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 AndrewGPaul wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:

 Thargrim wrote:
IMO Blanches artwork is the heart and soul 40k was originally built on, like it or not.

I keep hoping that one day people will realize that art is subjective, and we aren't required to like the same art style they are. Blanche's style is polarizing to say the least. I consider it to be dated and overly busy. It's okay if you like it, but I just don't.

That's fair, but it's still true that his art and style is fundamental to the look of 40k and AoS. He's been providing artwork, art direction and concept art for 30-odd years, after all. You not liking it won't change that.

If they have him doing design work/style work in the background, that's great. What I'd like is for them to stick with their really good artists and give this cat a job simply working background concepts. Have him sit there and design a new race, then let other people do the finished product.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Tyranids descending on an utterly lifeless planet to quote the text. Fundamentally something wrong there and having one Sister leftover at the end is just silly.

If a single hiveship can wipe Malan'tai then a whole splinter fleet would have no problems with a couple thousand Sisters.

I don't see a problem. Splinter fleet sees a supposedly easy source of biomass. Diverts for a quick and easy meal. Quick and easy meal doesn't go down quick and easy and proceeds to butcher them in a fire and fury reply. Neither side backs down and committed, kill each other off. Sounds typical 40K to me. Plus it's a Sister article, so they're going to get bits to show they can put down other forces.

I got the impression that the ones to divert were the Sisters while the Tyranids were inexplicably headed for a lifeless planet all along.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Well confirmation that old fluff > new fluff.
That tyranid part was a bit ridiculous. Tyranids don't make for good one on one enemies, each tyranid invasion is designed to devour an entire planet!
And they didn't even mention the Trial of Sebastian Thor and the Plague of Unbelief, some of the best fluff!!!

Except the old fluff where Maugan Ra on his very own, 1 knife-ear, defended the entire planet of Stormvald against Hive Fleet Leviathan?


Stuff like that is the heart and soul of classic 40K fluff, lol.

I don't mind the Tyranid fleet being smallish, but the whole 'attacking a barren planet' thing made me go 'huh?'

Makes me think of the Slitheen from Doctor Who. "Why would we want to invade this godforsaken rock?"

I can't help wondering if it's some kind of meta-joke about the tradition of bonkers Tyranid fluff in Sisters books. The original Praxedes story from the 2nd ed Codex has her leading a guerilla-warfare campaign against Tyranids. Good luck with that.

Has the Tyranid fluff ever really recovered from 5th ed, though? I never actually read that Codex, but I gather it was a... strange take on their background. Mind you, the same thing happened to the Necrons, Daemons, Grey Knights and others back in 5th, when it all went a bit Saturday-morning-cartoon for some reason.

As for the art... I can't find my favourite Sisters art on Google, but it's the early 3rd ed stuff, before the Witch Hunters Codex. The small bits and pieces in the back of the 3rd ed rulebook.

I actually think the original black-and-white version of this:


...is where GW art started to go wrong.

As said above, up until the end of the 90s, you had lots of distinctive styles. In the early 2000s the GW 'house style' coalesced and everything started to look the same. It looked 'cool', but it lost the variety. It started to look like every other game out there. (Same thing seems to have happened to D&D too, come to think of it.)

As a teenager, I loved the then-new house style. It looked cooler. But the weird thing is that cool always seems to end up the same. Whereas nowadays I'm all about the distinctive and memorable. I want charming, goofy, scary, moody, bizarre, feverish... all kinds of stuff. Art that expresses a mood more than it tries to be technically accurate.

Blanche's stuff is a great example. It looks 'off'--it doesn't have realistic perspective or anatomical accuracy or what have you--but that makes it feel right. It feels to me like the sort of thing some crazed visionary in the 41st millennium might draw after staying up all night praying in a chapel mounted on the prow of a kilometre-long spaceship churning through a dimension of raw madness. It's not how that creature or whatever would look in in 'real life'... but that's not the point. It says: "The 41st millennium is completely insane, and nobody who lives there ever notices." Just like actual medieval art feels more medieval than a hyper-realistic modern portrayal of a knight, because it's working from basic assumptions about the world (like the idea that historical Biblical figures should be depicted in medieval armour) that don't match up to our own.

Er. I may have veered a little off topic there.

Sooo... how about them Sisters, eh?

