Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

There is a fair bit of distortion the last year or two in a ton of GW’s product photography (other examples include some of the Gladiator tank product photos with excessive foreshortening, and some shots of the Inceptors) and I feel like the Lilith photo we’re all responding to is probably suffering from that a bit as well. The paint job doesn’t do her any favors either, so I’m hoping the model looks better IRL but I have to agree that old Lilith worked way better IMO. She looked fit and very strong but not power-lifter strong.

I showed my wife a photo of the old and the new one, and she summed it up better than anyone else I’ve seen so far: “The original model looks like the character in her early 20’s. Young, fit, vibrant, in peak shape and ready to go “kill it.” The new one looks like the character in her mid to late 50’s after her dreams have been crushed and she’s got a double wide trailer full of stray cats which she takes care of using the money she makes from her job as a waffle house waitress.”

Hopefully, like Daedalus said, the model looks better IRL. That character (and DE players in general) deserve better.

Edit: Far as the “alluring” part of the description- meh. Eye of the beholder and all that. I don’t so much care if they “get” that right or not. I just feel like she’s portrayed like someone who is built more like a strong swimmer, and the photo of the new seems like they sculpted her as though she’s about to attempt an Olympic dead lift record.

Am I looking at the same model as everyone else? I see no real issue with Lelith besides the fact that the hair has lots of tiny, easily breakable bits and that her foot is attached to the scenic base meaning you need to do knife work to have her based on anything but that. Other than that...she is a muscular woman doing a scenic lunge/leap.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Holy strawman, Herzog.

I'll turn the question around, what makes Lelith sensual? Yukishiro asked that awhile ago at least a couple times and I didn't see a good response (Canadian, you said something about "queen b***h" which is kind of ironic in this thread). Again, as was said, aesthetics are subjective, but I don't think you have to be an art history major to say this sculpt is less sensual than the last one. Again, the Keeper resculpt and several other Slaaneshi models are a much better example of that.

I was jesting.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


she fits that description better than her old model IMO

Please explain why you feel that way.

Imo her posture is much better than the old one. She feels like shes pouncing at her victim in a pretty graceful way to me.
The shape of one's body has no real say in their sensuality, neither does it dictate the other adjectives you used to describe her.

Grace, hypnotism, sensuality and spellbinding are all about how she acts.

And i think a large part of why people find her not feminine enough is because of the inability of Heavy Metal to paint anything else than marines and catachans.
Compare these two pictures , im sure that a lelith painted with the second's style will look plenty feminine

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


she fits that description better than her old model IMO

That's sorta like the South Park skit with the two political candidates. I'd probably be inclined to say I like the old model better, but they both completely fail at capturing what she's described as.

Should I take that lukewarm response as another vote that, all bashing on hypothetical incels aside, this model is not in fact "grace embodied," "hypnotic," "sensual" and "spellbinding?"

 Canadian 5th wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Oh come on, at least own your rudeness if you're going to be rude, don't try to weasel your way out of it afterward. You were very much insulting the guy for no real reason. Nothing he said was remotely like the barbs you were hurling around about panty-flashing and waifus. There was no "similarity." If you disagree with his argument by all means do so, but do so without insinuating he's some sort of weird creepy incel. It's just pathetic and nasty and it poisons the whole tone of the conversation.

This entire conversation is that the female elf model isn't built like a runway model and that this somehow makes her less attractive. It's entirely fair to compare it to anime nerds complaining that a character wasn't rendered hot enough in plastic for their figurine. I feel like this goes double when, in spite of all the claims, we never see these arguments pop up around singular male sculpts with people digg'ing through the flavor text to find every little flaw in a character's rendering in plastic.

Oh but we have, with Shrike, and would you guess what the emergent narrative was..?

re: New Lelith-

New Lelith looks highly similar to old Lelith except for the head, the head has lines that look more like human models than the other dark eldar models. She does not look Dark Eldar to me because of this, her head is not Aeldari. Her body is highly similiar in shape and size to the previous sculpt although the entire scale is slightly bigger.

