The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[beefcake]

Which is the problem.

Yep, one company selling two versions of the same game with different packaging. Way to compete with yourself GW.

Where's that last image from. They still using Blanches artwork? Pretty sure he still works for them doesn't he?

[throwsFireball]

Yep, one company selling two versions of the same game with different packaging. Way to compete with yourself GW.

Where's that last image from. They still using Blanches artwork? Pretty sure he still works for them doesn't he?

Yep, that's Blanche's art. Supposedly the inspiration for the Sigmarines but considering how different they are it's a bit of a joke.

[stone-cold-lead]

Yep, that's Blanche's art. Supposedly the inspiration for the Sigmarines but considering how different they are it's a bit of a joke.

Has anything ever ended up looking like Blanche's sketches once sculpted?! 

[throwsFireball]

Has anything ever ended up looking like Blanche's sketches once sculpted?! 

I think the Kingdom Death guys could have a real good go at it.

[beefcake]

Zombie dragon by Tom Meier is pretty much a dead ringer, excuse the pun.

[von Lucky]

And Blanche's own converted miniatures.



Or her:


1986 sculpt by Micheal Perry based on 'Amazonia Gothique' by John Blanche. Okay, not quite, but close.

[Hobgoblin]

The C15 Armoured Orcs were very close to the original Blanche sketch:

http://oldorcsneverdie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/john-blanche-did-it.html

And the original Slann and Broo lines followed similar sketches closely.

[Vermis]

Sigmarorcs? They look like Orks, in Space marine armour set in the fantasy world. Full plate wouldn't be so bad if it actually looked like full plate. I have to say though that I quite like the Wyvern Miniature (if that is what the big beasty is). Only one view of it at the moment though, in no way flight practical though but I guess it could be seen as having non-functional wings if you were worried about it, much like flightless birds.

My condiments exactly.

Solution: Warhammer Fantasy skirmish with reduced range, no army book costs, and smaller possible armies.

Fly in Ointment: Create gigantic models which cost an absurd amount of money...essentially restoring the high buy-in cost once again (if you skip the "Start Collecting" boxes, which I suspect will eventually disappear).

I guess I'm not seeing the logic of a struggling line of miniatures hoping they'll sell more by making hugely more expensive models.

I think that was the point! Maybe I'm crediting GW with too much sneaky intelligence (especially when it's so blatant) but while 'free army books, smaller starting armies' is a juicy dangling carrot that can and does hook fanboys, it almost seems like GW then carry the 'fewer customers providing the same revenue' thing over to their minis. Fewer minis providing the same amount of revenue...

And then it looks like the smaller armies are in no way intended to be the endpoint for gamers, if those 200-mini, £400+ bundles are any indication. 200 minis for a skirmish game, fer the luvva mike.

If they'd gone all the way with the '80s metal aesthetic and had giant musclebeasts blasting each other into pieces with the focus on anime-style combat... It'd've been pretty cool and kind of original.

Maybe it's a matter of viewpoint, but I thought that's what they - and others - did already.  

The art... the John Blanche design looks better, IMO, but perhaps only because it looks more 'lived in' and baroque, rather than obviously he-mannish. As usual.
The sigmarines vs. ratfiendstormogre piece: fairly basic rendering, no great sense of motion, oversaturation, everything (that has a mouth) suffering from lockjaw, a look as if the artist directly copied the models, and a couple of ol' digital art tropes - hoping that too much aerial perspective (which isn't really working, IMO) and grubby sunbeam clouds will carry the piece. It might be made flatter if you ran over it with a road roller, but not much.

Not the worst illustration I've seen from GW, but man, if AoS models are kid's action figures, this is the clunky art that comes on the blister card.

(Something about the faces of the nearest stormcast and dracoth... it's not Dave Gallagher, is it?)

[throwsFireball]

I think that was the point! Maybe I'm crediting GW with too much sneaky intelligence (especially when it's so blatant) but while 'free army books, smaller starting armies' is a juicy dangling carrot that can and does hook fanboys, it almost seems like GW then carry the 'fewer customers providing the same revenue' thing over to their minis. Fewer minis providing the same amount of revenue...

In the gaming industry, these kind of customers are called "whales". It's an entire business strategy to focus on the big spenders. It's also very manipulative and disgusting but hey ho.

Maybe it's a matter of viewpoint, but I thought that's what they - and others - did already.  

I'm saying they didn't go far enough.

Also the combat isn't right. It just feels like it's clung to it's roots instead of going full madness.

