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Pr3Mu5 wrote:


That being said is it just me or are the second hand models on eBay still rather overpriced? I'm guessing due to sellers realising how high the demand is...

<goes and has a look> It seems that most of them hover around $5-10 a pop, which is still cheaper than GW. Repressor kits seem to be stupid expensive (out of print), and the rest of the super-high prices are just people who don't really want to sell. It will take you a while to assemble an entire army on the 'cheap' ($5 per metal sister), but patience will save you money.

Another tactic is to ask around your local gaming community. You never know what people have locked away in a closet that they never pull out. Somebody might have a large sisters army they're too lazy to sell on e-bay that you can buy for relatively cheap.

It all depends what you're willing to spend. If it's less than $5 per mini, you're probably out of luck - and you might as well wait for plastic sisters, though those will be at least $5 a model given how GW charges these days.

EDIT: Ok, checked e-bay in Britain and it's definitely more expensive there, though there are still bargains to be had.

On the topic of John Blanche, I rather like his art. I know it isn't to everyone's taste, and I do prefer the more Osprey style art of the Forgeworld books and some of the more recent 40K images, but it's still iconic.

As for eBay sisters - unless it's OOP, I always pay less than the GW asking price. On the other hand, I also buy from GW on occasion.

I really would vastly increase the size of my army if they came out in plastic though!

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Jes Goodwin is maybe what springs to YOUR mind when someone mentions 40k, but John Blanche is what springs to my mind.

I pity you. Jes does excellent work as a designer, artist and sculptor. Blanche is a hack, and yes, I absolutely could do better than his red-brown smears.

Well, no, Blanche isn't a hack, he's an artist. You might not like his work, and that's fine, but smearing him as a hack is somewhat unfair... unless you're of the opinion that Heironymous Bosch, one of Blanche's great inspirations, is also a hack?

Or perhaps Duchamp was a hack, what with his 'Urinal'. Or maybe the Dadaists were all just hacks. Or how about the Surrealists, or the Deconstructivists, or the Post-Modernists?

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
Well, no, Blanche isn't a hack, he's an artist. You might not like his work, and that's fine, but smearing him as a hack is somewhat unfair... unless you're of the opinion that Heironymous Bosch, one of Blanche's great inspirations, is also a hack?

What if I am of the opinion that Bosch was a hack? Man had no sense of composition or focus at all.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Jes Goodwin is maybe what springs to YOUR mind when someone mentions 40k, but John Blanche is what springs to my mind.

I pity you. Jes does excellent work as a designer, artist and sculptor. Blanche is a hack, and yes, I absolutely could do better than his red-brown smears.

Again, if you could 'do better' is redundant. The only possible answer is 'go on then'. Get your paints out and do better. Show us. Everyone who thinks you made a more quintessentially 40k image than John Blanche is right. And everyone who thinks you've failed is right too. Someone tried that earlier in the thread, drew a generic anime alien thing and called it 'just as good'. Maybe they thought so. I'm not sure how many others did. Who cares.

I, for example, have never been a fan of Wayne England. His work is too block colour, too cartoony, too 90s to evoke a gothic setting. Everyone looks like a superhero, and as someone who was never that interested in comic books, that puts me off. But other people like it. Maybe they came to 40k because they liked 90s comic books and found toy soldiers in the store too. I don't 'pity them', because people like what they like and I'm not so much an donkey-cave to consider myself an arbiter (heh) of what is 'true art'. It doesn't make Wanye England a hack or a bad artist just because I don't like it, any more than it makes Bosch a hack because the above poster doesn't like it.

40k has spawned tons of art, in deliberately differing styles, with the sole purpose of sucking in people who liked just one of them. All you can do is express a preference. Anyone who is stupid enough to say that this or that art is wrong or bad or that your preference is the wrong one is an idiot.


.

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
Well, no, Blanche isn't a hack, he's an artist.

He can be both. He's done some good pieces, but a lot of crap too. I find a lot of his character pieces to be extremely stilted, where the image is of someone 'striking a pose' that's terribly stiff. It's the equivalent of taking people's pictures at national monuments, versus taking someone's picture at a more relaxed moment.

Regardless, that's kind of off topic. And either way, GW thankfully did not use his "art" as the only basis for the design of the Sororitas.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Jes Goodwin is maybe what springs to YOUR mind when someone mentions 40k, but John Blanche is what springs to my mind.

