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Not sure what’s the proper name for these is but I’m sure many of use remember when you got the body arms legs and heads and then a spruce with a variety of weapons.

These days many kits, well you just get what you get and you can make choices about what kits to give your minis unless you want to kitbash.

I have been making a squad of CSM and a sqaud of plague marines, the later does actually have some options.

So it got me thinking about the CSM and the other newer kits and the choices being made for me, like the aspiring champion has a chain axe and that’s it’s, despite being able to take options from the champions equipment list.

Why are GW doing this. Is it simply easier for them or are they trying to impose what they think is the most sensible or balanced load out for squads. And are they progressing in this way as they rollout new kits. It will undoubtedly change the game because unless you are willing to kitbash armies are going to become more predictable.

So I suppose my main question is, is this an appear by GW to shape the way the game is played.

I think the reason they're doing it is because they want to make kits with more detail and more dynamic poses.
These models therefore look amazing, but it makes options and variant poses difficult to impossible.

Personally, I really dislike this direction. Having 5 models which look super sexy and sleek is all well and good, until you need 20 of them and it starts to look strange if they're all doing exactly the same silhouette, and it gets frustrating when you want to change a loadout or convert them because there's so much detail in the way.

If I had my tinfoil hat handy I'd be tempted to argue that latter point is deliberate as well, they're pushing out the third party market.
But I do think the primary drive is producing models that look better on the box front/web store with no consideration of how they work as gaming pieces.

The same reason is why we're getting massive models with tiny protruding details like swirling energy or outstretched wings that makes the model impossible to store and guaranteed to break.

I agree with your points I think it is detrimental to certain aspects of the game but the models do look good an im mostly into painting.

I’d like it if GW started a revenue stream focused around kitbash, they already sell things like green stuff. I think the problem they face is that so many other companies are already established at doing this, but it would be nice if there were more “upgrade sprues” available. Of course it would be a lot more expensive form GW.

Yeah. There was a sweet spot, which was (conveniently for one of my armies at least) around when the Dark Eldar troops were released, where the models had a reasonable amount of detail, you could mix and match bodies / limbs / heads, and they came with a reasonable amount of interchangeable weapons.

More recent stuff like the Harlequins did this too. It's a pain that they seem to have regressed of late. As was mentioned, some of this seems to be so they can increase the detail further. Personally I would rather they went back to the reduced detail / increased options model. Frankly there's a lot more detail than I can really be bothered to paint nowadays!

I'm kind of of two minds here.

1) A large, large fraction of the units in the game in "the good old days" were actually only 2-3 poses of completely 100% monopose metal miniatures.Usually these were characters and elite units you were expected to have 5-10 models of total.

2) In actual fact the "no rules maaan we just give you a bunch of torsos and legs and guns and arms" type kits actually had very little practical support for posing unless you took a knife to them. Just recently I looked into getting some Dire Avengers and just couldn't stomach another squad of 100% Pooping While Standing Up leg guys all holding their guns in the same hand.

GW's current kits for "Elite Units" - i.e. generally replacing kits with 2-3 totally monopose poses - tend to have between 3 and 10 potential poses, and often have freely swappable heads and random bits or some other degree of assembly freedom. Generally, that's not 10 poses with the same weapons, but it's still generally either on par or better than the finecast it's replacing when it comes to pose variety.

The big change for "Troop Units" Tends to be the fusion of legs and torso. GW 100% has stepped away from the ball join or flat join torso that you can rotate as you like for most of their kits. Usually, not always but usually, a troop kit will still have freely swappable arms, heads, and backpacks/shoulderpads if applicable.

This is even true in the much-maligned new csm kit. I've built this kit - the assembly instructions show you "you can build this guy with a plasma gun, or a bolter, or a chainsword and bolt pistol!" but you can take any of those options and put them on any other guy as well, the torsos are all the same width. There's a couple examples of bolter arm sets where the little ammo box might not attach to exactly the right spot on the torso on some of the legs but the rest are swappable.

There was a totally mono-pose version of the kit released in a limited edition box or something? Maybe you got that? https://imgur.com/a/zeMR6aG

^Is that the kit you have?

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think the reason they're doing it is because they want to make kits with more detail and more dynamic poses.
These models therefore look amazing, but it makes options and variant poses difficult to impossible.

