren't familiar with miniature painting.
Yeah, making painting more accessible is great and the Contrast paints are very good for that.
But I still want to debunk the common misconception that they're 'noob paints' and no serious painter would touch them. Whilst I may not be anywhere near Golden Daemon levels, I'd certainly consider myself to be a pretty damn decent painter, and I use Contrast paints a lot. Using translucent layers is simply a different technique, it is more like working with water colours. Now obviously I use normal paints in addition to them, but they're a valuable part of my toolkit. They also help speeding past the boring parts and getting to the more interesting detail work.
A "Contrast Paint" is a glaze. That's it. That's all it is. You can glaze with "Contrast Paints", you can glaze without "Contrast Paints." They take a technique that already exists and made it a bit easier for inexperienced painters to use it, and there's no reason experienced painters looking to speed up their process shouldn't use them, but it's an element in your toolkit whether or not you decide to use "Contrast Paints" to do it.
A "Contrast Paint" is a glaze. That's it. That's all it is. You can glaze with "Contrast Paints", you can glaze without "Contrast Paints." They take a technique that already exists and made it a bit easier for inexperienced painters to use it, and there's no reason experienced painters looking to speed up their process shouldn't use them, but it's an element in your toolkit whether or not you decide to use "Contrast Paints" to do it.
Sure. It is a type of glaze. Though it has somewhat different flow properties than more typical glaze. It is something between a wash and a glaze.
But with the old models the abdomen looked wrong if you rotated the torso.
Well that's plainly untrue. I mean there's a range for how much you can rotate the torso (obviously you can't rotate it backwards), but there's way more range there than you're giving credit for.
ERJAK wrote: Contrast is basically magic for bad painters.
I am a bad painter. I've been a bad painter for almost a decade now. It's very likely I will always be a bad painter. The 'most well crafted army I could manage' pre-contrast just straight up isn't as good as what I can achieve now with a metallic airbrush basecoat and some Talassar blue or Blood Angel red.
It's not a trend towards convenience, the desire for more convenience has always been there, especially with painting. It's also not the only thing products like contrast and 'How to paint an army in one day' offer. For YOU(in your elitist mindset, and yes, it is quite clearly elitist) these products represent a dip in quality or a dumbing down of hobby, but for new players, gamers, or people who just aren't good at the painting side, they represent an increase in convenience AND quality.
Painting keeps more people out of the hobby than anything else. More than price(although price is a close #2 and loses out when you net players gained BY painting), more than rules, more than bad community experiences. It is unbelievably daunting for new players to jump into. Things like Contrast and quick paint videos help make the entire process seem less impossible to people who aren't familiar with miniature painting.
Yeah, making painting more accessible is great and the Contrast paints are very good for that.
But I still want to debunk the common misconception that they're 'noob paints' and no serious painter would touch them. Whilst I may not be anywhere near Golden Daemon levels, I'd certainly consider myself to be a pretty damn decent painter, and I use Contrast paints a lot. Using translucent layers is simply a different technique, it is more like working with water colours. Now obviously I use normal paints in addition to them, but they're a valuable part of my toolkit. They also help speeding past the boring parts and getting to the more interesting detail work.
A "Contrast Paint" is a glaze. That's it. That's all it is. You can glaze with "Contrast Paints", you can glaze without "Contrast Paints." They take a technique that already exists and made it a bit easier for inexperienced painters to use it, and there's no reason experienced painters looking to speed up their process shouldn't use them, but it's an element in your toolkit whether or not you decide to use "Contrast Paints" to do it.
Unless you can't glaze without contrast paints. I can't. No goddam idea how that crap works. Watched a bunch of guide videos on glazing, still always ends up looking like I spilled paint water on whatever I was working on.
So I just use contrast paints instead. Much better. I imagine it's the same for a lot of people who pick up the brush for the first time. Or who hate painting.
But with the old models the abdomen looked wrong if you rotated the torso.
Well that's plainly untrue. I mean there's a range for how much you can rotate the torso (obviously you can't rotate it backwards), but there's way more range there than you're giving credit for.
The old marines have a belt buckle and usually some cables going directly upwards from it as part of their torso. Realistically if the marine turned their torso, the belt buckle would move less than the chest, and the cables would bent. Now of course as this one piece, this cannot happen, so it looks wrong. On primaris marines the abdomen details are actually sculpted to match the rotation of the torso, so they look right.
I think contrast paints are definitely nice if you're looking to paint a lot of rank and file models without spending ages on each.
Even if you add some detail or extra layers afterwards, painting the bulk of a model's body with a contrast paint can save an awful lot of time and effort.
But with the old models the abdomen looked wrong if you rotated the torso.
Well that's plainly untrue. I mean there's a range for how much you can rotate the torso (obviously you can't rotate it backwards), but there's way more range there than you're giving credit for.
The old marines have a belt buckle and usually some cables going directly upwards from it as part of their torso. Realistically if the marine turned their torso, the belt buckle would move less than the chest, and the cables would bent. Now of course as this one piece, this cannot happen, so it looks wrong. On primaris marines the abdomen details are actually sculpted to match the rotation of the torso, so they look right.
Let's be real. The old marines never looked right. Bowlegged and with thighs out of an Anorexia clinic.
Let's be real. The old marines never looked right. Bowlegged and with thighs out of an Anorexia clinic.
Tell me about it! I spent so much time rescaling a reposing them for my previous marine army in attempt to get them look right. I am so glad that we finally have marine models that have decent looking anatomy straight from the box, so I can spent my conversion efforts on more fun stuff than fixing proportions.
But with the old models the abdomen looked wrong if you rotated the torso.
Well that's plainly untrue. I mean there's a range for how much you can rotate the torso (obviously you can't rotate it backwards), but there's way more range there than you're giving credit for.
The old marines have a belt buckle and usually some cables going directly upwards from it as part of their torso. Realistically if the marine turned their torso, the belt buckle would move less than the chest, and the cables would bent. Now of course as this one piece, this cannot happen, so it looks wrong. On primaris marines the abdomen details are actually sculpted to match the rotation of the torso, so they look right.
A detail I'm happy to give up for the sake of making my own poses.
Insectum7 wrote: Looked right enough to be GWs best selling models for three decades.
And Toby Macguire was an awesome Spiderman until Tom Holland knocked it out of the park. Will I still enjoy the original movies? Sure, but I like the new ones so much more. This is, of course, just my personal opinion.
For me, combined torsos and legs (If you can make it with the option of havin different breastplates for each body even better) and nearly total freedom of heads, shoulderpads and arms and weapons is the best way of doing this.
And TBH, Intercessors are basically that. Heck, I made my Assault Intercessor sargeants with Indomitus marines using the double handed Deatwatch thunder hammer with minimal effort, just using the pauldrons to hide where the smallers arm's don't connect 100% with the body.
The 2019 Chaos Knights I am currently assembling are probably the worst GW plastic kit I have ever worked with. This thing is just atrocious - every single knight is cut up differently from every other one, in completely bizarre and non-intuitive ways that make the idea of painting in assemblies virtually impossible, so you have to just stick them together and content yourself with the hard to reach bits not getting done well. And don't even think about trying to repose them.
And despite all that...the kit doesn't even go together well, either. I've had to use more green stuff on this than on any other plastic kit I've ever put together according to the basic instructions, bar none. Nothing fits together right - it's almost like chopping figures up into absolutely bizarre bits doesn't work very well when trying to fit them back together.
I cannot say enough bad things about this kit. It is everything wrong with modern GW. And the absolutely astounding thing is that this is from a Start Collecting box. If I had started the hobby with this box, I am quite sure I would have quit out of sheer frustration and never come back. It's mind-boggling that anyone thought it was a good idea to design a starter set with miniatures assembled like these ones are.
ccs wrote: Model companies - GW or any other - have always made mono-pose models. Always will. Toy soldiers, cars, planes, tanks, terrain, or whatever else, in whatever scale or material.
And GW has had tons of non-mono-pose models as well, but now they make less of them. Do you understand that yet?
ERJAK wrote: Let's be real. The old marines never looked right. Bowlegged and with thighs out of an Anorexia clinic.
Sure were popular for something that "never looked right". Moreover, the "bowlegged" argument doesn't really hold water when you compare it to morerecentkits.
Daedalus81 wrote: And Toby Macguire was an awesome Spiderman until Tom Holland knocked it out of the park. Will I still enjoy the original movies? Sure, but I like the new ones so much more. This is, of course, just my personal opinion.
That's... not an equivalent example. What people are doing here, to take your Spider-Man example, is basically "Well, now that I see Tom Holland, I see that Toby Macguire's Spider-Man was poorly acted and unconvincing. He really wasn't very good at the time, was he?" (and it would be as terrible an argument as the outdated bowlegged Marine example). That's what people are saying when they say that the new mono-pose minis are great.
Insectum7 wrote: Looked right enough to be GWs best selling models for three decades.
And Toby Macguire was an awesome Spiderman until Tom Holland knocked it out of the park. Will I still enjoy the original movies? Sure, but I like the new ones so much more. This is, of course, just my personal opinion.
Daedalus81 wrote: And Toby Macguire was an awesome Spiderman until Tom Holland knocked it out of the park. Will I still enjoy the original movies? Sure, but I like the new ones so much more. This is, of course, just my personal opinion.
That's... not an equivalent example. What people are doing here, to take your Spider-Man example, is basically "Well, now that I see Tom Holland, I see that Toby Macguire's Spider-Man was poorly acted and unconvincing. He really wasn't very good at the time, was he?" (and it would be as terrible an argument as the outdated bowlegged Marine example). That's what people are saying when they say that the new mono-pose minis are great.
H.B.M.C. wrote: drbored - I figured you took the time to write a detailed post, so the least I could do is take the time to reply in kind.
drbored wrote: I've been wondering about this sort of thing. A lot of people tend to make arguments about GW's path, the models that are coming out, etc, within the vacuum of GW's product line. Where there may be improvements to fidelity of detail, they are made via sacrifices to 'poseability', but then you look at the poseability of old, and you had a lot of marines and models that looked like this:
Sure, it was slightly easier to put the plasma gun, melta gun, flamer, and pistols on whichever arm you wanted, but for the most part those things are still possible with a little bit of extra effort and careful clipping, minus a few options where the hands are molded around the grip, for example. The ability to rotate the torso 360 degrees was paired with the issue of the legs always looking like they were in a mid-squat pose, while with the newer models, certain special and heavy weapons can only fit on one or two bodies, and only fit on others with significantly more effort than before.
I wholeheartedly reject this argument as it does not match up to the reality of GW minis. Above I have three links to not-exactly-old kits - Deathwatch Veterans, Rubric Marines and Mk.III Marines. I chose recent Marines examples specifically as previous Tactical Squads and the Chaos Marines you included in your post above are most often cited for why "this is why mono-pose is better!". None of those kits are dumpy bow-legged Marines like those ancient Chaos Marines (much as I love that old kit! ).
GW is at the top of their game when it comes to plastic multi-part miniatures. I cannot speak to what plasic tech in Japan is like - so please don't quote a dozen random Gundum makers at me that maybe make GW look like children* - but from a mass-market Western wargame I don't think anyone matches them as far as variety, detail and expertise. It's no accident why they're the biggest fish in the small pond that is miniature wargaming, and why other companies could never reach their heights (Mantic), why some need pre-painted pre-built licensed products to get near (X-Wing, SW Legion) or why some almost got there but flew too close to the sun (Privateer Press).
*That's directed at the thread, not you specifically.
We know what they can produce. How often have we all gone "Well I already own 20 of those, so I doubt a new kit will make me rebuy th... oh my God I must have that!!!" when they show off just how much more detail a new kit has, new weapons, new heads and really just how farwe'vecome?
GW's recent crop of minis may have the detail, but they're losing their modularity. They're becoming harder to piece together. They're becoming more restrictive. None of these three things are positive and, more importantly, none of these things are necessary because we know they don't have to do it this way.
I don't know how many different ways I can restate that, and I don't understand why anyone could see this regression as a positive. If you think this trend really is a positive, then by all means, help me understand it.
drbored wrote: The other angle that I have been considering this is in the community as a whole. With regards to mental health, if you're surrounded by people that are constantly negative, bashing on the things that you like, or at worst even gaslighting or using other argument methods to shut you down, many mental health experts would call that a toxic environment. A toxic environment isn't conducive to the healthy growth of an individual, and is generally not where you would want to be, and yet the Warhammer community, on some sites, is exactly that. "Relentless positivity" is hammered down until those that like to look on the bright side simply don't speak up, while "relentless negativity" is praised and joined, upvoted and agreed with, whether or not it's warranted, and sometimes in the face of opposing facts.
I operate on a credit where credit's due mentality. It's why you'll always see me talking up GW customer service, as it's excellent. It's why you'll see me absolutely gushing over virtually any terrain product GW puts out. But that also means I'm not going to ignore things I consider to be bad, from rules, to GW's pricing policies, business practices, to increasing amounts of mono-pose minis.
I don't think we have a problem with hammering down 'relentless positivity', because what I find is that we don't often get that here. What we get are relentless excuse making. When something is good, we see people in any thread in N&R talking about it. And I think Dakka's nature as a 'toxic' is overblown. Better this than a site where the staff stamp down on any form of discussion that doesn't fit its incredibly narrow views (I've heard horror stories about Bolter & Chainsword...). As far as the opposite, 'relentless negativity', I've come across very few here who exude that with every aspect of every post they make.
drbored wrote: I wouldn't call anyone pointing these things out to be 'relentlessly negative', though in many of these instances it certainly feels like they're beating the same horse, and new routes of conversation might be more entertaining to have.
You know? I don't disagree with you on that. But at the same time, mono-pose minis is this thread's topic, so whilst the topic itself may have been done to death, it seems odd to criticise the discussion happening within the thread where it was set up to happen.
drbored wrote: However, there are just as many criticisms that are stated as fact, and when someone tries to present an opposing view, the community doesn't want to hear it. Take Kill Team, for example. The volatile upset of the vocal part of the community was astoundingly negative when it was revealed that the Compendium would be a separate book and would cost more than the previous editions' core book did. Is that crappy? Yeah, it's rough to have to shell another 60 USD to get what people perceive to be the same content as what previously came in a 40 dollar book. Sure, I agree, that's mighty crappy. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the printing of so many books. That said, the same exact thing happened with Warhammer 40k and the community praised the practice: 8th edition brought with it the Indexes, and in order to be able to play all the factions, you had to buy 4 separate indexes, knowing full well that they'd be replaced later.
I don't have the Compendium, and Kill Team itself holds little interest for me (certainly once they decided to forgo numbers in favour of shapes for some unknown reason... ), but I think that came down to people expecting their Kill-Teams to be useable in the new rules, and not to have all their options stripped away. Y'know, a bit like when a new kit comes out and it's all mono-pose.
drbored wrote: When you talk about "relentless positivity" like it's a bad thing, I have to wonder if you'd prefer this "relentless negativity" to continue. Is it truly healthy for the community as a whole? Valid criticism, maybe even some activism to keep the company on track, is certainly healthy, but in my mind the negative voices seem to be far louder than the positive ones.
I have a quote in my sig - "Everything is fine, nothing is broken!" that I keep there for a very specific reason. It was something an old boss of mine would say years ago when everything was going wrong. It was his self-deprecating way of letting everyone know that something was broken but he was working on fixing it. When the time came to do the vehicle rules for the Only War 40KRPG I couldn't help but include that as the quote at the start of the vehicle repair section, which is where that screenshot in my sig comes from.
As I said above, I don't feel we have a lot of "relentless positivity" at Dakka - certainly no more than relentless negativity - but rather relentless excuse making. Too many people here are willing to go "Everything is fine! Nothing is broken!" whilst things regress right before their eyes. That's not positivity. That's delusion.
When GW gets something right, we should celebrate it - the new Ork terrain is phenomenal, I really love the new 1KSons Codex, I think Crusade is fantastic (but would be better if my 'Nids had Crusade rules! ). The Indomitus box finally turned me around on Primaris Marines (dumb Cawl fluff notwithstanding). Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City are two of the coolest things GW has released in a long time. 8th (and 9th) made me excited to play 40k again. I quite often express the sheer joy I get out of terrain making, even with my own blog on the subject. I just want to play 40K and Necromunda and Warhammer Quest and BattleTech but I've been stuck in a perpetual lockdown since June and it's driving me fething insane!!!
*ahem*
Meanwhile, Al, a few posts above me: "Those aren't real conversions! Real conversions involve blah blah blah gatekeeping!"
And ---I'm--- the one being negative?
drbored wrote: Also, don't mistake "relentless positivity" for people that just want to enjoy the hobby they spent hundreds of dollars to get into. There are people that, despite the beliefs in some of these forums, actually LIKE the hobby for what it is, despite the drama, and don't need to be told that so many things suck.