[Elbows]

Yeah, the "whale" concept was in full effect back in 2000-2005 when I was roommates with a store manager here in the states.  While it was a good time for us (cheap bits and lots of games) the sales strategy was (straight from the horse's mouth) concentrated on large initial purchases made by mom and dad for a kid.  The goal was to sell the hobby and get a $200-300 initial purchase.

There was no purchase strategy to keep current gamers (let's be honest, poor highschool and college kids is never a smart market) buying products.

I think my problem with AoS's new strategy is that while a lot of people seem to enjoy the game rules well enough, you're really risking it when a single character model now costs $33...which is even a lot considering most 40K characters are $20-25 a piece.  I guess we'll see if it works.  The issue was already a dwindling customer base with Warhammer Fantasy...the "increase the cost!" bit is just an odd approach to solving that problem.

PS: The above art is...without exaggeration probably the worst piece of art I've seen in a GW product.  Granted I haven't owned any books they've printed since the early 2000's, and I'm no fan of Blanche's art methods...but the warmed over comic book look, is truly terrible.

[nic-e]

PS: The above art is...without exaggeration probably the worst piece of art I've seen in a GW product.  Granted I haven't owned any books they've printed since the early 2000's, and I'm no fan of Blanche's art methods...but the warmed over comic book look, is truly terrible.

I was just thinking the same thing. I think it goes back to the same problem that alot of the newer GW miniatures have,which is they are done by digital designers not physical artists. Whilst you can't say theyre inherently bad as technical works, They're just so ...soulless, more like an attempt to just recreate something photographically than give a fantastical exaggeration of these god warriors.
Not to mention the bizarre posing and dull colours.
It looks like art done by a small company to promote the start of a kickstarer,not the artwork we're used to from GW,which has always had an amazing portfolio of warhammer art.

[Elbows]

Yeah, GW has never been short of decent artists (again, from early 90's - early 2000's in my experience).  While John Blanche's stuff is a bit lazy, he's always been good at delivering "atmosphere".  My personal favourite was/is the Mark Gibbons work.

[Vermis]

ThrowsFireball: oh aye, I know about whales. What I meant was something more like what Elbows mentioned:

The issue was already a dwindling customer base with Warhammer Fantasy...the "increase the cost!" bit is just an odd approach to solving that problem.

Not so much a small proportion of high-paying customers making up for the other, lower-paying customers, as a smaller proportion of customers being made to pay higher 'cos that's all the customers there are.

I'm saying they didn't go far enough.

Also the combat isn't right. It just feels like it's clung to it's roots instead of going full madness.

Ah, it is a matter of viewpoint. I think they've gone plenty full madness. 

On the topic of GW artists we like, I went searching for images and some of them linked back to this topic, a couple of years ago! So I'll start off quoting myself. 

Blanche and Kopinsky beyond that era.

Yup. And a bit of Paul Dainton and Adrian Smith. And the guy whose art was in the 40K 3rd ed book, whose name escapes me. (Edit: Wayne England.)
On that note, there were some of the guys on the Warhammer comic, crossing over with 2000AD in some cases. Colin MacNeil, Anthony Williams, the Kevs Walker and Hopgood, Tiernan Trevallion and the inestimable Wayne Reynolds.

I still have Jes Goodwin and Adrian Smith art books on me bookshelf, but I'd have to admit I've gone off some aspects of Adrian Smith's style. These images are examples:

http://art-of-40k.tumblr.com/image/82870901861
http://digital-art-gallery.com/picture/4041
http://chamberart.net/ru/view/51658-adrian.smith.damien.1427.html

Slightly contorted faces, and weird, twisted muscles around the shoulder (deltoids, pecs, biceps), pushed out to the corners of extremely wide ribcages. Maybe done for effect, but I don't know if it meshes well with the otherwise realistic (or at least well-done) rendering.

[Hobgoblin]

John Blanche and Ian Miller are the GW illustrators I like. I think both transcend being "just" fantasy illustrators. I don't find anything about their stuff boring. I'm not sure if either's best stuff is their GW stuff - especially in the case of Ian Miller. I love the illustrations they did for the (textually awful) Tolkien Bestiary. I'm not sure if Blanche's Smaug would pass the Vermis test, but it remains the definitive Smaug for me.

I think Blanche's best orcs were the ones he did in that book too - although his Sorcery goblins are nice.

I also think that Blanche and Miller were far more interesting Tolkien illustrators than Howe and Lee.

[Vermis]

 

It gets a pass for reasons of Blancheness.