Personally, I really dislike this direction. Having 5 models which look super sexy and sleek is all well and good, until you need 20 of them and it starts to look strange if they're all doing exactly the same silhouette, and it gets frustrating when you want to change a loadout or convert them because there's so much detail in the way.

If I had my tinfoil hat handy I'd be tempted to argue that latter point is deliberate as well, they're pushing out the third party market.
But I do think the primary drive is producing models that look better on the box front/web store with no consideration of how they work as gaming pieces.

The same reason is why we're getting massive models with tiny protruding details like swirling energy or outstretched wings that makes the model impossible to store and guaranteed to break.

It IS an attempt at pushing out the 3rd party providers.
I recomend to look at the boltguns f.e. for the chaos marines, they only work with the corresponding set of arms and corresponding torso leg combination.
And it is also to provide the awesome look. And yes i am somewhere between elated at the new csm , as my more then 70 now can attest too, but i am also really annoyed at them at the same time, because the box also has issues , especially in regards to core equipment.

HOWEVER: there's also the SC chaos marine box, with the shadowsword CSM ... the daemonkin. yeah, those "new" csm... were and still are by and large terrible.


Personally, kitbashing kinda becomes a must in regards to the newer kits, and scalpell + greenstuff your best ally at providing a more customizable force.

However, tere are exceptions to this, the GSC neophytes, whilest really pricey for a kit are great in this regards.

Crispy78 wrote:
Yeah. There was a sweet spot, which was (conveniently for one of my armies at least) around when the Dark Eldar troops were released, where the models had a reasonable amount of detail, you could mix and match bodies / limbs / heads, and they came with a reasonable amount of interchangeable weapons.

More recent stuff like the Harlequins did this too. It's a pain that they seem to have regressed of late. As was mentioned, some of this seems to be so they can increase the detail further. Personally I would rather they went back to the reduced detail / increased options model. Frankly there's a lot more detail than I can really be bothered to paint nowadays!

Harlequins IMO are the absolute peak of kit variability GW has ever achieved, it's actually insane. The fact that you can slice off the joins on the legs to create about a dozen leg poses that look good, all the arms and heads are compatible with the various other kits, and the fact that there's like 4-5 different elbow angles you can choose from on all the weapon options AND all the masks and hairstyles are separate makes it possible to build 5 sets of plastic harlequins without a single duplicate.

.....it also makes it fairly easy to kitbash a Shadowseer and Death Jester just from the models you get extra in your transport kits.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think the reason they're doing it is because they want to make kits with more detail and more dynamic poses.
These models therefore look amazing, but it makes options and variant poses difficult to impossible.

Personally, I really dislike this direction. Having 5 models which look super sexy and sleek is all well and good, until you need 20 of them and it starts to look strange if they're all doing exactly the same silhouette, and it gets frustrating when you want to change a loadout or convert them because there's so much detail in the way.

If I had my tinfoil hat handy I'd be tempted to argue that latter point is deliberate as well, they're pushing out the third party market.
But I do think the primary drive is producing models that look better on the box front/web store with no consideration of how they work as gaming pieces.

The same reason is why we're getting massive models with tiny protruding details like swirling energy or outstretched wings that makes the model impossible to store and guaranteed to break.

It IS an attempt at pushing out the 3rd party providers.
I recomend to look at the boltguns f.e. for the chaos marines, they only work with the corresponding set of arms and corresponding torso leg combination.
And it is also to provide the awesome look. And yes i am somewhere between elated at the new csm , as my more then 70 now can attest too, but i am also really annoyed at them at the same time, because the box also has issues , especially in regards to core equipment.

Personally, kitbashing kinda becomes a must in regards to the newer kits, and scalpell + greenstuff your best ally at providing a more customizable force.

However, tere are exceptions to this, the GSC neophytes, whilest really pricey for a kit are great in this regards.

Some of them look a bit silly (like if you put the arms holding the boltgun up in the air on the stationary standing legs instead of on the running legs) but when I assembled this kit for a commission I did I didn't find I had to do this at all.

The two-handed weaponry all have a designated pair of arms (which has been the case since the U-hand days, basically, AFAIK) but they didn't seem to have a designated torso. I'm not at home rn but I'm fairly certain I could take the spare bits from that kit and fit up one of the boltguns to any old MEQ torso.