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Well confirmation that old fluff > new fluff.
That tyranid part was a bit ridiculous. Tyranids don't make for good one on one enemies, each tyranid invasion is designed to devour an entire planet!
And they didn't even mention the Trial of Sebastian Thor and the Plague of Unbelief, some of the best fluff!!!

Except the old fluff where Maugan Ra on his very own, 1 knife-ear, defended the entire planet of Stormvald against Hive Fleet Leviathan?


Stuff like that is the heart and soul of classic 40K fluff, lol.

That was always a great piece of fluff (it was also a tendril, not the whole hive fleet), a single line that got retconned to him holding off a single hive ship. Considering he's an ancient, warp-delving, craftworld saving warrior, I wouldn't put it past him to kill a tendril of Leviathan.

Zenithfleet wrote:

As said above, up until the end of the 90s, you had lots of distinctive styles. In the early 2000s the GW 'house style' coalesced and everything started to look the same. It looked 'cool', but it lost the variety. It started to look like every other game out there. (Same thing seems to have happened to D&D too, come to think of it.)

Digital painting. Apparently all digital artists seem to use the same tools and features. There's plenty of stuff out there that all looks the same (and the near-universal use of bevelled shapes and hexagons on pictures of military equipment doesn't help).

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
If a single hiveship can wipe Malan'tai then a whole splinter fleet would have no problems with a couple thousand Sisters.

Depends on the nature of the splinter fleet. Could have been a few hundred spores landing intermittently over the months or not even that - the hive would have no reason to deploy forces to a barren world except to verify faint lifesigns or the nature of whatever ship the sisters came on.

If you really want a fun one for scale the tau once conquered an entire hiveworld with 20 riptide suits, a thousand or so firewarriors, and a handful of supporting units. While splitting their forces to attack multiple hives at once, and launching a ground assault at entrenched guard tanks and artillery, and a company of space marines (led by their chapter master no less), and a knight household...

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Tyranids descending on an utterly lifeless planet to quote the text. Fundamentally something wrong there and having one Sister leftover at the end is just silly.

Wrong how? It had been canon since the start tyranids devour planets to bedrock, taking all useful stuff with them. The fact it's lifeless means nothing, it could still be full of water, breathable atmosphere, and useful chemicals that could sustain the fleet. Just look at Titan in our own solar system, it's completely lifeless, yet it's surface contains more hydrocarbons than Earth does, by four orders of magnitude. You don't seriously believe just the tiny amount of biomass on typical planet would sustain an entire hive fleet for long, do you?

Ditto for 'single survivor', that had been staple of 40K for so long I have no idea how is it any controversial still. Single space marine ending The Beheading? Dozens of stories with single surviving IG trooper? That Black Templar comic with single surviving Sword Brethren out of the entire force opening the gates? Etc etc?

 Yodhrin wrote:
A genuinely hilarious comment, given that one of the big reasons a lot of people will have gotten into Sisters in the first place was that stunning 2nd Ed codex cover by Blanche.

You mean the 'stunning' art that GW recently tried to turn into a model, producing not only one of the worst mini Sisters ever got, but also one of the worst GW models of entire last decade, quite an achievement given some recent FW attempts and the fact that Nurgle range simply exists? That one?

Because frankly, you couldn't ask for better proof it was not Blanche's demented scribbles that made the setting what it is and if GW actually stuck to it instead of being saved by dozens of far more talented and influential (unsung, sadly) people it would have sunk long ago.

Hell, I don't have problem with Stormcast, but it's telling the most despised AoS faction was designed based mostly on Blanche and the most praised Stormcast models are the ones that deviate from his "art" the most...

Which factions are you talking about here? I don't recall the Gloomspite Gits being badly received at all, or the Fyreslayers or Kharadron Overlords.

Fair enough Ibris, if you want to be snotty about it that's fine, but it doesn't detract from it being a crap piece of lore. They literally boiled it down to "Sisters vs. Nids deathmatch go" with nothing on the planet to fight for. And I don't seriously believe that a small amount of biomass would sustain a hive fleet, I wasn't refuting that point at all.

And as for the lone survivor stuff, my point still stands that it's a pretty silly plot point that GW use. Just because it's a staple doesn't mean it is good. Not to mention the fact that other lone survivor stories are better written.

 Irbis wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Tyranids descending on an utterly lifeless planet to quote the text. Fundamentally something wrong there and having one Sister leftover at the end is just silly.

