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The first look at Warhammer+ is up on the Warhammer Community site for 24 hours only.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/21/24-hours-only-watch-a-free-episode-of-hammer-and-bolter/

It's not what I expected, but I enjoyed it. The story was good and I liked the composition.

Story was OK, I've only read it like ten times already.

Animation quality was horrid, barely above slideshow level.

It's good, and has orks in it.

I love how the Ghazkull character was the old model!

Old story with mediocre animations but at least told from an Ork perspective. Could be worse I guess.

I really enjoyed it! A lot of these old stories deserved to be made into such tales, and being told from the Ork perspective allowed the story to twist and weave from bloody fight to bloody fight without needing to spend time any time on fiddly bits. And it even had character development and a point to it!



So, simple? Sure! Old story? Sure! Enjoyable? You bet!

Well, that's borderline what I'd call "animated", but that was metal enough.

Fairly low quality stuff, wouldn’t have me subscribe at Netflix level prices.

 Albertorius wrote:

Animation quality was horrid, barely above slideshow level.

I think they've worked well with the budget they've got. Clearly there wasn't money to animated the whole thing to 80-90s level anime. What they have instead is a very solid style of animation that works. I think it also works well as this is more of a narrated story summary than it is an in depth adventure.

I'd also say that it does its job well, you don't really have to understand too much of the setting to get what's going on. Which is just what you want from some of these early works that are clearly aiming to reach out to new people - both new to warhammer and those new to the lore side of things who haven't read all the BL books.

 Overread wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

Animation quality was horrid, barely above slideshow level.

I think they've worked well with the budget they've got. Clearly there wasn't money to animated the whole thing to 80-90s level anime. What they have instead is a very solid style of animation that works. I think it also works well as this is more of a narrated story summary than it is an in depth adventure.

Again, what budget is that supposed to be? 13 episodes of 23-minutes anime run at an average of 2 million dollars.

I was surprised to actually like it.

Yeah, it was okay for me as well. A bit difficult to follow ork's accent since english isn't my first language, I wouldn't have minded some subtitles at some time.

True, not everything was animated, but sometimes you don't need to for the story and I really like the "comix style" for some action scenes, like you were really reading one. Fits the tone nicely, IMHO.

Wonder if the other episodes are still told from the ork's point of view or if they'll go in a more traditionnal storytelling.

I thought it was meh. GW should really have pulled out all the stops to wow us as an introduction to Warhammer+, and this certainly isn't that.

TBH, I wasn't expecting a DC animated movie, here, just an animated series you can see on a patreon channel (it's not that great either in comparison). So I wasn't expecting much from the start.

Still, can see the creators of this series put a lot of work in this one. Would have liked to know who they are, indeed.

Sarouan wrote:
TBH, I wasn't expecting a DC animated movie, here, just an animated series you can see on a patreon channel (it's not that great either in comparison). So I wasn't expecting much from the start.

Still, can see the creators of this series put a lot of work in this one. Would have liked to know who they are, indeed.

Well, if they plan to play on the streaming service field (and charge), they better be on par with at least some of them.

How do the Germans say this again? Scheiße?

Like I already thought, if this is the quality of stories we can expect from WH+, the animations are the least interesting aspect of it

I enjoyed it, appreciated the Ork perspective. Had me chuckling at times!

 Albertorius wrote:


Well, if they plan to play on the streaming service field (and charge), they better be on par with at least some of them.

Sure. Though reason why I'm not subscribing to Netflix instead of Warhammer + is because I want to see Warhammer related content - and I won't find it on Netflix.

And if I subscribe to Miniwargaming...I know I won't find any animated series here as well. Yet the price is still somewhat the same.

Comparing contents is good, but better to see if content comparison is relevant as well.

Sarouan wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:


Well, if they plan to play on the streaming service field (and charge), they better be on par with at least some of them.

Sure. Though reason why I'm not subscribing to Netflix instead of Warhammer + is because I want to see Warhammer related content - and I won't find it on Netflix.

And if I subscribe to Miniwargaming...I know I won't find any animated series here as well. Yet the price is still somewhat the same.

Comparing contents is good, but better to see if content comparison is relevant as well.

Sure, but what could be more relevant that between streaming services, given that's what W+ is?

If your only retort to that is "not warhammer on Netflix"... well, yeah. No Star Wars on Netflix either, nor Marvel. But there's Warhammer on Youtube, of a similar quality, and that's free. Was even more, back when GW didn't want to create their own service, so you're objectively worse off now.

Comparing it with a subscription to Miniwargaming, though? That is doing a "non relevant" comparison.

And that's not even going into the "how much content there even is" territory...

 Albertorius wrote:
Animation quality was horrid, barely above slideshow level.

If you get rid of all the fan animations, none can compare your poor animation quality to fan work.

Clever, GW.

 Albertorius wrote:
And that's not even going into the "how much content there even is" territory...

The vast majority of people are probably only subscribing for the models and would probably care less if + was just the 40k App and a digital catalogue. Attitudes largely did a complete 180 around the web once the "freebie" was revealed despite it actually having less content than what largely seemed to be predicted. The animations could be Eddie and Adam playing with finger puppets while telling us they're the best shadows ever and people would now be fine with it because £50 for a Vindicare statue is about what they'd pay retail anyway.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Animation quality was horrid, barely above slideshow level.

If you get rid of all the fan animations, none can compare your poor animation quality to fan work.

Clever, GW.

I mean they didn't get rid of them - many of them are going to appear through Warhammer+

Sarouan wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:


Well, if they plan to play on the streaming service field (and charge), they better be on par with at least some of them.