I'm fine with it. If I start to get frustrated I can look at the posing of those old freeform miniatures to remember that it didn't end up looking very good. I do wish arms were generally more swappable between kits, but at the same time having them exclusive to certain dynamic poses is necessary for them to work. I like having those poses mixed in, but can understand if some people do not like the trade off. I am sure HNBC will appear shortly to agree with the OP on the matter!

Some kits ARE more poseable, though. While fused legs and torso are generally a thing (more a product of improved technology IMO since there was never much option beyond 'forward') having completely poseable arms & head is very much still a thing for some.

The current kits are a peculiar middle ground. They’ve got the dynamism allowed by plastic, but not the sheer possibility of previous kits.

Yet....let’s take a think on the 3rd Ed era Marines. Across all flavours, they were the same size, with the same joints. This meant all the collective parts were mix and match.

But....that didn’t really bring as much variety as you might initially think. The arms and legs were much of a muchness. Exceptions are the kneeling Marine legs, and the Khorne Berserkers having the ‘running’ legs. Beyond that, the main difference was the sculpted detail.

Then, as now, if you wanted serious variety of poses? Time to get hacking and converting, maybe green stuffing for really ambitious work.

The modern models have sacrificed wide cross compatibility for arguably more interesting poses. So whilst Assault and Vanilla Intercessors can be mixed, it’s my understanding it’s not as straight forward as the previous era beyond arm swaps.

My issue here is that they could still have gone down the wide compatibility root, whilst retaining the more interesting poses. Sure, certain leg and torso poses might’ve looked crap, but that’s nothing the instructions couldn’t have handled.

I am bad at posing, I just don't have a good eye for it, so I appreciate when they have made dynamic poses for me honestly. I'm not too bothered about having a couple of duplicates in the squad here and there, I will just make an effort to give them a slightly different paint job and call it a day.

The most recent GW kit I built was those Cultists of the Abyss, and they are lovely models but the assembly is weirdly difficult, very flimsy bits that have to be put together with a fair bit of pressure. I think that is a bigger problem than them being monopose. At least with my monopose metal guard all the dudes just slot into a base and assembly is done, it is pretty hard to mess up! But I am quite happy with the look of my cultist units with the basic monopose dudes from the 6e starter and then a few fancier ones from the cutlists of the Abyss to spice things up.

I started the game when most things were monopose metal models.

You were lucky if you had 5 distinct sculpts, and if you wanted to change something you had to modify it yourself. Many times we had to create our own units because GW made a profile for something but didn't have a model.

People these days should consider themselves lucky to have the number of options available to them.

Having multi pose models is nice. But if you look at the difference between sculpts now compared to sculpts 10 years ago, its night and day. They are much better now than they used to be.

I don't mind spending a little extra time cutting up and customizing my models to make sure I don't have duplicates.

Monopose certainly works towards giving more dynamic looks and poses to the minis.

Likewise, the reduction in options cuts down on extra bits that need to be included (and modeled) and/or fewer SKU's. Furthermore, the rule team has to test/balance less and makes the datasheets "cleaner". Finally, it cuts down on option paralysis in players and the "one or two best option" syndrome where only a couple of bitz gets used despite the plethora of options.

Most of it, though is just sheer laziness in keeping things simple.

I don't think the new CSM kit is all that bad in terms of mixing things up. I paint mine in Black Legion so that does help hide some repeating details. I also have some older CSM model kit parts, which used sparingly; I think makes the kit go further even if the bits definitely have less and softer details. The spoiler below has all of my not-Dark Vengeance bolter CSM. Note: the Shadowspear marines are also in there. I don't remember which they are. Also, apologies for the unpainted ones. I got a box of CSM for Christmas and haven't felt like painting more gold trim at the moment.


First, I thought I had more bolter CSM than that. Upon singling them out and inspecting them, I would say yes I can see some repeats pretty clearly. In my defense, I didn't go to too much effort to ensure this didn't happen. I usually do, but I got kinda lazy here. I think if I pick up another box, I am going to have to be pretty careful to avoid having even more twins. I still do think with a little effort it can be avoided.


