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 warboss wrote:
It's called converting.

Something that:

1. Should not be required to build squads that look different from one another.
2. Would not be required if the kits weren't all mono-pose to begin with.

Looking at the images again it looks like there is at least six distinct bodies, which leads me to think there might be ten unique bodies total. I can see them doing either 5 or ten, but not just six bodies only. The main studio put all their effort into this project since it was announced so i'll reserve final judgement until we see the whole squad painted and the full contents of the kit.

If I remember these were sculpted by the guy who did the skitarii rangers, and that kit had ten unique bodies and lots of head options. I'd expect some similarities there.

God damn they’re lovely, and that painted one is legitimately beautiful... I guess it’s yet another army to add to my back log (except it’ll get pushed to the front because they look phenomenal.)

For the love of god just release them already... they've been teasing this (full on legit teasing, not offhand mentions and jokes) for what, 2 years? JUST DO IT.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
For the love of god just release them already... they've been teasing this (full on legit teasing, not offhand mentions and jokes) for what, 2 years? JUST DO IT.

Yeah this strip tease has been too long. Luckily they’re beautiful so it’ll be worth the wait.

Can i put in a silly guess as to why?

Enter: Conspiracy Mode

Rewind back to a couple of months before GW actually announced the return of Sisters of Battle. If you recall there was a somewhat bizarre burst of third-party Sisters-styled Kickstarters. I remember at least two Kickstarters and another release from Raging Heroes(?) etc. Anyway there was a bizarre glut of Sisters of Battle releases from everyone but GW. I think we had Sisters of the Burning Rose from Anvil, the Shieldwolf War Maidens and one of the "baddest chicks in the galaxy" releases or some such.

Then a month or two later GW confesses they're going to make the army and unlike any other thing they've done - they give people a year or more heads up?

I genuinely think that somewhere, someone slipped up and the word got out (albeit very minimally) where GW were going. I feel like the third-party companies dove on the news. GW then responded by throwing out their news way too early (they weren't exactly short on releases or news and had little to no reason to do so...) to try to stall players from buying up all the third-party sisters stuff.

It may not have been the case, but it was awfully suspicious timing...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's called converting.

Something that:

1. Should not be required to build squads that look different from one another.
2. Would not be required if the kits weren't all mono-pose to begin with.

The phase (and thankfully it was just a phase) where every torso, pair of legs, head and set of arms were separate pieces led to years of bad looking miniatures. You had convert them to make something that didn’t look like a toy. Limited options is just the price you have to pay to get better looking miniatures.

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's called converting.

Something that:

1. Should not be required to build squads that look different from one another.
2. Would not be required if the kits weren't all mono-pose to begin with.

The phase (and thankfully it was just a phase) where every torso, pair of legs, head and set of arms were separate pieces led to years of bad looking miniatures. You had convert them to make something that didn’t look like a toy. Limited options is just the price you have to pay to get better looking miniatures.

Putting aside that I strongly disagree with your basic premise that the multipart style looked bad, and also putting aside that even if it were accurate it's demonstrably true that it's easier to do such conversions when the models are designed from the ground up to facilitate them rather than to make it as much effort as possible(and beyond the skill of many); even then, the idea that things have to be as limited as many modern GW kits is just pure nonsense on toast.

There is no technical or practical reason that a kit must permit only Torso A, Head C, and Weapon/Arms D to fit together without significant resculpting if you want to use, say, Head Y or Weapon/Arms G from the same kit. GW are perfectly capable of designing a kit where most of the parts are interchangeable, it just requires that the designer restrain themselves a little and leave the prancing, heroic strutting, and tactical footrest type poses out of basic infantry boxes that you'll be buying multiples of.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's called converting.

Something that:

1. Should not be required to build squads that look different from one another.
2. Would not be required if the kits weren't all mono-pose to begin with.

The phase (and thankfully it was just a phase) where every torso, pair of legs, head and set of arms were separate pieces led to years of bad looking miniatures. You had convert them to make something that didn’t look like a toy. Limited options is just the price you have to pay to get better looking miniatures.

Putting aside that I strongly disagree with your basic premise that the multipart style looked bad, and also putting aside that even if it were accurate it's demonstrably true that it's easier to do such conversions when the models are designed from the ground up to facilitate them rather than to make it as much effort as possible(and beyond the skill of many); even then, the idea that things have to be as limited as many modern GW kits is just pure nonsense on toast.