Completely fair call, but I can't help but point out again that this is a thread about mono-pose minis, so coming in here not expecting to find opinions in the negative of such minis is a bit like going into a discussion about a new movie you haven't seen and getting annoyed that they "spoiled" it for you.
I'm not as savvy with the quote system so I'll just respond to a few points.
I DEFINITELY took the conversation off the rails, mostly because I had an ulterior motive when it came to creating this topic, which was to gauge certain emotions of the forum under the guise of a thought exercise. In my mind, certain complaints that are purely in the realm of opinion tend to, when people discuss them in comments, veer towards the negative, but as you can see from the poll above, there's generally a larger number of people that would continue to buy into the hobby as it is, and as it could be. I don't at all feel 'spoiled' about a certain range of opinions. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of what I'd expect.
My own brainspace has been a bit tumultuous. Dealing with negativity in my own local community has driven me away from that community, but not from the hobby. As I actively build and paint my models, I find myself enjoying the hobby, while I tend to not enjoy time spent talking about the hobby. Much more breath is spent complaining about a variety of issues, from 'what is monopose' to 'is this tolerable' to 'everything is awful all the time' than it is on conversation focused on the lighter side. There are of course a couple points to be made there alone.
A. People in general tend to find some catharsis complaining, whinging, and griping about issues in their lives and circles.
B. Progress on the Warhammer hobby is generally slow. In the span of a week, a hobbyist may make a little bit of progress on a squad, or play one or two games. In other words, conversations on the positive aspects of the hobby are simply fewer, and the void in between those conversations is filled with whatever topics may be at hand, which tends to be some form of GW drama. I more blame our need to consume social media to fill that void as the issue, but I'm sure it differs from person to person.
As to the "relentless excuse making" I think that's a matter of perspective when it comes to the nature of opinions. In regards to the mono-pose issue, there's certainly a challenge when some bodies within a model kit can't be easily equipped with certain special weapons. The Chaos Marine Missile Launcher is an example that pops to mind, since I built it recently. On some of the bodies, especially the running ones, but also some of the regular standing ones, the missile launcher arm simply... struggles to fit on many of the bodies, or looks quite awkward indeed. On one or two out of the 10 bodies, it works decently well, and out of maybe another one or two, you could shave some plastic away to make it work well enough, but it's still pretty clear that it's meant to fit in a certain way on those first two body options.
Someone who likes the kit regardless might say a variety of things, like "You don't need that many missile launchers anyway!" or "just get the Havoc set, and use some of those as missile launchers instead!" which misses the point of having options in the first kit completely. These excuses, I think, come from the same sort of emotion as someone trying to swat a fly away with their hand and missing. They send out excuses hoping that one of them will strike true and the opponents of the model kit will shut up with all of their "relentless negativity" and go away, or somehow change their mind and see the light (we all know that nobody changes their mind on the Internet).
Meanwhile, someone that doesn't like the kit for the aforementioned reasons will suggest "GW can do better!" or "The range of options is worst than other kits of the past and present!" But what I've found is that instead of pointing people to the source, many will often use highly aggressive and derisive language to describe the issue, with your choice of curse words or colorful language sprinkled in for flavor. This makes the person arguing for a better model kit seem simply grumpy and inconsolable, likely because they've dealt with too many of the excuse-makers and know that anything else would land on deaf ears. There's another issue, however. The issue is simply that, well, the model kit is out. By the time it's revealed by GW, there's little say that we have in what we get. The legitimate complaints that we may have about models that are coming out today may not actually go into effect in the cycle of design-and-release for another 3-5 years, and even then it's very unlikely that GW will remake a modern kit to appease complainers or those that want more options in their kit. Because of these things, complaints tend to pile up even though fans of a particular kit or faction are buying it up anyway.
In either situation, you've got opposing views that will never meet eye-to-eye unless opinions change (which they do, contrary to my previous statement. My own have changed several times over the course of my hobbying, as I've gone from my 20's into my 30's even here on this very forum. It tends to take a decent measure of self reflecting, life events, and various catalysts, like GW suggesting you can slap the old resin sonic blasters on new chaos marines to make Emperor's Children Noise Marines, instead of giving us a fething Noise Marine update, ffs).
The result: a forum where people argue, where those with one kind of opinion view the other side as toxic. A forum can choose the course it takes, as Bolter and Chainsword clearly wanted to foster a more pro-GW attitude, which, honestly, I appreciate. It's nice to have a place I know I can go to where I can read a thread and not have to deal with these arguments, especially when so many other places people are free to complain to their hearts content. Having different communities can be healthy for the Community as a whole, as people can find the cliques they fit in with and won't feel forced to stick with certain attitudes around them at all times.
When I was younger, I lived in a town with only one game store. If you wanted to play anything, from 40k to Magic the Gathering, you went to that game store. If you didn't like someone, you had to play nice, because there were simply no other options. Now, I live in a place with twelve game stores, and the ability to fit in with a certain group that matches your opinions/playstyles is a blessing. You're not stuck losing game after game with your narrative army against a group of competitive players, you can go find the other narrative players and have a better time. In my mind it's better to be able to find a place where you can fit in, so where someone might say that a forum like B&C is 'restricting of free speech', I see it as a save haven for people that just want to have fun with their miniatures that they spent hundreds of dollars on without being in a community that's more likely to give them feelings of buyer's remorse.
My personal hope, honestly, is not to change anyone's opinions about the validity of the current path of GW's model making or business decisions. I actually have much more fun trying to figure out the root cause of people's butting of heads, even when it's my own head being butted against. I have no great dreams of changing the community, but if I can figure out my own viewpoints through conversation, either personally or online, then I can better direct my energy into what's actually important to me. It was this sort of thing, butting of heads included, that got me to leave one community in my local area in favor of another. So, hopefully I'll just have a better time. I'd hope that more people try to do that, to improve their situation if it needs improving, and that includes considering why you get so much catharsis over complaining, or if your excuse-making is falling on deaf ears, or anywhere in between.
Love the fact everyone just ignored this. Too busy enjoying being negative and having a row to actual see what’s happening here.
He was replying to me. It took him a long time to write his post, it took me a long time to write my reply, and it likely took him just as long to write another reply.
ERJAK wrote: Let's be real. The old marines never looked right. Bowlegged and with thighs out of an Anorexia clinic.
Sure were popular for something that "never looked right". Moreover, the "bowlegged" argument doesn't really hold water when you compare it to morerecentkits.
Get some new links, those ones are past spoiled.
For one thing, they're disingenuous selections for your general argument; you've deliberately selected "armoured head-to-toe" miniatures (ie. the style most forgiving of the anatomical butchery multi-pose kits can be guilty of). The picks are fine for a narrow discussion of Space Marines posture, but I'm pretty sure I've watched you drop them in response to the *general complaint* of bowleggedness (which has always included Orks, Eldar, and other humanoids that are not caked in shells of XXL plate).
They're sort of boring, too (not *ahem* dynaaaaamic in the least). But, worse than that, they're also... just... lame? bad? poses. Do you think those wooden, shuffling gaits are something that should be widely emulated? Every model that isn't standing stock still is instead laboriously staggering forward like it's 24 hours after leg day. They look like they're wading through a pond of mercury in Goku's 50x gravity chamber. The fact that you can look at those and think "These are good, these are impressive, these are faithful to the reality of warrior movement, I'm going to pick THEM to make my point" is very f---ing funny. They are completely fine, workmanlike sets that do not do anything special (and their positive characteristics aren't even applicable to non-armoured figs). Oh, and the 30K sergeant is still bowlegged, lmao.
What does someone mean by bow-legged? Are they referring to the massive thigh gap between the legs that would make any supermodel jealous? The Deathwatch are the only ones in those pictures I would describe as bow-legged. The rest of them just have a wide stance and thin legs.
It does look bad, especially if you're to believe there's a thick chunk of armour between everything. It has nothing to do with them being monpose/multipose though. Most of GWs questionable anatomy is an artistic choice or poor scaling.
but yeah, the best poses for Space Marines are: aiming gun, readying gun, standing still, or lumbering forward. Maybe some grenade tossing if you want to get crazy. Leave the ballet dancing to the Space Elves.
Goose LeChance wrote: What does someone mean by bow-legged? Are they referring to the massive thigh gap between the legs that would make any supermodel jealous? The Deathwatch are the only ones in those pictures I would describe as bow-legged. The rest of them just have a wide stance and thin legs.
It does look bad, especially if you're to believe there's a thick chunk of armour between everything. It has nothing to do with them being monpose/multipose though. Most of GWs questionable anatomy is an artistic choice or poor scaling.
but yeah, the best poses for Space Marines are: aiming gun, readying gun, standing still, or lumbering forward. Maybe some grenade tossing if you want to get crazy. Leave the ballet dancing to the Space Elves.
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
etc. This general pose where the legs tend to look mid-squat.
H.B.M.C. wrote: drbored - I figured you took the time to write a detailed post, so the least I could do is take the time to reply in kind.
drbored wrote: I've been wondering about this sort of thing. A lot of people tend to make arguments about GW's path, the models that are coming out, etc, within the vacuum of GW's product line. Where there may be improvements to fidelity of detail, they are made via sacrifices to 'poseability', but then you look at the poseability of old, and you had a lot of marines and models that looked like this:
Sure, it was slightly easier to put the plasma gun, melta gun, flamer, and pistols on whichever arm you wanted, but for the most part those things are still possible with a little bit of extra effort and careful clipping, minus a few options where the hands are molded around the grip, for example. The ability to rotate the torso 360 degrees was paired with the issue of the legs always looking like they were in a mid-squat pose, while with the newer models, certain special and heavy weapons can only fit on one or two bodies, and only fit on others with significantly more effort than before.
I wholeheartedly reject this argument as it does not match up to the reality of GW minis. Above I have three links to not-exactly-old kits - Deathwatch Veterans, Rubric Marines and Mk.III Marines. I chose recent Marines examples specifically as previous Tactical Squads and the Chaos Marines you included in your post above are most often cited for why "this is why mono-pose is better!". None of those kits are dumpy bow-legged Marines like those ancient Chaos Marines (much as I love that old kit! ).
GW is at the top of their game when it comes to plastic multi-part miniatures. I cannot speak to what plasic tech in Japan is like - so please don't quote a dozen random Gundum makers at me that maybe make GW look like children* - but from a mass-market Western wargame I don't think anyone matches them as far as variety, detail and expertise. It's no accident why they're the biggest fish in the small pond that is miniature wargaming, and why other companies could never reach their heights (Mantic), why some need pre-painted pre-built licensed products to get near (X-Wing, SW Legion) or why some almost got there but flew too close to the sun (Privateer Press).
*That's directed at the thread, not you specifically.
We know what they can produce. How often have we all gone "Well I already own 20 of those, so I doubt a new kit will make me rebuy th... oh my God I must have that!!!" when they show off just how much more detail a new kit has, new weapons, new heads and really just how farwe'vecome?
GW's recent crop of minis may have the detail, but they're losing their modularity. They're becoming harder to piece together. They're becoming more restrictive. None of these three things are positive and, more importantly, none of these things are necessary because we know they don't have to do it this way.
I don't know how many different ways I can restate that, and I don't understand why anyone could see this regression as a positive. If you think this trend really is a positive, then by all means, help me understand it.
drbored wrote: The other angle that I have been considering this is in the community as a whole. With regards to mental health, if you're surrounded by people that are constantly negative, bashing on the things that you like, or at worst even gaslighting or using other argument methods to shut you down, many mental health experts would call that a toxic environment. A toxic environment isn't conducive to the healthy growth of an individual, and is generally not where you would want to be, and yet the Warhammer community, on some sites, is exactly that. "Relentless positivity" is hammered down until those that like to look on the bright side simply don't speak up, while "relentless negativity" is praised and joined, upvoted and agreed with, whether or not it's warranted, and sometimes in the face of opposing facts.
I operate on a credit where credit's due mentality. It's why you'll always see me talking up GW customer service, as it's excellent. It's why you'll see me absolutely gushing over virtually any terrain product GW puts out. But that also means I'm not going to ignore things I consider to be bad, from rules, to GW's pricing policies, business practices, to increasing amounts of mono-pose minis.
I don't think we have a problem with hammering down 'relentless positivity', because what I find is that we don't often get that here. What we get are relentless excuse making. When something is good, we see people in any thread in N&R talking about it. And I think Dakka's nature as a 'toxic' is overblown. Better this than a site where the staff stamp down on any form of discussion that doesn't fit its incredibly narrow views (I've heard horror stories about Bolter & Chainsword...). As far as the opposite, 'relentless negativity', I've come across very few here who exude that with every aspect of every post they make.
drbored wrote: I wouldn't call anyone pointing these things out to be 'relentlessly negative', though in many of these instances it certainly feels like they're beating the same horse, and new routes of conversation might be more entertaining to have.
You know? I don't disagree with you on that. But at the same time, mono-pose minis is this thread's topic, so whilst the topic itself may have been done to death, it seems odd to criticise the discussion happening within the thread where it was set up to happen.
drbored wrote: However, there are just as many criticisms that are stated as fact, and when someone tries to present an opposing view, the community doesn't want to hear it. Take Kill Team, for example. The volatile upset of the vocal part of the community was astoundingly negative when it was revealed that the Compendium would be a separate book and would cost more than the previous editions' core book did. Is that crappy? Yeah, it's rough to have to shell another 60 USD to get what people perceive to be the same content as what previously came in a 40 dollar book. Sure, I agree, that's mighty crappy. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the printing of so many books. That said, the same exact thing happened with Warhammer 40k and the community praised the practice: 8th edition brought with it the Indexes, and in order to be able to play all the factions, you had to buy 4 separate indexes, knowing full well that they'd be replaced later.
I don't have the Compendium, and Kill Team itself holds little interest for me (certainly once they decided to forgo numbers in favour of shapes for some unknown reason... ), but I think that came down to people expecting their Kill-Teams to be useable in the new rules, and not to have all their options stripped away. Y'know, a bit like when a new kit comes out and it's all mono-pose.
drbored wrote: When you talk about "relentless positivity" like it's a bad thing, I have to wonder if you'd prefer this "relentless negativity" to continue. Is it truly healthy for the community as a whole? Valid criticism, maybe even some activism to keep the company on track, is certainly healthy, but in my mind the negative voices seem to be far louder than the positive ones.
I have a quote in my sig - "Everything is fine, nothing is broken!" that I keep there for a very specific reason. It was something an old boss of mine would say years ago when everything was going wrong. It was his self-deprecating way of letting everyone know that something was broken but he was working on fixing it. When the time came to do the vehicle rules for the Only War 40KRPG I couldn't help but include that as the quote at the start of the vehicle repair section, which is where that screenshot in my sig comes from.
As I said above, I don't feel we have a lot of "relentless positivity" at Dakka - certainly no more than relentless negativity - but rather relentless excuse making. Too many people here are willing to go "Everything is fine! Nothing is broken!" whilst things regress right before their eyes. That's not positivity. That's delusion.
When GW gets something right, we should celebrate it - the new Ork terrain is phenomenal, I really love the new 1KSons Codex, I think Crusade is fantastic (but would be better if my 'Nids had Crusade rules! ). The Indomitus box finally turned me around on Primaris Marines (dumb Cawl fluff notwithstanding). Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City are two of the coolest things GW has released in a long time. 8th (and 9th) made me excited to play 40k again. I quite often express the sheer joy I get out of terrain making, even with my own blog on the subject. I just want to play 40K and Necromunda and Warhammer Quest and BattleTech but I've been stuck in a perpetual lockdown since June and it's driving me fething insane!!!
*ahem*
Meanwhile, Al, a few posts above me: "Those aren't real conversions! Real conversions involve blah blah blah gatekeeping!"
And ---I'm--- the one being negative?
drbored wrote: Also, don't mistake "relentless positivity" for people that just want to enjoy the hobby they spent hundreds of dollars to get into. There are people that, despite the beliefs in some of these forums, actually LIKE the hobby for what it is, despite the drama, and don't need to be told that so many things suck.
Completely fair call, but I can't help but point out again that this is a thread about mono-pose minis, so coming in here not expecting to find opinions in the negative of such minis is a bit like going into a discussion about a new movie you haven't seen and getting annoyed that they "spoiled" it for you.
I'm not as savvy with the quote system so I'll just respond to a few points.
I DEFINITELY took the conversation off the rails, mostly because I had an ulterior motive when it came to creating this topic, which was to gauge certain emotions of the forum under the guise of a thought exercise. In my mind, certain complaints that are purely in the realm of opinion tend to, when people discuss them in comments, veer towards the negative, but as you can see from the poll above, there's generally a larger number of people that would continue to buy into the hobby as it is, and as it could be. I don't at all feel 'spoiled' about a certain range of opinions. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of what I'd expect.
