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I was expecting some perky bums and crooked backs, but not on almost all of them.

All of them Brook.... a whole sea of perky crookedness....like the most titillating version of world war z ever coming for you.

 BrookM wrote:
I was expecting some perky bums and crooked backs, but not on almost all of them.

Sacré bleu! How dare you criticise such artiste's!



You sir, may see only sculpts, but they have created such beautiful art and you lack such ability to see it that you are not fit to comment! These are more than pigeon toes, broken backs and dislocated ankles! This is our new paradigm, where we interpret art from such classics like picasso and create them in miniature form!

I have been suitably chastised and I shall now reflect on what I have posted earlier.

Yeah, so am I.

Wacky poses and super uber ultra amazing style is what everyone shouldve expected.

Good! Good! Let the delicious Gifs flow. Blast their their special snowflake, delicate artistic sensibilities with the superheated air of criticism and snark.

prankster wrote:
So, twice as many armies in half the time? I suspect it'll mostly be characters with a unit or two per faction, rather than the other way around.

Some predictions (in no particular order)
Arbitrary funding level that they can blow through in minutes - $20-30k.
Somewhat elastic stretch goals during the first period, whilst they drink wine and get around to posting them.
Better communication, at least at first.
Always reaching for another unlock, rather than stopping themselves from over promising
Another entertaining Dania thread.
Delays, resculpts and changes after the fact.

That said, if they have actually learnt things, much of the above may not come to pass. Either way, I'll probably back, at least for a dollar to get updates.

Well, can't say that backers weren't warned - quoting from the fifth post in this thread!

Don't just invoke it, POST it.

Yes, yes, let's not get carried away please.

Oh how I missed that gif.

 BrookM wrote:
It's a combination of having way more "special snowflake" poses and options than the boring old bread and butter options that may do it in over time. And yes, the inability to tone it down is a massive factor in all of this as well. It's an army so busy and full of character that well, it makes you lose focus of who are supposed to the heroes and who are supposed to the scrubs!

I'll keep it in spoilers, but people looking to build armies, or even squads using the Raging Heroes models, here's what it may end up looking like. I used the Kurganova regular infantry boxed sets and one command boxed set for these.

Spoiler:

My biggest problems with these infantry kits, in short:
- Way too many running legs
- Stationary legs are far too akimbo (this is even worse with the Jailbirds sets, who can't fit onto regular 28mm bases!)
- Not enough helmeted heads! (I want the boring helmeted heads, not the wild, wind in the hair heads! )
- Not enough arms holding a rifle in both hands, whether it is shooting or at ease, there are way too many gesturing arms, or ones holding grenades and demolition charges!

The last one is particularly damning. What I was hoping for was a unit of voidborn infantry that could neatly be ranked up into a cool firing line, but when I do that on the tabletop I'm stuck with a unit that seems to be in utter chaos and doing anything but firing.

Another problem people should look out for is this, pardon the crappy picture:

Spoiler:

RETURN OF THE CROOKED SPINES. All girls from those boxed sets (ditto with my box of Jailbirds and the many blisters of character sculpts I've bought) have a perky bum and quite a crooked back, so buyer beware, this may also very well happen with the sisters. I think we can safely assume that the elves, of both fantasy and scientific persuasion, already have these.

That's exactly what I was talking about. Actually, overnight I was thinking about this, and it occured to me that the perfect analogy comes from an episode of the UK version of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. If you're a fan of that series, one of the things that made it different form the USA version (which was mostly Ramsey shouting at incompetent chefs running terrible restraunts), is several of the episodes he actually liked the chefs and their problems came not from being bad cooks, but simply not knowing how to run a restrant as a business.

The specific episode I was thinking about is from season 2: La Riveira. It's one of the best examples of how the principle of 'less is more' can work sometimes.

Edit: To expand on that, the Chef at La Riveira is Luic, a hotshot young French (by coincidence) chef who has found a rich patron that allows him to explore all his culinary aspirations. The problem is, having never learned moderation, his dishes actually suffer for all their extravagance.

If I could sit Benoit down and explain what is going wrong with his vision, I would basically have him watch this episode. So much of what RH is putting out now is like the dishes Luic put on the table: brimming with good ideas, good execution and fine ingredients... but too many of them.

It's a lesser version of what Kingdom Death is still going through really: a creative mind not bound by someone putting the foot down and saying enough is enough already.