I pity you. Jes does excellent work as a designer, artist and sculptor. Blanche is a hack, and yes, I absolutely could do better than his red-brown smears.

Again, if you could 'do better' is redundant. The only possible answer is 'go on then'. Get your paints out and do better. Show us.

Actually, I already have. Back in the early 0's, I was designing alt Phantom Titans to be cast in resin. I put a lot of work into them, and scanned a few.

Unfortunately, it appears that the image hosting site I used is defunct. Oh well.

Not that it matters, as the bar is so trivially low. Particularly when we look at the Chaos Daemons that he gakked out and managed to get published. I mean, COME ON.

Well, sure, you can think Bosch is a hack.

But either way, it's still art!

Aaaanyway, back to Sisters of Battle - I think their image is pretty sound; there's not a lot that needs changing (if anything) - my list is basically:

More head options
Crazier Repentia and less whips on the Repentia's Castigator
More cherubim
Plastic.

You know, it would be totally OK if GW just made regular plastic Sisters in the exact same size and exact same style, but with choice of bare & sallet helms. Really. Sprue of 5 basic Sisters with variant heads. $35 per box of 5.

Yes. Absolutely. I would happily pay the money for that. But it would be nice if they could add alternative weapons for Sister Superiors and maybe a couple of special weapons too... in a box of 10, perhaps...

 ArbitorIan wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Jes Goodwin is maybe what springs to YOUR mind when someone mentions 40k, but John Blanche is what springs to my mind.

I pity you. Jes does excellent work as a designer, artist and sculptor. Blanche is a hack, and yes, I absolutely could do better than his red-brown smears.

Again, if you could 'do better' is redundant. The only possible answer is 'go on then'. Get your paints out and do better. Show us. Everyone who thinks you made a more quintessentially 40k image than John Blanche is right. And everyone who thinks you've failed is right too. Someone tried that earlier in the thread, drew a generic anime alien thing and called it 'just as good'. Maybe they thought so. I'm not sure how many others did. Who cares.

I, for example, have never been a fan of Wayne England. His work is too block colour, too cartoony, too 90s to evoke a gothic setting. Everyone looks like a superhero, and as someone who was never that interested in comic books, that puts me off. But other people like it. Maybe they came to 40k because they liked 90s comic books and found toy soldiers in the store too. I don't 'pity them', because people like what they like and I'm not so much an donkey-cave to consider myself an arbiter (heh) of what is 'true art'. It doesn't make Wanye England a hack or a bad artist just because I don't like it, any more than it makes Bosch a hack because the above poster doesn't like it.

40k has spawned tons of art, in deliberately differing styles, with the sole purpose of sucking in people who liked just one of them. All you can do is express a preference. Anyone who is stupid enough to say that this or that art is wrong or bad or that your preference is the wrong one is an idiot.

I believe you were referring to me. That was a vampire lady holding a small vial. I'm not sure where you got an "alien" from that. I didn't claim it to be just as good. Just that I can complete artwork in a limited amount of time.
Though my work may seem heavily inspired by Anime and Manga I actually gained interest through Joe Mad!, Ed McGuinnes, Rob Leifield, Erik Larson, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and a few other young american comic artists.
Classic Art-wise Dean Cornwell, Norman Rockwell and Frank Frazetta. More modern... Brom, Karl Kopinski (hey look! a Warhammer artist who left for MtG) and Carl Critchlow .

The point I was making is that John Blanches artwork has no place in published warhammer books unless it is specifically about his style and notes. Lets be honest, the guy hasn't had a major exposition in any GW material in years with exception of the most horribly designed codex of all time: Chaos Daemons. There is so much blank space in that book that any art student in the world would see it as an example of how not to create art.

That's the last I'll talk about that in this thread. There really should be a thread on Blanche as clearly he has a following of fans and an army of critics.

On plastic sisters... I don't think we'll ever see them. At least not now that other companies have made their own. Why would GW both to produce a line that people have already collected?

The last thing GW needs is yet another power armor faction to fill magazines and websites with. Don't get me wrong, I love the sisters. I even owned an army of them for a day (not my playstyle AT ALL).