My own brainspace has been a bit tumultuous. Dealing with negativity in my own local community has driven me away from that community, but not from the hobby. As I actively build and paint my models, I find myself enjoying the hobby, while I tend to not enjoy time spent talking about the hobby. Much more breath is spent complaining about a variety of issues, from 'what is monopose' to 'is this tolerable' to 'everything is awful all the time' than it is on conversation focused on the lighter side. There are of course a couple points to be made there alone.
A. People in general tend to find some catharsis complaining, whinging, and griping about issues in their lives and circles.
B. Progress on the Warhammer hobby is generally slow. In the span of a week, a hobbyist may make a little bit of progress on a squad, or play one or two games. In other words, conversations on the positive aspects of the hobby are simply fewer, and the void in between those conversations is filled with whatever topics may be at hand, which tends to be some form of GW drama. I more blame our need to consume social media to fill that void as the issue, but I'm sure it differs from person to person.
As to the "relentless excuse making" I think that's a matter of perspective when it comes to the nature of opinions. In regards to the mono-pose issue, there's certainly a challenge when some bodies within a model kit can't be easily equipped with certain special weapons. The Chaos Marine Missile Launcher is an example that pops to mind, since I built it recently. On some of the bodies, especially the running ones, but also some of the regular standing ones, the missile launcher arm simply... struggles to fit on many of the bodies, or looks quite awkward indeed. On one or two out of the 10 bodies, it works decently well, and out of maybe another one or two, you could shave some plastic away to make it work well enough, but it's still pretty clear that it's meant to fit in a certain way on those first two body options.
Someone who likes the kit regardless might say a variety of things, like "You don't need that many missile launchers anyway!" or "just get the Havoc set, and use some of those as missile launchers instead!" which misses the point of having options in the first kit completely. These excuses, I think, come from the same sort of emotion as someone trying to swat a fly away with their hand and missing. They send out excuses hoping that one of them will strike true and the opponents of the model kit will shut up with all of their "relentless negativity" and go away, or somehow change their mind and see the light (we all know that nobody changes their mind on the Internet).
Meanwhile, someone that doesn't like the kit for the aforementioned reasons will suggest "GW can do better!" or "The range of options is worst than other kits of the past and present!" But what I've found is that instead of pointing people to the source, many will often use highly aggressive and derisive language to describe the issue, with your choice of curse words or colorful language sprinkled in for flavor. This makes the person arguing for a better model kit seem simply grumpy and inconsolable, likely because they've dealt with too many of the excuse-makers and know that anything else would land on deaf ears. There's another issue, however. The issue is simply that, well, the model kit is out. By the time it's revealed by GW, there's little say that we have in what we get. The legitimate complaints that we may have about models that are coming out today may not actually go into effect in the cycle of design-and-release for another 3-5 years, and even then it's very unlikely that GW will remake a modern kit to appease complainers or those that want more options in their kit. Because of these things, complaints tend to pile up even though fans of a particular kit or faction are buying it up anyway.
In either situation, you've got opposing views that will never meet eye-to-eye unless opinions change (which they do, contrary to my previous statement. My own have changed several times over the course of my hobbying, as I've gone from my 20's into my 30's even here on this very forum. It tends to take a decent measure of self reflecting, life events, and various catalysts, like GW suggesting you can slap the old resin sonic blasters on new chaos marines to make Emperor's Children Noise Marines, instead of giving us a fething Noise Marine update, ffs).
The result: a forum where people argue, where those with one kind of opinion view the other side as toxic. A forum can choose the course it takes, as Bolter and Chainsword clearly wanted to foster a more pro-GW attitude, which, honestly, I appreciate. It's nice to have a place I know I can go to where I can read a thread and not have to deal with these arguments, especially when so many other places people are free to complain to their hearts content. Having different communities can be healthy for the Community as a whole, as people can find the cliques they fit in with and won't feel forced to stick with certain attitudes around them at all times.
When I was younger, I lived in a town with only one game store. If you wanted to play anything, from 40k to Magic the Gathering, you went to that game store. If you didn't like someone, you had to play nice, because there were simply no other options. Now, I live in a place with twelve game stores, and the ability to fit in with a certain group that matches your opinions/playstyles is a blessing. You're not stuck losing game after game with your narrative army against a group of competitive players, you can go find the other narrative players and have a better time. In my mind it's better to be able to find a place where you can fit in, so where someone might say that a forum like B&C is 'restricting of free speech', I see it as a save haven for people that just want to have fun with their miniatures that they spent hundreds of dollars on without being in a community that's more likely to give them feelings of buyer's remorse.
My personal hope, honestly, is not to change anyone's opinions about the validity of the current path of GW's model making or business decisions. I actually have much more fun trying to figure out the root cause of people's butting of heads, even when it's my own head being butted against. I have no great dreams of changing the community, but if I can figure out my own viewpoints through conversation, either personally or online, then I can better direct my energy into what's actually important to me. It was this sort of thing, butting of heads included, that got me to leave one community in my local area in favor of another. So, hopefully I'll just have a better time. I'd hope that more people try to do that, to improve their situation if it needs improving, and that includes considering why you get so much catharsis over complaining, or if your excuse-making is falling on deaf ears, or anywhere in between.
Love the fact everyone just ignored this. Too busy enjoying being negative and having a row to actual see what’s happening here.
Its certainly a quite esoteric post to comment on. Perhaps the poster has been far to subtle and sofisticated. Perhaps people frame their own "negativity" in a different manner. Certainly commenting on mono-pose (another corporate imposition over the "warhammer hobby") is something quite legit since its an issue full of nuance.
From my perspective any advice that goes in to the wait till your 30 perspective, should be reviewed by people in their 30s, as if someone else told them, just wait till you are 60, and then it will be good.
Looking at the past is a important thing. And it is good if things end up good for you. But I think over all, the quality of the progression through anything matters much. It is one thing for the road to be tough, but at the end you get a good job, a scholarship or something similar. It is different thing to spend a few years doing something, and then quiting, because this means you just litterally wasted time and money on something that ended bad.
yukishiro1 wrote: The 2019 Chaos Knights I am currently assembling are probably the worst GW plastic kit I have ever worked with. This thing is just atrocious - every single knight is cut up differently from every other one, in completely bizarre and non-intuitive ways that make the idea of painting in assemblies virtually impossible, so you have to just stick them together and content yourself with the hard to reach bits not getting done well. And don't even think about trying to repose them.
And despite all that...the kit doesn't even go together well, either. I've had to use more green stuff on this than on any other plastic kit I've ever put together according to the basic instructions, bar none. Nothing fits together right - it's almost like chopping figures up into absolutely bizarre bits doesn't work very well when trying to fit them back together.
I've never assembled any of the GW Knights but you may find that they actually go together perfectly...but only if you locate the tiny, tiny tabs that align the pieces properly. If you don't do that nothing fits right. This has been my problem with a lot of the monopose kits, especially characters. The new CADtastic sprues are often designed as some kind of torture device with pieces designed to fit into increasingly bizarre locations. The last 3 kits I've assembled have been the Flayed Ones, some Lychguard and Szeras. The Lychguard are an older kit and they have some issues. There are too many heavy pieces supported by a relatively small ball-and-socket joint and trying to assemble them with warscythes requires at least 3 hands to get everything lined up. The other 2 kits are the new style. They're worse. It took me about an hour to assemble 10 Lychguard, working in stages and sub-assemblies. Flayed Ones took about 75 minutes for half the number of models, not including the break I had to take halfway through for the sake of my sanity. Szeras isn't actually a model you assemble, it's a trial you endure.
It doesn't have to be like this. Most of the Primaris units are fine. You need to use the matching body/leg sections but they go together very easily and fit well. The arms are often interchangeable, though sometimes there's a small amount of extra work needed there. I do wonder if the cutting up of the models onto sprues and creation of assembly instructions is done almost purely by an automated process now, leading to some annoying conventions that make model assembly so much harder than it needs to be. That used to be done by a skilled machinist who could take ease of assembly into account during the process.
Quite a few of the older plastic kits, despite being very customisable in theory, aren't really in practice; even with ball and socket style limbs/torsos you still invariably end up locked into assembling them into the same three or four basic pose
H.B.M.C. wrote: He was replying to me. It took him a long time to write his post, it took me a long time to write my reply, and it likely took him just as long to write another reply.
I'm at work.
It was more a comment about the posts that all followed it, big thoughtful comment on the discussion and attitudes in general in the hobby…..ignore it and continue bickering.
Basically this whole thread is one side trying to convince the other that there opinion is fact. I know that’s the majority of the forum but this thread is specifically about aesthetics and personal taste. There is no right or wrong. I PREFER the newer style models but liked elements form the others. I think the new ORK boyz are too far away from easy modification, but think the primaris marine line has it pretty much bang on. I can do exactly what I could with the old ones with the new ones (it’s with in my skill set to do that level of converting). With the ORK boyz my green stuff skills aren’t up to doing much with them. The is what suits me! Not everyone.
yukishiro1 wrote: The Lychguard are an older kit and they have some issues. There are too many heavy pieces supported by a relatively small ball-and-socket joint and trying to assemble them with warscythes requires at least 3 hands to get everything lined up.
I have a love/hate relationship with the lychguard kit. It's amazing posable by my god those wrist joints.
Even if it cut the cost by 50%, you'd see exactly 0% price cut. Why would they, when that's 50% more profit per box? It's not how capitalism works.
Evidence suggests the prices only go up anyway, regardless of cost cutting measures.
Definitely, they did this with Finecast.
At the time resin was a lot cheaper than metal, still bumped up prices despite the resulting sculpts being a lot worse.
It was more a comment about the posts that all followed it, big thoughtful comment on the discussion and attitudes in general in the hobby…..ignore it and continue bickering.
Basically this whole thread is one side trying to convince the other that there opinion is fact. I know that’s the majority of the forum but this thread is specifically about aesthetics and personal taste. There is no right or wrong. I PREFER the newer style models but liked elements form the others. I think the new ORK boyz are too far away from easy modification, but think the primaris marine line has it pretty much bang on. I can do exactly what I could with the old ones with the new ones (it’s with in my skill set to do that level of converting). With the ORK boyz my green stuff skills aren’t up to doing much with them. The is what suits me! Not everyone.
People are perfectly free to like or dislike whatever they want. However, what I have an issue with is generated grievances and distortion of the truth. And this is what is very much going on with this 'monopose' debacle. Some people hate the primaris marines, and that's their right; but now they're just inventing reasons for hating them and as a process distorting the meaning of actually useful terms. Before the primaris no one though that the Skitarii or GSC cultists were monopose or complained that they lacked customisation potential. But when the primaris models started to use similar construction method, this was suddenly an anathema. And calling models that by no reasonable definition are monopose 'monopose' is just confusing. GW actually currently produces monopose and multipose version of many units, so these labels are useful for communicating what you're talking about.
If every kit from now on was like the Space Marine Intercessors, or the Chaos Space Marines, or the Battle Sisters from the Sisters of Battle, or the Plague Marines, would you still buy the product?
These kits, due to certain arms not fitting certain bodies, certain weapon options not fitting certain torsos, and the torso and leg options generally being one, immovable piece, are considered "monopose" on top of other things like ETB kits, or kits with near zero options like various things from Blackstone Fortress (guard, cultists, etc).
I mean, if we're just going to start making up definitions of words, I could just as well argue that any kit Citadel has ever made in its history is "monopose" on the grounds that the pieces of ALL kits aren't infinitely interchangeable and there are some parts that don't bend at the elbow etc etc. Some people have absolutely completely rotted their brains in their determination to find something to criticise GW over at every possible turn.
It was more a comment about the posts that all followed it, big thoughtful comment on the discussion and attitudes in general in the hobby…..ignore it and continue bickering.
Basically this whole thread is one side trying to convince the other that there opinion is fact. I know that’s the majority of the forum but this thread is specifically about aesthetics and personal taste. There is no right or wrong. I PREFER the newer style models but liked elements form the others. I think the new ORK boyz are too far away from easy modification, but think the primaris marine line has it pretty much bang on. I can do exactly what I could with the old ones with the new ones (it’s with in my skill set to do that level of converting). With the ORK boyz my green stuff skills aren’t up to doing much with them. The is what suits me! Not everyone.
People are perfectly free to like or dislike whatever they want. However, what I have an issue with is generated grievances and distortion of the truth. And this is what is very much going on with this 'monopose' debacle. Some people hate the primaris marines, and that's their right; but now they're just inventing reasons for hating them and as a process distorting the meaning of actually useful terms. Before the primaris no one though that the Skitarii or GSC cultists were monopose or complained that they lacked customisation potential. But when the primaris models started to use similar construction method, this was suddenly an anathema. And calling models that by no reasonable definition are monopose 'monopose' is just confusing. GW actually currently produces monopose and multipose version of many units, so these labels are useful for communicating what you're talking about.
Yepppp. I'm not a big fan of the Primaris Marines from an aesthetic/fluff perspective, but the kits are absolutely FINE and more than capable of creating just as varied units as the, say, the old Tactical Marines kit. Only difference is you can't make them look like total gak by assembling them with their waists rotated at an impossible angle.
Well in the end the lack of common language and the lack of interest in finding common definitions makes most arguments moot.
Although I think we could agree that if in order to give a unit a new weapon you need to do some heavy converting or a specific weapon fits only one type of body per box, then the if not monopose, the models are at least very limited in what can be done with them. While the older kits you can put, to use the example from this thread, the heavy weapon on any of the 10 bodies in the old box.
Even if it cut the cost by 50%, you'd see exactly 0% price cut. Why would they, when that's 50% more profit per box? It's not how capitalism works.
No, it works by people refusing to pay inflated prices to get prices dropped. The problem is that there are whales that will never do that currently.
And since people never refuse to pay inflated prices, they have no incentive to pass any savings to the customer, ergo capitalism works as described in practice.
Even if it cut the cost by 50%, you'd see exactly 0% price cut. Why would they, when that's 50% more profit per box? It's not how capitalism works.
Evidence suggests the prices only go up anyway, regardless of cost cutting measures.
Definitely, they did this with Finecast.
At the time resin was a lot cheaper than metal, still bumped up prices despite the resulting sculpts being a lot worse.
Like to note another thing about Finecast, though: Nobody bought the hype. It was universally despised. New kits designed for finecast stopped happening, and they stopped happening QUICK. Replacing a finecast model with plastic requires a complete re-cadding and new molds, so that happens slowly, but Finecast is the opposite of an effective argument if what you're going for is "all warhammer consumers are stupid apes who will pay anything and GW can get away with anything with them."
No company, ever, is going to shuffle out and do a press conference to announce "our new product is a failure, sorry folks, wont happen again." they'll stop promoting it, they'll get real quiet about it, and they'll either kill it when nobody's looking or start to phase it out without ever announcing the fact that they're doing that. Companies do not play defense.
Finecast, the brand name, disappeared RIGHT quick. You notice they're just described as 'resin miniatures' now? After the very first handful of new, intended for finecast releases, those were done. All plastic, only plastic, except for those kits where the answer was 'finecast or get rid of them.'
Backlash and refusing to buy objectively works with GW. The only thing is, a handful of boomers on a twice-outdated forum mode of communication most of whom bought a single box of tactical marines in 1937 and think that entitles them to complain endlessly about kids these days and their stratagems and their primaris inferencers aren't actually a platform that represents a real slice of the GW purchasing demographic.
I did not collect any GW through the finecast era and when I got my hands on one of those models recently I was absolutely floored by how egregiously terrible the material was. For those that were closer to the logic at the time, what was GW's reasoning? Cutting costs? Did they pass the cost-savings onto customers as well? I did note that the pyrovore I picked up seemed cheaper than other GW products. But the sculpt and detail are shockingly terrible coming from the "world's premier model company".
harlokin wrote: Quite a few of the older plastic kits, despite being very customisable in theory, aren't really in practice; even with ball and socket style limbs/torsos you still invariably end up locked into assembling them into the same three or four basic pose
True, and this is another thing people generally don't acknowledge. In reality though, it is quite possible to take even a single kit and like some elements while disliking others.
To use the most recent example, i bought new kill team and had a variety of reactions to Kommandos:
1) I HATE, like REALLY REALLY HATE the new head and arm join scheme because i really cannot fathom a reason for its existence beyond being a 'sorry, no headphone jack on your new iphone' feature.
For those that aren't in the know, the new kommandos are put together in much the same way as older ork kits with joins at the shoulder and joins at the neck, EXACTLY in the same spot, but while existing ork kit joins are always flat at the shoulder and round at the neck, the new kommandos are flat and sculpted at the neck and squared at the shoulder.
