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 Overread wrote:


I'm sorry but no. AoS at the first day of its launch had multiple large armies, including the brand new Stormcast. You can't argue it any other way - the product line was already mature on day 1 of its existence.

Huh? The first year AoS got stormcast and khornate chaos models (blades of khorne was not a thing, it was just random chaos models) and after a while the Fire Slayers showed up. The rest of the armies was the Fantasy Battle factions, just broken up in small thematic forces in free PDF downloads. Units from different FB armies was put together in small constellation. It was focused on small warbands, and you could basically mix any units (I bought some empire units, a bretonnian pegasus lord, and also had a giant just because I could). First edition there was not even a rulebook, the rules was one page in the back of a (horribly written) campaign book. The first year there was no points or guidelines as to assemble an army.

You actually got a bonus if you had a bigger moustash than your opponent.

Thinking about it, it was kind of fun, and I have not actually played the game since.

 Fayric wrote:

 Overread wrote:


I'm sorry but no. AoS at the first day of its launch had multiple large armies, including the brand new Stormcast. You can't argue it any other way - the product line was already mature on day 1 of its existence.

Huh? The first year AoS got stormcast and khornate chaos models (blades of khorne was not a thing, it was just random chaos models) and after a while the Fire Slayers showed up. The rest of the armies was the Fantasy Battle factions, just broken up in small thematic forces in free PDF downloads. Units from different FB armies was put together in small constellation. It was focused on small warbands, and you could basically mix any units (I bought some empire units, a bretonnian pegasus lord, and also had a giant just because I could). First edition there was not even a rulebook, the rules was one page in the back of a (horribly written) campaign book. The first year there was no points or guidelines as to assemble an army.

You actually got a bonus if you had a bigger moustash than your opponent.

Thinking about it, it was kind of fun, and I have not actually played the game since.

This is flat-out wrong. I’ve got the original launch box, and the rulebook inside devotes a full page to Blades of the Blood God. Happy to post a photo if anyone’s curious.

GW’s transition from Fantasy Battles to Age of Sigmar wasn’t elegant, but they did make the attempt. Let’s be honest—it went from “too complicated” to “too simple,” mostly in reaction to player feedback at the time. Folks who barely played raged that the game was “dead,” but sales and new player interest were already tanking. The writing was on the wall.

We’ve all walked this argument into the ground, but let me be clear: repurposing models in a new system absolutely supports a mature product line. The Orruk and Grot kits in AOS are direct descendants from decades ago. I still remember my first AOS battle—my brother’s spider rider goblins shredded my Stormcast with their poison rules. Those little monsters were absurd!

I’m all in on the Helsmiths. Their aesthetic is killer, and I’ll be grabbing their Spearhead day one.

I'm very excited to get more Hobgrotz. Great looking kit.

The Chaos Dwarfs feel very...cartoony? Over designed? I can't quite put my finger on it, but I would go with the myriad of better done third party sculpts I've seen over the official ones at this point.

The chaos dwarves look like something out of world of warcraft. It would be at home with GWs aesthetic in both 40k and AoS 10 years ago, not so much today.

Alright G-dubs, thanks for the Chaos Dwarves, now go all in on the Kurnothi, please. Can’t keep them confined to Underworlds, its just not right!

I think I’m more looking forward to getting my hands on the lore of the Helsmith battletome than I am the miniatures. This:

Importantly, we discover just who – or what – Hashut is, and how he relates to Grungni, Grimnir, Valaya and Gazul…

Has me intrigued immensely.

Your gang vs the guys she told you not to worry about... Just a proof modern day GW sculpting sucks ass.

Obviously its subjective but I like these chaos dwarfs.

There's a slight... uncannyness, but I get that with basically all AoS stuff. Consider Kruleboyz to old Orcs, Cities of Sigmar to old Empire, the various Chaos stuff to old chaos etc. But I'm starting to get over it.

 CragHack wrote:
Your gang vs the guys she told you not to worry about... Just a proof modern day GW sculpting sucks ass.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Yup, wonderful example of sh*tflation.
Tamurkhan era sculpts (from real actual sculptors) vs what novice blender team dishes out now, based on committee design and ai references. Must be various teams working at GW as well, because some new plastic kits are stunning, others are like from a different company.

Pic of bull centaur character from the past to rub the salt into the wounds.