I honestly tell people to get the RH stuff for the characters, not for army building, as price aside, it is not a great way of doing it. People love ragging on the Cadian plastics for being ugly, but they do their job, that of being boring old rank and file troops you use to build squads, perfectly. You get one set of special weapons, one set of sergeant arms, one hand lobbing a grenade and the rest is all holding lasguns. The Kurganova kits I bought for this did not have one set of rifle toting arms that was firing or holding it sufficiently high enough to make it look like someone was firing, it's all "lobbing a frag!" here, "hauling a landmine" there and "may I tickle le moustache" in one case.

I'm actually curious, has a breakdown of the infantry kits been shown yet? Or is that still early days?

I want to put my IE on eBay (the 15 or so remaining)m I was abulout to take a bunch of pictures, want me to pm them you?

BrookM - While I think you have some good points, when you start saying Cadian plastics do anything "perfectly"... I think you've crossed the line

There's a reason there's such a market for alternate IG, and it's mostly that GW's IG (whether Cadians / Catachans / etc!) are pretty poor!

There's some nice sculpts to be had if you go through Forgeworld, etc... but it just makes it ripe for competitors.

Also, to you and Buzzsaw I just had a question - At least in Buzzsaw's case, since you didn't really back this project much I wonder why you continue to go after the RH folks - not saying they don't leave themselves really open to it, but it just feels a bit harsh. Especially with say that gif, that has continued to pop up throughout any RH discussion. It's funny as a meme, I'll grant you . But at some point I would think you'd say you disagree with their approach and move on...

Finally, just wanted to say I do find both of your analyses on things like this interesting - this is more a comment of motivation / what you're looking to get out of continuing to track them, since you're not really after the minis themselves this time around (again from Buzzsaw's comment of dropping his backing by 95% last page - not sure if you're in on this one heavily BrookM?).

He's not even in for a buck, he just comes here to feed on the angst.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Whereas I pledged (boo! hiss!) to get the Daughters of the Crucible and those mega-armoured SoB. I expect Tarantino-levels of dynamism, attitude and heels from the former. I'll only ever field a full unit, max, so each can be individual and clearly identifiable as such.

From the latter, I do hope they won't be in KISS-sized heels, because, well, you know. I feel very sorry for those backers who wanted sensible boots and got heels and pigeon toes. I am very happy that I made my SoB army with Dreamforge Valkir instead, regardless of the price difference. Mine don't look like chicks, and that's perfect for me.

My own 5 cents, I'm not holding out for the RH game. It'l probably be very hero-centric, and troops will only act as support, and I just don't find them believable as combat heroes. Not that girls can't kick ass. They can.

I'm trying so hard to behave this time round to keep the vitriol in check! And aye, no pledge here this time around, as it became clear that the one mini I was interested in, Witchfinder Pointy-Shoes (There's also the not-Terminators, I was a bit weary of those, still am, can you imagine suits of tactical dreadnought armour with heels?), would not be unlocked during this campaign. However, I created this thread, so it keeps on popping up in my feed and as such, I keep checking in on it. If this is supposed to be a KS backers exclusive club, maybe put it in the forum charter? I kid of course, though if one of you guys does pop round, warn me in advance so I can put on the kettle and pull out our favourite paddling bat.

I will say this though, as shocking as it may sound to some of the veterans of the first rodeo: I still want them to succeed. I really, honestly do. I like quite a few of their models. If I like a model enough that I missed out on during the KS, I will gladly buy it from their own store instead.

However, just because I want something to succeed does not mean that I'm going to keep my gob shut and not point out what bothers me about something like some people show with some companies out there.

Now, if my posts here are reported by others for whatever reason they deem, be it offensive or annoying, just say so and I'll stay out.

No no, the criticism is valid and fine - I was just curious about that . It's certainly not an exclusive club - I didn't back either, but then again I only check in here occasionally

I can certainly relate to wanting to track something even after not being directly involved in it, was just wondering!

I do feel bad for RH sometimes and think when we indulge in a bit of, for lack of a better term, "french-bashing" it might go a bit too far here. It's funny in a lot of ways (and there's plenty of similar "Murica" type jokes elsewhere) but might cloud some legitimate criticism at times.

