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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think this is the exception to Hanlon's Razor.

Like the switch to 32mm bases, I think this change was done specifically to stifle the third party market. I mean even their terrain is less modular than it used to be (or not modular at all).

Could be. Or it could be just the extreme case of GW lazy reliance on pushfit.

I really don't think they care that much about 3rd parties, people that buy 3rd party bit will still have to put it on a mini they bought from GW.
I think these 3 guys are the EXACT same thing that many new units these days, it's just something GW made with a sticky note "do a real kit later", but just like the Blight Hauler they "kinda forgot about it" and we are still stuck with the easy to build, not gear option nightmare till this day.

 Crimson wrote:
That's absurd.

Is it?

Large company changes its base size to a size that no one else is making, thereby leaving all 3rd parties making scenic bases in the dust. Seems like the kind of thing a company would do. Especially a company like GW.

It's a bit like when GW all of a sudden came up with this minimum/recommended board size for 9th that had nothing to do with the health of the game or game balance or any of that, and everything to do with the fact that that was the size of board that fit inside their standard box sizes. And the mat makers fell over themselves trying to be first to market with smaller mats...

GW would prefer to be dancing alone, but if you're going to dance, they're going to make sure you dance to their tune.

[quote=[HN] 800235 11231894 null]

 Galas wrote:
People buys more boxes to mix n' max before this. So I really cannot understand even from an purely economical point of view, why degrade your kits like this.

Hanlon's Razor.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
That's absurd.

Is it?

Large company changes its base size to a size that no one else is making, thereby leaving all 3rd parties making scenic bases in the dust. Seems like the kind of thing a company would do. Especially a company like GW.

Yes, this is a ludicrous tinfoil hat theory. Third party makers were making 32mm bases in couple of months. A lot of models had looked awkward on 25mm bases for a long time, I certainly had been hoping for a bases size between 25mm and 40mm for a while when 32mms were introduced.


Most GWs decisions about models is about making the models look the best they can. And BTW that weird looking piece on the Blade Guard kit is about that too. It is to get the best possible detain on the kneepads and the scabbard.

JSG wrote:

I think Galas actually hit the nail on the head with "I really cannot understand".

Pretty standard operating procedure for the EA of miniature games. It doesn't take an evil mastermind to come up with this stuff and they aren't fools either.

 Galas wrote:
So I really cannot understand even from an purely economical point of view, why degrade your kits like this.

As has been said many times over many years, GW doesn't want to be part of the miniature wargaming hobby. They want to be the hobby. This is why we have seen the rise of no model/no rule, how that has begun to infect and corrupt the rules (and even occasionally the artwork), how it leads to less modularity with miniatures, fewer options, even to the point where their terrain is getting less modular and more specific. If there are no options, then you need not go to a third party or a bits site to get extras.

Stay within the warm four-armed embrace of Father GW. It's safer here.

the firstborn castellan with axe looks weird, the pose, the choice of weaponry( I want a maul). I love Grimaldus' 'Aliens' teeth helmet, much more scarier than the previous skull. The E's champion and sword brethren looks spot on, hope its multi posing kit.

 Big Mac wrote:
the firstborn castellan with axe looks weird, the pose, the choice of weaponry( I want a maul). I love Grimaldus' 'Aliens' teeth helmet, much more scarier than the previous skull. The E's champion and sword brethren looks spot on, hope its multi posing kit.

Apparently he can be used to represent primaris or firstborn.

I wonder why they changed the photo on the website so it no longer shows his backpack...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I wonder why they changed the photo on the website so it no longer shows his backpack...

It's a very good question. The obvious answer is to his the fact that it's clearly a FB backpack and since they are trying to pass him as primaris they are just embarrassed to realize that... damn, he really don't look one.
Yes it's frankly stupid and petty (as if the original pic wasn't already on every sites related to 40k, and as if we couldn't clearly see that this armor is a FB armor), but then again, the Warhammer community staff has a pretty consistent track record of being stupid and petty like that.

He might always be an extremly stubborn Firstborn that refuses to let go of his old Mark of armour.

"Your Castellan is too fat for his armour! Bring me the Power Breastplate Stretcher!"

...but the much more obvious explanation is that he was supposed to be a limited event model, but was repurposed as a generic relase.

(HN) wrote:
Yes it's frankly stupid and petty (as if the original pic wasn't already on every sites related to 40k, and as if we couldn't clearly see that this armor is a FB armor), but then again, the Warhammer community staff has a pretty consistent track record of being stupid and petty like that.

Or the WarCom team doesn't get told loads about releases in case they leak it and then when they get those releases they get minimal info on what it actually is.
GW is known for its poor internal comms and its been pretty clear over the past year or so that the social media teams get naff all in the way of info. Ironically it seems like they are the last to find out when they're the primary advertising outlet.