There is no technical or practical reason that a kit must permit only Torso A, Head C, and Weapon/Arms D to fit together without significant resculpting if you want to use, say, Head Y or Weapon/Arms G from the same kit. GW are perfectly capable of designing a kit where most of the parts are interchangeable, it just requires that the designer restrain themselves a little and leave the prancing, heroic strutting, and tactical footrest type poses out of basic infantry boxes that you'll be buying multiples of.

I think the old multipart kits did look bad, but that’s entirely subjective. I’d rather have beautifully sculpted single pose minis than multi pose action figure style. Again, subjective.

Here’s where we fundamentally disagree ...

Making an arm or a head fit onto a torso it wasn’t designed for, is not difficult and does not require “significant resculpting”. I’m still thinking though, based on the style of these miniatures, that we could be looking at Shadowspear style single pose sculpts here and more customisable boxes will follow.

More modular kit just meant the designer had to spend more time brainstorming.

Custodian Guard kit is some of GW last super modular kit. Further Custode kit are all monopose with arm and hand in 1 piece.

And remember that time they make The Elven Union bloodbowl team with interchangable head and arm between all body, took them 9 months to release that kit.

With GW's heavily release schedule it's necessary for all designers to make monopose kit to save time.

I've always wanted to do an infantry horde army of all 1 sculpt and 1 pose just to mess with people's OCD.

ERJAK wrote:
I've always wanted to do an infantry horde army of all 1 sculpt and 1 pose just to mess with people's OCD.

You may laugh, but back in the day I’ve seen close to that when an entire range of some obscure period of metal historical consisted of maybe 12 sculpts.

I’m with the idea these are for a Shadowspear style box set. It’s probably not true, but I’ve never seen scenic bases on troops unless they’re easy build in some way. Another example of this is the new Stormcast.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
I’m with the idea these are for a Shadowspear style box set. It’s probably not true, but I’ve never seen scenic bases on troops unless they’re easy build in some way. Another example of this is the new Stormcast.

Agreed. The retributors they showed us before looked far more like standard, modern GW kits, with what looks to be a single piece torso and legs.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/05/27/battle-sister-bulletin-part-8-retributors-first-lookgw-homepage-post-4/

 Tiberius501 wrote:
I’m with the idea these are for a Shadowspear style box set. It’s probably not true, but I’ve never seen scenic bases on troops unless they’re easy build in some way. Another example of this is the new Stormcast.

Harlequins, Van Saar, and to a lesser extent Cawdor, immediately spring to mind.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Tiberius501 wrote:
I’m with the idea these are for a Shadowspear style box set. It’s probably not true, but I’ve never seen scenic bases on troops unless they’re easy build in some way. Another example of this is the new Stormcast.

Harlequins, Van Saar, and to a lesser extent Cawdor, immediately spring to mind.

Yes, you can legitimately argue this either way. The fact is, there is no rule that all GW releases conform to. Time, as they say, will tell.

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
I've always wanted to do an infantry horde army of all 1 sculpt and 1 pose just to mess with people's OCD.

You may laugh, but back in the day I’ve seen close to that when an entire range of some obscure period of metal historical consisted of maybe 12 sculpts.

You might be thinking of the original metal sisters :p

(12 battle sisters including squad leaders and special weapons, 4 seraphim, 3 retributors, a banner, and a canoness. Even the second wave characters and seraphim were arm/head swaps of the first wave).

 Yodhrin wrote:

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's called converting.

Something that:

1. Should not be required to build squads that look different from one another.
2. Would not be required if the kits weren't all mono-pose to begin with.

The phase (and thankfully it was just a phase) where every torso, pair of legs, head and set of arms were separate pieces led to years of bad looking miniatures. You had convert them to make something that didn’t look like a toy. Limited options is just the price you have to pay to get better looking miniatures.

Putting aside that I strongly disagree with your basic premise that the multipart style looked bad, and also putting aside that even if it were accurate it's demonstrably true that it's easier to do such conversions when the models are designed from the ground up to facilitate them rather than to make it as much effort as possible(and beyond the skill of many); even then, the idea that things have to be as limited as many modern GW kits is just pure nonsense on toast.