The only function of this decision was to prevent interkit compatibility with existing ork kits or at least make it more difficult.
2) I really like the way having a few 'intended' poses allows for drastically different individual model poses than you got to have before. Before all orks had to either be standing or bow-leggedly waddling forward, but in this kit because there are two 'intended' poses you can have a torso that's bending down, either under a heavy weapon or creeping forward, and various other base poses that allow you to have more variety without looking so out of place you'd immediately recognize a duplicate.
3) the intrakit customization is actually pretty solid for a 10-man kit. It will be tricky to try and make the various special dudes look distinct, particularly you'd probably have to clip off the bit of 'flame' from the burna if you wanted to have two distinct burna boyz and the big shoota boy is also going to look similar either way. The Comms Boy is the most distinctive here, but tbf he's not anything in 40k and unique in kill team so just...only make him once I guess.
But the various choppas, sluggas, heads, backpacks and assorted bits of extra kit they provide you are such that I think it'd actually be pretty trivial to take this kit, combine with a very minor amount of extra bits, and make 30 completely distinct kommandos. Honestly I think it'd be way easier to do than 30 distinct ork boyz out of the current boyz kit. The nob would probably be the biggest challenge.
Finecast is a big reason why Eldar have been seen less these days. Aspect Warriors are only (apart from Banshees) availabe in Finecast.
The details was nice on them, if they weren't riddled with holes. So I stopped at my 2nd box.
The new 'intended poses' are very nice, for an army's look. The flat arm joins (where used) just allow for so much variation from there.
Like to note another thing about Finecast, though: Nobody bought the hype. It was universally despised. New kits designed for finecast stopped happening, and they stopped happening QUICK. Replacing a finecast model with plastic requires a complete re-cadding and new molds, so that happens slowly, but Finecast is the opposite of an effective argument if what you're going for is "all warhammer consumers are stupid apes who will pay anything and GW can get away with anything with them."
And yet neither were the prices lowered nor was the product removed/reverted to previous version. People still buy it, if there is no 3rd party alternative.
Karol wrote: Well in the end the lack of common language and the lack of interest in finding common definitions makes most arguments moot.
Yeah this. No matter whether a model - lacks extra bits to customize it - can be build in only one way - has legs and torso connected - has arms/heads that cannot be freely posed - has arms/heads that aren't interchangeable with other models from the same set - is cut in a weird way - is push-fit - has dynamic poses someone will screech "mONo-PosE!".
Thus, it's completely pointless to discuss this topic.
Plus I must say I have seen a guy at my store make cutodes with the big guns, out of different stormcast models and stuff he designed and printed himself. The models are 100% monopose, and look , at least just as good, as what GW did with FW.
I don't sometimes I think people, just know when something is not okey. A unit of havocks looking all the same is okey. But if someone told me they have a unit of 30 identical looking cultists, I don't think it would look good. And the stuff other mentioned about too dynamic stuff is, I think true too. It just loks wierd when every 5th model, army does a very distinct specific thing. And it gets really bad for certain armies. For other , like nids, it doesn't hurt as much.
Karol wrote: Plus I must say I have seen a guy at my store make cutodes with the big guns, out of different stormcast models and stuff he designed and printed himself. The models are 100% monopose, and look , at least just as good, as what GW did with FW.
I don't sometimes I think people, just know when something is not okey. A unit of havocks looking all the same is okey. But if someone told me they have a unit of 30 identical looking cultists, I don't think it would look good. And the stuff other mentioned about too dynamic stuff is, I think true too. It just loks wierd when every 5th model, army does a very distinct specific thing. And it gets really bad for certain armies. For other , like nids, it doesn't hurt as much.
I mean that's just like, your opinion man.
I think it heavily depends on the sculpt but the level of freedom you're given with, say, havocs is just not enough to make a full squad armed with the same gun not look like identical guys.
I guess it varies depending on the guy, the ones in neutral 'imma firin my lazar' poses would probably look OK, but the missile launchers where all the guys are holding the ML in one hand and a spare rocket out at a weird angle in their other hand are going to be instantly recognizable.
This is why the way the sisters set does it is superior: all special weapons can be swapped in to any of the basic bolter-gal torsos precisely because they might be dominions or celestians with 4x special weapons in the same squad.
But I do think GW does actually do this kind of calculus. I think there's a "how many of this kit do we expect people to own" discussion that gets had, and if the answer is 'probably in your average army, just the one' then monoposing is considered as a cost saving measure. If the answer is 'this unit is in the Elites slot, so probably 1-2' then they do dual-pose like GSC aberrants, DG terminators, or ork kommandos, and if the answer is 'this is the army's one basic troop box and also alternately builds 2 elite units' like the sisters, then they put a little extra effort in to provide spare heads and multiple pose possibilities.
And this isn't something completely foreign to how they used to do it before. Mostly theyre just worse nowadays about taking away options when they dont strictly need to, I guess to avoid what im gonna call "The Ikea Problem"?
To give an example of this: Drukhari Scourges have the old-style full modular construction, each arm has a flat join so can go on any torso and they're holding a variety of special weapons, all in different ways. The hand that's not holding the handle of the gun is in no way 'built in' to the model. In theory, any arm can go on any guy. In practice, theres only one single arm in the kit that you can use to hold the dark lance, where the hand will actually fall in the correct spot where the guy is supposed to be holding the dark lance.
To make matters worse, Dark Lance Hand can...kinda work on a couple of the other weapons, so if you're not paying attention carefully you can easily glue the arm you needed to a different model.
When I look at figures like Havocs where the shoulderpad that fits snugly underneath the lascannon is built right in to the lascannon, that's what I think the intention is to prevent. That I dont mind so much. What annoys me is when I look at the havoc kit vs the Deathwatch Veterans kit and I realize "Oh, they just DIDNT BOTHER to put any spare bits at all in this kit to differentiate your figures if you buy two kits. Just, not a single one, and they KNOW when they make a unit of 'heavy weapon havers' with one of each weapon people are going to want to buy multiples of the kit to get more coherent squads. They had LOTS OF ROOM because you can see it's the same exact sprue frame as they put into the DW vets and the DW vet sprue is about 50% denser with parts, they just didnt, and they want to charge me way more for it, so go ahead and feth yourselves I'll be buying third party havocs if I ever want some."
this is actually kind of a fascinating demonstration of how internet memeification completely destroys any kind of discussion that can be had. I cant even tell from this if you're generally pro or anti newer kits vs older ones, because in the post you're presumably 'responding' to by reducing it to a meme I criticized aspects of both.
Goose LeChance wrote: You meme post constantly, including in this thread so it's par for the course.
Yeah, I do. Typically I try to do it in response that are already reductive to the point of utter unreason (i.e. pretending that all kits from the new starter box boyz to the highly customizable primaris kits are somehow equivalent and should be lumped under the exact same category of 'mono-pose') but, you got me.
Someone who is hypocritical? Not on MY internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!
H.B.M.C. wrote: drbored - I figured you took the time to write a detailed post, so the least I could do is take the time to reply in kind.
drbored wrote: I've been wondering about this sort of thing. A lot of people tend to make arguments about GW's path, the models that are coming out, etc, within the vacuum of GW's product line. Where there may be improvements to fidelity of detail, they are made via sacrifices to 'poseability', but then you look at the poseability of old, and you had a lot of marines and models that looked like this:
Sure, it was slightly easier to put the plasma gun, melta gun, flamer, and pistols on whichever arm you wanted, but for the most part those things are still possible with a little bit of extra effort and careful clipping, minus a few options where the hands are molded around the grip, for example. The ability to rotate the torso 360 degrees was paired with the issue of the legs always looking like they were in a mid-squat pose, while with the newer models, certain special and heavy weapons can only fit on one or two bodies, and only fit on others with significantly more effort than before.
I wholeheartedly reject this argument as it does not match up to the reality of GW minis. Above I have three links to not-exactly-old kits - Deathwatch Veterans, Rubric Marines and Mk.III Marines. I chose recent Marines examples specifically as previous Tactical Squads and the Chaos Marines you included in your post above are most often cited for why "this is why mono-pose is better!". None of those kits are dumpy bow-legged Marines like those ancient Chaos Marines (much as I love that old kit! ).
GW is at the top of their game when it comes to plastic multi-part miniatures. I cannot speak to what plasic tech in Japan is like - so please don't quote a dozen random Gundum makers at me that maybe make GW look like children* - but from a mass-market Western wargame I don't think anyone matches them as far as variety, detail and expertise. It's no accident why they're the biggest fish in the small pond that is miniature wargaming, and why other companies could never reach their heights (Mantic), why some need pre-painted pre-built licensed products to get near (X-Wing, SW Legion) or why some almost got there but flew too close to the sun (Privateer Press).
*That's directed at the thread, not you specifically.
We know what they can produce. How often have we all gone "Well I already own 20 of those, so I doubt a new kit will make me rebuy th... oh my God I must have that!!!" when they show off just how much more detail a new kit has, new weapons, new heads and really just how farwe'vecome?
GW's recent crop of minis may have the detail, but they're losing their modularity. They're becoming harder to piece together. They're becoming more restrictive. None of these three things are positive and, more importantly, none of these things are necessary because we know they don't have to do it this way.
I don't know how many different ways I can restate that, and I don't understand why anyone could see this regression as a positive. If you think this trend really is a positive, then by all means, help me understand it.
drbored wrote: The other angle that I have been considering this is in the community as a whole. With regards to mental health, if you're surrounded by people that are constantly negative, bashing on the things that you like, or at worst even gaslighting or using other argument methods to shut you down, many mental health experts would call that a toxic environment. A toxic environment isn't conducive to the healthy growth of an individual, and is generally not where you would want to be, and yet the Warhammer community, on some sites, is exactly that. "Relentless positivity" is hammered down until those that like to look on the bright side simply don't speak up, while "relentless negativity" is praised and joined, upvoted and agreed with, whether or not it's warranted, and sometimes in the face of opposing facts.
I operate on a credit where credit's due mentality. It's why you'll always see me talking up GW customer service, as it's excellent. It's why you'll see me absolutely gushing over virtually any terrain product GW puts out. But that also means I'm not going to ignore things I consider to be bad, from rules, to GW's pricing policies, business practices, to increasing amounts of mono-pose minis.
I don't think we have a problem with hammering down 'relentless positivity', because what I find is that we don't often get that here. What we get are relentless excuse making. When something is good, we see people in any thread in N&R talking about it. And I think Dakka's nature as a 'toxic' is overblown. Better this than a site where the staff stamp down on any form of discussion that doesn't fit its incredibly narrow views (I've heard horror stories about Bolter & Chainsword...). As far as the opposite, 'relentless negativity', I've come across very few here who exude that with every aspect of every post they make.
drbored wrote: I wouldn't call anyone pointing these things out to be 'relentlessly negative', though in many of these instances it certainly feels like they're beating the same horse, and new routes of conversation might be more entertaining to have.
You know? I don't disagree with you on that. But at the same time, mono-pose minis is this thread's topic, so whilst the topic itself may have been done to death, it seems odd to criticise the discussion happening within the thread where it was set up to happen.
drbored wrote: However, there are just as many criticisms that are stated as fact, and when someone tries to present an opposing view, the community doesn't want to hear it. Take Kill Team, for example. The volatile upset of the vocal part of the community was astoundingly negative when it was revealed that the Compendium would be a separate book and would cost more than the previous editions' core book did. Is that crappy? Yeah, it's rough to have to shell another 60 USD to get what people perceive to be the same content as what previously came in a 40 dollar book. Sure, I agree, that's mighty crappy. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the printing of so many books. That said, the same exact thing happened with Warhammer 40k and the community praised the practice: 8th edition brought with it the Indexes, and in order to be able to play all the factions, you had to buy 4 separate indexes, knowing full well that they'd be replaced later.
I don't have the Compendium, and Kill Team itself holds little interest for me (certainly once they decided to forgo numbers in favour of shapes for some unknown reason... ), but I think that came down to people expecting their Kill-Teams to be useable in the new rules, and not to have all their options stripped away. Y'know, a bit like when a new kit comes out and it's all mono-pose.
drbored wrote: When you talk about "relentless positivity" like it's a bad thing, I have to wonder if you'd prefer this "relentless negativity" to continue. Is it truly healthy for the community as a whole? Valid criticism, maybe even some activism to keep the company on track, is certainly healthy, but in my mind the negative voices seem to be far louder than the positive ones.
I have a quote in my sig - "Everything is fine, nothing is broken!" that I keep there for a very specific reason. It was something an old boss of mine would say years ago when everything was going wrong. It was his self-deprecating way of letting everyone know that something was broken but he was working on fixing it. When the time came to do the vehicle rules for the Only War 40KRPG I couldn't help but include that as the quote at the start of the vehicle repair section, which is where that screenshot in my sig comes from.
As I said above, I don't feel we have a lot of "relentless positivity" at Dakka - certainly no more than relentless negativity - but rather relentless excuse making. Too many people here are willing to go "Everything is fine! Nothing is broken!" whilst things regress right before their eyes. That's not positivity. That's delusion.
When GW gets something right, we should celebrate it - the new Ork terrain is phenomenal, I really love the new 1KSons Codex, I think Crusade is fantastic (but would be better if my 'Nids had Crusade rules! ). The Indomitus box finally turned me around on Primaris Marines (dumb Cawl fluff notwithstanding). Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City are two of the coolest things GW has released in a long time. 8th (and 9th) made me excited to play 40k again. I quite often express the sheer joy I get out of terrain making, even with my own blog on the subject. I just want to play 40K and Necromunda and Warhammer Quest and BattleTech but I've been stuck in a perpetual lockdown since June and it's driving me fething insane!!!
*ahem*
Meanwhile, Al, a few posts above me: "Those aren't real conversions! Real conversions involve blah blah blah gatekeeping!"
And ---I'm--- the one being negative?
drbored wrote: Also, don't mistake "relentless positivity" for people that just want to enjoy the hobby they spent hundreds of dollars to get into. There are people that, despite the beliefs in some of these forums, actually LIKE the hobby for what it is, despite the drama, and don't need to be told that so many things suck.
Completely fair call, but I can't help but point out again that this is a thread about mono-pose minis, so coming in here not expecting to find opinions in the negative of such minis is a bit like going into a discussion about a new movie you haven't seen and getting annoyed that they "spoiled" it for you.
I'm not as savvy with the quote system so I'll just respond to a few points.
I DEFINITELY took the conversation off the rails, mostly because I had an ulterior motive when it came to creating this topic, which was to gauge certain emotions of the forum under the guise of a thought exercise. In my mind, certain complaints that are purely in the realm of opinion tend to, when people discuss them in comments, veer towards the negative, but as you can see from the poll above, there's generally a larger number of people that would continue to buy into the hobby as it is, and as it could be. I don't at all feel 'spoiled' about a certain range of opinions. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of what I'd expect.
Spoiler:
My own brainspace has been a bit tumultuous. Dealing with negativity in my own local community has driven me away from that community, but not from the hobby. As I actively build and paint my models, I find myself enjoying the hobby, while I tend to not enjoy time spent talking about the hobby. Much more breath is spent complaining about a variety of issues, from 'what is monopose' to 'is this tolerable' to 'everything is awful all the time' than it is on conversation focused on the lighter side. There are of course a couple points to be made there alone.
A. People in general tend to find some catharsis complaining, whinging, and griping about issues in their lives and circles.
B. Progress on the Warhammer hobby is generally slow. In the span of a week, a hobbyist may make a little bit of progress on a squad, or play one or two games. In other words, conversations on the positive aspects of the hobby are simply fewer, and the void in between those conversations is filled with whatever topics may be at hand, which tends to be some form of GW drama. I more blame our need to consume social media to fill that void as the issue, but I'm sure it differs from person to person.
As to the "relentless excuse making" I think that's a matter of perspective when it comes to the nature of opinions. In regards to the mono-pose issue, there's certainly a challenge when some bodies within a model kit can't be easily equipped with certain special weapons. The Chaos Marine Missile Launcher is an example that pops to mind, since I built it recently. On some of the bodies, especially the running ones, but also some of the regular standing ones, the missile launcher arm simply... struggles to fit on many of the bodies, or looks quite awkward indeed. On one or two out of the 10 bodies, it works decently well, and out of maybe another one or two, you could shave some plastic away to make it work well enough, but it's still pretty clear that it's meant to fit in a certain way on those first two body options.