This is the only new sculpt for an army I play I will not get, it is a downgrade in aesthetic from the previous sculpt - because it is not an aeldari aesthetic it looks human so it stands out against the rest of the model lines as a sore thumb.

re: Start collecting- The DE start collecting 2021 is an amazing deal. The start collecting the DE half of the pain and piety box would build a nice starting force.

You will get
Archon
Lelith
Venom
Raider x2
Incubi x5
10 Kabalites
5 scourges
10 wyches

With the new transport options you can put everything in transports other than the scourges, which do not need one anyways.

Suggestion

Venom with Incubi
Raider with Warriors + Archon
Raider with Wyches + Lelith
5 scourges

If I was starting with DE I would have about 1k of my force sorted right there.

 Castozor wrote:
So ignoring whether or not a new model accurately reflects the in-universe beauty standards for her race for a moment, how good would a pure Cabal force be with this new Dex? While I generally don't like (pretend) Elves I have to say DE look really interesting with their playstyle of stuffing everything in transports and zooming around the map. Since I don't have a lot of money to burn at the moment, I was eyeing the new Combat Patrol to get a start on a Cabal army but I'm not fampiliar with DE at all. No one here plays (Dark) Eldar and as such I lack the experience to judge the new codex for myself.

Immediately (like after the Raiding Force bits have landed) I'm looking hard at MSU obsidian rose running all the darklances

Incidentally, if you want an example of someone creating a DE model that I do think hits all those notes out of the park...Gareth Nicholas' Drazhar:



And that's just a dude (a very talented dude, yes, but just a dude) with his own STL file. And yet he's managed a level of kineticism, grace, and, yes, sensuality far beyond anything in any of GW's Lelith models. All without any lazy reliance on tactical rocks, either.

Can we maybe take a break on being gakky about women and focus up again on what build space has just been opened up?

Well they've admitted they can't represent eldar speed in the core mechanics by:

increasing warriors to 4+ and giving the whole army a 6++ (I know they had a 6+++ previously but it's not quite the same) minimum is the only way they could figure out how to cover it.


I expect some kind of similar design thinking going into the CWE as well.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Incidentally, if you want an example of someone creating a DE model that I do think hits all those notes out of the park...Gareth Nicholas' Drazhar:

Spoiler:

https://garethnicholasblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/drazhar-master-of-blades/amp/

And that's just a dude (a very talented dude, yes, but just a dude) with his own STL file. And yet he's managed a level of kineticism, grace, and, yes, sensuality far beyond anything in any of GW's Lelith models. All without any lazy reliance on tactical rocks, either.

THIS is what the new drazhar should have looked like, or at least along those lines. I think the new drazhar is a way worse offender for bad sculpt than the new lelith is. The only thing I personally really don't like a about the new lelith is her face, but GW is notoriously bad at faces....so whatever.

The new drazhar however is a whole other kind of awful. He's described as having a subdued, but archaic type of incubi armor, and as being a brutally efficient fighter.....so why the hell is the helmet on the new model so freaking big and unwieldy with about 4 horns too many? I really love the lore of that character and the new rules seem really awsome for him, but my god, the new model does absolutely nothing for me.
Seems to me like GW had to make sure he has a freakishly big helmet with idiotic extra horns, just to erase any doubt that he is just a normal incubus. Considering how great the new incubi look, they really dropped the ball on drazhar imo.

One last thing regarding lelith: while I am not a big fan of the model (again, the face) I think the GW paintjob doesn't help....a good painter can make her look considerably better for sure, like making the lines on her brow not as harsh, giving her face a softer appearence.

I'm going to wade in; I probably shouldn't. But here goes:

I think that the folks reacting to complaints about the model are making a common mistake- one which I myself make frequently: the voices of the excessively negative tend to blend together, and so it's easy to respond to a comment ASSUMING that a particular person belongs to "that category" of people.

It is not an exaggeration to say that these discussions come up with most if not all female models. The discussion over the repentia were... Well, quite frankly, soul destroying to read, and as mentioned, this particular model model has already been the subject of a thread that was explicitly about appearance, which ended up getting locked.

