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And that's before we get to one of their rules apparently relying on them being within 12" of an enemy unit to activate - something which really emphasises the whole "long range sniper on the back of a jetbike", which was already silly.

I was going to say something about the bike being bright red, too, but the painter seems to have at least tried for a slight camo effect.

Bright, block colours look better. There's no need to justify this at all, it's not a secret. They could easily paint everything in camo if they wanted to (they'd have to do if we're remotely going for "Realism" here) but they don't and we know why. Aesthetics takes president, which is as it should be. It's not unique to 40k. Does Halo have a load of camo skins? idk I don't really play games but I'd be shocked if camo skins dominate the selection for halo online games because they would not look as good and should therefore not be used as some sort of appeal to realism.

Isn't it a bit like non enhanced Super heroes with bows and all the stuff they do.

Must admit have cameo cloaks but bright armour and bikes is a bit wierd - same as it is for Marines. Either go full cameo or not bother - I think I will go full camo

 Mr Morden wrote:
Must admit have cameo cloaks but bright armour and bikes is a bit wierd - same as it is for Marines. Either go full cameo or not bother - I think I will go full camo

"By the Emperor! Did you see that, brother? That bright yellow xenos jetbike that just zoomed past us... had no rider!!!"

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Must admit have cameo cloaks but bright armour and bikes is a bit wierd - same as it is for Marines. Either go full cameo or not bother - I think I will go full camo

"By the Emperor! Did you see that, brother? That bright yellow xenos jetbike that just zoomed past us... had no rider!!!"

Ghost Bikes!!!!

Camo cloaks with non-camo elements is more visually appealing though. Primaris eliminators look excellent with camo cloaks and mono-colour armour.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Must admit have cameo cloaks but bright armour and bikes is a bit wierd - same as it is for Marines. Either go full cameo or not bother - I think I will go full camo

"By the Emperor! Did you see that, brother? That bright yellow xenos jetbike that just zoomed past us... had no rider!!!"

"It's a ghost jetbike! Run brother Tinnitus!"

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Spoiler:

 bullyboy wrote:
OK, let's settle it. If you can't grasp that Eldar can fire sniper rifles from jetbikes then you can't play Eldar and should definitely not buy the models. Should be good.

I didn't have a problem with the Shroud Runners. I thought they were excellent minis and if they're shooting sniper rifles from bikes then, y'know, whatever. It's not the dumbest thing in 40k, after all.

Buuuuuuuuuut, it seems that even the people writing the fluff for them knew that shooting sniper rifles from a fast-moving jetbike was stupid, and so they had to justify it with this weird "battle trance" nonsense to make it work for them. That alone shows that they knew what we know: Precision snipers zipping around on super-fast hover bikes is a really silly concept.

They'd've been better off just doing nothing and never justifying it. This is the 40k fluff equivalent of "the lady doth protest too much".

This post is why I'm now going to enjoy ranger bikes so much. Like somebody telling me orange soda is awful, it hits all the notes starting with "it's not the dumbest thing in 40K...but" and then complains how Eldar entering into a battle trance is "wierd nonsense" despite it literally being in their fluff for decades. Eldar on the Warrior Path have always been described that way when they put on their helmets, specifically called their "War Masks", it separates themselves from their war personality. Has been that way since 2nd edition. GW even called it battle trance in the 7th ed codex : "When the Eldar don their war masks, they enter a battle trance so focused that they flow across the battlefield like quicksilver, killing their foes without breaking stride" and later on when describing Warlocks "Few can match the arcane might of an Eldar Warlock in the midst of a battle trance, his destructive aura crackling outward to destroy those foes beyond his reach."

Eldar Rangers entering a "marksman trance" and sniping from a jetbike is as Eldar as it gets.

They tried the full camo thing in RT (or some variation of full camo at least), quickly dropped that idea, and for good reason

 Kalamadea wrote:
This post is why I'm now going to enjoy ranger bikes so much.

To be honest, given the wall'o'text you just posted, I'm not so sure you understood my post.

Then again, you're the weird 'un whose buying these bikes to spite other people...

JWBS wrote:
Camo cloaks with non-camo elements is more visually appealing though. Primaris eliminators look excellent with camo cloaks and mono-colour armour.

This has always been my camo philosophy. Real camo works and is boring as a game piece. Plus they blend in to the table and you forget to move/fire them. So have the cloaks and drab armor, but polish the buckles till they shine, and tie on a red scarf to show the colors of the craftworld.

I’m still on the fence if I’m going to do the main parts of the bikes in red to match my forces, or arctic camo to pair with the riders’ cloaks. I’ll probably dither about that until I pick up a brush to put paint down.

JWBS wrote:
Camo cloaks with non-camo elements is more visually appealing though. Primaris eliminators look excellent with camo cloaks and mono-colour armour.

Oh I don't disagree (take the Phobos Librarian, one of the best SM minis GW's done in a while). As I've said, I think the Shroud Runners look great. I like their camo-cloaks. It's just kinda odd that they'd need them, or that their bikes wouldn't also have some sort of visual distortion put on them.

The sniper on bikes makes perfect sense to me. It is just a really fast way to relocate to get better shots on the enemy/better line of sights. Really simple explanation. This is all the needed explanation.

All this battle trance stuff I guess explains how they could also be accurate on the move too but that probably wouldn't work so well in the real world.

As for the camo, that is the truly unbelievable one, they have gone for camo patterns a little on the bike, these have proven effective in reality (see image), but red (even dark red) probably isn't great as a camo colour (what do you think you are trying to blend in with).



Camo on a battleship of all things!!