Someone who likes the kit regardless might say a variety of things, like "You don't need that many missile launchers anyway!" or "just get the Havoc set, and use some of those as missile launchers instead!" which misses the point of having options in the first kit completely. These excuses, I think, come from the same sort of emotion as someone trying to swat a fly away with their hand and missing. They send out excuses hoping that one of them will strike true and the opponents of the model kit will shut up with all of their "relentless negativity" and go away, or somehow change their mind and see the light (we all know that nobody changes their mind on the Internet).
Meanwhile, someone that doesn't like the kit for the aforementioned reasons will suggest "GW can do better!" or "The range of options is worst than other kits of the past and present!" But what I've found is that instead of pointing people to the source, many will often use highly aggressive and derisive language to describe the issue, with your choice of curse words or colorful language sprinkled in for flavor. This makes the person arguing for a better model kit seem simply grumpy and inconsolable, likely because they've dealt with too many of the excuse-makers and know that anything else would land on deaf ears. There's another issue, however. The issue is simply that, well, the model kit is out. By the time it's revealed by GW, there's little say that we have in what we get. The legitimate complaints that we may have about models that are coming out today may not actually go into effect in the cycle of design-and-release for another 3-5 years, and even then it's very unlikely that GW will remake a modern kit to appease complainers or those that want more options in their kit. Because of these things, complaints tend to pile up even though fans of a particular kit or faction are buying it up anyway.
In either situation, you've got opposing views that will never meet eye-to-eye unless opinions change (which they do, contrary to my previous statement. My own have changed several times over the course of my hobbying, as I've gone from my 20's into my 30's even here on this very forum. It tends to take a decent measure of self reflecting, life events, and various catalysts, like GW suggesting you can slap the old resin sonic blasters on new chaos marines to make Emperor's Children Noise Marines, instead of giving us a fething Noise Marine update, ffs).
The result: a forum where people argue, where those with one kind of opinion view the other side as toxic. A forum can choose the course it takes, as Bolter and Chainsword clearly wanted to foster a more pro-GW attitude, which, honestly, I appreciate. It's nice to have a place I know I can go to where I can read a thread and not have to deal with these arguments, especially when so many other places people are free to complain to their hearts content. Having different communities can be healthy for the Community as a whole, as people can find the cliques they fit in with and won't feel forced to stick with certain attitudes around them at all times.
When I was younger, I lived in a town with only one game store. If you wanted to play anything, from 40k to Magic the Gathering, you went to that game store. If you didn't like someone, you had to play nice, because there were simply no other options. Now, I live in a place with twelve game stores, and the ability to fit in with a certain group that matches your opinions/playstyles is a blessing. You're not stuck losing game after game with your narrative army against a group of competitive players, you can go find the other narrative players and have a better time. In my mind it's better to be able to find a place where you can fit in, so where someone might say that a forum like B&C is 'restricting of free speech', I see it as a save haven for people that just want to have fun with their miniatures that they spent hundreds of dollars on without being in a community that's more likely to give them feelings of buyer's remorse.
My personal hope, honestly, is not to change anyone's opinions about the validity of the current path of GW's model making or business decisions. I actually have much more fun trying to figure out the root cause of people's butting of heads, even when it's my own head being butted against. I have no great dreams of changing the community, but if I can figure out my own viewpoints through conversation, either personally or online, then I can better direct my energy into what's actually important to me. It was this sort of thing, butting of heads included, that got me to leave one community in my local area in favor of another. So, hopefully I'll just have a better time. I'd hope that more people try to do that, to improve their situation if it needs improving, and that includes considering why you get so much catharsis over complaining, or if your excuse-making is falling on deaf ears, or anywhere in between.
Love the fact everyone just ignored this. Too busy enjoying being negative and having a row to actual see what’s happening here.
Which is a shame since its certainly the more interesting discussion.
We're looking at a microcosmic slice of western culture here: what is Facebook if not a forum without a specific topic and with ads and an algorithm that gives you more of whatever type of content you personally pay attention to? It's not even malicious, it's just human nature to pay more attention to things that make us mad and to glaze over the stuff that get too deep and nuanced.
Go into any forum, bring up any hot-button issue, wait a few pages, and then try to steer the discussion onto how predicable the course of the discussion has been, you'll get the same result. How to short circuit that (or if it's even possible) is fascinating.
Drbored: "Meanwhile, someone that doesn't like the kit for the aforementioned reasons will suggest "GW can do better!" or "The range of options is worst than other kits of the past and present!" But what I've found is that instead of pointing people to the source, many will often use highly aggressive and derisive language to describe the issue, with your choice of curse words or colorful language sprinkled in for flavor. This makes the person arguing for a better model kit seem simply grumpy and inconsolable, likely because they've dealt with too many of the excuse-makers and know that anything else would land on deaf ears. There's another issue, however. The issue is simply that, well, the model kit is out. By the time it's revealed by GW, there's little say that we have in what we get. The legitimate complaints that we may have about models that are coming out today may not actually go into effect in the cycle of design-and-release for another 3-5 years, and even then it's very unlikely that GW will remake a modern kit to appease complainers or those that want more options in their kit. Because of these things, complaints tend to pile up even though fans of a particular kit or faction are buying it up anyway."
Yup, this, basically. That's kind of what 'memeification' is. Everything is hyperbolized and shortened to the point of complete meaninglessness in an attempt to pre-emptively win an argument by forcing people into the position where it appears like they're arguing for something bonkers.
I'll pick exclusively on myself to avoid getting peoples' hackles up here: I make fun of Primaris unit names a lot, because it's a shorthand for the things that actually annoy me about most primaris units (their superficiality, the special treatment GW gives their heavy consumer marine playerbase over every other faction instead of enforcing faction release parity like a lot of game systems like MTGPP etc do or at least make less obvious, the releasing of new units that could not be more clearly replacements for existing units but which are purposefully designed to not *quite* be compatible so you have to buy the new one, GW blatantly reusing common concepts and slightly reconfiguring the spelling like some unholy fusion of a shity modern corporation and a millennial mother naming their babies, etc)
But that shorthand is just like, objectively hyperbole. There is no meaningful distinction in 'name quality' between "Eradicators" and "Devastators." There just isn't. "Infiltrators", "Outriders", "Suppressors", "Redemptor Dreadnought", "Invictor Warsuit" , and "Bladeguard Veterans", are perfectly fine, reasonable names for science fiction military units perfectly in line with "Sentinel", "Tactical Squad", "Assault Terminators", "Penitent Engine" and various things that we are more accepting of because theyve been around forever and when we first encountered them we were younger and more likely to go "woaaaaoooooh COOOOOOL' than think they were cheesy cringe.
Which is a shame since its certainly the more interesting discussion.
Is it?
Without a doubt.
Edit: Ok, in fairness "interesting" is subjective. It's undeniably the more important conversation, and it brings up a lot of problems that really need to be addressed, and it's just begging to tip the thread over into politics and an eventual lock.
the_scotsman wrote: Drbored: "Meanwhile, someone that doesn't like the kit for the aforementioned reasons will suggest "GW can do better!" or "The range of options is worst than other kits of the past and present!" But what I've found is that instead of pointing people to the source, many will often use highly aggressive and derisive language to describe the issue, with your choice of curse words or colorful language sprinkled in for flavor. This makes the person arguing for a better model kit seem simply grumpy and inconsolable, likely because they've dealt with too many of the excuse-makers and know that anything else would land on deaf ears. There's another issue, however. The issue is simply that, well, the model kit is out. By the time it's revealed by GW, there's little say that we have in what we get. The legitimate complaints that we may have about models that are coming out today may not actually go into effect in the cycle of design-and-release for another 3-5 years, and even then it's very unlikely that GW will remake a modern kit to appease complainers or those that want more options in their kit. Because of these things, complaints tend to pile up even though fans of a particular kit or faction are buying it up anyway."
Yup, this, basically. That's kind of what 'memeification' is. Everything is hyperbolized and shortened to the point of complete meaninglessness in an attempt to pre-emptively win an argument by forcing people into the position where it appears like they're arguing for something bonkers.
I'll pick exclusively on myself to avoid getting peoples' hackles up here: I make fun of Primaris unit names a lot, because it's a shorthand for the things that actually annoy me about most primaris units (their superficiality, the special treatment GW gives their heavy consumer marine playerbase over every other faction instead of enforcing faction release parity like a lot of game systems like MTGPP etc do or at least make less obvious, the releasing of new units that could not be more clearly replacements for existing units but which are purposefully designed to not *quite* be compatible so you have to buy the new one, GW blatantly reusing common concepts and slightly reconfiguring the spelling like some unholy fusion of a shity modern corporation and a millennial mother naming their babies, etc)
But that shorthand is just like, objectively hyperbole. There is no meaningful distinction in 'name quality' between "Eradicators" and "Devastators." There just isn't. "Infiltrators", "Outriders", "Suppressors", "Redemptor Dreadnought", "Invictor Warsuit" , and "Bladeguard Veterans", are perfectly fine, reasonable names for science fiction military units perfectly in line with "Sentinel", "Tactical Squad", "Assault Terminators", "Penitent Engine" and various things that we are more accepting of because theyve been around forever and when we first encountered them we were younger and more likely to go "woaaaaoooooh COOOOOOL' than think they were cheesy cringe.
This man is the voice of sanity.
Frankly monopose minis are just one of the many annoying features of Corporate Workshop... if not taken into the extreme they at least have the benefit to offer a increase in quality / dinamic postures... but is perfectly understandable that some modellers will be alienated by this trend.
As people have said, I feel the definition of monopose is really being pushed.
To my mind monopose is the old metal or single-printed plastics of the 1990s era. Intercessors certainly didn't feel monopose when I put 10 together a few years back. The same for basic CSM.
I think the lack of options in kits is bad - perhaps most especially in character kits, given the ever inflated price GW charge for them.
But... yeah. I just don't find the fact every fifth "X" is holding its weapons "like this" annoying in the way it seems to bother other people. Maybe its due to running goblin armies with 50+ essential clones in a unit.
Vatsetis wrote: Dont put the burden on the costumers ("whales"), Adam Smith wouldnt do it.
Quick FYI - customers buy products, costumers make costumes...
Sorry, but I see this one frequently (not just from you) and it bugs me, for some reason.
Well it can bug you... But is almost a truism that outside a perfect competition market (and the "warhammer hobby" is certainly not one) the power of costumers is extremely limited.
Corporate Workshop couldnt do a tenth of his bad practices if its costumers had any significant power.
The fact that costumers are routinely framed as those ultimately guilty of corporate abuse when they are one of the main victims is just another aspect of their lack of power or real agency in the market place.
Tyel wrote: As people have said, I feel the definition of monopose is really being pushed.
To my mind monopose is the old metal or single-printed plastics of the 1990s era. Intercessors certainly didn't feel monopose when I put 10 together a few years back. The same for basic CSM.
I think the lack of options in kits is bad - perhaps most especially in character kits, given the ever inflated price GW charge for them.
But... yeah. I just don't find the fact every fifth "X" is holding its weapons "like this" annoying in the way it seems to bother other people. Maybe its due to running goblin armies with 50+ essential clones in a unit.
Yeah this is very true. "True monopose" is the variety of single piece (sometimes near-single piece) metal models which used to abound. The reduction in options/build freedom/interchangeability is what is actually felt. The old Captain box vs. any current Captain is a prime example.
But ALSO, back when we were in that metal model era, there were many examples of extreme variety within those metal models. In particular the character range, such as six different metal Librarians all released at the same time, alongside four different Chaplains (not even including the Terminator variants).
Vatsetis wrote: Dont put the burden on the costumers ("whales"), Adam Smith wouldnt do it.
Quick FYI - customers buy products, costumers make costumes...
Sorry, but I see this one frequently (not just from you) and it bugs me, for some reason.
Well it can bug you... But is almost a truism that outside a perfect competition market (and the "warhammer hobby" is certainly not one) the power of costumers is extremely limited.
Corporate Workshop couldnt do a tenth of his bad practices if its costumers had any significant power.
The fact that costumers are routinely framed as those ultimately guilty of corporate abuse when they are one of the main victims is just another aspect of their lack of power or real agency in the market place.
I'm sorry, but what the heck does any of that have to do with saying "costumers" when you obviously mean "customers"? "People using the wrong word here bugs me" is in no way an argument for or against your position, say "yeah, I meant 'customer', sorry about your pet peeve there" and move on.
The Chaos Knights in this set are 100% true monopose. Not a single customizable option on any of them, and not a single one is interchangeable with any other because they are all cut up in completely different ways so nothing fits together. There are a sum total of two extra bits in the whole set, used to turn the Doom Knight into a Derp Knight by giving him a flail. It's like the person designing them was doing a bet with another designer to create the least conversion friendly kit in the history of the hobby, and they succeeded.
Then there's the Chaos Warriors, which are also completely monopose, but with headswap options for each monopose. I think it is fair to characterize these as monopose too, head swaps really don't count.
When you get beyond just headswaps is where things get a little trickier. Like take the Namarti Thralls kit. Is this monopose, or not? The bodies themselves are monopose, but IIRC ~7 of the 10 have alternate builds that swap in different arms that dramatically change the final pose of the model. And the heads are fully swappable among any of the models. Any of them can be the icon bearer.
There's a much better argument for kits like the Thralls than like the Chaos Knights, IMO. The Thralls achieve a level of fluid movement that the old multipart kits never do, while still preserving the ability to create more than 10 different-looking models through arm and head swaps. The Chaos Knights are 5 monopose models that will look exactly the same, and there is no way to avoid the repeat problem if you take more than 5 in your army.
There's a much better argument for kits like the Thralls than like the Chaos Knights, IMO. The Thralls achieve a level of fluid movement that the old multipart kits never do, while still preserving the ability to create more than 10 different-looking models through arm and head swaps.
Yep. I think this is the best of both worlds method.
The difference in time from what the know means that probably they were designed at the same time and under the same philosopies.
So why one is so good and the other is soo horrible? Why one os a stellar example of multiposing and variation in a monster infantry kit with exposed muscles that look natural and the other has like, 2 extra biz to make a third slaangor or a champion?
I cannot say. Maybe the armies were designed under different philosopies? Maybe the sculptors of the slaangors were just worse, incapable of using better the sprue space assigned to them?
Ok now just wait a minute. It's one thing to dispute that the Primaris are mono-pose, but to call them "highly customizable"? Come on...
Galas wrote: I cannot say. Maybe the armies were designed under different philosopies? Maybe the sculptors of the slaangors were just worse, incapable of using better the sprue space assigned to them?
This is why I get annoyed at people who act like this shift in design philosophy either isn't real or isn't happening.
You use the new Rock Troll vs Slaangor example, whereas I always go for the Exalted Sorcerer vs Deathshroud Terminator example. The former in both has a wealth of options and can do all sorts of combinations. The latter in both sit in stark contrast to that, and I don't get why (and don't get why people would deny that this is happening, or act like it's not a big deal, or in one truly bizarre instance in a different thread, insist that this was a restoration of GW's normal design methodology).
Again, we know what they can do, so why don't they?
I'm not sure it's really a shift, as he stated these were both in the design process at the same time. It's more inconsistency - which is, after all, the hallmark of everything GW does.
The only difference in the kit is in the description.
The Trolls are the actual "infantry" kit of a faction. And as they state in the web store, "You can make a whole army of this trolls without two being the same!".
The Slaangors are an elite unit in an elite army, by contrast.
So I believe, from all of us, the one closer to the truth is The_Scostman. GW is, and does, both extremely monopose kits and still perfectly multipose kits with the best of both worlds. They just chose what is gonna be each kit by economics and marketing metrics.
As customers we would all want modern kits to be like exalted sorcererrs, sisters of battle infantry, rock trolls, etc... but GW doesnt want to, for the same reason back in the day they started doing the infantry kits in multipart plastic kits when most characters and elite units were metal or resin.
Vatsetis wrote: Dont put the burden on the costumers ("whales"), Adam Smith wouldnt do it.
Quick FYI - customers buy products, costumers make costumes...
Sorry, but I see this one frequently (not just from you) and it bugs me, for some reason.
Well it can bug you... But is almost a truism that outside a perfect competition market (and the "warhammer hobby" is certainly not one) the power of costumers is extremely limited.
Corporate Workshop couldnt do a tenth of his bad practices if its costumers had any significant power.
The fact that costumers are routinely framed as those ultimately guilty of corporate abuse when they are one of the main victims is just another aspect of their lack of power or real agency in the market place.
I'm sorry, but what the heck does any of that have to do with saying "costumers" when you obviously mean "customers"? "People using the wrong word here bugs me" is in no way an argument for or against your position, say "yeah, I meant 'customer', sorry about your pet peeve there" and move on.
Upps... I made a spelling mistake... Non native, quick phone posting... Then I misread your post... And get lost In translation.