The Draxus threads were also pretty terrible.

It is possible that all of the people who have been called out this time around truly never have participated in any of those other threads. That is certainly possible. But the casual forum user just sees the thread moving in a certain direction and thinks, "Here we go again." So they speak up. And if you weren't one of the people in all those other threads saying all the trash that was said, yeah, you're going to get upset if you feel like someone is accusing you of that.

It's hard to keep posters strait. I can only identify a certain number of posters on here- there are about ten or so who are frequent enough posters, who also post lengthy enough responses that I can get a feel for who they are. This is a recent development for me. The rest of you- and please don't take this the wrong way- you kinda blend together. And if your one of the ones who tends to blend, I've probably assumed you were part of a camp that you seemed to be a part of, even though your own point of view might be more nuanced than I thought.

I'm sorry for all the times that has happened; I'm sorry in advance for all the times it will continue to happen, because it's not going to stop. We're ships in the night man, and we do make assumptions when there are pages and pages of threads about a particular grievance, and you happen to innocently express that grievance for the very first time.

It ain't right, but it's hard to fix; we just get so sick of "Draxus is too fat", "Repentia aren't sexy enough" and now Lelith. It may not have been you making any of the other comments that caused our exhaustion.

But we are exhausted.

Even if this particular argument has a shred more legitimacy than the others- and I'm not entirely sure it does, but even we give you the benefit of the doubt and concede Lelith is a special case, I'd hope you can still understand how the cumulative weight of all of these threads impacts our perceptions.

I imagine, for example, that some folks perceive me as a "White Knight" because I do cut GW a fair amount of slack. I personally feel that my opinions are more nuanced than those of a "true" white knight (whatever that is). But if you are having a day where, say you just found out that Renegades and Heretics no longer exist when they were your favourite faction, and you log into to Dakka, and you see PenitentJake talking about how GW is likely going to release Traitor Guard, which is why they did that...

Well jeez, I may even be right, but in that moment, I'm going to come across as a huge tool right?

With that, two specific observations:

Someone posted an unpainted Lelith, and the face at least looked fine. The unpainted face looks far less hostile, angry and/ or constipated on the unpainted model. I can see the potential for a more conventional beauty in the unpainted face than the painted one.

Second: the word "sensual" is an odd one. Definitionally, it simply means appealing to the five senses. The sexually attractive part is a connotative association, derived from the trope that "senses" are less valid than "reason."

The thing that I would assume to be true about someone described as "sensual" would be that they acted upon the senses. Like I've seen dancers who I did not consider to be "attractive"... Until I saw them dance. And sometimes, that changes EVERYTHING.

And I think that might be how Lelith works; you see a still image, and she's disconnected from the thing that makes her special- you only really grasp it when you see her move... Specifically, when you see her fight.

In any case, that's probably as far down this rabbit hole as I'm going to go- it may be too far already.

Peace.

Depicting movement (which is necessary to create either grace or sensuality) in a static model is difficult, no doubt. But it's not impossible. I think the fan-created Drazhar model I posted is an excellent example of someone absolutely nailing it.

I think it's rather embarrassing when some dude with a self-made STL manages to reflect motion better than a company worth 4 billion (is it 5 by now? it probably is).

Don't get me wrong, GW creates high quality models overall. And they've proved they can do grace with the Keeper of Secrets, which is a fantastic model that conveys a tremendous amount with a very restrained pose. But they sure didn't manage it with this Lelith model.

It ain't right, but it's hard to fix; we just get so sick of "Draxus is too fat", "Repentia aren't sexy enough" and now Lelith. It may not have been you making any of the other comments that caused our exhaustion.

So stop responding to those people?

Just like you mention that some folks make odd arguments ( “Repentia aren’t sexy enough is a good example of a real head shaker IMO) there are equally many who make a reasonable criticism and are immediately called names and insulted because they dared have an opinion of a female model. It actually happens with the male models too (although that one’s inconvenient for some folks). But the point is, why not just ignore the “crazies” and respond to the people with valid criticisms (noting that it is possible for a criticism to be valid even if one does not agree w/it).