The issue for me with stuff like the Chorfs is that it's fantasy being inspired by fantasy. I prefer fantasy inspired by real world cultures and technologies because there's an authenticity you get with that that is near impossible to achieve with fantasy inspired by other fantasy.

Video games have a lot of the latter type of design and it's also everywhere in modern RPGs. It's a lot of artists and designers who've come up fully immersed in fantasy worlds and disconnected from the (sometimes quite distant) real world influences. That's when you end up with armour that doesn't look like armour that anyone would really wear and so on.

I've become pretty hostile to the style I have to say. I'm moving more and more back to a sort of Dark Ages aesthetic in my tastes - lots of chainmail, very little if any plate, and no guns at all. It was always my preferred fantasy anyway and to be honest no version of GW's Fantasy has ever really managed it apart from the LOTR stuff that they didn't design.

But the Chorfs shown here are a particularly pure example of a disconnected fantasy army. AoS overall has a lot of that, and I think it's actually fine to do a fantasy world that way - not everything has to be linked to real world cultures and it's certainly potentially more original to do your own thing, but it's MUCH harder and takes really gifted designers imo. This is fairly derivative and doesn't hit the mark.

Ah who cares, Warhmmer dwarves have always looked extremely cartoony. Like them or don't people will buy and collect them. If they don't fit your particular vision, there's more than a few alternative ranges that cater to all tastes.

I do think to some extent it's unfair to compare to FW kits that don't have to worry about undercuts and being castable in steel injection moulds.

But I do think that quite a few bits of the new range have quite old fashioned looking soft musculature which used to characterise plastics fifteen - twenty years ago but don't so much any more, and I don't really know how that wasn't fixed for a big new launch line.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Ah who cares, Warhmmer dwarves have always looked extremely cartoony. Like them or don't people will buy and collect them. If they don't fit your particular vision, there's more than a few alternative ranges that cater to all tastes.

I care... and in a opinion forum debating this new release looks, most probably will too.

People are free to voice their opinion... good or bad is equally important. Like it or not people will voice their opinions on this forum... If you want an echo chamber then follow your advice and find alternative media.

The new CDs infantry is pretty nice and can fit most settings with a proper paint job.
The BullsCentaurs are very different from the past, Im totally fine with that, but I think its more than the 3d vs hand sculpted medium that is setting these apart and more style choices... Examples look at the warcry massive Centaur... that beast is a wild and dark mini.
So it can be done.

Are the new bull centaurs as big as the Warhammer Forge ones? I never liked how big they are, the dwarf part is ogre-sized. The original bull centaurs were on cavalry bases.

It might also be that some of the simpler poses and designs are in response to people wanting simpler armies in AoS to build and play with from a structural point of view. So could be that one of the objectives with Chaos Dwarves was to make them a "simpler" army in terms of build design; painting coverage and gameplay rules.

You can get that in game design - GW often does this with stormcast/marines in giving them a solid playstyle; chunky models and so on which can all make them easier for newer players or simply those looking for less challenge.

Whilst at the same time having glass cannon armies; fiddly fragile armies and so on.

Don't pin this on the fans, nobody asked for a low poly Great Taurus that looks like a SNES model!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Don't pin this on the fans, nobody asked for a low poly Great Taurus that looks like a SNES model!

Lol ok. But joking aside imagine someone painting it gritty and dark with loads of battle damage. That will turn it in a Wii game.

 The Phazer wrote:
I do think to some extent it's unfair to compare to FW kits that don't have to worry about undercuts and being castable in steel injection moulds.

But I do think that quite a few bits of the new range have quite old fashioned looking soft musculature which used to characterise plastics fifteen - twenty years ago but don't so much any more, and I don't really know how that wasn't fixed for a big new launch line.

They just look goofy. GW can definitely put out amazing looking models in plastic, like the new 40k Raven Guard hq, but this is like a hiccup against all the other silly/goofy/just plain bad crap they keep churning out. I think it's more of a matter of sculptors, their expertise and tools being used to make those models, where in this case majority of them are interns and few pros who know their stuff

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Ah who cares, Warhmmer dwarves have always looked extremely cartoony. Like them or don't people will buy and collect them. If they don't fit your particular vision, there's more than a few alternative ranges that cater to all tastes.

Yeah I don't expect GW to cater to me specifically at all, and I generally do look at alternative ranges and do my own thing. But this is a discussion forum where people discuss wargames, so I was just adding my point to the discussion. What do you think the forum is for?