Looking last page, the ankles really do seem unforgivable - and their explanation unsatisfactory - but it sounds like they might fix it. Seems totally required to me, so hopefully backers do push for that!

In the end I mostly don't follow this because I highly prefer realistic looking female minis, but just think RH might get the short end of the stick sometimes with their supporters not really posting here and so ending up being a bit of a punching bag on Dakka.

I backed,

and actually i'd be happy with either big mechanical boots (which actually got a whole bunch of critisim when first shown) or combat heels although they'll change how I paint the minis up

(assuming they fix the bendy armour issue which they say they'll do)

and the exaggerated poses are one of the reasons I like their stuff

I pledged because of the Not-Terminators.

I don't think we've even seen renders of them yet though, have we?

RiTides wrote:In the end I mostly don't follow this because I highly prefer realistic looking female minis, but just think RH might get the short end of the stick sometimes with their supporters not really posting here and so ending up being a bit of a punching bag on Dakka.

Dakka and a great deal of its members have been blacklisted for quite some time, or at least until the second campaign was kicked off, at which point they reinstated a lot of their Heralds, whom despite being awfully vocal with their concerns, still got roped back in again, not to mention re-friended a lot of blocked Dakka members on Facebook. Me as well!

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:I backed,

and actually i'd be happy with either big mechanical boots (which actually got a whole bunch of critisim when first shown) or combat heels although they'll change how I paint the minis up

You mean the Super Mario movie boots?

Alpharius wrote:I pledged because of the Not-Terminators.

I don't think we've even seen renders of them yet though, have we?

I think they may be in the same boat as General Wolfenstein from the first campaign: one of the first concepts to be shown off but ultimately one of the last to be done up as a mini. Shame really, as I also very loved the look of that one lass with the hammer and shield an awful lot.

 RiTides wrote:

Spoiler:

BrookM - While I think you have some good points, when you start saying Cadian plastics do anything "perfectly"... I think you've crossed the line

There's a reason there's such a market for alternate IG, and it's mostly that GW's IG (whether Cadians / Catachans / etc!) are pretty poor!

There's some nice sculpts to be had if you go through Forgeworld, etc... but it just makes it ripe for competitors.

Also, to you and Buzzsaw I just had a question - At least in Buzzsaw's case, since you didn't really back this project much I wonder why you continue to go after the RH folks - not saying they don't leave themselves really open to it, but it just feels a bit harsh. Especially with say that gif, that has continued to pop up throughout any RH discussion. It's funny as a meme, I'll grant you . But at some point I would think you'd say you disagree with their approach and move on...

Finally, just wanted to say I do find both of your analyses on things like this interesting - this is more a comment of motivation / what you're looking to get out of continuing to track them, since you're not really after the minis themselves this time around (again from Buzzsaw's comment of dropping his backing by 95% last page - not sure if you're in on this one heavily BrookM?).

Hmm, you know, that's a fine question, and one I've actually asked myself. I suppose that it really comes down to one definite point, and then two things that flow from that. The definite point is this: I consider sister models in boots are not equivalent to sister models in stripper heels. There is a lot of argument to be had on that, I'm sure, but that's what I believe, and put simply, I consider the changes that RH has made to be the equivalent of (in lay terms) a Bait and Switch.

I realize there a people that don't agree with my assessment, which is fine, but that assessment motivates the two points that follow from it;

-The first is... I genuinely think they are screwing people over here. What pushes my evaluation of RH's actions from basically harmless to malignant and (bordering on) tortious is their refusal to refund people who don't like the change. This moves beyond the area of their usual shenanigans of silly design decisions, interminable delays and general pig-headed-ness. This is the bait and switch, it aggravates me, and it's likely to keep aggravating me unless and until they either revert the offending sculpts or offer refunds.

Please note: my aggravation here is not inherently connected to the stripper heels. Plenty of the models were initially shown in such heels, and they worked fine with that in their established aesthetic. My ire is connected to showing art that clearly had the models in boots, and then switching to stripper heels, without either soliciting feedback ahead of time or allowing people refunds. If they allow refunds? This problem is completely fixed.

-The second point is rather similar to BrookM's: on the aesthetic side I think they really are going down the wrong path and it's disappointing, because I had high hopes in the first campaign, and they... sorta came through?