Get Relic'd!

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
He might always be an extremly stubborn Firstborn that refuses to let go of his old Mark of armour.

"Your Castellan is too fat for his armour! Bring me the Power Breastplate Stretcher!"

...but the much more obvious explanation is that he was supposed to be a limited event model, but was repurposed as a generic relase.

This is a very realistic scenario. The chonky Castellan was revelated at the same time as the "ordinary" Primaris Castellan. Why would they make 2 models of the same unit ?
Not that I'm complaining though, I like both.

The image in the warcom article still clearly shows his backpack?

What do you see? I see the backpack replaced with a close-up of his face/chest from a slight angle off to the side. It replaced the front-and-centre shot of his backpack.

I mean they could've just fethed up and posted the wrong image, remember when the entire DKoK line was uploaded with images with Horus Heresy plastered all over them?

This is the same image with one part changed. It's just so... weird.

Oh there was a closeup of the backpack in the inset image? I never noticed that to begin with, I thought you meant the backpack was removed from the image entirely (as in the main image no longer showed that it was wearing a backpack.

For direct comparison, from the first page roundup:



And what H.B.M.C. posted:



Note that the combi-weapon part is also different.

Shhh! Don't draw attention to that!

 Geifer wrote:

Note that the combi-weapon part is also different.

Not only that, the Combi-Weapon itself is slightly diffrent.

That’s quite odd indeed. I wonder if it’s some sort of “we painted the 3d printed prototype, but then they changed it before it went to the final mold making” situation

Guessing one is a pre-production prototype and the other is the market release version and something changed on the backpack between.

Thats what I was going to say, looks like they may have used a prototype (fairly common) for the display mini but during tooling they had to alter some of the details for manufacturing purposes (also fairly common) such that the master was no longer fully accurate to the production model.

Normally I would say the second one is the preproduction version as you can see some layer lines on the axe but its also the version they showed later so a little confused here

Maybe both are 3d printed prototypes just from different points in production and they used the wrong one at first

chaos0xomega wrote:
Thats what I was going to say, looks like they may have used a prototype (fairly common) for the display mini but during tooling they had to alter some of the details for manufacturing purposes (also fairly common) such that the master was no longer fully accurate to the production model.

And then modified the already-painted prototype by exchanging a few bits, so that they wouldn't have to paint an entirely new model for the promo pics, but mistakenly initially uploaded the outdated pictures. Makes sense.


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 Matrindur wrote:
Normally I would say the second one is the preproduction version as you can see some layer lines on the axe but its also the version they showed later so a little confused here

Maybe both are 3d printed prototypes just from different points in production and they used the wrong one at first

The paintjob's too identical to be two diffrent models, even the tufts of grass on the base are in the same places. They probably just replaced a few pieces on the initial prototype.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

I wonder if that's a reference to Jamie, from Mythbusters.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

Note that the combi-weapon part is also different.

Not only that, the Combi-Weapon itself is slightly diffrent.

Now THIS is interesting, especially since the new version is slitghly better than the previous one (you only compared on side of the gun, but the other side also changed.



I wonder now if they may have changed the backpack too to replace the cool skull reliquary with the very lame primaris dome... That would be a huge downgrade imo.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Get Relic'd!

The inclusion of this VERY generic powerpack (Geee, thanks GW for that amazing upgrade sprue) when talking about the relic is... worrying to say the least.

While I really don't mind having to model the relics on my minies (I'm a huge wysiwyg guy) having that kind of very generic stuff be a "relic" would be pretty stupid.

layer lines can also sometimes be found on plastic injection kits - the process by which molds are cut is not too dissimilar from the process by which FDM printers work. A cutting head (for fine details they would use a very very fine bit, a fraction of a millimeter in diameter) mills out a slab of metal one layer at a time to shape out the cavity as a negative of the item that it will eventually be used to produce - usually the cutting heads are multi-axial so they can turn/rotate/pivot etc to achieve more complex geometries, but other than that its the same basic principle, except instead of depositing extruded filament you're removing abraded metal.

Depending on the tool path, relative angles/geometry, size/quality of the cutting head, and a few other factors, sometimes the striations/layer lines that result from the process are distinct enough to be rendered into the plastic injection kits. There are certain things done to the mold as part of post-processing work to clean up the surface finish of the mold in order to reduce/eliminate these, but its not always possible to get them out completely without sacrificing certain geometry/details, and of course sometimes the striations (particularly when they arent particularly obvious/visible or are very very fine) in some areas are simply missed before the molds are put into production.