Wrong how? It had been canon since the start tyranids devour planets to bedrock, taking all useful stuff with them. The fact it's lifeless means nothing, it could still be full of water, breathable atmosphere, and useful chemicals that could sustain the fleet. Just look at Titan in our own solar system, it's completely lifeless, yet it's surface contains more hydrocarbons than Earth does, by four orders of magnitude. You don't seriously believe just the tiny amount of biomass on typical planet would sustain an entire hive fleet for long, do you?

Ditto for 'single survivor', that had been staple of 40K for so long I have no idea how is it any controversial still. Single space marine ending The Beheading? Dozens of stories with single surviving IG trooper? That Black Templar comic with single surviving Sword Brethren out of the entire force opening the gates? Etc etc?

 Yodhrin wrote:
A genuinely hilarious comment, given that one of the big reasons a lot of people will have gotten into Sisters in the first place was that stunning 2nd Ed codex cover by Blanche.

You mean the 'stunning' art that GW recently tried to turn into a model, producing not only one of the worst mini Sisters ever got, but also one of the worst GW models of entire last decade, quite an achievement given some recent FW attempts and the fact that Nurgle range simply exists? That one?

Because frankly, you couldn't ask for better proof it was not Blanche's demented scribbles that made the setting what it is and if GW actually stuck to it instead of being saved by dozens of far more talented and influential (unsung, sadly) people it would have sunk long ago.

Hell, I don't have problem with Stormcast, but it's telling the most despised AoS faction was designed based mostly on Blanche and the most praised Stormcast models are the ones that deviate from his "art" the most...

Are you talking about Veridyan? She's a fantastic model. Stormcast are despised? Where? I've seen more armies of them than most other factions to be honest.

 EnTyme wrote:

 Thargrim wrote:
IMO Blanches artwork is the heart and soul 40k was originally built on, like it or not.

I keep hoping that one day people will realize that art is subjective, and we aren't required to like the same art style they are. Blanche's style is polarizing to say the least. I consider it to be dated and overly busy. It's okay if you like it, but I just don't.

Dinosaurs who live in the past will eventually get left behind in it....

I'll never understand all these arguments about "fluff" and "art." Neither of those things influence why I play this competitive miniatures game. I'm here for the painting and the playing, everything else is just an uninteresting bonus.

Whether or not Blanche's style is or was a part of the games history, we're in 2019 now. You can't have things remain unchanged and stale for ever, at some point art direction will change as the older artists and designers retire and the newer artists rise to take their place. That's life.

 Geifer wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Tyranids descending on an utterly lifeless planet to quote the text. Fundamentally something wrong there and having one Sister leftover at the end is just silly.

If a single hiveship can wipe Malan'tai then a whole splinter fleet would have no problems with a couple thousand Sisters.

I don't see a problem. Splinter fleet sees a supposedly easy source of biomass. Diverts for a quick and easy meal. Quick and easy meal doesn't go down quick and easy and proceeds to butcher them in a fire and fury reply. Neither side backs down and committed, kill each other off. Sounds typical 40K to me. Plus it's a Sister article, so they're going to get bits to show they can put down other forces.

I got the impression that the ones to divert were the Sisters while the Tyranids were inexplicably headed for a lifeless planet all along.

Minerals, water, going past it anyway or following the Sisters for some reason. That's several reasons right there.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Tyranids descending on an utterly lifeless planet to quote the text. Fundamentally something wrong there and having one Sister leftover at the end is just silly.

If a single hiveship can wipe Malan'tai then a whole splinter fleet would have no problems with a couple thousand Sisters.

I don't see a problem. Splinter fleet sees a supposedly easy source of biomass. Diverts for a quick and easy meal. Quick and easy meal doesn't go down quick and easy and proceeds to butcher them in a fire and fury reply. Neither side backs down and committed, kill each other off. Sounds typical 40K to me. Plus it's a Sister article, so they're going to get bits to show they can put down other forces.

a) dead world is...well dead. Not exactly what tyranids are interested because funny that, there's very little bio resources there.
b) even splinter fleet is big. How big were those forces? 3 whatever they were called was quoted. Each better be LOT bigger than IG regiment or marine chapter. More like 100 chapter worth of marines.

Who says they were after biomass? We've seen the nids do weird as hell things this edition. They've branched out into very odd things. Could be something they were going for on the planet that was unknown.

And again, it was a Sisters article. And as ever, when the chose faction is the protag, they'll pull off over the top things to make them look good. It's a standard and has been for a long time.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I'll take the sketchiest, lowest-effort concept pieces with actual character by Blanche

Now if only he ever produced such a thing for Sisters. Alas, that has yet to happen.

