Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been noticing as I go through the rulebook, that whenever they show IG armies in pictures of battles, that they don't seem to be legal according to the Codex. The main thing is that they seem to just completely leave out the Command squads. For instance, a heavy weapons platoon is composed of one to three support squads, and a command squad. Yet they always just show random little clumps of support squads with no command squads.

For example, in the "Lord Borkrull's fortress" battle picture on page 237, there are multiple have weapons squads, and lots of little clumps of 8-10 infantry, and yet no-where on the board is there a command squad. So what's the deal with all the little groups? I feel like I'm missing something really obvious here, but I can't figure out what.

Hey, maybe the command squad are drop troops
I don't think GW's picture armies are necessarily legal.

They are intended to look cool and get you to buy the toy soldiers. Remember, never try to mix GW and reality.

The IG codex also has a splash shot with at least 4 HS choices...

Huh, thanks. I'll remember that GW and reality are non-compatible...

They just don't care enough to get it right.

they just wana look cool.:]

I'm throwing in my $.02 with these guys.

I don't know that any of my GW publications have legit armies displayed (short of the example FOC pics) even back to 2nd edition... usually just a few random squads in diorama.

And if you look at their pictured armies close, you'll often notice over half the figs in them are just copy/pastes of the same figs over and over.

games workshop is in business to sell models- not to get you to play the game. if that were so- you'd stop selling an army after people bought their core troops and other odds and ends to make the 1750/2250 tournie list.

thats why lotr does well- the models are exceptional

The armies and games typically shown in pictures are more dioramas then actual games. They are designed to look good and exciting, and to show a wide range of models.

They are rarely legal forces.

I talked to some of the GW guys about this. One of our local store's staffers had his army sent in to be pictured for White Dwarf. When it went in the magazine, it totally wasn't a legal army and he got made fun of to no end. It turned out that the models were just given to a photographer who had little to no idea about the rules of the game and he just arranged the models how he thought looked cool. From then on I blame photographers and editors who's world of design only concerns aesthetics rather than rules.

LionElJohnson - That may be true, but I think it goes a little deeper into the in house staff than that.

Do you remember the 3rd edition statured Daemon Prince with the Bolter, in the Chaos book?

I've always randomly seen ridiculous things, from setup/load outs of pictures units and just general disregard for the actual rules and FOC.

yeah,
Making Photos look cool is a priority, I for one like looking at cool photos, so i don't have a problem with that.

another possibily is that when the books photos are taken, the codex isn't finnished.
So where the units will be in the FOC or what models will be required to complete a unit probabily hasn't been fully decided yet?

aduro: I think the reason for the copy paste is because they are using pre production models. the actual sprues have probabliy not gone into production and so if they want more than one unit of a particular type they have no choice but to copy and paste...

these are my thoughts... not facts...

PaniC...

The 3rd Edition Eldar book had a picture of some player's army that was 2e legal but had one too many Heavy choices. It was oddly enough Craftworld Eldar legal under a Biel-Tan list.