Does anyone actually have a photo of her painted by someone else btw? The photo of the unpainted model on the last page solved a few of my potential issues but not all of them, and I’m still hoping my issues are more photo distortion + paint job type issues ...

 Castozor wrote:
So ignoring whether or not a new model accurately reflects the in-universe beauty standards for her race for a moment, how good would a pure Cabal force be with this new Dex? While I generally don't like (pretend) Elves I have to say DE look really interesting with their playstyle of stuffing everything in transports and zooming around the map. Since I don't have a lot of money to burn at the moment, I was eyeing the new Combat Patrol to get a start on a Cabal army but I'm not familiar with DE at all. No one here plays (Dark) Eldar and as such I lack the experience to judge the new codex for myself.

Pretty solid, if a bit stacked in the "Anti-marine and anti-big vehicles" side of things.

Dark eldar have always been one of the best armies in the biz for building a 'slow burn' army, because while you dont get a ton of points out of every box, you get so, so, just so so so many things to paint. Did you enjoy painting that squad of 10 super detailed infantry? Paint another 6 on their super intricate transport.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Do you think that model looks, in GW's words: "grace embodied," "hypnotic," "sensual" and "spellbinding?" I've asked the thread this three times now, and got zero responses from anyone. I have to assume that's because nobody actually does think that model is "grace embodied." She looks angry and/or constipated. Nothing about that model is graceful, hypnotic, sensual or spellbinding. If you want a model that looks graceful, hypnotic, sensual and spellbinding, look up the Keeper of Secrets. That hits all those notes, this model hits none.

The new one actually has a sense of motion unlike the 5e sculpt who was doing a dumb heroic pose on a random spear so it's automatically more graceful just due to looking like she's mid-leap instead of doing some DE fashion shoot. None of her models are anything like hypnotic, though her foam LARP weapons from the 3e sculpt might lure me in close because I can't believe they're supposed to be real, so maybe that one wins. None of her sculpts are sensual and it would be hard to make a single model sculpt look that way unless they literaly modeled a hand doing a come hither motion or had her arching her back like in the below image of her, heck maybe they could model her washing Vect's Raider and have her draped over the prow. For spellbinding see hypnotic.





You weren't going to get these images as her new sculpt and aside from her face which is shown off from a terrible angle in GW's promo art there isn't a massive difference between the 5e sculpt and the new one. She's just as buff in both sculpts, has a better pose now, and her hair shows off a better sense of motion. The new model is a better sculpt and at least as <insert adjective> as her old one.

So that's another vote for "the best I can say is that it's better than the last sculpt."

I think my point has been made. This sculpt doesn't reflect the description given to us by GW of the character. Not even the people defending it can bring themselves to say more than "not as bad as the old one."

And you can very much do sensuality in a sculpt without anything that isn't PG. When you're conveying movement in a static object, the key is dynamic posing. That doesn't mean someone has to be flying off a tactical rock - that's GW's favorite go-to and frankly it's part of why they so often fail at it, that's the lazy approach to movement - it's about depicting a movement that's still in progress. Sensuality and grace can be conveyed through accentuating the posing to be a little more stylized than would be natural. Etc etc. Whole sculpture courses are taught on these concepts.

The Keeper of Secrets model fits every one of the adjectives used to describe Lelith. So does the fan-created Drazhar I posted. GW can do it; non-GW people can do it. GW just didn't do it this time.

Y'all nuts. New Drazhar is an awesome sculpt. The old depiction of him was frankly comical.

I posted a fan-created model of him, not the old model. I don't think the new Drazhar is bad, BTW - I just think the fan-created one is a perfect illustration of how you create something that is graceful, sensual, hypnotic, spell-binding, etc. It's all in the posing. The new Lelith model fails because they're relying on the tactical rock to create motion and tactical rocks don't actually create motion. There's no elegance in that pose.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I posted a fan-created model of him, not the old model. I don't think the new Drazhar is bad, BTW - I just think the fan-created one is a perfect illustration of how you create something that is graceful, sensual, hypnotic, spell-binding, etc. It's all in the posing. The new Lelith model fails because they're relying on the tactical rock to create motion and tactical rocks don't actually create motion. There's no elegance in that pose.