I want new material, not recycled old material. Give Sisters effort. Sisters players have been waiting long enough that we fething deserve it. Hell, even new Blanche 'art' would be better than just getting the same old crap. We've been wallowing in the same stagnant cesspool of art and lore for ages, practically unchanged literally decades. I welcome the new, even if I'd have done things differently.

tneva82 wrote:
b) even splinter fleet is big. How big were those forces? 3 whatever they were called was quoted. Each better be LOT bigger than IG regiment or marine chapter. More like 100 chapter worth of marines.

Splinter fleet sizes are more poorly defined than an ork waaaugh.

Preceptories are up to around 1000 sisters each, give or take, but represent a subsidiary convent or a large detachment from an order without a specific fixed size.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
Tyranids descending on an utterly lifeless planet to quote the text. Fundamentally something wrong there and having one Sister leftover at the end is just silly.

Wrong how? It had been canon since the start tyranids devour planets to bedrock, taking all useful stuff with them. The fact it's lifeless means nothing, it could still be full of water, breathable atmosphere, and useful chemicals that could sustain the fleet. Just look at Titan in our own solar system, it's completely lifeless, yet it's surface contains more hydrocarbons than Earth does, by four orders of magnitude. You don't seriously believe just the tiny amount of biomass on typical planet would sustain an entire hive fleet for long, do you?

Ditto for 'single survivor', that had been staple of 40K for so long I have no idea how is it any controversial still. Single space marine ending The Beheading? Dozens of stories with single surviving IG trooper? That Black Templar comic with single surviving Sword Brethren out of the entire force opening the gates? Etc etc?

 Yodhrin wrote:
A genuinely hilarious comment, given that one of the big reasons a lot of people will have gotten into Sisters in the first place was that stunning 2nd Ed codex cover by Blanche.

You mean the 'stunning' art that GW recently tried to turn into a model, producing not only one of the worst mini Sisters ever got, but also one of the worst GW models of entire last decade, quite an achievement given some recent FW attempts and the fact that Nurgle range simply exists? That one?

Because frankly, you couldn't ask for better proof it was not Blanche's demented scribbles that made the setting what it is and if GW actually stuck to it instead of being saved by dozens of far more talented and influential (unsung, sadly) people it would have sunk long ago.

Hell, I don't have problem with Stormcast, but it's telling the most despised AoS faction was designed based mostly on Blanche and the most praised Stormcast models are the ones that deviate from his "art" the most...

Are you talking about Veridyan? She's a fantastic model. Stormcast are despised? Where? I've seen more armies of them than most other factions to be honest.

Stormcast are despised in the way Space Marines are despised. As in, a vocal minority despise them but most other people at the least tolerate them and most of the time have some themselves.

A.T. wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
b) even splinter fleet is big. How big were those forces? 3 whatever they were called was quoted. Each better be LOT bigger than IG regiment or marine chapter. More like 100 chapter worth of marines.

Splinter fleet sizes are more poorly defined than an ork waaaugh.

Preceptories are up to around 1000 sisters each, give or take, but represent a subsidiary convent or a large detachment from an order without a specific fixed size.

So 3000 sisters can do what chapters worth of marines and multiple IG regiments can't do?

Nice...SOB are the new super humans of the 40k.

A.T. wrote:
Preceptories are up to around 1000 sisters each, give or take, but represent a subsidiary convent or a large detachment from an order without a specific fixed size.

This is an important point here. Sisters do not have rigidly defined numbers. There might be anywhere from a few dozen thousand Sisters in the entire galaxy to hundreds of millions at any given time, because GW has never felt the number of Sisters important to define.

You can't see "three preceptories" and automatically think "oh that's 3000 women". GW hasn't given any useful definitions of those, numbers-wise.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
A genuinely hilarious comment, given that one of the big reasons a lot of people will have gotten into Sisters in the first place was that stunning 2nd Ed codex cover by Blanche.

Codex v2 art is best art.

Spoiler:

NOT the cover though, I'm talking about this BEAUTY!!!

I just LOVE how that optic/visor is almost bigger than her head, for BIGGER precision!

A lot of 2nd edition metals had these bizarre sights on the side of their rifles, they were there to fill the gap between the model's body and the gun so they could be one piece metals. I see them all the time on my metal Cadians and Mordians.