There is no technical or practical reason that a kit must permit only Torso A, Head C, and Weapon/Arms D to fit together without significant resculpting if you want to use, say, Head Y or Weapon/Arms G from the same kit. GW are perfectly capable of designing a kit where most of the parts are interchangeable, it just requires that the designer restrain themselves a little and leave the prancing, heroic strutting, and tactical footrest type poses out of basic infantry boxes that you'll be buying multiples of.

While I agree with you on multi-pose vs mono-pose for an entire force (mono-pose can be fine if you only have one squad. The minute you have two I think it starts to look silly), I'm not sure GW necessarily has the skill to make multi-pose models anymore. The last kit released was what? Two years ago?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
I've always wanted to do an infantry horde army of all 1 sculpt and 1 pose just to mess with people's OCD.

You may laugh, but back in the day I’ve seen close to that when an entire range of some obscure period of metal historical consisted of maybe 12 sculpts.

You might be thinking of the original metal sisters :p

(12 battle sisters including squad leaders and special weapons, 4 seraphim, 3 retributors, a banner, and a canoness. Even the second wave characters and seraphim were arm/head swaps of the first wave).

While it does closely fit the metal sisters, I've seen more than a few historicals companies that sell infantry in a bag, one of each sculpt, with that being the entire range for that army's basic trooper models.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's called converting.

Something that:

1. Should not be required to build squads that look different from one another.
2. Would not be required if the kits weren't all mono-pose to begin with.

The phase (and thankfully it was just a phase) where every torso, pair of legs, head and set of arms were separate pieces led to years of bad looking miniatures. You had convert them to make something that didn’t look like a toy. Limited options is just the price you have to pay to get better looking miniatures.

Putting aside that I strongly disagree with your basic premise that the multipart style looked bad, and also putting aside that even if it were accurate it's demonstrably true that it's easier to do such conversions when the models are designed from the ground up to facilitate them rather than to make it as much effort as possible(and beyond the skill of many); even then, the idea that things have to be as limited as many modern GW kits is just pure nonsense on toast.

There is no technical or practical reason that a kit must permit only Torso A, Head C, and Weapon/Arms D to fit together without significant resculpting if you want to use, say, Head Y or Weapon/Arms G from the same kit. GW are perfectly capable of designing a kit where most of the parts are interchangeable, it just requires that the designer restrain themselves a little and leave the prancing, heroic strutting, and tactical footrest type poses out of basic infantry boxes that you'll be buying multiples of.

I think you have to separate old multi-part and newer kits; Tau are a great example, the old Firewarrior kit basically had standing or kneeling and firing from the shoulder or hip. Really difficult to get the models to do anything else, despite being a full multi-part kit and could easily have been monopose or the current “semi-posable”(?). The new Pathfinder kit on the other hand is magnificent; standing, kneeling and advancing legs with firing, advancing and a whole load of other arms (reloading, communications, sensors, gestures), plus multiple special weapons, giving a huge variety of outputs.

has GW done any kneeling models in recent years - I have a few great Sisters from another compnay - several kneeling and look great.

I'm not worried about duplicate poses. Somebody staring at my 20+ strong infantry section will almost definitely eventually be able to pick out some duplicated leg/torso sections but it won't make my army look bad. They're rank and file troops performing effectively the same function as each other. There's never been so much variety in GW miniature armies as there is now, so the idea that the highly detailed monoposes of the last few years are some kind of step backwards is simply nonsense.

But hey, guess some people need something to complain about.

GW: Here are some extremely detailed, dynamically posed miniatures for your army.
Customer: HOW VERY DARE YOU

etc.

 ekwatts wrote:
I'm not worried about duplicate poses. Somebody staring at my 20+ strong infantry section will almost definitely eventually be able to pick out some duplicated leg/torso sections but it won't make my army look bad. They're rank and file troops performing effectively the same function as each other.

With simple and functional poses that's true. With prancing and showboating ones, not so much.

 Mr Morden wrote:
has GW done any kneeling models in recent years - I have a few great Sisters from another compnay - several kneeling and look great.

I think the last one was the Space Marine Devastator Squad.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
For the love of god just release them already... they've been teasing this (full on legit teasing, not offhand mentions and jokes) for what, 2 years? JUST DO IT.

What's interesting is that GW normally doesn't tease nor preview like that. I get the feeling its a big marketing test for them. Their typical approach in the past was to tease almost nothing until right up close to the release window. That's advanced and now they generally tease perhaps 3 or 4 months up to the release window. Sisters they've teased for a few years up to the release window.

