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I have one major issue with WH40k. Whenever you see a model that you love, being painted by 'Eavy Metal, they keep it PG. Most models are PG (As PG as a 10 foot RPG SM can be...)
Also, this is WAR. War is not fought on pure grassland. Add some bodies! Put some casualties and gore on the fields. If the 40K universe was realistic, DC would be up to their ankles in gore, and DE would have organs spewed all over their bodies.

So put my rant in to one question: Where is the blood in 40k? It seems that GW could make a killing giving blood tutorials and modeling blood spewing from weapons. Is it to appease the 12 year old's mothers (I.E. Where are the DE in a GW?) Or another, odd reason all together?

yes i aggre the art work just looks to....clean

I believe the idea is that your models are pre-wounds. Space marines have to keep their armor clean, of course, and so they would clean off their armor. Imperial guard would have similar levels of cleanliness, as I'm guessing Tau would. Eldar, well, I'm guessing that blood looks ugly on spirit stones, and for all the generally "good"-ish guys. Chaos and deamons, not sure why they wouldn't have blood/guts. And yeah, the DE should have blood on them. I've seen some of their skiffs with chained skeletons to the side, although I'm not sure that was part of the original model. I have seen some cool tutorials in WD (I think) on how to paint blood and bloodied snow.

Hmm I think really as far as combat goes. Be it any type of combat or era. The only time you are really bloodied is during and shortly after a battle. Other then that you keep your crap pretty clean. Blood is well dirty. Can carry illness as well as not at all good for your gear.

A Matter of Pride wrote:Hmm I think really as far as combat goes. Be it any type of combat or era. The only time you are really bloodied is during and shortly after a battle. Other then that you keep your crap pretty clean. Blood is well dirty. Can carry illness as well as not at all good for your gear.

you may have been in the real life militery but this is 40k where screaming mad men charge into battle chainswords roaring with holy rage thier armour forged from contempt thier boltpistols barking litineys of hate


so thats a little diffferent from what your used to.

Blood effects look very childish, as do corpse piles, etc.

They're difficult to do well, and to boot: they detract from the models themselves.

Kanluwen wrote:Blood effects look very childish, as do corpse piles, etc.

They're difficult to do well, and to boot: they detract from the models themselves.

The good blood effects are very minimal; just a little splotch on the armor, a tiny bit of gore on the sword, ect. It is extremely easy to overdo it. As said above 99% of gore effects detract from the model because they're overdone.

I'm thinking blood on the swords, CCW, perhaps small spots on the armor. Nothing that drastic. Except I HATE GW tables. Who has a war in a perfectly green field? If you went to war on a planet, there had to be some sort of bloodshed before hand.

chowderhead13 wrote:I'm thinking blood on the swords, CCW, perhaps small spots on the armor. Nothing that drastic. Except I HATE GW tables. Who has a war in a perfectly green field? If you went to war on a planet, there had to be some sort of bloodshed before hand.

such as entire cracked grounds filled with skulls?

Nah who'd make such a thing

chowderhead13 wrote: Who has a war in a perfectly green field?

Erm..Attila the Hun, Gengis Khan, Napoleon, Most Tank Battles, Pre-trenched WW1, Almost EVERY non-siege medieval battle, The british Empire during its colonial days, Romans, To some extent Greeks, Persians, Sal Al-Din. Just to name a couple

Sry but i just couldnt resist

I agree on that most fields are too "clean", but I thought 40k wasn't about big battles, more "Skirmishes" of two patrols clashing.
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That's what we have apocalypse for!

I thought 40k was showing a small section of a massive force fighting a massive force. Apoc is just to show the massive forces. Normal 40k is to show small chunks.

In simplification: So, you are the period. (.=YOU)

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micahaphone wrote:Eldar, well, I'm guessing that blood looks ugly on spirit stones, and for all the generally "good"-ish guys.

Are you kidding? The Eldar come from one of the most hedonistic histories in the galaxy! There's really not too much seperating them from their dark bretheren, especially the Aspect Warriors, who embrace warlike culture. Exarchs probably get off a little when some blood splatters onto their armour.

I have some of my orkz painted up with some blood on them. Just one Nob who's painted as if his right eye's just been shot out, and another nob with a big choppa who's been splattered head-to-toe... I don't think I need to explain why for him.

For the most part though, unless you do the blood really, really well, it's going to look quite bad.

Ah. How do we know that these aren't a new battlefield? Then again, 40k has big time differences, with many, many years between the battles on familiar ground. Take a look at Gettysburg (and various other historic battlefields). It is a nice, green combination of farmland, plains, and forests. Sure, it has been around 250 years, give or take, since the battle, but even 20-50 years later, there are few/no signs of the old battle.

That is, unless you're on a special planet with a less active natural cycle than our own.


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Y'know, the whole scifi if you need the setting make a planet for the idea.

warboss spinetwizta wrote:

A Matter of Pride wrote:Hmm I think really as far as combat goes. Be it any type of combat or era. The only time you are really bloodied is during and shortly after a battle. Other then that you keep your crap pretty clean. Blood is well dirty. Can carry illness as well as not at all good for your gear.

you may have been in the real life militery but this is 40k where screaming mad men charge into battle chainswords roaring with holy rage thier armour forged from contempt thier boltpistols barking litineys of hate


so thats a little diffferent from what your used to.