The spoiler above is all my heavy weapon options. I have made sure to have 3 of all special and heavy weapons save the chaingun which I only have one as I went super into Havoc kits and had one left over. I spent a little extra time getting them to all look unique since they are likely to stay on the table after the bolter marines have been removed. Considering a good chunk of parts came from kitbashing with the Havocs and involve multiple connection points, I think I did a pretty good job. Please note, I am awful at conversions and kitbashing. So I have no doubt, it wouldn't be hard to top these examples too.

The only bit of advice I can offer is that a very simple conversion is the classic one army the bolter with the bolt pistol drawn pose. You probably can't go to that well too often, but it does mix things up and is dead easy.



Now, I can to consider getting yet another box of CSM after seeing how few bolter and chainsword/bolt pistol marines I actually have. Plus, I kinda like the idea of 66 CSM being all evil and such.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I started the game when most things were monopose metal models.

You were lucky if you had 5 distinct sculpts, and if you wanted to change something you had to modify it yourself. Many times we had to create our own units because GW made a profile for something but didn't have a model.

People these days should consider themselves lucky to have the number of options available to them.

Amen.
I read these rants about mono-pose models, lack of options, etc and laugh.
I started building Guard regiments in 2e. Cadians, Catachans, Mordians, Tallarn, etc etc etc. I have hundreds of the same mono-pose solid metal guys per regiment I've built. And for reasons yet unclear GW never made all of the special/heavy weapons for all of the regiments. Or in some cases did so long after my forces were built... So if I wanted a missing special weapon in a squad at the time? I had to learn how to mod solid metal....
And these children cry about modding plastic.

Count me in the ol' grognard category of having had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow. And also of only having had mono-pose METAL models. Modding them was never an issue, so I don't really have a problem altering the stance on a plastic mini ...

the_scotsman wrote:
I'm kind of of two minds here.

1) A large, large fraction of the units in the game in "the good old days" were actually only 2-3 poses of completely 100% monopose metal miniatures.Usually these were characters and elite units you were expected to have 5-10 models of total.

2) In actual fact the "no rules maaan we just give you a bunch of torsos and legs and guns and arms" type kits actually had very little practical support for posing unless you took a knife to them. Just recently I looked into getting some Dire Avengers and just couldn't stomach another squad of 100% Pooping While Standing Up leg guys all holding their guns in the same hand.

GW's current kits for "Elite Units" - i.e. generally replacing kits with 2-3 totally monopose poses - tend to have between 3 and 10 potential poses, and often have freely swappable heads and random bits or some other degree of assembly freedom. Generally, that's not 10 poses with the same weapons, but it's still generally either on par or better than the finecast it's replacing when it comes to pose variety.

The big change for "Troop Units" Tends to be the fusion of legs and torso. GW 100% has stepped away from the ball join or flat join torso that you can rotate as you like for most of their kits. Usually, not always but usually, a troop kit will still have freely swappable arms, heads, and backpacks/shoulderpads if applicable.

This is even true in the much-maligned new csm kit. I've built this kit - the assembly instructions show you "you can build this guy with a plasma gun, or a bolter, or a chainsword and bolt pistol!" but you can take any of those options and put them on any other guy as well, the torsos are all the same width. There's a couple examples of bolter arm sets where the little ammo box might not attach to exactly the right spot on the torso on some of the legs but the rest are swappable.

There was a totally mono-pose version of the kit released in a limited edition box or something? Maybe you got that? https://imgur.com/a/zeMR6aG

^Is that the kit you have?

Nah it’s a squad from one of the start collecting boxes

One thing I'm a little annoyed about after building a couple of the newer Marine kits is that the bits seem to be slightly different which makes kitbashing even more awkward if you want consistency. The Assault Intercessors for example, the Bolt Pistols are slightly different to the standard Intercessor and Reiver ones, the Chainsword arms have that weird vambrace guard. The Reivers have the weird missing pauldron preventing you using those arms on a different kit.

In some ways I prefer the old monopose metals. They are practically indestructable if they are one piece, which most of them are. And I find them satisfying to hand.

mrFickle wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I'm kind of of two minds here.

1) A large, large fraction of the units in the game in "the good old days" were actually only 2-3 poses of completely 100% monopose metal miniatures.Usually these were characters and elite units you were expected to have 5-10 models of total.

2) In actual fact the "no rules maaan we just give you a bunch of torsos and legs and guns and arms" type kits actually had very little practical support for posing unless you took a knife to them. Just recently I looked into getting some Dire Avengers and just couldn't stomach another squad of 100% Pooping While Standing Up leg guys all holding their guns in the same hand.