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Must admit have cameo cloaks but bright armour and bikes is a bit wierd - same as it is for Marines. Either go full cameo or not bother - I think I will go full camo

"By the Emperor! Did you see that, brother? That bright yellow xenos jetbike that just zoomed past us... had no rider!!!"

"It's a ghost jetbike! Run brother Tinnitus!"

"Belay that! We are the Emperor's Chosen, and we will deliver His Mercy to the xenos! Brother Tinnitus, five rounds rapid! Brother Phyrrus, burn those witches!"

Seeing that the Death Korps of Krieg box is ten figures for US$55 gives me hope the new Guardians box may also be $55, and not the $60 or higher I was expecting. [The $50 for 3 Eliminators bothers me enough that I'll never purchase them unless given a hefty discount, betterthan the 15% GW permits.]

 Dysartes wrote:

Skinnereal wrote:The helmet wings were some sort of targetting aid, I think. Radar sensors, or something.

I'm kinda curious as to how they're meant to provide a benefit on the heads with the partial helms, given that head style doesn't appear to retain any element of a HUD to get the information from them on...

Kinda how SM weapons are linked to the helmets and aren't really dependent on the actual aim of the user, but plenty of them just don't use them because intelligence is an optional thing amongst their ranks.

 Ancestral Hamster wrote:
Seeing that the Death Korps of Krieg box is ten figures for US$55 gives me hope the new Guardians box may also be $55, and not the $60 or higher I was expecting. [The $50 for 3 Eliminators bothers me enough that I'll never purchase them unless given a hefty discount, betterthan the 15% GW permits.]

That's a sad thing to hope for, given that US$55 for 10 Guardsmen is absurd.

 ceorron wrote:
As for the camo, that is the truly unbelievable one, they have gone for camo patterns a little on the bike, these have proven effective in reality (see image), but red (even dark red) probably isn't great as a camo colour (what do you think you are trying to blend in with).

Spoiler:

Camo on a battleship of all things!!

It's not that large scale camo necessarily can't look good. I'm thinking now of that Alaitoc scheme they used to have, can't find the official pics but here's one by someone on Dakka https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2013/10/30/552204-Alaitoc%2C%20Eldar%2C%20Walker%2C%20War.JPG even with this, there has to be some sort of non-camo element to focus they eye or break the pattern. In 'reality', would this have a block colour yellow on the helmet / weapon casings? No, it would all be the same blue on blue camo. It would look a lot worse though.

The whole point of camo is to break up the outline of the shape and make it harder to recognise, pretty pointless on a model you are trying to show off, so congrats works better.

Took me a while to work out you mean contrast there. Yeah pretty much this. Just looks better.

Don't throw out those finecast models just yet!

Well then.

 The Power Cosmic wrote:

The poses and the way they hold the guns make them look weightless, not the death-dealing heavy weapons they are. Yes, sure, they could have suspensors or augmented arm strength or something, but there's no mass to them. They look like they're waving around pool noodles.

Isn't the point of wraithbone being a material extremely light? Stupidly light for Wraithwalkers to make ninja moves without effort, so the fact of they waving around "pool noodles" is quite accurate.

 ceorron wrote:
The sniper on bikes makes perfect sense to me. It is just a really fast way to relocate to get better shots on the enemy/better line of sights. Really simple explanation. This is all the needed explanation.

All this battle trance stuff I guess explains how they could also be accurate on the move too but that probably wouldn't work so well in the real world.

As for the camo, that is the truly unbelievable one, they have gone for camo patterns a little on the bike, these have proven effective in reality (see image), but red (even dark red) probably isn't great as a camo colour (what do you think you are trying to blend in with).

Spoiler:

Camo on a battleship of all things!!

Camo often isn’t about blending in. It’s about breaking up shapes and outlines.

I think its best to say that Camo isn't about a singular purpose and that there are variations based on the situation and resources you have which will affect how and what kind you go for and what ultimately proves the most effective.

Eg some of the new vision systems (thermal, night etc...) are getting so good that some of the regular camo approaches are basically useless. You can be decked out to look just like a tree and so long as you are only combating against human eyes you are fine; as soon as they deploy night vision goggles or such you stand out like a christmas tree.



Which rather amusingly means that fancy gaudy designs and paint schemes of the 41st millennium might be rather sensible after all. Or at least not as much of a downside as one might think

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Camo often isn’t about blending in. It’s about breaking up shapes and outlines.

Which you think wouldn't be necessary on something that moves so fast as to be a blur, but then why would the riders need cloaks, unless they had to stop to shoot, but then the bikes would need camo as well, but they don't need to stop because of 'battle trance' and I've gone cross-eyed...

I'm gonna paint my Shroud Runners with some color shift paint to give them the appearance of "active" camo that reflects light from the opposite side of the bike.

It should make them look like they could actually camouflage, while also looking stunning on the tabletop.

-

 xttz wrote:
Don't throw out those finecast models just yet!

Spoiler:

Spicy! It is going to be a stranger world where you would ever take anything over Burning Heat. What could be better than skipping the Wound Roll on a Meltagun

That second one would make the flamer D2, right? Something about that could be appealing.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That second one would make the flamer D2, right? Something about that could be appealing.

Assuming you have lost your mind and decided to take a Flamer in a Meltagun unit

 alextroy wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That second one would make the flamer D2, right? Something about that could be appealing.

Assuming you have lost your mind and decided to take a Flamer in a Meltagun unit

Yeah I know... the Dragons Breath remains one of those "Why?" weapon options, a bit like the Reaper Shuriken Cannon. And the Firepike certainly looks cooler (or... hotter... I suppose... ).

I guess I have a soft spot for odd weapons.