 Galas wrote:
But it is specifically mentioned as not a hive fleet but a smaller splinter of a bigger hive fleet

But why send a splinter that's too small to eat a planet to go eat a planet?

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
I don't see a problem. Splinter fleet sees a supposedly easy source of biomass.

The “lifeless planet” is “an easy source of biomass”?

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Plus it's a Sister article, so they're going to get bits to show they can put down other forces.

For the great glory of saving… a lifeless planet from… not being eaten by the tyranid because it is lifeless?

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Except the old fluff where Maugan Ra on his very own, 1 knife-ear, defended the entire planet of Stormvald against Hive Fleet Leviathan?

I was thinking of Sisters' fluff. See, Sister's fluff is kind of special because you had Codex: Sisters of Battle from 2nd edition, then WD293UK, and that's basically the sum of all worthwhile old fluff, so it's pretty easy to know all of it. New fluff is basically anything that isn't mention in there (and Codex: Witch Hunter but that's not a lot).
I don't know about that Maugan Ra stuff, I don't know where it was written and when and the details about it, so I am not going to comment on it. I would be too likely to say stupid things!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A lot of 2nd edition metals had these bizarre sights on the side of their rifles, they were there to fill the gap between the model's body and the gun so they could be one piece metals. I see them all the time on my metal Cadians and Mordians.

Yeah, 2nd ed Sisters also have big optics but on the drawing it really looks hilarious ^^.

 Melissia wrote:

A.T. wrote:
Preceptories are up to around 1000 sisters each, give or take, but represent a subsidiary convent or a large detachment from an order without a specific fixed size.

This is an important point here. Sisters do not have rigidly defined numbers. There might be anywhere from a few dozen thousand Sisters in the entire galaxy to hundreds of millions at any given time, because GW has never felt the number of Sisters important to define.

You can't see "three preceptories" and automatically think "oh that's 3000 women". GW hasn't given any useful definitions of those, numbers-wise.

Well that 3 preceptories better be three million sisters then.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Galas wrote:
But it is specifically mentioned as not a hive fleet but a smaller splinter of a bigger hive fleet

But why send a splinter that's too small to eat a planet to go eat a planet?

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
I don't see a problem. Splinter fleet sees a supposedly easy source of biomass.

The “lifeless planet” is “an easy source of biomass”?

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Plus it's a Sister article, so they're going to get bits to show they can put down other forces.

For the great glory of saving… a lifeless planet from… not being eaten by the tyranid because it is lifeless?

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Except the old fluff where Maugan Ra on his very own, 1 knife-ear, defended the entire planet of Stormvald against Hive Fleet Leviathan?

I was thinking of Sisters' fluff. See, Sister's fluff is kind of special because you had Codex: Sisters of Battle from 2nd edition, then WD293UK, and that's basically the sum of all worthwhile old fluff, so it's pretty easy to know all of it. New fluff is basically anything that isn't mention in there (and Codex: Witch Hunter but that's not a lot).
I don't know about that Maugan Ra stuff, I don't know where it was written and when and the details about it, so I am not going to comment on it. I would be too likely to say stupid things!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A lot of 2nd edition metals had these bizarre sights on the side of their rifles, they were there to fill the gap between the model's body and the gun so they could be one piece metals. I see them all the time on my metal Cadians and Mordians.

Yeah, 2nd ed Sisters also have big optics but on the drawing it really looks hilarious ^^.

Re-read it. She had the vision, the Sisters landed on the planet before the Tyranids arrived. The Tyranids then entered the system. With the Sisters there, there is now biomass on the planet. Cue diversion to "easy" biomass and following punchup.

So the Sisters went to the planet so that the tyranid could come and kill them all? Good plan!

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So the Sisters went to the planet so that the tyranid could come and kill them all? Good plan!

They went there because one of them had a vision. Visions are from the God-Emperor and lead to positive outcomes. So yes, it was a good plan.

Biomass=/=Living things.


A planet that is pure rocks with an atmosphere full of CO2 is full of biomass.

 Galas wrote:
Biomass=/=Living things.


A planet that is pure rocks with an atmosphere full of CO2 is full of biomass.

In-consumable biomass, however, which makes it useless for the hive fleets.

Like Tyranids respect any kind of biology/physics law. They drain everything from a planet.

Are we really hard arguing the consumption abilities of fantasy psychic space bugs in a universe that's known for being stupidly over the top and blatently ridiculous?