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
Yes. Absolutely. I would happily pay the money for that. But it would be nice if they could add alternative weapons for Sister Superiors and maybe a couple of special weapons too... in a box of 10, perhaps...

Most of the sisters units could be handled with a single set of sprues, provided it had a heavy bolter, multi melta, heavy flamer and the various special weapons troops carry. GW has already gone this route with unit boxes (2 different varieties built from one box). Elites could be handled with a head upgrade - only Seraphim really need their own sculpts.

Repentia just need to be replaced with real CC troops in Power Armor. Give some sisters bolt pistol + fancy holy CC weapon (aspergillum?) that counts as 'poisoned' and call it a day.

I could see GW doing one box for Sisters/Celestians (box of 10), 1 box for Dominion/Retributors (box of 5, lots of weapons options, 1 box for Seraphim (box of 5).

John Prins wrote:
Repentia just need to be replaced with real CC troops in Power Armor.

Celestians used to be this, back in third edition meta, especially when combined with Acts of Faith.

See, I think giving Celestians 2A and a bonus in close combat for Sarissas would work OK. Maybe re-roll all 1s to-hit, or re-roll wounds?

Repentia just need to go towards the naked-but-for-nails-and-parchment end of the craziness I think. Dial it up, not down. Give them a 5+ invulnerable because of their faith/combat drugs? Frenzon injectors!

 Gen.Steiner wrote:
See, I think giving Celestians 2A and a bonus in close combat for Sarissas would work OK. Maybe re-roll all 1s to-hit, or re-roll wounds?

Repentia just need to go towards the naked-but-for-nails-and-parchment end of the craziness I think. Dial it up, not down. Give them a 5+ invulnerable because of their faith/combat drugs? Frenzon injectors!

I was thinking feel no pain.

 Gen.Steiner wrote:

Repentia just need to go towards the naked-but-for-nails-and-parchment end of the craziness I think. Dial it up, not down.

I'd favor them being removed entirely. They've always been mechanically BAD or overpriced and they're shot magnets that can't take shooting (even if they got FNP) because they have no real armor to speak of.

They're dumb, sexist and for all the sexism they're not even attractive models.
There's a big difference between 'sexy' and 'exploitative'. I'm not here to wave the flag of political correctness, but Repentia are just embarrassing. The nails and parchment outfit would actually be LESS exploitative than studs and leather bondage gear. Sackcloth and ashes would be the most thematically correct, or a simple penitent's robe - personally I'd steer away from the wimple if it could be avoided.

Or, since Repentia are sisters who have been bad, replace the power armor and bolter with carapace armor and a 2h weapon and give them Furious Charge. They'll survive a bit of shooting, should be cheap enough to buy en masse (units of 20!) and work as half decent assault counters to protect your gun lines.

Now that I think of it, carapace armor plus a hooded mantle might look pretty cool.

Sackcloth, ashes, nails, parchment... all for it. Give them a Feel No Pain save and some form of assault vehicle and they'd be much better.

An assault vehicle would help, though I doubt they'd get Land Raiders.

Really they suffer from the fact that there's no good use for them. They're bad at counter-assault, because real assault units tear them apart. They're bad at regular assault because they're easily shot to pieces. They're expensive because they all carry Eviscerators, so they don't have weight of numbers to do their job. At best, they chew up vehicles, which isn't what they were designed for.

Really, give them FNP at 4+ (all the time) and a S4 CC weapon at AP4 or AP5 and make them cheap. Let them upgrade a few models to Eviscerators so you're not paying for the powerfists on models that are going to die long before they see combat.

FWIW, my Sisters hit the board today as Allies, 10-strong Combi-Flamer, Flamer & Heavy Flamer. They died after taking and uncovering what ended up being the least important Objective. But they did a fair job of tying up and redirecting a LOT of Orks in the process. I should push the paint on more of the models.

For those who think the Sisters are obscure, doomed, or desperate for a complete revamp - take note that GW considers their current (YES CURRENT) iteration to be iconic enough to feature in the panoply of their IP at the Licensing Trade Show And Expo this year.

Indeed

Maybe they will take notice of their own stand!

I see it says "Toys" on the bottom of that advert in the middle, does that mean I might be able to get my Ork plushy one day???

 Gogsnik wrote:
I see it says "Toys" on the bottom of that advert in the middle, does that mean I might be able to get my Ork plushy one day???