GW's current kits for "Elite Units" - i.e. generally replacing kits with 2-3 totally monopose poses - tend to have between 3 and 10 potential poses, and often have freely swappable heads and random bits or some other degree of assembly freedom. Generally, that's not 10 poses with the same weapons, but it's still generally either on par or better than the finecast it's replacing when it comes to pose variety.

The big change for "Troop Units" Tends to be the fusion of legs and torso. GW 100% has stepped away from the ball join or flat join torso that you can rotate as you like for most of their kits. Usually, not always but usually, a troop kit will still have freely swappable arms, heads, and backpacks/shoulderpads if applicable.

This is even true in the much-maligned new csm kit. I've built this kit - the assembly instructions show you "you can build this guy with a plasma gun, or a bolter, or a chainsword and bolt pistol!" but you can take any of those options and put them on any other guy as well, the torsos are all the same width. There's a couple examples of bolter arm sets where the little ammo box might not attach to exactly the right spot on the torso on some of the legs but the rest are swappable.

There was a totally mono-pose version of the kit released in a limited edition box or something? Maybe you got that? https://imgur.com/a/zeMR6aG

^Is that the kit you have?

Nah it’s a squad from one of the start collecting boxes

Ah, that explains it.

GW has started a trend of making totally monopose, as in one way to build them only, models to put in various discount starter sets. The unit of Chaos Space Marines from the SC box is not only monopose, it's actually weirdly UNIQUE monopose - for example you MUST build that squad with an autocannon, and you don't get an autocannon in the multipart CSM kit.

The marines from that half of the set are the same way (Start Collecting: Phobos Primaris Marines or somesuch). They've done this for a while, starting with I think the board game "Deathwatch Overkill" which is how they launched both Deathwatch and GSC in 7th edition.

Weirdly they also have a habit of including units in those monopose sets and taking a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally long time (if ever) to release those units in a mpk. Genestealer Aberrants, for example, took like 3 years to come out as a multipose kit, and you actually could not make the poses that you got in the original monopose sprue.

The Assault Intercessors for example, the Bolt Pistols are slightly different to the standard Intercessor and Reiver ones

In this case, its because all 3 of those units have different Bolt Pistols. They all do something different.

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

mrFickle wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I'm kind of of two minds here.

1) A large, large fraction of the units in the game in "the good old days" were actually only 2-3 poses of completely 100% monopose metal miniatures.Usually these were characters and elite units you were expected to have 5-10 models of total.

2) In actual fact the "no rules maaan we just give you a bunch of torsos and legs and guns and arms" type kits actually had very little practical support for posing unless you took a knife to them. Just recently I looked into getting some Dire Avengers and just couldn't stomach another squad of 100% Pooping While Standing Up leg guys all holding their guns in the same hand.

GW's current kits for "Elite Units" - i.e. generally replacing kits with 2-3 totally monopose poses - tend to have between 3 and 10 potential poses, and often have freely swappable heads and random bits or some other degree of assembly freedom. Generally, that's not 10 poses with the same weapons, but it's still generally either on par or better than the finecast it's replacing when it comes to pose variety.

The big change for "Troop Units" Tends to be the fusion of legs and torso. GW 100% has stepped away from the ball join or flat join torso that you can rotate as you like for most of their kits. Usually, not always but usually, a troop kit will still have freely swappable arms, heads, and backpacks/shoulderpads if applicable.

This is even true in the much-maligned new csm kit. I've built this kit - the assembly instructions show you "you can build this guy with a plasma gun, or a bolter, or a chainsword and bolt pistol!" but you can take any of those options and put them on any other guy as well, the torsos are all the same width. There's a couple examples of bolter arm sets where the little ammo box might not attach to exactly the right spot on the torso on some of the legs but the rest are swappable.

There was a totally mono-pose version of the kit released in a limited edition box or something? Maybe you got that? https://imgur.com/a/zeMR6aG

^Is that the kit you have?

Nah it’s a squad from one of the start collecting boxes

Ah, that explains it.

GW has started a trend of making totally monopose, as in one way to build them only, models to put in various discount starter sets. The unit of Chaos Space Marines from the SC box is not only monopose, it's actually weirdly UNIQUE monopose - for example you MUST build that squad with an autocannon, and you don't get an autocannon in the multipart CSM kit.