I mean, we know how this works: GW is upfront that the miniatures come first, rules come second. They just design something cool, with little to no consideration for how it's going to play on the tabletop, then the team has to come up with rules for it. It's not really any surprise we end up with stuff like the Havocs where the miniatures in the kit don't translate into a playable tabletop unit without buying multiple copies of the kit.
H.B.M.C. wrote: That's... not an equivalent example. What people are doing here, to take your Spider-Man example, is basically "Well, now that I see Tom Holland, I see that Toby Macguire's Spider-Man was poorly acted and unconvincing. He really wasn't very good at the time, was he?" (and it would be as terrible an argument as the outdated bowlegged Marine example). That's what people are saying when they say that the new mono-pose minis are great.
I don't retroactively think the old models are bad. They're just from a different time, but a new perspective offers the chance to look back and make comparisons ( for both "sides" ).
I have to say, I always loved space marines and never felt anything was wrong with them.
The moment I saw primaris, everything change and I cannot look back at marines without looking at their legs. Like, everything else is fine. If GW released a "longer leg" upgrade sprue for all the firstborn marines I would be in love. Just a sprue with 10 pair of longer legs to use in normal firstborn squads.
Tyel wrote: As people have said, I feel the definition of monopose is really being pushed.
To my mind monopose is the old metal or single-printed plastics of the 1990s era. Intercessors certainly didn't feel monopose when I put 10 together a few years back. The same for basic CSM.
I think the lack of options in kits is bad - perhaps most especially in character kits, given the ever inflated price GW charge for them.
But... yeah. I just don't find the fact every fifth "X" is holding its weapons "like this" annoying in the way it seems to bother other people. Maybe its due to running goblin armies with 50+ essential clones in a unit.
I definitely made an attempt to establish a definition of 'monopose', using what I'd seen people complain about in the past and using modern examples of kits across a range of factions.
The fact of the matter at hand is that 'monopose' is a slang term that has a negative connotation, and the definition of it changes based on who is speaking.
One person will say that the Warcry kits, such as the Corvus Cabal, are Monopose. Half of the models can only be built a single way, and the other half have maybe one or two options to swap out for arms or heads.
Another person will say that the Sisters of Battle kits are all Monopose, despite there being a wide array of head options and weapon options, but since the torso and legs are fused and some of the special weapons struggle to fit onto certain bodies, they fit their own personal definition of Monopose. I took this stance as the definition, as it covered the broadest range of kits, seeing as there are only a handful of kits where the torsos and legs are truly independent.
The thing that I find interesting is that people complain about the design direction of Games Workshop without really considering what the alternatives are. Most of the models I've seen from other games, be they skirmish or war games, have even fewer options, or are entirely 'Monopose' in the strictest definition. That's not to say that the complaints aren't entirely valid, but most complaints stem from a 'grass is greener' mentality, and I don't really see any greener grass from here.
Galas wrote: I have to say, I always loved space marines and never felt anything was wrong with them.
The moment I saw primaris, everything change and I cannot look back at marines without looking at their legs. Like, everything else is fine. If GW released a "longer leg" upgrade sprue for all the firstborn marines I would be in love. Just a sprue with 10 pair of longer legs to use in normal firstborn squads.
What's funny about this is that proportionally speaking, it's the torso that needs to be elongated to be in more proper proportion.
Galas wrote: The Havoc kit is just a bad kit. His bitz and sprue density looks like something from 12-15 years ago.
One chaincannon. That's all I'm going to say. One. . CHAINCANNON.
That was appalling, absolutely. Somehow the SM Devastator kit manages to have two each of an even greater array of weapons.
Right. Twelve heavy weapons. Twelve. And a combi-weapon with a full complement of appropriate bits, storm bolter, and bolter for the Sargeant, along with, what? 4, 5 melee weapons? The Havoc Aspiring Champion doesn't even get a basic bolter, much less a combi-weapon. Neither does the Aspiring Champion in the CSM kit have a combi-weapon option, despite it being an option in the rules. Plus Devastators come with all of that other stuff, servo skulls and such. And the Chaos Terminators are worse. Typical gw treatment for anything CSM.
yukishiro1 wrote:I mean, we know how this works: GW is upfront that the miniatures come first, rules come second. They just design something cool, with little to no consideration for how it's going to play on the tabletop, then the team has to come up with rules for it. It's not really any surprise we end up with stuff like the Havocs where the miniatures in the kit don't translate into a playable tabletop unit without buying multiple copies of the kit.
It's an absolutely insane way to run a game.
That doesn't explain the limited number of guns in the kit. They made those cool new guns, but only included one? They knew people would want more than that.
I like the old marines more than the primaris version, myself, and I wish they'd not have created a rupture in the design by making the primaris ones different (ok, I wish they'd never made primaris in the first place, but that's a different rant). It's a miniatures game, I like the stylized look of the original marines more than the "more accurate tacticool" vibe of the primaris. I'm playing toy soldiers, not trying to accurately scale down "real" 7 foot tall humans in massive battle armor.
yukishiro1 wrote:I mean, we know how this works: GW is upfront that the miniatures come first, rules come second. They just design something cool, with little to no consideration for how it's going to play on the tabletop, then the team has to come up with rules for it. It's not really any surprise we end up with stuff like the Havocs where the miniatures in the kit don't translate into a playable tabletop unit without buying multiple copies of the kit.
It's an absolutely insane way to run a game.
That doesn't explain the limited number of guns in the kit. They made those cool new guns, but only included one? They knew people would want more than that.
I think it sorta does explain it. They created some cool models with a variety of weapons. They wanted you to have one of each in a squad, because that's cool! It just doesn't work in the actual game.
It's an extreme example of how divorced the model design is from the way the game actually works. Yes, anyone who knew how 40k worked would have said "we should include multiples of each weapon in this kit, because in the game, you never want to take split loadouts." But that's not how the process works. Nobody is there to say that.
yukishiro1 wrote:I mean, we know how this works: GW is upfront that the miniatures come first, rules come second. They just design something cool, with little to no consideration for how it's going to play on the tabletop, then the team has to come up with rules for it. It's not really any surprise we end up with stuff like the Havocs where the miniatures in the kit don't translate into a playable tabletop unit without buying multiple copies of the kit.
It's an absolutely insane way to run a game.
That doesn't explain the limited number of guns in the kit. They made those cool new guns, but only included one? They knew people would want more than that.
I think it sorta does explain it. They created some cool models with a variety of weapons. They wanted you to have one of each in a squad, because that's cool! It just doesn't work in the actual game.
It's an extreme example of how divorced the model design is from the way the game actually works. Yes, anyone who knew how 40k worked would have said "we should include multiples of each weapon in this kit, because in the game, you never want to take split loadouts." But that's not how the process works. Nobody is there to say that.
No it doesn't, because they didn't include one of every gun. They included two of everything except the new gun that no one already had. It was a blatant attempt to sell more kits.
You would have had to buy multiple kits either way to get a usable loadout, though. It's not like taking 2 reaper chaincannons in a unit of 5 is much more viable than 1. They would have needed to include 4 if they were actually making a usable kit in game. And GW never does that.
I mean I don't want to fight over why they included 1 instead of 2. The overall point is that the reason you get these kits that don't make any sense for the way the game is played is because they are designed by people who don't consider how the game is played when making the kits.
yukishiro1 wrote:I mean, we know how this works: GW is upfront that the miniatures come first, rules come second. They just design something cool, with little to no consideration for how it's going to play on the tabletop, then the team has to come up with rules for it. It's not really any surprise we end up with stuff like the Havocs where the miniatures in the kit don't translate into a playable tabletop unit without buying multiple copies of the kit.
It's an absolutely insane way to run a game.
That doesn't explain the limited number of guns in the kit. They made those cool new guns, but only included one? They knew people would want more than that.
[spoiler]
I think it sorta does explain it. They created some cool models with a variety of weapons. They wanted you to have one of each in a squad, because that's cool! It just doesn't work in the actual game.
It's an extreme example of how divorced the model design is from the way the game actually works. Yes, anyone who knew how 40k worked would have said "we should include multiples of each weapon in this kit, because in the game, you never want to take split loadouts." But that's not how the process works. Nobody is there to say that.
No it doesn't, because they didn't include one of every gun. They included two of everything except the new gun that no one already had. It was a blatant attempt to sell more kits.
'Oh no. Looks like there isn't space to fit a multi-melta on the Battle Sisters sprue. Guess you'll just have to buy some Retributors who are twice the price per model...'
Galas wrote: The Havoc kit is just a bad kit. His bitz and sprue density looks like something from 12-15 years ago.
One chaincannon. That's all I'm going to say. One. . CHAINCANNON.
That was appalling, absolutely. Somehow the SM Devastator kit manages to have two each of an even greater array of weapons.
Right. Twelve heavy weapons. Twelve. And a combi-weapon with a full complement of appropriate bits, storm bolter, and bolter for the Sargeant, along with, what? 4, 5 melee weapons? The Havoc Aspiring Champion doesn't even get a basic bolter, much less a combi-weapon. Neither does the Aspiring Champion in the CSM kit have a combi-weapon option, despite it being an option in the rules. Plus Devastators come with all of that other stuff, servo skulls and such. And the Chaos Terminators are worse. Typical gw treatment for anything CSM.
yukishiro1 wrote:I mean, we know how this works: GW is upfront that the miniatures come first, rules come second. They just design something cool, with little to no consideration for how it's going to play on the tabletop, then the team has to come up with rules for it. It's not really any surprise we end up with stuff like the Havocs where the miniatures in the kit don't translate into a playable tabletop unit without buying multiple copies of the kit.
It's an absolutely insane way to run a game.
That doesn't explain the limited number of guns in the kit. They made those cool new guns, but only included one? They knew people would want more than that.
Fun fact, they have no idea.
Gundstock Thunderers in AoS had 5-6 different weapon options, but only the most basic rifle had enough for the whole squad. Every other option was 1 per box, despite being able to take however many of the same gun you wanted per unit. So in order to equip an entire squad with ANY weapon (other than the basic rifle) you need 5 boxes PER SQUAD. The unit was OP as balls so a bunch of people went out and bought 10-15 boxes of them to get the good special.
Thing was, it came out that GW didn't think people would actually run every single gun the same. They assumed people would mix and match the guns or take a special and rifles. This sort of thought process can be seen from the casual AoS community as well via an episode of Signal from the Frontline that came out when the battletome did that had their locally Narrative guy on as a guest. As they were reviewing the battletome, the 'buying 10 boxes' thing came up and narrative guy said 'well, obviously no one's going to
actually run the unit like that.' and Reece and Frankie side-eyed him like 'Bro...that's the ONLY way anyone is going to run that unit!'
GW saw what everybody was doing and rewrote the warscroll so that you could only take 1 of each special. It was completely useless as a unit from that point until the new book.
TLDRGW doesn't know that people want to use their cool guns.
yukishiro1 wrote: You would have had to buy multiple kits either way to get a usable loadout, though. It's not like taking 2 reaper chaincannons in a unit of 5 is much more viable than 1. They would have needed to include 4 if they were actually making a usable kit in game. And GW never does that.
I mean I don't want to fight over why they included 1 instead of 2. The overall point is that the reason you get these kits that don't make any sense for the way the game is played is because they are designed by people who don't consider how the game is played when making the kits.
Two kits is half the $$$ of four. And having twice the number of chaincannons in the kit would have helped kept the price of them down on the bits market. There's no reason, other than a blatant cash grab, that the Havoc kit only includes one of the only gun that was new. Especially considering the example of Devastators, which manages to include two of six types of heavy weapons, while Havocs only have five options. Gw knew which gun people were going to want.
I honestly think you're giving GW too much credit in assuming they knew what they were doing to that extent. When choosing to ascribe what GW does to either nefariousness or incompetence, the latter is almost always the more plausible.
I mean maybe they really did include only 1 as a cash grab. On this one kit. But not others. Because they really, really thought that getting people to buy multiple boxes of Havocs was the way to make the big bucks. But I kinda doubt it.
Galas wrote: The Havoc kit is just a bad kit. His bitz and sprue density looks like something from 12-15 years ago.
One chaincannon. That's all I'm going to say. One. . CHAINCANNON.
That was appalling, absolutely. Somehow the SM Devastator kit manages to have two each of an even greater array of weapons.
Right. Twelve heavy weapons. Twelve. And a combi-weapon with a full complement of appropriate bits, storm bolter, and bolter for the Sargeant, along with, what? 4, 5 melee weapons? The Havoc Aspiring Champion doesn't even get a basic bolter, much less a combi-weapon. Neither does the Aspiring Champion in the CSM kit have a combi-weapon option, despite it being an option in the rules. Plus Devastators come with all of that other stuff, servo skulls and such. And the Chaos Terminators are worse. Typical gw treatment for anything CSM.
yukishiro1 wrote:I mean, we know how this works: GW is upfront that the miniatures come first, rules come second. They just design something cool, with little to no consideration for how it's going to play on the tabletop, then the team has to come up with rules for it. It's not really any surprise we end up with stuff like the Havocs where the miniatures in the kit don't translate into a playable tabletop unit without buying multiple copies of the kit.
It's an absolutely insane way to run a game.
That doesn't explain the limited number of guns in the kit. They made those cool new guns, but only included one? They knew people would want more than that.
Fun fact, they have no idea.
Gundstock Thunderers in AoS had 5-6 different weapon options, but only the most basic rifle had enough for the whole squad. Every other option was 1 per box, despite being able to take however many of the same gun you wanted per unit. So in order to equip an entire squad with ANY weapon (other than the basic rifle) you need 5 boxes PER SQUAD. The unit was OP as balls so a bunch of people went out and bought 10-15 boxes of them to get the good special.
Thing was, it came out that GW didn't think people would actually run every single gun the same. They assumed people would mix and match the guns or take a special and rifles. This sort of thought process can be seen from the casual AoS community as well via an episode of Signal from the Frontline that came out when the battletome did that had their locally Narrative guy on as a guest. As they were reviewing the battletome, the 'buying 10 boxes' thing came up and narrative guy said 'well, obviously no one's going to
actually run the unit like that.' and Reece and Frankie side-eyed him like 'Bro...that's the ONLY way anyone is going to run that unit!'
GW saw what everybody was doing and rewrote the warscroll so that you could only take 1 of each special. It was completely useless as a unit from that point until the new book.
TLDRGW doesn't know that people want to use their cool guns.
So, gw makes a new Havoc kit, with four types of guns they've been able to use for years, and therefore most established CSM players already have, and one new one that nobody has. And they don’t know that the new one is going to be the one everyone wants. Right. I can buy that for the Thunderers, because I assume they were a completely new unit. But Havocs have existed for ages, and only one of those guns was something new. And it was the only one limited to one per kit. That isn't a mistake or a coincidence.
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yukishiro1 wrote: I honestly think you're giving GW too much credit in assuming they knew what they were doing to that extent. When choosing to ascribe what GW does to either nefariousness or incompetence, the latter is almost always the more plausible.
I mean maybe they really did include only 1 as a cash grab. On this one kit. But not others. Because they really, really thought that getting people to buy multiple boxes of Havocs was the way to make the big bucks. But I kinda doubt it.
Well, I've never assumed that they were corporate geniuses, but if they couldn't figure out that everyone was going to want the cool new mini-gun, then they're even goofier than I previously thought.
'Oh no. Looks like there isn't space to fit a multi-melta on the Battle Sisters sprue. Guess you'll just have to buy some Retributors who are twice the price per model...'
I had to look to see if that was true. Oh nooooo . . . . Also I get a "No longer available online" for Retributors.
I mean tactical squads also only come with a missile launcher. And is not like when released, multimeltas were OP or anything for the new sisters until 9th.
Galas wrote: I mean tactical squads also only come with a missile launcher. And is not like when released, multimeltas were OP or anything for the new sisters until 9th.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the total array of gear choices in the Tactical kit outstrip those in the Sisters kit.
And as pointed out previously, the Devastator kit has 12(!!!) Heavy Weapons in it, compared the the Retributors 6(?) 2 HBs, 2, H-Flamers and 2 Multimeltas ?
Galas wrote: I mean tactical squads also only come with a missile launcher. And is not like when released, multimeltas were OP or anything for the new sisters until 9th.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the total array of gear choices in the Tactical kit outstrip those in the Sisters kit.
While I'm not disagreeing with the Devastator issue, I should say on the Sisters case, they do actually have more options/wargear than the Tacticals do.
Tacs have a single missile, flamer, plasma, melta, and grav-gun, Sisters have a single heavy bolter and heavy flamer, and then two storm bolters, two flamers, and two meltaguns. As for Sergeants/Superiors, the Tactical Sergeant has one more melee weapon option (a power fist), but the Sister Superior has multiple chainswords and multiple power swords. They both have the same amount of combi-weapon options, but the Tactical Sergeant has access to the plasma pistol and grav-pistol.
