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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 -DE- wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
How did Blanche keep his job next to other artist's work like this?!!

Because John Blanche is an artist that creates, while Mark Gibbons is an artist that recreates.

THat's it in a nutshell.

Blanche is a classically trained artist who, along with Jes Goodwin basically created the look of 40k, bringing all sorts of Roman, Medieval, Rennissance and other influences to it (along with more than his share of madness). While his style has gotten looser over the last 25 years he's the innovator and others are following along in his wake.

Did he even finish his studies?

I still own this book.

However, i really wish I had gotten my hand son the 2nd Edition SoB codex. So much cool fluff tha tI have never actually read on the page.

 -DE- wrote:

Because John Blanche is an artist that creates, while Mark Gibbons is an artist that recreates.

Perhaps, but I much prefer Mark Gibbon's work. John Blanche is just too untidy.

My second edition army was Imperial Guard Not sure why the hatred of tanks. At the time most people could field *maybe* 1-2 tanks. I fielded 6!

2 chimera's, 1 leman russ, 1 demolisher and 1 hellhound, and 1 basilisk. That's 6 free pre-game barrages. None of my opponents could bring the fire power to bear to take out that many tanks and usually there brains locked up.

Combined with my two command squads with comm units and heavy weapon squad of mortars I was reigning down indirect fire on my foes.

And then my foot troops! Ah did my enemies love killing them off, thinking that it mattered. Oh you wiped out my squad? here take 1 VP, don't worry I have plenty more! They are nothing but canon fodder to screen my good units.

There was some sort of publication that included assassins and inquisitors because I used them too! Ah the cheese of those characters. My favorite was the assassin (Caladar?) who could infiltrate enemy squads. I would pick an enemy squad and replace one model with my guy, who would then beat the stuffing out of them.

If I remember correctly, the IG codex was the first codes to introduce force structure charts. Before that it was just percentages so it forced you to take some crap units.

My IG was an unstoppable killing machine thansk for bringing back the memories.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Catachan fluff is completely over the top. Ridiculously so.

"Every living thing on Catachan is inimical to human life. Every creature is a carnivore. Every plant is poisonous."

Wouldn't this mean there's a huge unexplroed niche in the Catchan bio-sphere for a fast-breeding, poison-resistant critter?

Well, it makes zero sense anyhow.
Without herbivores there's no way for the energy in the food chain to transfer from the plants to the animals, so the carnivores would eat themselves into starvation within a couple of months.

Or that somebody on the writing team took a vacation to Australia....

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Though I think that the term 'Deathworld' was taken from Harry Harrison's series by the same title. The first world was full of incredibly letak critters and plant - what the colonists did not understand was that they were inimical to humans. That all this lethality was closer to the planet's immune system than to just a whole bunch of really nasty wild life.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
That all this lethality was closer to the planet's immune system than to just a whole bunch of really nasty wild life.

40K's Deathworlds evolved into this kind of thing eventually.

Can't help but think that a lot of the criticism of 2nd edition comes from people not reading the rules properly.
You did not get one shot per tank for preliminary barrage, but 1 per LRBT, Basilisk and Griffon.
And then in game it was 1 shot per comm-link if you rolled under a 'interference' level on a D6.

As for the tanks themselves, 2nd edition tanks were extremely powerful, they were fast, could fire all their weapons at different targets (if enough targets were available), add on the need to take specialist AT weapons to be able to destroy tanks.

Anyway..

The idea behind the 5 different sets of metal models, was that each platoon of cmd squad + 1-3 squads would be all the same.
unfortunately a lot of guard players wanted 1 of each set because a. variety is the spice of life! and b. until late on in 2nd edition you couldn't get all the weapon options for each different regiment.
Why the switch from multi-part plastic to metal? your guess is as good as mine (plastic mordians would have been so cool!), i will say that i prefer the old stormtrooper look to the new one, badass guys in berets always a winner.

machineuk wrote:
Can't help but think that a lot of the criticism of 2nd edition comes from people not reading the rules properly.
You did not get one shot per tank for preliminary barrage, but 1 per LRBT, Basilisk and Griffon.
And then in game it was 1 shot per comm-link if you rolled under a 'interference' level on a D6.

As for the tanks themselves, 2nd edition tanks were extremely powerful, they were fast, could fire all their weapons at different targets (if enough targets were available), add on the need to take specialist AT weapons to be able to destroy tanks.

Anyway..

