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So I got my new megabox set for WHFB Empire in today.

I'm dissapointed, really am.


Lets go box by box and see whats to see, shall we?  Sorry I can't post pics but I'll do my best to describe!

Empire General Box
*Fine overall except the banner isn't a banner, it's some sort of reaper THING on a pole.  This is definatly not going into my army.  I will continue to use my 6th edition Greatswordsman Banner Bearer as my BSB.

Empire Soldiers Box
I was definatly looking forward to these overall.  I loved the 6th edition multi-part plastic models, that gave me so many bits to mess with and make myself some nice low level conversions with.  This current box sucks in respect to those beloved 6th edition Empire Swordsmen/halberds.  The most obvious problem is that the chest/leg configuation is fixed.  That's right ladys and gentlemen, you now have body, arms, head, and that's it.  This means all the junk at their waists are fixed, and will be a pain in the ass to remove.  (Why the HELL do Empire soldiers have skulls and crap on their belts??)

All is not lost, however; the box does allow halberders, spearmen, and swordsmen to be built, even if the bodies are fixed in one location.  Everything's different, I notice the obvious introduction of the spontoon as a weapon (the spear), and the swods are different, very different.  The halberd heads are also larger, and more "fantasy-esque".

The banner is festooned with random crap.  It's like taking a sticky ball and rolling it through a packrats room or something.

The shields have gone from heaters, which where more believable, into a mixture between shields that don't make sense, and shields with obvious "Jousting notches" in them.

The Giant feathers arn't so bad, but it's the skulls that irritate me the most.  Why the HELL would a professional soldier have a skull strapped to his helmet?  Did the Empire run so short of men in the Great War we just had that they had to draft the emo-kids?

Overall, this box is a flop IMO.  Some of you might find a liking, but me...I'm not so impressed as I thought I was going to be.  I might end up liking them in the future when they paint up, but the very fact that they're 10 in a box means I will not be collecting a whole lot of these guys.

Empire Ranged Troopers Box Set
This set includes crossbowmen and handgunners.  I love the acceptance of crossbowmen to be state troops, and the new handguns don't look TOO bad at all;  However, those pistols just suck --- they're very narrow and "weedy" looking now.  I also notice alot of CRAP hanging from their waists, such as skulls.  The powder monkey is already slated to be glued onto one of my bottle rockets, so we will exclude him from this amature review.

I like the handgonnes more robust look, and some of the troops have daggers strapped to their guns, which looks cool I think.  The musician appears to be a piper, which is fine with me; infact, it scores points with me.

As for unit upgrades, you get a repeating handgun, pistols, and a hochland long rifle, which scores points with me.

Crossbows look great, and this unit will probobly end up as crossbowmen (as I have two units of 6th ed. handgunners painted, and have a third I havn't painted yet) for flavor in my army, though I might buy some in the future to be handgunners.  Maybe.

Overall, this box rocks.  The only major crap I disliked was the skulls, and powder monkey.  Baner dosn't look too bad either. 

Outrider/Pistolier Box
I havn't looked through the rulebook yet, but I've heard alot of good things about outriders being useful for "Sit and shoot" cavalry.  However...

The outriders are supposed to recieve some sort of cloak.  From the pictures, I disliked these cloaks, and had planned to exclude them.  But lo and behold, the arms of the outriders are modeled into the cloaks!  That's slowed, IMO.   Lucky for us the arms are free of the chests, so we can substitute arms instead, if you can find one that lines up with the other arm, holding the repeater handgun.  Rhw piaroliwea unfortunatly suffer from the crappy looking pistols in this new set, which look thin and are just generally poor imo.  Lucky for us, there are few skulls here to worry about. I also see a left and a right repeater pistol, which makes me wonder if I can get a brace of them for even more dakka.

Artilary Box
Didn't change, thankfully.  I don't know how I would have take a skull cannon or something.

Knights
They didn't change, which is fine, as I like them the way they are.

Overall
As much as I stuck up for the new Empire plastics before, I can't help but be dissapointed by them.  The skulls and other misc. crap hanging from their belts makes them look less professional, and more "Gothiciy" which isn't so grand as I was interested in Empire for it's "spit and polish" military regiments.

Is the box worth 220USD?  Nope, sure isn't.  GW pricing aside, the box just dosn't give me enough satisfaction to justify the 176USD I spent on it from NEIL.  GW's biggest mistake of all other than stupid prices, is that these boxes are limited, like their 30 man boxes are.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great boost and you save a good deal of money I think (Havn't run the numbers), but I'vea feeling I should be hunting up some more 6th edition plastics soon.