Santtu wrote:
Are the new bull centaurs as big as the Warhammer Forge ones? I never liked how big they are, the dwarf part is ogre-sized. The original bull centaurs were on cavalry bases.

Yes, the new plastics are as big or bigger than the FW versions. They showed a lineup of the actual models on the presenter desk and they're massive with an Ogre sized torso.

New Bullcentaurs have more similariries to the original models. The Forge World models looked great, but was not really recognicable as bullcentaurs.

Also those FW ones have a lot of detail on them which is actually just really good painting colour variation. Strip the paint off and the amount of apparent detail would diminish. Still solid but the paint style is certainly doing them a lot of favours compared to the much more clear bright-bold-simple scheme the studio went for.


And we see this all the time - the GW studio for box-art aims for visually clear and simple schemes painted to a high standard. Schemes that are easier for people to emulate with lower skills of painting. Meanwhile once those models get into the hands of experts the styles and what potential they have changes a lot.

I see this time and time again where people dislike the official scheme but then utterly fall in love with alternatives even though the model is identical.

 Overread wrote:
Also those FW ones have a lot of detail on them which is actually just really good painting colour variation.

I strongly disagree here.

I've own the FW Bull Centaurs, the detail on them is fantastic. The kind of detail that would be beyond a GW HIPs kit.

The paint jobs on them aren't creating details that aren't even there: if anything the bare resin models look better, IMHO

 Undead_Love-Machine wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Also those FW ones have a lot of detail on them which is actually just really good painting colour variation.

I strongly disagree here.

I've own the FW Bull Centaurs, the detail on them is fantastic. The kind of detail that would be beyond a GW HIPs kit.

The paint jobs on them aren't creating details that aren't even there: if anything the bare resin models look better, IMHO

Exactly, I've had them myself. I would even say that the paintjob on the GW ones is even better (not counting Shar'Tor), yet they still look worse

 Da Boss wrote:
The issue for me with stuff like the Chorfs is that it's fantasy being inspired by fantasy. I prefer fantasy inspired by real world cultures and technologies because there's an authenticity you get with that that is near impossible to achieve with fantasy inspired by other fantasy.

Video games have a lot of the latter type of design and it's also everywhere in modern RPGs. It's a lot of artists and designers who've come up fully immersed in fantasy worlds and disconnected from the (sometimes quite distant) real world influences. That's when you end up with armour that doesn't look like armour that anyone would really wear and so on.

I've become pretty hostile to the style I have to say. I'm moving more and more back to a sort of Dark Ages aesthetic in my tastes - lots of chainmail, very little if any plate, and no guns at all. It was always my preferred fantasy anyway and to be honest no version of GW's Fantasy has ever really managed it apart from the LOTR stuff that they didn't design.

But the Chorfs shown here are a particularly pure example of a disconnected fantasy army. AoS overall has a lot of that, and I think it's actually fine to do a fantasy world that way - not everything has to be linked to real world cultures and it's certainly potentially more original to do your own thing, but it's MUCH harder and takes really gifted designers imo. This is fairly derivative and doesn't hit the mark.

Agreed completely

Ancient GW designers were history freaks, read a lot of fantasy novels and were DD players. Current GW designers grew up playing WOW 16 hours a day and their whole cultural reference is limited to superhero movies.

I still think that GW still makes some great miniatures for the most part, but their miniatures and setting are a lot less interesting than it was before for me (bar for TOW)

If I were to go Chaos Dwarf, I still think I'd use these guys as a base for my Bull Centaurs.

While I am greatly pleased with the reissue of the Chaos Dwarves...despite their very, very toned down chapeaus...I was taken aback by how inorganic they look.

I get that they now use a plethora of golems, but even the Titan Forge Infernal Golem looked like it was alive (and mine will be seeing play very soon it seems).

Still, my favorite army has returned, and I will dutifully add these to the ever-growing forces of Hashut!

 CragHack wrote:
Your gang vs the guys she told you not to worry about... Just a proof modern day GW sculpting sucks ass.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Oh man. This is such a damning comparison.

I didn't realize how bad and soulless the modern sculpting had gotten.

My sig line was "still waiting on Chaos Dwarves" for too long for me to not pick them up. Thankfully I like the new style. I just wish the studio scheme had the purples brighter and the warpfire green more teal like on the Battle Tome cover.

The warpfire green actually bothers me now that I think about it. Its too much like Skaven. If I pick any of these mini’s up, its going to be “normal’ flames

Good size comparisons.