I saw that and I'm still saying nope to it. Part of it is clearly the nostalgia from the old drawing of him which is the appeal but the new one looks more ready to feth gak up, which is what I expect of a Phoenix Lord.

yukishiro1 wrote:
So that's another vote for "the best I can say is that it's better than the last sculpt."

I think my point has been made. This sculpt doesn't reflect the description given to us by GW of the character. Not even the people defending it can bring themselves to say more than "not as bad as the old one."

And you can very much do sensuality in a sculpt without anything that isn't PG. When you're conveying movement in a static object, the key is dynamic posing. That doesn't mean someone has to be flying off a tactical rock - that's GW's favorite go-to and frankly it's part of why they so often fail at it, that's the lazy approach to movement - it's about depicting a movement that's still in progress. Sensuality and grace can be conveyed through accentuating the posing to be a little more stylized than would be natural. Etc etc. Whole sculpture courses are taught on these concepts.

The Keeper of Secrets model fits every one of the adjectives used to describe Lelith. So does the fan-created Drazhar I posted. GW can do it; non-GW people can do it. GW just didn't do it this time.

I'm not saying that the new sculpt is perfect. If it were me I might have had her posed, bent over a freshly beheaded corpse cradling the head in one hand and a blood blade in the others, her eyes fixed on the head with a look of smug self-satisfaction, the body of her victim would be posed just leaning over with her other knife lodged in it's back. The issue would be that every Lelith would then be beheading the same dude even in battles where none of that faction are present, so it might work better as a diorama than a baseline character model.

I hate to have to comment again but I will. You know you can just not be a fan of how a model looks right ? Really why does anyone need more of a reason to dislike the new lelith other than " I don't like it, I think its ugly, bland, insert adjective here.

I mean, they are models, they aren't real, they aren't a judgement on real people. I don't cry myself to sleep because Catachans and Space Marines make me look like a feeble girly man, why does it bother anyone people don't like the new lilith for whatever reason they have ?

This is literally opinion at its finest with beauty being quite snug in the eye of beholder. Maybe some people like sexier or their version of it looking women ? Maybe some don't, maybe some want super huge He men, maybe some don't. Like for me ? I liked the older one, this one doesn't fit my styles, I'd use it if I wanted to use the character and didn't have her already.

I really kind of feel like all this seeking to justify why its worse, is a waste of creative energy. It's alright just to dislike it, or just to like it. At the end of the day we can most all agree they had better models to re do and it'll cost an eye watering amount that will make me shake my head.

I'm left asking who or what is Draxus.

Really my problem with Lelith is the open mouth. See those Banshees as a similar example. I know its meant to indicate shouting or something, but since the model doesn't actually move, it makes them look like they are trying to catch flies.

I always felt annoyed with the bald screaming space marine Sgt heads for the same reason.

Though I loved to take the old plastic dark eldar wild, wind blown hair, cut it off the eldar warrior heads and place it on the bald space marine sgt heads. Looked like they were rocking out with amazing hair. Called it the Ric Flair... Woooooo !

 Canadian 5th wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
So that's another vote for "the best I can say is that it's better than the last sculpt."

I think my point has been made. This sculpt doesn't reflect the description given to us by GW of the character. Not even the people defending it can bring themselves to say more than "not as bad as the old one."

And you can very much do sensuality in a sculpt without anything that isn't PG. When you're conveying movement in a static object, the key is dynamic posing. That doesn't mean someone has to be flying off a tactical rock - that's GW's favorite go-to and frankly it's part of why they so often fail at it, that's the lazy approach to movement - it's about depicting a movement that's still in progress. Sensuality and grace can be conveyed through accentuating the posing to be a little more stylized than would be natural. Etc etc. Whole sculpture courses are taught on these concepts.