Insectum7 wrote: Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the total array of gear choices in the Tactical kit outstrip those in the Sisters kit.
You're wrong. the basic SoB box has two different heavy weapons, two of each special weapons, some combi weapons, different pistols and melee weapons and an option to build an icon bearer and a cherub.
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Sgt_Smudge wrote: but the Tactical Sergeant has access to the plasma pistol and grav-pistol.
Insectum7 wrote: Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the total array of gear choices in the Tactical kit outstrip those in the Sisters kit.
You're wrong. the basic SoB box has two different heavy weapons, two of each special weapons, some combi weapons, different pistols and melee weapons and an option to build an icon bearer and a cherub.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: but the Tactical Sergeant has access to the plasma pistol and grav-pistol.
Actually the SoB kit has a plasma pistol too.
Ah, you are correct! That must have slipped my mind!
That Devastator kit still blows the Retributors out of the water though.
Both kits have two of each type of weapon they can use. Marines just happen to have more options.
On the surface, sure. The key bit is that combining the two kits Marines come out way ahead in terms of capabilities. Sisters struggle for AT weapons on infantry when Marines have Heavy Plasma, Melta, Lascannons, Grav Cannons and (sorta) Missile Launchers for the same task, making it much easier to spread AT threats around, while Sisters are starved for Multimeltas, their single AT option.
Edit: Another way to look at it is if Retributors had put 12 Heavy weapons on the sprue, that would be enough to outfit the squad with it's full complement of each weapon choice.
Galas wrote: The Havoc kit is just a bad kit. His bitz and sprue density looks like something from 12-15 years ago.
One chaincannon. That's all I'm going to say. One. . CHAINCANNON.
That was appalling, absolutely. Somehow the SM Devastator kit manages to have two each of an even greater array of weapons.
Right. Twelve heavy weapons. Twelve. And a combi-weapon with a full complement of appropriate bits, storm bolter, and bolter for the Sargeant, along with, what? 4, 5 melee weapons? The Havoc Aspiring Champion doesn't even get a basic bolter, much less a combi-weapon. Neither does the Aspiring Champion in the CSM kit have a combi-weapon option, despite it being an option in the rules. Plus Devastators come with all of that other stuff, servo skulls and such. And the Chaos Terminators are worse. Typical gw treatment for anything CSM.
And not only that: The Havoc Heads attach to their backpacks, meaning they are always looking the same way. Not even any variety there.
The Devastator kit is just a phenomenal kit. The best "heavy weapon squad" kit they ever released.
A ton of heavy weapons, 5 combi weapons for the sargeant, and literally all meele weapons for the sargeant?
The fething devastator sargeant has half the meele weapons that come in the whole chaos terminator box. Let that sink. 9 for the chaos terminators, 6 for the devastator sargeant.
H.B.M.C. wrote: So... everything new in the Ork Combat Patrol is push-fit. Every single new model.
Regression.
Gotta love it huh? I've been waiting for the SOB Start Collecting box for awhile now, so imagine my surprise when the Combat Patrol is full of monopose crap from the first launch box.
It's like GW is doing everything they can to save me money
AOBR was designed smartly (ish , because big shoota have been debatable since their existence)
but the new combat patroll ork boyz? what was the unit combination
1 Nob, 1 FORCED special weapon, 3 shoots and 5 choppas?
Like, i wanted that box since i wanted me some more boyz to restart my little waagh force that was my first 40k army and a MA Warboss and the koptas and am not opposed to the Big kan.
But the feth am i supposed to do with these boyzs?
I was going to add my thoughts to this yesterday morning but decided to I should rephrase them a bit.
So I am not pro or con monopose models. I think it absolutely depends on the models in question. Tanks are almost mono pose but this is really about Infantry or monster models.
I love conversions and dynamic model as well. However for things like AM/IG I don't personally see the need for that many different poses. Shooting, advancing and what have you is consistent with what they would be doing and drifts right back to the old Metal model ranges. It's possible that many new 40K players have not seen or don't remember the old metal models each faction had before the plastics. So then I think about variety of poses vs the number of like units I would feel like painting and how much redundancy I feel I actually want in that area, would another kit do the sme task but not look the same, this more for things like Space Marines than AM/IG. My IG army is made from 3rd party Napoleonic and Franco Prussian war models and some Wargames Atlantic kits so the flexibility and pose-ability isn't very high. I'm just looking to hit a few particular poses, again shooting, advancing being the most important to look exciting. Shoulder army is much less exciting on the table top. Going back to the GW monopose my frustration isn't the poses so much as mandatory load outs or locked loadouts due to the supplied models having only those builds from the kits, the new Ork boys mob is the prime offender that comes to mind. On the Primaris range it at least works that these squads only build in these combinations because that's what they do because of doctrine or fluff unlike the orks. I don't like GW forcing unit builds on everything and even looking back to the old Metal IG models there were still other options you could stick in the squads but bought separately as they were. To wrap this up I do like the multi part kits as they are now and have said for a long time that I would also wish they would sell filler models, again for things like Imperial guard or where more appropriate.
All of that said I don't much care for every players army looking effectively the same aside from the chosen paint colors. Especially the heroes. which is where it sticks out the most.
I'm at a point in my GW/40K hobby and gaming where GW itself is not that important to my Gw/40K hobby and gaming. Their game isn't where I would like it and they just aren't providing what I want more of. (After something like 25 years of the hobby.)
For more transparency I only have 1 army for 9th and it was started specifically for 9th. I'll buy a few more codex books (at a discount) but just to have them not to take those armies out to the shops.
I am sure I drifted around here but I feel the two topics for me are interconnected.
GW could definitely do better and offer more customization on the characters, the silly things cost enough we should be able to get more out of them for the price.
Is it possible to run the boyz as komandos?
Or rather do commandos run a heavy weapon in their squads, because I assume that 10 orks infantry can more or less always be run as another 10 ork infantry with same load out.
Because if yes, then the box isn't that bad. Most ork armies seem to run 2 units of komandos.
The warboss not being customizable is kind of disappointing, especially after seeing what they did with the nobz on smasha squig.
The koptas though? We wanted to be able to buy AOBR koptas and essentially GW delivered and brought back a legacy option that never had a model so far. On top of that, it seem like the slots for arms and legs are the same, so you can easily mix them up. They are also shaped in a way that you can replace them with arms from other sets with minimal effort, and unlike with the old koptas you can still keep one hand on the stick.These are perfectly fine.
Mix 'em in with the multi-part multi-pose Boyz and hope that they haven't had a visit from the Scale Creep Fairy.
well according to some they didn't, which of course would be nice...
But i wanted me to get some 30 Shoota boyz (with the first 10 being my first fully painted models ever in my longstanding and later on corrupted carreer of 40k) and now i need to buy atleast another boy box to get more shootas?
...
It wouldn't have been that much additional sprue if they'd had done either choppa and pistol or shoota for every one of the boys.
And quite rightly when i can get from Wargames atlantic basically 5 diffrent heads and more then enough special and other weaponry and have to compare that to 8 boltguns / 10 csm then i seriously start to wonder what GW has going for it at that point beyond an IP monopoly it enforces against the community to a degree that hurts itself more than it does good longterm?
Because quite frankly a lot of their plastic ranges is easily outcompeted and even their newer kits have other better alternatives at often far more reasonable prices.
its like they want to actively push people away or force them to start considering 3d Printers etc.
And locally due to conversion rates that don't reflect reality its actually cheaper for me to get a 3d printer + setup with all the whistles and bells than starting certain armies already.
Karol wrote: Is it possible to run the boyz as komandos?
Or rather do commandos run a heavy weapon in their squads, because I assume that 10 orks infantry can more or less always be run as another 10 ork infantry with same load out.
Because if yes, then the box isn't that bad. Most ork armies seem to run 2 units of komandos.
kommandos are fairly disticnt though with a commando type deal kit.
But yea with greenstuff and some bits you could easily turn these into a commando unit and make a shoota boy unit on the side. because commandos obviously once again didn't get shootas.....
Karol wrote: Is it possible to run the boyz as komandos? Or rather do commandos run a heavy weapon in their squads, because I assume that 10 orks infantry can more or less always be run as another 10 ork infantry with same load out.
Because if yes, then the box isn't that bad. Most ork armies seem to run 2 units of komandos.
The difference between an ork boy and an ork kommando is usually a backpack and a fancy head. Before the metal/fincast models which recently retired, you could buy an upgrade set from FW which was just heads with gas masks and backpacks. I think most people just used the ammo backpacks from the old boyz kit and burna heads or something similar to convert them.
Since the kommadoz box comes with 20 heads, I'll do exactly that. Build all the special weapons from the kit, split them into a melee and ranged and then fill up the squads with models made from boyz with the spare heads.
But the feth am i supposed to do with these boyzs?
Exalted! Don't buy them or buy more of them? Or just don't play wysiwyg? Ebay is an option?
I feel so bad for the new Ork players out there.
I am not even new, my first real army was Orks (AOBR was very significant ) and whilest i was always more of a mad mek type of player (kanz, the old grot guns and koptas aswell as flying things) i had always a distinct lack of boyz. But when the boyz from ages long since past are more competently designed then their new stuff then i start to wonder why?
And stuff like the havoc chaincannon debacle really really make me think they have ulterior design choices at the work.
But the feth am i supposed to do with these boyzs?
Exalted! Don't buy them or buy more of them? Or just don't play wysiwyg? Ebay is an option?
I feel so bad for the new Ork players out there.
I am not even new, my first real army was Orks (AOBR was very significant ) and whilest i was always more of a mad mek type of player (kanz, the old grot guns and koptas aswell as flying things) i had always a distinct lack of boyz. But when the boyz from ages long since past are more competently designed then their new stuff then i start to wonder why?
And stuff like the havoc chaincannon debacle really really make me think they have ulterior design choices at the work.
I agree. I asked the same question and doing the math they will sell 3 Combat Patrol boxes to players looking to find more control over their models or maybe drop another box of boys with different options mathed out for completeness between the two but I do agree it's a money making thing. but was told GW might be changing focus to fixed load outs fixed kits because that's what they see other companies doing. Only GW knows for sure. I will say aside from the heavy/special weapon I think 3 shootas is about the right number for a mixed mob of 10 but I'm no math guy and zero or all of them is probably a stronger numbers than mixed.
I have sooooooo many boys mobs love the old AoBR pushfits. I salvaged between 60 or 90 of them a few years ago for my Green tide formations.
I remember my friend complaining about not enough Chaincannons, I recommended blue stuff for molds.... Wish there was a similarly simple answer for Ork boys. Maybe Latex? but what to use after that... Good luck Boss!
But if they are the main seller for GW, would they risk, not giving the options to the marine factions? Marine sells, from what people have told, seem to not only make a large chunk of all W40k sales, but all GW sells in general.
It would be a huge gamble for GW to risk replace them or change the factions too much.
Karol wrote: But if they are the main seller for GW, would they risk, not giving the options to the marine factions? Marine sells, from what people have told, seem to not only make a large chunk of all W40k sales, but all GW sells in general.
It would be a huge gamble for GW to risk replace them or change the factions too much.
It sucks for Ork players especially since the range is famous for it's customisation. Is monopose a fad, or will GW continue to double down? Were these designs too far in development to course correct? who knows. When it comes to new models from GW, be careful what you wish for.
Vatsetis wrote: Dont put the burden on the costumers ("whales"), Adam Smith wouldnt do it.
Quick FYI - customers buy products, costumers make costumes...
Sorry, but I see this one frequently (not just from you) and it bugs me, for some reason.
Well it can bug you... But is almost a truism that outside a perfect competition market (and the "warhammer hobby" is certainly not one) the power of costumers is extremely limited.
Corporate Workshop couldnt do a tenth of his bad practices if its costumers had any significant power.
The fact that costumers are routinely framed as those ultimately guilty of corporate abuse when they are one of the main victims is just another aspect of their lack of power or real agency in the market place.
I'm sorry, but what the heck does any of that have to do with saying "costumers" when you obviously mean "customers"? "People using the wrong word here bugs me" is in no way an argument for or against your position, say "yeah, I meant 'customer', sorry about your pet peeve there" and move on.
Upps... I made a spelling mistake... Non native, quick phone posting... Then I misread your post... And get lost In translation.
Yep I mean customer... Sorry for the lecturing.
I'm thrilled to see someone grasp the important point and react appropriately, thank you.
the_scotsman wrote: Comparing csm kits to their "marine equivalent" is the most obvious sure-fire way to point out the reality of GWs blatant marine favoritism.
They just always get more in the kit and the kit costs less, lol.
Look. Those spikes take a lot of space on the sprue!
Haha, what they did to the new Ork set is so GW it hurts. Jesus. Poor Orks. You wait all that time for new models and then they give you some monopose boyz that are stuck partially choppas and partially shooters with no option to even swap the weapons.
It must be exhausting trying to defend GW, every time you settle on a PR strategy they do something new that rips the rug out from under you.
yukishiro1 wrote: Haha, what they did to the new Ork set is so GW it hurts. Jesus. Poor Orks. You wait all that time for new models and then they give you some monopose boyz that are stuck partially choppas and partially shooters with no option to even swap the weapons.
The issue really is that GW don't put nearly as much resources to xenos than to Imperium. If this was a marine release, then it would be almost certain that this was just a starter box sprue and there would be a separate full kit later with full options. But it's orks, so it's probably not gonna happen. If this is all the boyz are gonna get, then at minimum they should have made at least couple of them to have an option to be built with wither choppa or shoota, so if you got twenty you could at least build ten of each. Three shootas per ten models if frankly bizarre.
It must be exhausting trying to defend GW, every time you settle on a PR strategy they do something new that rips the rug out from under you.
Who does that? It might be hard to grasp, but some people actually have no agenda, and understand that GW is just a company that produces some great stuff and some not so great stuff. And then you only buy the stuff you like.
I wouldn't stop buying models but I would quit collecting armies. I am perfectly fine with E2B monopose like Indomitus, Dominion, Cursed City or Warhammer Underworlds warbands. I think models look awesome and not being poseable doesn't make them worse for me.
Monopose only becomes an issue for me if I have to build or paint exactly the same model multiple times. I would buy one set of Beast Snagga Boyz or nuBoyz but not multiple sets.
I don't care where I am at HBMC's scale of denial and I don't understand why he cares either.
Goose LeChance wrote: Marine popularity will only continue to grow if they have better looking models with more modular kits.
Haha, black knights like you are hilarious. "Don't buy ork kits, because if you do, GW will produce less ork kits". Do you even read some of your own gak sometimes?
Goose LeChance wrote: Marine popularity will only continue to grow if they have better looking models with more modular kits.
Haha, black knights like you are hilarious. "Don't buy ork kits, because if you do, GW will produce less ork kits". Do you even read some of your own gak sometimes?
They won't produce less Ork kits, they'll produce monopose Ork kits. Of course there's probably a bit more coming and then that's it for the next 10 years.
Space Marines will just continue to dominate the market because when someone sees the virgin monopose Ork next to the chad modular Marine it's game over.
Just like few people will buy 20 year old IG/Eldar models when you've got Primaris Marines next to them on a shelf.
"Don't buy monopose kits unless you want to send the message to GW that people will buy monopose kits" seems like a fairly reasonable take.
GW doesn't care if you're holding your nose when you hit the purchase button, they just care that you hit the button. Every time somebody purchases a monopose kit they send a datapoint to GW that monopose kits sell.
Doesn't mean you can't do it, obviously. It's also reasonable to say "it's better than nothing, and I'd rather they make monopose orks than no orks." Even if it is a little bit sad in terms of being resigned to those being the only options.
Question is whether GW will make that connection or conclude that orks don't sell in general anymore. You'd have to be very vocal in pointing out the issue being the monopose construction.
Or just, like, buy multipose ork kits instead of monopose ones. GW often feels like it's still operating in the 1980s, but I guarantee you even they track carefully which stuff sells and which stuff doesn't and look at the type of kit it is, not just the faction.
But yes, everyone should be vocal about the reasons. If you don't like monopose kits but are buying them because you feel you have no choice, email GW with that. They won't care one whit about your individual opinion, but if they get 10,000 of them - or even better, 10,000 negative social media comments about it, new GW actually cares about its social media presence - they might.
yukishiro1 wrote: Or just, like, buy multipose ork kits instead of monopose ones. GW often feels like it's still operating in the 1980s, but I guarantee you even they track carefully which stuff sells and which stuff doesn't and look at the type of kit it is, not just the faction.