The idea behind the 5 different sets of metal models, was that each platoon of cmd squad + 1-3 squads would be all the same.
unfortunately a lot of guard players wanted 1 of each set because a. variety is the spice of life! and b. until late on in 2nd edition you couldn't get all the weapon options for each different regiment.
Why the switch from multi-part plastic to metal? your guess is as good as mine (plastic mordians would have been so cool!), i will say that i prefer the old stormtrooper look to the new one, badass guys in berets always a winner.

I just read that post and wondered how someone could get a barrage from a Chimera.

In hindsight I believe the metals gave GW a cheaper option to do multiple Regiments compared to the costs for plastic tooling.

Storm Troopers were plastic as theoretically every IG player might want them but not everyone would want Valhallans as their backbone.

I have a feeling that if you told Mark Gibbons that he doesn't create, only re-creates, he might punch you. And he'd be right to.

 Balance wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Catachan fluff is completely over the top. Ridiculously so.

"Every living thing on Catachan is inimical to human life. Every creature is a carnivore. Every plant is poisonous."

Wouldn't this mean there's a huge unexplroed niche in the Catchan bio-sphere for a fast-breeding, poison-resistant critter?

What's perhaps more sad is that it has since been ret-conned that the catachan devil is possibly the spawn of some hive fleet ship. Like.. Genestealers are now, like even the sodding Kraken thing Russ fought on Fenris bloody years before(?!). There is not a single highly dangerous animal in the galaxy that is not connected to the Tyranids somehow. It's like they took all of the imagination, crunched it up and squeezed it into a small bottle.

Nice write up and pictures!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

If you weren't alive then, please mention it in the comments, it's a rule!

I was in college in 1995. Shut up!

I always enjoy these. Keep them coming!

 Balance wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Catachan fluff is completely over the top. Ridiculously so.

"Every living thing on Catachan is inimical to human life. Every creature is a carnivore. Every plant is poisonous."

Wouldn't this mean there's a huge unexplroed niche in the Catchan bio-sphere for a fast-breeding, poison-resistant critter?

Wait, so Catachan is Australia

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


A couple of options disappeared in this edition. Penal legions with their suicide bombers went away (probably for the best), beastmen were purged (but Ogryn stayed?), robots were deactivated (if you ever saw their rules you know why), conscripts/whiteshields got promoted, and everyone had to turn in their underbarrel grenade launchers with vortex grenades (darnit!).

Ah, come on - The robot rules were fantastic! You essentially had to program them yourself

Wicked thread! Keep the Nostalgia coming. I dug out my old 2nd edition box the other day and had a pick through what's in their. Wargear cards, vehicle cards. Wow, so much interesting stuff to read...

I still regularly read my 2ed Battle Sister codex because of how interesting it is.

Great review

 Flashman wrote:
Always enjoyed Mark Gibbons' very polished artwork, but it was a little cartoony for the subject matter. YMMV of course.

Specifically for the IG, or in general? Much of the subsequent art once MG left was simply their new "in-house" artists being trained to try and draw in Mark's style. I found his art fo the IG codex to be exaggerated in the same way that the proportions of the miniatures are rather than cartoony, though... his marine and chaos stuff OTOH really has never been surpassed in many instances.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
How did Blanche keep his job next to other artist's work like this?!!

Spoiler:

Being the boss helps.

 -DE- wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
How did Blanche keep his job next to other artist's work like this?!!

Because John Blanche is an artist that creates, while Mark Gibbons is an artist that recreates.

Such a simplistic view of the world. Or to put it another way: When you're an employee or doing work-for-hire, and your boss (Blanche in this instance) tells you to "draw one of those" while giving you a design brief, you draw one of those.

I love Marc Gibbon's work. From this Codex through Necromunda, the Black Templars Codex (Grimaldus and Retinue) up to the Stompa with apparent nipple chain sketch but that Commissar painting has always left me cold.

I have no idea why...unless its a subliminal reaction to me thinking smoking is a filthy habit.

As for Blanche's work I have no clear opinion, it all depends on the individual piece. The Sisters of Battle art is up there with my all-time 40K favourites but I'd like to unsee a lot of his work.

There are quite a few award winning actors out there who can be amazing with a good director to tell them what to do, but if left to their own devices produce utterly atrocious performances.

Blanche is the same, on the rare rare occasions he actually finishes a piece it's usually amazing, but since he's the boss he can mostly just toss out quarter finished scribblings.

I'm gonna go ahead and say this is one of the best things I've ever read on Dakka. I hope you review more 2nd Ed codices. Makes me put some perspective on some of my own whining about modern 40k.

Make sure you read Kyoto's reviews of the Realm of Chaos books linked earlier in the thread!