Even with that. You dont want blood and gore on that chain sword for very long. It will rust the chain faster. Get into the inner workings of the machine and mess things up.

A normal CCW like a sword will be relaticly clean so it doesnt rust. Plus after a heavy battle it will need to be taken to a wet stone which will take everything off.

I dont imagine a power sword ever getting anything on it ever. You could even say depending on how a power sword really works. When it cuts into flesh it could burn the wound close instantly.


But really most things in 40k are more for the rule of cool more then anything else. Mass gore just doesnt seem all that cool to most people.

Flayed Ones painted by the studio aren't even that gory and those guys have carved off drapes of fresh skin on them!

Ummm... Have you ever seen a well-painted and converted Nurgle army?

Guts and pus are everywhere. Any army with any kind of discipline isn't going to have nasty gak all over their armor and gear.

Kurgash wrote:Flayed Ones painted by the studio aren't even that gory and those guys have carved off drapes of fresh skin on them!

That's pretty gory, IMHO.

I personally like to think Bloodletters actually have brown skin. . .

they, like Orkz, never take showers after a proper fight

I, like others, think that it's way too easy to go OTT when it comes to blood.

chowderhead13 wrote:Or another, odd reason all together?

It's a lot more work, and if it's not done right, it looks more silly than sinister.

Kanluwen wrote:Blood effects look very childish, as do corpse piles, etc.

They're difficult to do well, and to boot: they detract from the models themselves.

DING! DING! DING! DING!

We have a winner!

Nicely put, Kanluwen, nicely put.


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micahaphone wrote:I agree on that most fields are too "clean", but I thought 40k wasn't about big battles, more "Skirmishes" of two patrols clashing.
More of --> !!! <---


versus
---><----
---><----
----><----
That's what we have apocalypse for!

The battles of 40k are more representative of a single part of a greater battle, where you and your opponents armies are fighting on the table is where the thickest, bloodiest and crucial fighting is taking place, or it could just be a border skirmish/two patrols meeting and taking it to one another.

Apoc was just a reason to fork out even more money for this gak.


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Monster Rain wrote:Ummm... Have you ever seen a well-painted and converted Nurgle army?

Guts and pus are everywhere. Any army with any kind of discipline isn't going to have nasty gak all over their armor and gear.

lolchaos, even the incredibly loose realism of 40k means dick to them.

GW doesn't shy away from tasteful gore and the like, when it's necessary.

To wit:







As well as their Dark Eldar slaves and a wounded Guardsman model, neither of which I could find.

But the point is, too much gore makes a model 1) boring to paint and 2) boring to look at. A bit of gore here and there adds character, and that's what GW does.

And you'll notice three out of those five pictures are 1) Nurgle Daemons (or, more accurately, two Nurgle Daemons and a Plague Ogryn), who are the most rancid of all models, yet still are not too over the top... and also 2) ForgeWorld models, who, though a subsidiary of Games Workshop, have their own design team.

You think 'eavy metal is clean now! you should have been around for 2nd!

It's 40K, not Mortal Kombat, so there is a limit to how much gore you can put on a model. Too much and people will just laugh at it.

it's really easy to do grimdark very poorly. That said, I feel that GW has been slowly moving away from its grimdark roots. Look no further than the artwork in the rules books for confirmation.

I've been slowly working to fix that with my army. For example, the guard has astropaths. Astropaths are tortured to death so that their soul can be bound to a chunk of the emperor's essence before it is quickly shoved back in their bodies. The process leaves most people dead, and those who survive suffer from terrible physical degradation.

How does GW represent this unit?



and here's how I modeled mine...



I like to think that a little tasteful gore can be used to bring back some real grimdark.

Ailaros wrote:it's really easy to do grimdark very poorly. That said, I feel that GW has been slowly moving away from its grimdark roots. Look no further than the artwork in the rules books for confirmation.

I've been slowly working to fix that with my army. For example, the guard has astropaths. Astropaths are tortured to death so that their soul can be bound to a chunk of the emperor's essence before it is quickly shoved back in their bodies. The process leaves most people dead, and those who survive suffer from terrible physical degradation.

How does GW represent this unit?



and here's how I modeled mine...



I like to think that a little tasteful gore can be used to bring back some real grimdark.

I loved that conversion and still do. I do agree that with some conservative use of gore ( oxymoron i know! ). You can get a much better effect. As too much just looks comical and cheap.

I usually put just a smigen of blood on my 40k models.

a little splatter here, a wound here.

the most 40k gore i did was on my GK dreadnought who has just finished ripping a CSM in half and is holding part, but even then it is confined to a relitivly small portion of the body and DCCW.



my Fantasy Ogres have quite a bot more, but it isn't completely covering the area that the blood is splatted over(more of heavy splatting from multiple victims)

the human body only has a few quarts of blood and not all of it will come out at once. you can bleed out in 2-3 minutes and that is from a relitivly small hole.

you can sever an arm with a sword and come away with a little streak on the blade. the arm will begin bleading vigorously within a second, but after the sword is gone and the victum is on the ground screaming.

Honestly, the best way I've seen to do tasteful blood splatters?

Load up a toothbrush with really really watered down red paint(50/50 mix of Red Gore and Blood Red works amazing here), then flick it in the model's direction.

Hmmm... I may have to try that on my Khorne marines. Thanks for the general tip.

That's what I did for this guy...


I figure that, considering the nature of the weapon, that that amount of blood is not only acceptable, but absolutely necessary.