But yes, everyone should be vocal about the reasons. If you don't like monopose kits but are buying them because you feel you have no choice, email GW with that. They won't care one whit about your individual opinion, but if they get 10,000 of them - or even better, 10,000 negative social media comments about it, new GW actually cares about its social media presence - they might.
I doubt any amount of emails matter to a publicly traded mega corp like GW, as long as you buy it, they'll assume it's a success. The only thing that matters to them is your money and where you spend it. That should tell them everything they need to know.
Yeah… 110euro for three koptas… that is a negative for me. If the boys were customizable with extra bits for me to move more of my old whfb black orks and other boys into 40k, then… getting closer to a yes. With a twenty percent discount and free shipping, at effectively 90euro… much closer. Now, about that 80euro battle wagon. Wow. Yeah, I follow jullevi here. I am glad to have collected my armies already. Feel sad for anyone trying to get into the hobby now.
It was more a comment about the posts that all followed it, big thoughtful comment on the discussion and attitudes in general in the hobby…..ignore it and continue bickering.
Basically this whole thread is one side trying to convince the other that there opinion is fact. I know that’s the majority of the forum but this thread is specifically about aesthetics and personal taste. There is no right or wrong. I PREFER the newer style models but liked elements form the others. I think the new ORK boyz are too far away from easy modification, but think the primaris marine line has it pretty much bang on. I can do exactly what I could with the old ones with the new ones (it’s with in my skill set to do that level of converting). With the ORK boyz my green stuff skills aren’t up to doing much with them. The is what suits me! Not everyone.
People are perfectly free to like or dislike whatever they want. However, what I have an issue with is generated grievances and distortion of the truth. And this is what is very much going on with this 'monopose' debacle. Some people hate the primaris marines, and that's their right; but now they're just inventing reasons for hating them and as a process distorting the meaning of actually useful terms. Before the primaris no one though that the Skitarii or GSC cultists were monopose or complained that they lacked customisation potential. But when the primaris models started to use similar construction method, this was suddenly an anathema. And calling models that by no reasonable definition are monopose 'monopose' is just confusing. GW actually currently produces monopose and multipose version of many units, so these labels are useful for communicating what you're talking about.
Crimson wrote: Three shootas per ten models if frankly bizarre.
The decision is slightly less bizarre if GW have another intended purpose for these kits where cost, push-fit, and fixed load-outs are an advantage over full multi-part with a million extra options. Boyz in particular would have needed at least one extra sprue to cover all possible options, increasing tooling costs by 50%.
Other options could include:
Another self-contained board game like the two revealed this week
A Boyz Kill Team set with KT-specific upgrade sprue, like the updated Cadians
A reboot of the Battle for Vedros starter sets, intended for a much younger audience in toy shops & department stores and with a lower price
After 9 other new kits for Orks this year it's entirely possible that the whole reason these new Combat Patrol models were allocated production resources at all is because GW has another purpose lined up for them. The patrol box clearly isn't the only product for these sprues because why go to the trouble of making everything push-fit and then include a regular Deff Dread in the same box? If this was the only end-product then they'd have just done regular flying stands for the Deffkoptas instead of integrating them into the sprue.
Or it's just because, as noted previously, GW doesn't think about the game when designing the models. Models first, rules second. For all we know the model designers don't even realize that having a mixed loadout isn't something anybody would actually do in the game. Maybe they think that's how people play - Orks aren't disciplined, this guy having a gun, this guy having a choppa, this guy having a special weapon - how Orky is that?! What's the problem guys? They have a long history of not including enough heavy weapons in dedicated heavy weapons squads for everyone to take the same heavy weapon, this is just that applied to a basic troops squad as well - again, not a distinction I'm sure the model designers even necessarily appreciate.
Crimson wrote: Three shootas per ten models if frankly bizarre.
The decision is slightly less bizarre if GW have another intended purpose for these kits where cost, push-fit, and fixed load-outs are an advantage over full multi-part with a million extra options. Boyz in particular would have needed at least one extra sprue to cover all possible options, increasing tooling costs by 50%.
Other options could include:
Another self-contained board game like the two revealed this week
A Boyz Kill Team set with KT-specific upgrade sprue, like the updated Cadians
A reboot of the Battle for Vedros starter sets, intended for a much younger audience in toy shops & department stores and with a lower price
After 9 other new kits for Orks this year it's entirely possible that the whole reason these new Combat Patrol models were allocated production resources at all is because GW has another purpose lined up for them. The patrol box clearly isn't the only product for these sprues because why go to the trouble of making everything push-fit and then include a regular Deff Dread in the same box? If this was the only end-product then they'd have just done regular flying stands for the Deffkoptas instead of integrating them into the sprue.
the reason in my eyes is most likely that they want to cut down on people just building their army by buying 4-5 of the discoutned start collecting set, or ebaying secondhand models split off of the start collecting box, and ideally they have it as a starting point but then they want you to buy full price kits for the rest of your stuff.
yukishiro1 wrote: Or it's just because, as noted previously, GW doesn't think about the game when designing the models. Models first, rules second. For all we know the model designers don't even realize that having a mixed loadout isn't something anybody would actually do in the game. Maybe they think that's how people play - Orks aren't disciplined, this guy having a gun, this guy having a choppa, this guy having a special weapon - how Orky is that?! What's the problem guys? They have a long history of not including enough heavy weapons in dedicated heavy weapons squads for everyone to take the same heavy weapon, this is just that applied to a basic troops squad as well - again, not a distinction I'm sure the model designers even necessarily appreciate.
This theory assumes that the people who design the models are also the same people who decide how many of each option is included in the kits. That decision could be up to marketing or production departments. Do we have any evidence that shows that the model designers are also the people who decide what's actually included on the sprues in each kit?
In this case, each monopose model is unique (of the 10, 20 are included but that's just two sets of the 10 unique models). So there's not really anything to include multiples of. If you mean who decided that of the 10 how many were goin to have sluggas and how many choppas I don't think anybody knows that. But whoever did decide that clearly wasn't thinking of actually playing the game when they made that decision.
yukishiro1 wrote: In this case, each monopose model is unique (of the 10, 20 are included but that's just two sets of the 10 unique models). So there's not really anything to include multiples of. If you mean who decided that of the 10 how many were goin to have sluggas and how many choppas I don't think anybody knows that. But whoever did decide that clearly wasn't thinking of actually playing the game when they made that decision.
Yes, but isn't it just as likely that instead of making that decision for "artistic reasons", or "models first, rules second" as you put it, the decision was made for other reasons, such as those detailed by The_Scotsman and XTTZ? Less artistic reasons and more marketing, production, or monetary. So the blame is not so much on the model designers than on those who decide what to do with the designs once they're done?
yukishiro1 wrote: "Don't buy monopose kits unless you want to send the message to GW that people will buy monopose kits" seems like a fairly reasonable take.
GW doesn't care if you're holding your nose when you hit the purchase button, they just care that you hit the button. Every time somebody purchases a monopose kit they send a datapoint to GW that monopose kits sell.
Doesn't mean you can't do it, obviously. It's also reasonable to say "it's better than nothing, and I'd rather they make monopose orks than no orks." Even if it is a little bit sad in terms of being resigned to those being the only options.
Mr My-hoby-is-hating-GW I was responding to said that if I buy ork kits, GW will make more marines. And if I don't buy ork kits, GW will also make more marines.
So essentially, I'm free to buy whatever model I like, since GW will make more marines anyways, correct? So mono-pose doesn't matter at all.
Well as people have shown marines have a separate release schedul. other armies or factions get models or don't get models, but marines get more or less the same number of new models each edition. So they don't take away any release spots from other armies. It is the other non marine factions that do. If Gw decides to update Necron, SoB and Orks to various degrees, there is a good chance that some factions, like lets say 1ksons or GK, end up with 1 new model. And next edition it can be IG, GSC etc and orks or necron get only one new model per codex.
yukishiro1 wrote: Or just, like, buy multipose ork kits instead of monopose ones. GW often feels like it's still operating in the 1980s, but I guarantee you even they track carefully which stuff sells and which stuff doesn't and look at the type of kit it is, not just the faction.
But yes, everyone should be vocal about the reasons. If you don't like monopose kits but are buying them because you feel you have no choice, email GW with that. They won't care one whit about your individual opinion, but if they get 10,000 of them - or even better, 10,000 negative social media comments about it, new GW actually cares about its social media presence - they might.
Except there is no reason to hate kits for the sole reason of being mono-pose.
Crimson wrote: Three shootas per ten models if frankly bizarre.
The decision is slightly less bizarre if GW have another intended purpose for these kits where cost, push-fit, and fixed load-outs are an advantage over full multi-part with a million extra options. Boyz in particular would have needed at least one extra sprue to cover all possible options, increasing tooling costs by 50%.
They could have put all slugga/choppas or shootas into the box though. I agree that this mix is particularly odd, especially as a unit of shootas made out of the new kits would just be an endless repetition of the same three boyz.
That is an interesting stand point considering, the orks before the new codex and after the new codex have a higher win rate then most space marine armies of any kind.
Except there is no reason to hate kits for the sole reason of being mono-pose.
You might not care what your game tokens look like but others do, people like building and customising.
Karol wrote: That is an interesting stand point considering, the orks before the new codex and after the new codex have a higher win rate then most space marine armies of any kind.
Win rate has nothing to do with popularity though, Marines have remained on top regardless of any meta shift.
the_scotsman wrote: the reason in my eyes is most likely that they want to cut down on people just building their army by buying 4-5 of the discoutned start collecting set, or ebaying secondhand models split off of the start collecting box, and ideally they have it as a starting point but then they want you to buy full price kits for the rest of your stuff.
Sure, this would make sense if there actually was a full price kit of new boyz too.
There is a full price kit of existing Boyz though, which they kept on sale much like the Chaos Warriors they kept on sale. And the Chaos Knights they kept on sale.
They could have put all slugga/choppas or shootas into the box though. I agree that this mix is particularly odd, especially as a unit of shootas made out of the new kits would just be an endless repetition of the same three boyz.
To me that reinforces the board game / Vedros theory, because it's a way to show a wider range of Orks in a single squad. These Boyz are far more like BSF Cultists than any 'regular' 40k squad kit.
They're this way because GW don't want people buying multiples to get a discount.
That's a side-benefit to GW too, because why both assigning resources to stocking Megabosses / multi-part Boyz / Deffkoptas in separate packaging if people are breaking up Combat Patrols on ebay? I think the other faction boxes roughly work out to getting 1 vehicle 'free', while the Ork box effectively gives the Deffkoptas and Dread 'free'. The most likely outcome of that situation is the Combat Patrol gets replaced for one with less discount.
It doesn't explain why they bothered making everything push-fit and self-contained though. I'm struggling to think of any similarly designed 40k models that were not also used in a 'starter' product, such as edition starter sets, easy-to-build boxes, Imperium magazine, Sisters army launch box, etc
To be honest the problem seems to be linked a lot to how good shotas vs choppa boys are. If GW suddenly made a GK monopose kit, of lets say primaris GK, gave 2 swords , 1 halabard , one a heavy gun and one was the hammer leader, but the optimal unit load out was two falchions on each dude and never take a heavy weapon, GK players would be not very happy either. The good thing about the box, that at least the boys can be run as kommandos, so buying 2 boxes doesn't leave you with a ton of models you will never use. It would of course be better to have monopose dudes, but with both weapon options and an option to not have the heavy weapon.
H.B.M.C. wrote: There is a full price kit of existing Boyz though, which they kept on sale much like the Chaos Warriors they kept on sale. And the Chaos Knights they kept on sale.
Oh, that's not "full price" for GW's current standards.
H.B.M.C. wrote: There is a full price kit of existing Boyz though, which they kept on sale much like the Chaos Warriors they kept on sale. And the Chaos Knights they kept on sale.
Oh, that's not "full price" for GW's current standards.
Quoted for truth , especially according to the Battlewagon pricehike
H.B.M.C. wrote: There is a full price kit of existing Boyz though, which they kept on sale much like the Chaos Warriors they kept on sale. And the Chaos Knights they kept on sale.
Yes, but the old ones look like crap compared to the new ones. Granted, more with chaos warriors than orks, but still. In any case I certainly wouldn't mix the old and new, it would look wrong just like the minimarines next to the primaris.
Crimson wrote: Yes, but the old ones look like crap compared to the new ones. Granted, more with chaos warriors than orks, but still. In any case I certainly wouldn't mix the old and new, it would look wrong just like the minimarines next to the primaris.
I don't think the new Orks are better than the old ones.
Crimson wrote: Yes, but the old ones look like crap compared to the new ones. Granted, more with chaos warriors than orks, but still. In any case I certainly wouldn't mix the old and new, it would look wrong just like the minimarines next to the primaris.
I don't think the new Orks are better than the old ones.
I think they're better looking. And they definitely are different looking. I think they would look wrong in mixed squads.
harlokin wrote: IMO, if monopose Ork kits don't sell, GW's conclusion will be that there is limited interest in Orks, not monopose.
That's exactly how they want you to feel. What are they gonna do, stop selling every army but Space Marines and kill their own game?
It's unproductive to have this fear. Frankly people should not have bought Death Guard or any other monopose BS if they feel strongly about it.
How long did Ork players wait for new models, and this is what they've offered? Especially when compared to Marines it's pathetic. GW knows Orks are the kitbash faction and they did it anyway.
How many times must I write up lengthy counter points...
How many times must I explain...
Why must I continue to content...
I have a number for you: zero times. You don't have to do any of that. You don't have to convince anyone that their opinions, facts of preferences are wrong.
I know that you are trying to be clever, witty or funny by having a whole list of stages of denial but instead of making fun of others it just makes you look like a fool. Which is a shame because I find your posts entertaining most of the time. And for the record, I agree with many of your concerns about lack of poseability or options, I just don't take it personally.
My point is that our subjective opinions of whether we think the new Ork Boyz look better than the existing Boyz is kinda irrelevant.
Sure. Except if you like the old boyz, then there is no problem. They still sell those. However if you're like me and thought the old boys looked bad, and wouldn't want to build an army with such ugly and outdated models, the new better looking set having very limited options is more of an issue.
H.B.M.C. wrote: We'll just have to wait and see. I'll see if I can put them side-by-side and see what comes up.
I'd love to see side-by-side, but I'm certain they will look off. I've seen pics of beast snaggas next to the old orks, and they don't work together. The newer ones just have different proportions; they're still cartoony, but far less so. The new boyz seem to be the same.
Goose LeChance wrote: How long did Ork players wait for new models, and this is what they've offered? Especially when compared to Marines it's pathetic.
Not the best comparison imo.
Excluding Indomitus (the sprues for which doubled up a few unit entries and covered several edition starter sets plus the new magazine), Orks received exactly the same number of new kits this year as marines did last year. A similar proportion were mono-build / push-fit / easy-to-build too. The Marine (& Sisters) combat patrols also have fewer unit build options that the new Ork one.
Don't get why the Ork release is 'pathetic' but the marine one isn't.
Goose LeChance wrote: How long did Ork players wait for new models, and this is what they've offered? Especially when compared to Marines it's pathetic.
Not the best comparison imo.
Excluding Indomitus (the sprues for which doubled up a few unit entries and covered several edition starter sets plus the new magazine), Orks received exactly the same number of new kits this year as marines did last year. A similar proportion were mono-build / push-fit / easy-to-build too. The Marine (& Sisters) combat patrols also have fewer unit build options that the new Ork one.
Don't get why the Ork release is 'pathetic' but the marine one isn't.
So if we exclude a whole bunch of new Marine models and only look at the most recent Marine release wave, they're just the same as Orks!
Well I'm glad that isn't at all a biased analysis.
Win rate has nothing to do with popularity though, Marines have remained on top regardless of any meta shift.
Yes for marines. The one distinctive faction in the game. You have not seen waves of DE armies, before they got the rule set they got. Same with ad mecha and every other army in the game. Which means that if we are talking about models for an army other then the various marine factions, the rules very much become a factor in popularity. Plus even for marines, I have my doubts that scouts or centurions, generate sales anything close to what happened in 8th ed. Reavers didn't become popular in 9th, and technically they got a SW unique update.
Komandos, buggies, jets etc are selling great for orks. DE raiders at some points were gone from most stores. Chickens for ad mecha etc were the same. All those things happen were directly linked to rules updated, which were favourable.
In fact the speed of how something gets sold out in different web stores is a partially good indication, if something is popular. Or at least, if it does not sell out, it is a clear sign that something is not popular.
).
), but I think that came down to people expecting their Kill-Teams to be useable in the new rules, and not to have all their options stripped away. Y'know, a bit like when a new kit comes out and it's all mono-pose. 
). The Indomitus box finally turned me around on Primaris Marines (dumb Cawl fluff notwithstanding). Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City are two of the coolest things 
. CHAINCANNON. 