Someone mentioned Kingdom Death, and I think that's a good comparison, because I think that what Poots has gone the right way, at least when it comes to his miniature philosophy. What I mean by that is there is a pretty clear divergence between the individual, monopose sculpts and the 'generic' armor kits. His armor kits are just amazing, in no small part because they don't go as far over the top as the individual sculpts.

Consider the difference between individual figures like the Fighter, Mage and Thief on the one hand...


And, on the other hand, the Leather Armor kit;


Or the Spider Silk armor kit;


There is a huge difference in pose and dynamism, if you will. There is clearly less 'movement' in the kits... which makes them vastly more flexible, because it means they can be used in a modular fashion. This means that the kits have a great deal of utility for making various fantasy figures, not just highly individualized 'characters', but you can also make units out of them.

This is the biggest problem with what RH has decided to do with most, if not all, of their unit boxes: rather then toning down their aesthetic, they're simply making boxes of aesthetically similar heroic models.

In Warmachine, one of the big complaints is how noticeable it is that there is repetition of sculpt in, basically, anything larger then a unit of 3. Imagine how much more jarring that will be when you have multiple squads of, say, 10 Sisters, and in every single squad you have the one Sister doing the hokey-pokey, the one Sister doing... the reverse hokey pokey, the come at me, bro... Nobody can be just 'shooting', instead you have to be executing a one foot landing in high heels (with an ankle breaking angle, natch), tabard swirling around with the spine in some impossible position...

Again, this would all be fine for hero models. It would also be fine if the unit was especially acrobatic... but these aren't. These are just regular trooper models with a variety of guns, not limber assassins. This is one area where GW clearly understood what they were doing back when they released their updated Dark Eldar range; there was a clear differentiation between Warriors and Wyches, where the warriors had more solid, 'military' stances, contrasting the running and athletic poses of the Wyches.

This is an area where RH was only OK to start, but now seem to have completely lost their ability to use visual language to express information... well, information other then "Awesome! Everything is Awesome!" The problem is that when everything is awesome, nothing is.

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be what someone suggested literally years ago, after the first campaign: lower expectations. It's shame, because they really do have some good art staff, but the direction they are getting is so wrongheaded and... almost, patronizing? There seems something just desperate about how over the top everything is. Like in that Ramsey show I linked above, it almost seems like there is a lack of confidence in the product, and so a need to throw everything into it in an attempt to say "see, it's great! It's got all this great stuff, everyone likes all of these things, so why wouldn't they like them together?!"

Well, while everyone is fretting about heels, RH put out another update.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/loudnraging/tgg2-light-and-darkness/posts/1559380?ref=dash

With this interesting little note:

Upcoming Fixes

That being said, the entire team is working non-stop on finishing all the sculpts, with huge commitment and energy. The process that we developed with the first Troops is paying off and is constantly evolving and improving. But it requires a high level of skills and attention, and even then, occasionally, some things slip through.

By slipping through, I don't mean that we don't see the problems, but rather, that we cannot fix them all before we produce the renders for you. Case in point is the case of the rubbery ankles...

It is true that some of the models we showed last week have strange looking ankles. And so you could feel like some of them have a hard time standing up, creating the feeling that the heels look impractical.

When we noticed the problem, the rendering pipeline was already running at full speed and so, it was not the time to go back and fix everything then. This is a problem that shows in both Sisters and Dark Eves Troops , and it will be fixed.

More specifically, for the Sisters, to correct this problem, we will reposition the armour correctly and we will add an extra plate at the connexion of the foot and the shin, a bit like what we've done for the Daughters of the Crucible.

Please note that the Fantasy Angels images that we are posting below do not have this correction yet, but don't worry, it will be done and we plan to show you the changes at that time.

And I think this test print is relevant to many's interests:


Plus the renders for the fantasy angels:

The fantasy angels look much better than the people with buildings for wings

Bare heads also look better than the helmets they have come up with.

Agreed, I think a lot of people will be taking these as Seraphim instead of their sci-fi sisters.

 silent25 wrote:
Well, while everyone is fretting about heels, RH put out another update.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/loudnraging/tgg2-light-and-darkness/posts/1559380?ref=dash

Spoiler:

With this interesting little note:

Upcoming Fixes

That being said, the entire team is working non-stop on finishing all the sculpts, with huge commitment and energy. The process that we developed with the first Troops is paying off and is constantly evolving and improving. But it requires a high level of skills and attention, and even then, occasionally, some things slip through.