Sure. Though reason why I'm not subscribing to Netflix instead of Warhammer + is because I want to see Warhammer related content - and I won't find it on Netflix.

And if I subscribe to Miniwargaming...I know I won't find any animated series here as well. Yet the price is still somewhat the same.

Comparing contents is good, but better to see if content comparison is relevant as well.

well, until we have a better idea of the quality of the other elements (the loremaster videos, the batreps, etc), then its rather hard to make a serious comparison to what is already available for free elsewhere.

I, for one, was happy enough with the quality of the animation. its hard to say if they leant into that art style for purely artistic or logistical/budgetary reasons, but the animator still managed to make it work. i intend to subscribe anyway as i currently use the 40K app which is getting rolled into this, so any decent work, particuarlly AOS stuff that might get some more converts for that game form the 40K side, would be most welcome.

 Overread wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Animation quality was horrid, barely above slideshow level.

If you get rid of all the fan animations, none can compare your poor animation quality to fan work.

Clever, GW.

I mean they didn't get rid of them - many of them are going to appear through Warhammer+

Not rid of. Just co opted and charged.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Fairly low quality stuff, wouldn’t have me subscribe at Netflix level prices.

Even the most basic Netflix plan which only lets you watch on one device and isn't HD is 30% more than Warhammer+ when paying monthly or 45% more compared to Warhammer+ if you're paying annually. If you go with a standard Netflix plan, which I assume is what most people have, you're at nearly 3 times the price of Warhammer+.

That doesn't include all the app support and annual model you get either.

So sure, while the quality shown so far doesn't match the quality of a Netflix original show or movie, I think it's still decent and I found the episode enjoyable. Netflix also didn't start out with the level of content they have now(they actually didn't have any original content), they can produce that through the revenue they make from subscriptions. So Warhammer+ also has the ability to produce better content over time with the money made from subscriptions.

It seems there's this fan entitlement that media content should be free because you are a fan and/or pay a lot for miniatures already, which is absurd. You don't get free books from Black Library because you bought some models.

While on the subject of Black Library, and I think it's a good example of what level of content can be made over time with dedicated media channels within the overall GW company. Early days could be hot or miss with novels, but overtime they've really built a large subsection of high quality content that has its own consumers that may not interact with other aspects of the Warhammer product offerings. Plenty of people read books but don't collect models or play the games. And many more may do that but found that hobby through the books.

I think it's safe to assume the same could be true with Warhammer+ and probably on a much larger scale, as streaming media is just a more accessible and convenient format than books for many people.

For me this preview episode was enough to convince me it's worth a $60 annual purchase to see what they produce in the first year, and frankly, because I really want the Vindicare model. $60 is less than two tickets to a movie with some snacks thrown in. Not really a bad value proposition when you consider the overall content across a year of streaming service.

It was nice they chose a classic story to put out there. I like the overall art style but as others noted there's barely any animation in it. I'd be very impressed if this was an independent production but since it's produced by GW it's very underwhelming.

Also, the Space Marine models looked really weird when they showed up, perhaps my streaming quality died off during that segment.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:
It was nice they chose a classic story to put out there. I like the overall art style but as others noted there's barely any animation in it. I'd be very impressed if this was an independent production but since it's produced by GW it's very underwhelming.

Also, the Space Marine models looked really weird when they showed up, perhaps my streaming quality died off during that segment.

The space marine segment and a few with ghazkul near the end looked like they used 3d models to do the armor and just didn't do a good job blending them with the rest.

 Albertorius wrote:

Comparing it with a subscription to Miniwargaming, though? That is doing a "non relevant" comparison.

Why not ? They do produce daily content and it's mainly about Warhammer. They litterally built a business out of it - like with a physical place and all, it's not amateur work at all, they have paid employees to produce all that content. Granted, there are a lot of battle reports...but everything is painted, they do have a lot of different terrains and even if you tend to have the same armies on long term without guests, it does help to keep it varied still.

They also make reviews and painting tutorials, and give a few discounts on their store (doesn't help for me since the shipping kills me in EU). And I like their narrative campaigns where they do put a lot of work in these.

Their subscription is still $ 7,95 per month if you take their yearly Silver Membership, $11,95 if you took it monthly.

Yet, I don't mind subscribing to them if their content is good. And it is, from my point of view. Helps a lot you can already enjoy all of their past videos.

xerxeskingofking wrote:


well, until we have a better idea of the quality of the other elements (the loremaster videos, the batreps, etc), then its rather hard to make a serious comparison to what is already available for free elsewhere.

Totally agree about that. Though to be honest, the "free miniature" and the access to previous books is already worth it to give it a try in the first year.

GW know they have to start from scratch here. It's not like Miniwargaming, that does have a lot of content even if you're a first subscriber right now. You know that even if you pay certainly more for just one month, you will have enough to keep you busy for that very month already.

With Warhammer +, if I can read the previous books / white dwarves...well, even if they don't have much video content, I can at least keep myself busy with the nostalgia.

Hmm.

Got to the bit where we see Yarrick driving into battle aboard the Fortress of Arrogance, and outside Helsreach - but the audio seemed very out of sync?

Is it just me, or a stylistic thing, or should I try a different device?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hmm.

Got to the bit where we see Yarrick driving into battle aboard the Fortress of Arrogance, and outside Helsreach - but the audio seemed very out of sync?

Is it just me, or a stylistic thing, or should I try a different device?

Didn't notice. Maybe your connection was out of sync ?