I guess for GW the big risks are:
1) That they tease too much early on and end up missing their release window due to unforeseen issues. Always a big risk and can deflate a markets interest very fast if that release window is missed by a large margin. Or if the release window turns into a "well we don't know now but its coming "soon""

2) That they market this thing coming so far off and their customers end up saving instead of spending on the more current releases

3) That they tease material a little too early and it changes significantly through the duration of the project so that what was shown early isn't what is delivered later.

Honestly I feel like points 1 and 2 they've handled really well. They only gave 2019 as the release window and they've steadily kept to that target. Meanwhile they didn't tease too much early on which meant that whilst we were hungry for more info we didn't get spoilt and urn out of stuff to be previewed and what we saw then is what we are seeing now.

beast_gts wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
has GW done any kneeling models in recent years - I have a few great Sisters from another compnay - several kneeling and look great.

I think the last one was the Space Marine Devastator Squad.

Actually last were Primaris snipers from Shadowspear...

 ekwatts wrote:
I'm not worried about duplicate poses. Somebody staring at my 20+ strong infantry section will almost definitely eventually be able to pick out some duplicated leg/torso sections but it won't make my army look bad. They're rank and file troops performing effectively the same function as each other. There's never been so much variety in GW miniature armies as there is now, so the idea that the highly detailed monoposes of the last few years are some kind of step backwards is simply nonsense.

But hey, guess some people need something to complain about.

GW: Here are some extremely detailed, dynamically posed miniatures for your army.
Customer: HOW VERY DARE YOU

etc.

Citation needed, I think. Looking at GW releases, variety has definitely gone down. Both in what's produced overall (replacements come and we get lots of variations of the same thing (6 ork buggies, marines with rifle replacements, eldar wraith wraith wraith), but the same holes remain in ranges) and what's in a box. Set bodies with swap X weapon for Y weapon.

Voss wrote:


Looking at GW releases, variety has definitely gone down. Both in what's produced overall (replacements come and we get lots of variations of the same thing (6 ork buggies, marines with rifle replacements, eldar wraith wraith wraith), but the same holes remain in ranges) and what's in a box. Set bodies with swap X weapon for Y weapon.

It's very true - GW plastic kits are less varied than before in the poses, but that's not really a problem - the material is still easy to work and you can always convert a bit to make them different.

Otherwise, it's still funny to see people complaining about that when you know the metal sisters are more than quite rigid with the same poses repeating themselves over and over (and a real pain in the ass to convert). True sisters players know these on the Warhammer Community will already be a huge improvement compared to now (and soon before ?).

On a more serious note, when you have miniatures with floating long piece of clothes, it's better to have a specific set pose that is meant to be used with set arms so that the whole still looks coherent. Unless you want to have a miniature that looks like it's caught in a chaotic wind blowing in all directions at the same time. So I believe this design choice is actually made for the sake of having better looking miniatures.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It's called converting.

Something that:

1. Should not be required to build squads that look different from one another.

Why not? It's the norm for lots of games, including 40k for a significant time.

 Sarouan wrote:

Voss wrote:


Looking at GW releases, variety has definitely gone down. Both in what's produced overall (replacements come and we get lots of variations of the same thing (6 ork buggies, marines with rifle replacements, eldar wraith wraith wraith), but the same holes remain in ranges) and what's in a box. Set bodies with swap X weapon for Y weapon.

It's very true - GW plastic kits are less varied than before in the poses, but that's not really a problem - the material is still easy to work and you can always convert a bit to make them different.

Otherwise, it's still funny to see people complaining about that when you know the metal sisters are more than quite rigid with the same poses repeating themselves over and over (and a real pain in the ass to convert). True sisters players know these on the Warhammer Community will already be a huge improvement compared to now (and soon before ?).

On a more serious note, when you have miniatures with floating long piece of clothes, it's better to have a specific set pose that is meant to be used with set arms so that the whole still looks coherent. Unless you want to have a miniature that looks like it's caught in a chaotic wind blowing in all directions at the same time. So I believe this design choice is actually made for the sake of having better looking miniatures.

Sure, at least partially. I suspect it also will coincidentally restrict how many special weapons are on the sprue.

But the general trend is less variety in favor of more posing and restrictive parts.

ERJAK wrote:
I've always wanted to do an infantry horde army of all 1 sculpt and 1 pose just to mess with people's OCD.

Just hunt down the 2nd edition 40k starter set on ebay