Posted By Infantryman on 12/18/2006 7:27 PM
Is the box worth 220USD?  Nope, sure isn't.  GW pricing aside, the box just dosn't give me enough satisfaction to justify the 176USD I spent on it from NEIL.  GW's biggest mistake of all other than stupid prices, is that these boxes are limited, like their 30 man boxes are.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great boost and you save a good deal of money I think (Havn't run the numbers), but I'vea feeling I should be hunting up some more 6th edition plastics soon.

I think this nicely sums up my problem with GW's plastics of late. Not only is the pricing ridiculous, you get very little bang for your buck with the mono-pose figures that have little to no interchangeability between other kits (even just other Empire kits), now contain half the number of figures per box and are even more difficult to make unique than before. This doesn't even get into the styling issues you pointed out (like SKULLZ, what the hell?).

Anyhow, this succinctly surmises my thoughts on the entire Empire release:

I feel these models are more suited to the battlefields of Mordheim or Empire in Flames (Both of which I want to do, but secondary to WHFB).

I think they're best suited for 40k... which everyone by now knows is my biggest gripe of all.

I think they are great models...the banner you are talkingg about rocks!

The giant Reaper of Death guy on the pole pretty much goes with the Dark Angels, as well as some of the shields and things in the General's box.

It sucks when the ancilliary bits are more interesting than the actual miniatures.

It sucks when the ancilliary bits are more interesting than the actual miniatures.

It sucks when I double post.

It sucks when I double post.

Blame da program, not da user.

 

You think GW's pricing is ridiculous.....

So McDonald's has a dollar menu....double cheese burgers etc....all for a buck.

But they raised prices on almost all their other meals by a dollar or two, know that people will think they are getting a deal of some sort. It's outrageous...every year a price adjustment on Big Mac's etc.

Ew. EkDoonelds.

Posted By Infantryman on 12/18/2006 7:27 PM
The powder monkey is already slated to be glued onto one of my bottle rockets, so we will exclude him from this amature review.

I'm actually interested in acquiring a powder monkey for as-yet-undetermined devious future mayhem, so the next time you have a monkey all ready to go into orbit maybe stuff him in an envelope and send him my way instead?

Thanks for the review.  You didn't mention the barefeet on the Empire troopers, which IMHO is one of the more WTF?!?!?! elements of the kits.

- Boss Salvage

*looks again*

O_O BARE FEET?? IN MY ARMY?? Gah!

I still have the powder monkey, he might have a place in a cannon unit...

I was not impressed with the new Empire miniatures when I saw them. GW have a new miniatures policy I think, to provide more basic kits that require less assembly, but quality has been lost in the process.

GW does have a fixation for skulls everywhere. even worse most of the pieces are rather chunky. Gone are the clean lines in the plastic you got with previous plastic infantry miniatures. Empire soldiers look very 'chunky' and underdetailed. The coat hanging on the pistolier champions back is a good example, its a solid slab or plastic unlike previous cloaks from other boxsets.

The Empire general boxset does look ok, though the skeleton on the horses head needs removing and many of the parts are 'chunky'.

I also dislike the new burning Battle wizard and the wraith-on-a-stick BSB. The old BSB looked excellent and they had a good line of wizard models that didnt need replacing.

I heard they are redoing the knights too, set for a summer release. Why? The current range is very good.

The strong suit of GW is their miniature quality. If they let the minature quality standards drop they will regret it, and sooner rather than later. They dont win customers because of their friendly attitude, decent rules or low prices after all. Cutting miniature quality is a very very bad mistake.

Meh... They look OK.

I already completed my Empire Army under the last edition though. The only models I'm even considering are the new General and the Engineer on the Mechanical Horse.

There OK, but not enough for me to run out and buy units I don't need.


EDIT: I disagree about the statement about GW's strength being model quality. Rackham's quality is higher, and Privateer Press' is about the same (on the whole - all 3 have hits and misses).

GW's strengths are retail distribution and an entrenched customer base.

Yup and they've already made that mistake :p

This is the final nail in the coffin, tbh.

 

They are unfriendly? I never had a problem getting mistakes corrected or having them deal with any customer service issues. The rules are fine if you aren't a rules lawyering dick IMHO and as for the prices....dollar for dollar you pay as much or just a little less for most other companies basic figures. Where they get extreme are the metal character models.

I'm a throwing my hat in the models suck and the castings aren't good crowd. Yes, they are trying to make the model building process simpler, so people can assemble armies and play faster...( or so the hobby appeals to less intelligent gamers). And in doing so, they remove some of the fun of converting and customizing armies a bit. And yeah, alot of the models don't have crisp detail.

I noticed this first on the Black Templar range. I wonder if it has to do with them sculpting on computer programs and not doing it by hand anymore?

My younger brother, who normally is nearly begging to assemble things for me has issued the following statement: "This guy is a hunch back and barefoot...and look at this shield, so gay!! This is crap! I'm better than this. I refuse to assemble these anymore."