The marines from that half of the set are the same way (Start Collecting: Phobos Primaris Marines or somesuch). They've done this for a while, starting with I think the board game "Deathwatch Overkill" which is how they launched both Deathwatch and GSC in 7th edition.

Weirdly they also have a habit of including units in those monopose sets and taking a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally long time (if ever) to release those units in a mpk. Genestealer Aberrants, for example, took like 3 years to come out as a multipose kit, and you actually could not make the poses that you got in the original monopose sprue.

There still aren't kits for Suppressors from Shadow Spear and the Gravis Captain and Ancient from Dark Imperium. Which is weird considering how Marine-happy GW is.

The Newman wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

mrFickle wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I'm kind of of two minds here.

1) A large, large fraction of the units in the game in "the good old days" were actually only 2-3 poses of completely 100% monopose metal miniatures.Usually these were characters and elite units you were expected to have 5-10 models of total.

2) In actual fact the "no rules maaan we just give you a bunch of torsos and legs and guns and arms" type kits actually had very little practical support for posing unless you took a knife to them. Just recently I looked into getting some Dire Avengers and just couldn't stomach another squad of 100% Pooping While Standing Up leg guys all holding their guns in the same hand.

GW's current kits for "Elite Units" - i.e. generally replacing kits with 2-3 totally monopose poses - tend to have between 3 and 10 potential poses, and often have freely swappable heads and random bits or some other degree of assembly freedom. Generally, that's not 10 poses with the same weapons, but it's still generally either on par or better than the finecast it's replacing when it comes to pose variety.

The big change for "Troop Units" Tends to be the fusion of legs and torso. GW 100% has stepped away from the ball join or flat join torso that you can rotate as you like for most of their kits. Usually, not always but usually, a troop kit will still have freely swappable arms, heads, and backpacks/shoulderpads if applicable.

This is even true in the much-maligned new csm kit. I've built this kit - the assembly instructions show you "you can build this guy with a plasma gun, or a bolter, or a chainsword and bolt pistol!" but you can take any of those options and put them on any other guy as well, the torsos are all the same width. There's a couple examples of bolter arm sets where the little ammo box might not attach to exactly the right spot on the torso on some of the legs but the rest are swappable.

There was a totally mono-pose version of the kit released in a limited edition box or something? Maybe you got that? https://imgur.com/a/zeMR6aG

^Is that the kit you have?

Nah it’s a squad from one of the start collecting boxes

Ah, that explains it.

GW has started a trend of making totally monopose, as in one way to build them only, models to put in various discount starter sets. The unit of Chaos Space Marines from the SC box is not only monopose, it's actually weirdly UNIQUE monopose - for example you MUST build that squad with an autocannon, and you don't get an autocannon in the multipart CSM kit.

The marines from that half of the set are the same way (Start Collecting: Phobos Primaris Marines or somesuch). They've done this for a while, starting with I think the board game "Deathwatch Overkill" which is how they launched both Deathwatch and GSC in 7th edition.

Weirdly they also have a habit of including units in those monopose sets and taking a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally long time (if ever) to release those units in a mpk. Genestealer Aberrants, for example, took like 3 years to come out as a multipose kit, and you actually could not make the poses that you got in the original monopose sprue.

There still aren't kits for Suppressors from Shadow Spear and the Gravis Captain and Ancient from Dark Imperium. Which is weird considering how Marine-happy GW is.

They're just saving them for any week/month they don't have any other SM kit slated for.

For characters it probably doesn't matter as much. But dynamic poses, when you are running 4-6 of the same unit, starts looking kind of a wierd. At least to me. Specialy when GW goes for the really dynamic pose, and every 5th model per squad is doing the same back flip

ccs wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I started the game when most things were monopose metal models.

You were lucky if you had 5 distinct sculpts, and if you wanted to change something you had to modify it yourself. Many times we had to create our own units because GW made a profile for something but didn't have a model.

People these days should consider themselves lucky to have the number of options available to them.