Games Workshop-branded toys for adults?

Games Workshop-branded Adult toys!

I would gladly license that to produce items of Slaanesh, etc.

 Gogsnik wrote:
I see it says "Toys" on the bottom of that advert in the middle, does that mean I might be able to get my Ork plushy one day???

Strangely enough they miss out on some stuff they make anyway - I know several people who would buy packs of the Christmas cards they give away

 Manchu wrote:
For those who think the Sisters are obscure, doomed, or desperate for a complete revamp - take note that GW considers their current (YES CURRENT) iteration to be iconic enough to feature in the panoply of their IP at the Licensing Trade Show And Expo this year.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=79585&d=1473099806&stc=1

But not enough to give us new minis.

If GW is even working on them at all, it's the best kept secret in the history of the company.

 DeffDred wrote:

The point I was making is that John Blanches artwork has no place in published warhammer books unless it is specifically about his style and notes. Lets be honest, the guy hasn't had a major exposition in any GW material in years with exception of the most horribly designed codex of all time: Chaos Daemons. There is so much blank space in that book that any art student in the world would see it as an example of how not to create art.

I am an ex art student and a currently working art professional, and I love that the Daemon codex was done entirely in his work.

No one is saying you have to like his work, but don't assume that just because you also studied art that you have a monopoly on all other artists opinions.

John Prins wrote:

They're dumb, sexist and for all the sexism they're not even attractive models.
There's a big difference between 'sexy' and 'exploitative'. I'm not here to wave the flag of political correctness, but Repentia are just embarrassing. The nails and parchment outfit would actually be LESS exploitative than studs and leather bondage gear. Sackcloth and ashes would be the most thematically correct, or a simple penitent's robe - personally I'd steer away from the wimple if it could be avoided.

I remember my first impression of them a long time ago, and I thought along similar lines. But when I went back and looked at the models again I was surprised at how tame I now feel they are. In my memory they were showing a lot more skin, probably because of the illustrations.

They could use some help as a unit though, that's for sure.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:

The point I was making is that John Blanches artwork has no place in published warhammer books unless it is specifically about his style and notes. Lets be honest, the guy hasn't had a major exposition in any GW material in years with exception of the most horribly designed codex of all time: Chaos Daemons. There is so much blank space in that book that any art student in the world would see it as an example of how not to create art.

I am an ex art student and a currently working art professional, and I love that the Daemon codex was done entirely in his work.

No one is saying you have to like his work, but don't assume that just because you also studied art that you have a monopoly on all other artists opinions.

John Prins wrote:

They're dumb, sexist and for all the sexism they're not even attractive models.
There's a big difference between 'sexy' and 'exploitative'. I'm not here to wave the flag of political correctness, but Repentia are just embarrassing. The nails and parchment outfit would actually be LESS exploitative than studs and leather bondage gear. Sackcloth and ashes would be the most thematically correct, or a simple penitent's robe - personally I'd steer away from the wimple if it could be avoided.

I remember my first impression of them a long time ago, and I thought along similar lines. But when I went back and looked at the models again I was surprised at how tame I now feel they are. In my memory they were showing a lot more skin, probably because of the illustrations.

They could use some help as a unit though, that's for sure.

I wasn't directly referring to his art in the Daemon Codex. Just that the Daemon Codex itself is just a horrible pile of trash as far as artistic design. It had enough blank space to put 3 other codex inside. It was all unfinished black and white art that was shoved into the corners of almost entirely blank pages. I was able to photocopy the pages and cut out all relevant info and put them on 4 pieces of paper.

I agree that the Repentia did seem kind of kinky on their release but over the years they have become tame compared to what other models have come out.

 DeffDred wrote:

I wasn't directly referring to his art in the Daemon Codex. Just that the Daemon Codex itself is just a horrible pile of trash as far as artistic design. It had enough blank space to put 3 other codex inside. It was all unfinished black and white art that was shoved into the corners of almost entirely blank pages. I was able to photocopy the pages and cut out all relevant info and put them on 4 pieces of paper.

You must have a very different version of the book than I do.

 DeffDred wrote:

The point I was making is that John Blanches artwork has no place in published warhammer books unless it is specifically about his style and notes

This is, however, directly referring to his work. And I very much disagree.