By slipping through, I don't mean that we don't see the problems, but rather, that we cannot fix them all before we produce the renders for you. Case in point is the case of the rubbery ankles...

It is true that some of the models we showed last week have strange looking ankles. And so you could feel like some of them have a hard time standing up, creating the feeling that the heels look impractical.

When we noticed the problem, the rendering pipeline was already running at full speed and so, it was not the time to go back and fix everything then. This is a problem that shows in both Sisters and Dark Eves Troops , and it will be fixed.

More specifically, for the Sisters, to correct this problem, we will reposition the armour correctly and we will add an extra plate at the connexion of the foot and the shin, a bit like what we've done for the Daughters of the Crucible.

Please note that the Fantasy Angels images that we are posting below do not have this correction yet, but don't worry, it will be done and we plan to show you the changes at that time.

And I think this test print is relevant to many's interests:


Plus the renders for the fantasy angels:

Actually, we (I) noted the update last page;

 Buzzsaw wrote:
<snip>

The new update is out, and it features their take on Angels with dirty faces... oops, I mean stripper heels, half-a dozen of the other and all that.

I left some feedback there (long story short, nice figures, but really weird proportions in some areas), but the real thing that struck me overall is what BrookM mentioned: their figures are just so 'dynamic' that they end up really poorly done for making actual units. The angels especially don't look like a unit that you would want to ever have more then one of, because so many highly distinctive design elements would be so obvious when you have more then one.

There are angels ascending, angels descending, angels shoving forward a book, etc. They all look rather nice (with the noted exceptions), until you have more then one on the field. They really seem more painters miniatures or heroes then unit figures.

Which rather ties into one of the things I've observed about RH: they just don't know when to tone things down. Troopers should not be so distinctive, because you end up on detail overload.

By the way, earlier I had sent a message to RH, asking them how the male conversion kits for Dark Elves were going to work (yet another casualty of hyper-dynamism), and received this reply;

I have received feedback from the creative team regarding your query on the male bits for Dark Elves, but as they will redesigned and produced last in this KS, it is too early to provide a specific answer for this.

Now, I don't want to read too much into this, but my sense that they forgot they were evening doing these kits has increased. If for no other reason then how bad it seems (at least to a laymen) to completely design the Dark Elves, push them to production stage, then, after everything else is done, design major replacement parts.

Buzzsaw - Just wanted to say, all fair points! Someday, though, I want to see you do a post-mortem of a Kickstarter you Love

I actually track all of this because I'm both interested as a backer (of wayyyy to many KS!) and creator... so it's all just very helpful to see and learn from.

Here's hoping they fix those feet!

How does she fit/mobe in that armour?

Would there be any support for alternate feet for the sisters? If they are going to redesign the ankles anyway, wouldn't that be the perfect time to design two bits for the ankle downward? That way the RH team doesn't have to sacrifice the heeled look that they say they think embodies the line, but the backers still get what they want? It seems like a very minimal amount of work, which would be done on an area of the render they're already going back to do more work on...

 Jimsolo wrote:
Would there be any support for alternate feet for the sisters? If they are going to redesign the ankles anyway, wouldn't that be the perfect time to design two bits for the ankle downward? That way the RH team doesn't have to sacrifice the heeled look that they say they think embodies the line, but the backers still get what they want? It seems like a very minimal amount of work, which would be done on an area of the render they're already going back to do more work on...

I'm sure there would be: the people that object to heels do not (seem) to have anything against heels as an option, they just don't want it to be the only option. The problem is that for many of the figures, the 'dynamic' poses mean that feel often touch other pieces of the sculpts: flowing tabards, tactical rocks, etc... Besides, the stripper heel seems to be the hill that RH is willing to fight and die on (possible in the economic sense, as I point out in an earlier post, I would be shocked if RH had the capability to refund even a very small % of their pledges).

Hehe, one of the backers (I believe the one that has already asked for, and been denied, a refund) made this image;



If RH thinks that everyone is going to warm up to this change, methinks they are going to be disappointed. Which leads to the question I have pondered: what percentage of this campaign's backers are going to ask for a refund, and what percent can RH actually afford to refund?

I hope they fix the feet... their choices are a bit odd. That being said they still haven't reveled the units I went in for. I hope their horsemen and Worm riders turn out well as I want to use them for KoW.