The Keeper of Secrets model fits every one of the adjectives used to describe Lelith. So does the fan-created Drazhar I posted. GW can do it; non-GW people can do it. GW just didn't do it this time.

I'm not saying that the new sculpt is perfect. If it were me I might have had her posed, bent over a freshly beheaded corpse cradling the head in one hand and a blood blade in the others, her eyes fixed on the head with a look of smug self-satisfaction, the body of her victim would be posed just leaning over with her other knife lodged in it's back. The issue would be that every Lelith would then be beheading the same dude even in battles where none of that faction are present, so it might work better as a diorama than a baseline character model.

The new model has more of a Xena/Red Sonja vibe, while most people probably would have envisioned her closer how the Daughters of Khaine look like. Essentially people were expecting an elegant but deadly fighter, and got a brutal and powerful mixed martial arts gladiatrix instead. Neither view is probably "wrong", but it's definitely a change in style.

Tyel wrote:
I'm left asking who or what is Draxus.

Really my problem with Lelith is the open mouth. See those Banshees as a similar example. I know its meant to indicate shouting or something, but since the model doesn't actually move, it makes them look like they are trying to catch flies.

Kyria Draxus is the newest Inquisitor. There were similar discussions about her too.

PenitentJake wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm left asking who or what is Draxus.

Really my problem with Lelith is the open mouth. See those Banshees as a similar example. I know its meant to indicate shouting or something, but since the model doesn't actually move, it makes them look like they are trying to catch flies.

Kyria Draxus is the newest Inquisitor. There were similar discussions about her too.

That model pissed me off because it was gratuitous as feth, but I missed the complaints about it. Got a thread?

 AngryAngel80 wrote:


This is literally opinion at its finest with beauty being quite snug in the eye of beholder. Maybe some people like sexier or their version of it looking women ? Maybe some don't, maybe some want super huge He men, maybe some don't. Like for me ? I liked the older one, this one doesn't fit my styles, I'd use it if I wanted to use the character and didn't have her already.

Honestly, just because it's repetitive and tiresome. If there was some dude who chimed in every time GW released a model for a male figure and called him wimpy and scrawny and weak looking if he didn't have the same arm size to head size ratio from the 3rd ed plastic catachans, I'd probably start trolling that guy too.

 Castozor wrote:
So ignoring whether or not a new model accurately reflects the in-universe beauty standards for her race for a moment, how good would a pure Cabal force be with this new Dex? While I generally don't like (pretend) Elves I have to say DE look really interesting with their playstyle of stuffing everything in transports and zooming around the map. Since I don't have a lot of money to burn at the moment, I was eyeing the new Combat Patrol to get a start on a Cabal army but I'm not familiar with DE at all. No one here plays (Dark) Eldar and as such I lack the experience to judge the new codex for myself.

My initial opinion is that a pure Kabal force will work fine but wont be great. From everything I've seen Drukhari are now very much a combat army with some decent shooting support but the shooting isn't good enough to rely on heavily.

2 of the new Combat Patrols and 2 of the old Wych Cult start collecting boxes if you can find them will give you more than 1500pts so you'll have a couple options, the Wyches, Incubi and characters will be able to leverage the combat potential of the army while the Ravagers and Venoms can provide some fire support. Actually looks like you can build a decent army that way.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm left asking who or what is Draxus.

Really my problem with Lelith is the open mouth. See those Banshees as a similar example. I know its meant to indicate shouting or something, but since the model doesn't actually move, it makes them look like they are trying to catch flies.

Kyria Draxus is the newest Inquisitor. There were similar discussions about her too.

That model pissed me off because it was gratuitous as feth, but I missed the complaints about it. Got a thread?

I'll look a little later on; often it isn't a dedicated thread- it's a subject that creeps into other threads for a few pages, which might make it hard to find. But I will take a look later.

Personally I love Kyria and her arm-dragon; the only thing I find frustrating is that her Shuri-cat is better than Asurmen's.