This was after the first empire guy. Before that, he had spent 15 minuites pestering me to let him assemble them.

Wow. I really need to round up some old school empire...around 3 boxes and I'll have my 2k pt army. Guess I can never go forwards from there :-/

Infantryman, you just cost my FLGS $220 in sales. After these dismal reviews, my money is staying in my pocket.

Luckily I saved myself 40 some and got it from Neil.

wow, i just have to ask - does anyone EVER say anything positive on these forums? I don't think there's been a single new mini that's come out from GW that the people here didn't complain about constantly.

You know what folks - We know the new Empire heads don't look like scholars, but do you all have to breathe fire every time something isn't JUST how you wanted it?

So you had to drag up a nearly month old post to complain about people complaining? Huh?

Posted By Tigerone on 01/19/2007 12:35 PM
wow, i just have to ask - does anyone EVER say anything positive on these forums? I don't think there's been a single new mini that's come out from GW that the people here didn't complain about constantly.

You know what folks - We know the new Empire heads don't look like scholars, but do you all have to breathe fire every time something isn't JUST how you wanted it?

The first rule of news- hell, of narrative- is that things that are pleasant and enjoyable to experience are deathly boring to read about.  Even Peter Rabbit has some tension (will Farmer McGregor catch Peter when he is naughtly?  What would he do to poor Peter if he did catch him?).

So, yeah, we pretty much do have to breathe fire.  It relaxes us and keeps things interesting.  There are plenty of threads that I don't bother reading or posting on (last time I checked the Codex Release Schedule thread was up at 7 or 8 pages), but the people who are posting there are having fun.  Okay, it's the sort of fun adults are not supposed to encourage, the fun of being in a smug little clique and talking mean about all the not-cool people, but hey, better online than in real life.

And you are wrong.  There are several minis from GW that we don't complain about.  The new Empire General/Standard Bearer is just sweeeeet.  But for every cool well-sculpted centerpiece model there are five spraddle-legged hunchback barefoot mouthbreathers... not really my vision of the army of Altdorf.  Free Company, perhaps; Bretonnian peasants, certainly.  Well-equipped, highly trained standing army?  Not!  Yet GW wants us to purchase these, when the previous sculpts are so much better... I think since our money is on the table, we have a right to discuss the defects of the product on offer.

Here's the thing: if I want to compete in a GW tournament, my army has to be made up of GW figures.  Now, Foundry makes a line of Renaissance miniatures (sculpted by the Perry bros., no less) that are beautiful and historically accurate, much nicer than the current plastic set GW is offering, and cost only a little more. http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/REN/1/index.asp  (8 plastic GW knights, $35; 9 metal Foundry knights, $46). Yet I could not use an army of Foundry figures in a GW tournament.  My protestations that I want my army to look nice, and not be filled with a bunch of hunchbacks, will fall on deaf ears.  Yet GW does not give me the option of fielding a non-hunchy army, as all of their new figures are deformed.

Posted By General Hobbs on 12/20/2006 8:17 PM

 

You think GW's pricing is ridiculous.....

So McDonald's has a dollar menu....double cheese burgers etc....all for a buck.

But they raised prices on almost all their other meals by a dollar or two, know that people will think they are getting a deal of some sort. It's outrageous...every year a price adjustment on Big Mac's etc.

And have you seen the sculps on the Flushed Away Happy Meal toys?  They aren't worth the three fifty I paid for my child's meal, or the temper tantrum after I stole the toy.

We COULD just complain about the trolls complaining about people who spent 220 dollars
on a set of miniatures they didn't like....

nah, then we would be pegged as being reasonable. We cant have that.

Posted By Tigerone  on  01/19/2007 12:35 PM

wow, i just have to ask - does anyone EVER say anything positive on these forums? I don't think there's been a single new mini that's come out from GW that the people here didn't complain about constantly.

You know what folks -  We know the new Empire heads don't look like scholars, but do you all have to breathe fire every time something isn't JUST how you wanted it?

If you buy the minis, I think you have the right to voice your review of said product.

I dont think Infantry amn was being unfair.

Just because GW is consistently putting out crap that the vast majority of people dont like, doesnt mean we have to croon praises at them.

I believe I am correct in my supposition that the vast majority dont like the models, judging by how badly the company is doing (that mixed with many other flaws the company has).

When they "improve" a product, and it is worse than what it was replacing, I believe that it is quite reasonable to poopoo the newer "improvement".

Why would you steal the toy? That's just mean! Why not just buy another Happy Meal, if you wanted a toy?

You bad person.

A side note about the skulls on the soldiers: In the Empire, soldiers wear ravens' skulls to ward off either bad luck or harm.

As for the tying the Grim Reaper to their BSB, I have no idea. But I'm trying to think of a way to incorporate it.