Amen.
I read these rants about mono-pose models, lack of options, etc and laugh.
I started building Guard regiments in 2e. Cadians, Catachans, Mordians, Tallarn, etc etc etc. I have hundreds of the same mono-pose solid metal guys per regiment I've built. And for reasons yet unclear GW never made all of the special/heavy weapons for all of the regiments. Or in some cases did so long after my forces were built... So if I wanted a missing special weapon in a squad at the time? I had to learn how to mod solid metal....
And these children cry about modding plastic.

Yet at the same time they released 5? 6? Regiments for you to choose from.

Marines had five Chaplain options an seven Librarian options (including 1 Terminator option for each), all of which allowed for arm swaps and far more wargear choices than they have now, as well as the easy Jump Pack upgrade for any of the power armored.

I forget how many Guardian sculpts there were, but iirc it was a ton.

I dislike the new kits how they come together, I had a lot more enjoyment from the older ones and wish the trends would have gone towards better more freedom oriented models as opposed to his more mono pose hybrid approach.

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
I dislike the new kits how they come together, I had a lot more enjoyment from the older ones and wish the trends would have gone towards better more freedom oriented models as opposed to his more mono pose hybrid approach.

Which of the new kits have you built?

 Insectum7 wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I started the game when most things were monopose metal models.

You were lucky if you had 5 distinct sculpts, and if you wanted to change something you had to modify it yourself. Many times we had to create our own units because GW made a profile for something but didn't have a model.

People these days should consider themselves lucky to have the number of options available to them.

Amen.
I read these rants about mono-pose models, lack of options, etc and laugh.
I started building Guard regiments in 2e. Cadians, Catachans, Mordians, Tallarn, etc etc etc. I have hundreds of the same mono-pose solid metal guys per regiment I've built. And for reasons yet unclear GW never made all of the special/heavy weapons for all of the regiments. Or in some cases did so long after my forces were built... So if I wanted a missing special weapon in a squad at the time? I had to learn how to mod solid metal....
And these children cry about modding plastic.

Yet at the same time they released 5? 6? Regiments for you to choose from.

Cadian, Catachan, Mordian, Tallarn, Vallhallen + the Attilan Rough Riders + the plastic Stormtroopers.
Late 2e added the Preatorians
3rd added the Steel Legion
4th added the Vostroyans

I chose them all & don't mix them, converting missing weapons for each regiment as needed. So you won't see a Mordian spec/heavy weapon in my Tallarns, etc.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Marines had five Chaplain options an seven Librarian options (including 1 Terminator option for each), all of which allowed for arm swaps and far more wargear choices than they have now, as well as the easy Jump Pack upgrade for any of the power armored.

And Commissars. There's 5 or so different ones.

Lol. Can you imagine the whinging of some of these people if between 2 types some SM accounted for 12 "releases"?

ccs wrote:

Lol. Can you imagine the whinging of some of these people if between 2 types some SM accounted for 12 "releases"?

Now now, context. Every Codex in 2nd came out with a bunch of new models, and between codexes there were numerous other releases for Marines and Xenos alike. And at the time, the Eldar models were new, not over two decades old like many of them are now.

mrFickle wrote:
Not sure what’s the proper name for these is but I’m sure many of use remember when you got the body arms legs and heads and then a spruce with a variety of weapons.

These days many kits, well you just get what you get and you can make choices about what kits to give your minis unless you want to kitbash.

I have been making a squad of CSM and a sqaud of plague marines, the later does actually have some options.

So it got me thinking about the CSM and the other newer kits and the choices being made for me, like the aspiring champion has a chain axe and that’s it’s, despite being able to take options from the champions equipment list.

Why are GW doing this. Is it simply easier for them or are they trying to impose what they think is the most sensible or balanced load out for squads. And are they progressing in this way as they rollout new kits. It will undoubtedly change the game because unless you are willing to kitbash armies are going to become more predictable.

So I suppose my main question is, is this an appear by GW to shape the way the game is played.

I think this is totally an issue of control. By making the kits monopose, you're cutting down a huge part of the community in terms of kitbashes and 3rd party figs. There are many who will keep doing it, but a large number of people with less modeling experience will shy away from it. But, this is only one part. The other part is in limiting choices to make the rule set more tight and easier to balance over long periods of time.

 Da Boss wrote:
In some ways I prefer the old monopose metals. They are practically indestructable if they are one piece, which most of them are. And I find them satisfying to hand.

Absolutely. Every fool know early-mid 90's GW is best GW.