The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[zemjw]

GW and Amazon studios sign agreement https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/12/18/warhammer-amazon-contracts-signed-the-news-every-warhammer-fan-has-been-waiting-for/

All we can tell you right now is that an elite band of screenwriters, each with their own particular passion for Warhammer, is being assembled to help bring the setting and characters you love to the screen. This illustrious group will be championed by Henry Cavill, who stands ready to take his place as executive producer – bringing his pen, sword and/or spear to the project.

TV and Film production is a mammoth undertaking. It’s not unusual for projects to take two to three years from this point before something arrives on screen. Still, things are now properly rolling, and you can bet we’ll bring you all the latest updates and cool snippets as soon as we’re able.

[Codsticker]

Gawd, I hope this ends up being a Good Film; something that will be enjoyable for the average movie goer, and won't get panned by critics... but I am sceptical.

[robh]

It's an Amazon production aimed directly at GWs core (young & impressionable) audience. Expect vast amounts of blatant "messaging" and DEI approved characters linked by a poorly written script and crap cgi.

[Belligerentparrot]

"messaging" and DEI approved characters

Sounds great! It was frankly embarrassing in 1991 trying to get my Maori and Samoan friends into 40k and they're like "Are there no brown dudes left in this universe?"

a poorly written script and crap cgi.

Oh, maybe not so great then. 

[Daeothar]

I can live with crap CGI; I also play with/against poorly painted minis and terrain after all 

But the script better be good; suspension of disbelief is no problem, unless the plot is completely off the rails.

It's the same with those direct to DVD or amateur films on Youtube: no matter the effects and props are crap, not even an issue that the sound sucks, but when the story is incoherent, unclear and/or obviously altered in post-production, I'm out...

Also, I just watched Reacher, and Alan Ritchson would make for a perfect Space Marine! (next to Henry himself, obviously)

[v_lazy_dragon]

"Are there no brown dudes left in this universe?"

A frequent and recurring question regarding 40K. I remember mild surprise when Codex Armageddon showed the Salamander chapter space marines as black - until then, I don't think I'd seen a non-Caucasian figure in 40k!

[Daeothar]

Ten thousand years of evolution and interbreeding would most likely have mixed every human phenotype into a single 'race', as predicted by current models.

This would be well before the expansion of humanity out into the stars, so once we spread acoss the galaxy, all humans would be mostly identical; olive brown skin, black hair and brown eyes.

All mutations such as blue eyes, red or blond hair and fair skin would be completely gone by then.

Unless of course, there would be new and possibly even more interesting mutations during that time. But because of the Village Earth effect, those would occur, but would never be able to stabilize and spread across an isolated and limited population, because those would no longer exist.

Only after the birth of Slaanesh would human population centers (read: planetary systems) be so isolated that a population could be altered enough to make a divergent phenotype sustainable. But even then only on very isolated, small communities.

One could wonder as to how the later Imperium would react to this, xenophobic as it is. But there are hints in scattered references in books and codices that all of this fear and hate is projected outward and humans are humans are humans, as long as they don't sprout extra eyes or limbs. I believe Last Chancers mentioned a completely albino population (two of which were inducted into the Penal Legion featured in the book(s)), but there are many more.

Bottom line; the Imperium does not care about the colour of skin, hair or eyes, as long as it's not overtly mutated (bright green skin with glowing white eyes for instance). An Imperial citizen is just that, and the Imperium, the Administratum and Echlesiary see them as such. Intra-human racism would be gone, the concept alien (sic) to them.

By this time, it's absolutely possible for entire populations on planets to have pale skin and red hair. Or blue eyes and black skin, or red eyes and grey skin. But the majority of human populations would still be that olive skinned, brown eyed phenotype they inherited from their Terran ancestors, and when they have regular contact with other humans, they would slowly but surely be absorbed into the 'regular' Human genepool again.

So any looks we assign to our Imperial miniatures are purely made up by ourselves, probably inspired by our own frame of reference. This goes for GW/BL authors just as well, so we might still catch references of blonde primarchs etc, but I myself like to adhere to the idea that 90% of all human population would have very similar skin-, hair- and eye colours...

[jon_1066]

Ten thousand years of evolution and interbreeding would most likely have mixed every human phenotype into a single 'race', as predicted by current models.

This would be well before the expansion of humanity out into the stars, so once we spread acoss the galaxy, all humans would be mostly identical; olive brown skin, black hair and brown eyes.

All mutations such as blue eyes, red or blond hair and fair skin would be completely gone by then.

...

I don't think genetics works like that.  It's a bit like saying humans will all have the same shaped nose and the same predisposition to type 2 diabetes.  There is plenty of room for genetic diversity within a population, otherwise how else would red hair or blue eyes still be present (after all it's had thousands of years to be bred out from the European population).  Those genes won't be bred out unless there is genetic pressure for them to be bred out so you'll just have them as part of the normal variance in the population.

[Daeothar]

But that's exactly how they work.

Blue eyes have been with us somewhere between 6 to 10 thousand years, white skin is a mutation that occurred first around 8 thousand years ago.

The reason it was prevelant in the northwest of Europe was because of the population here being isolated enough from the larger genepool for the genes causing blue eyes and white skin to become more widespread.

Going further south, we can see skin, eye and hair colours gradually becoming darker again.

Red hair is more common in Ireland, because the gene(s) causing this colour became isolated in the relatively small population on the island.

And all of this occurred within a relatively short period of time.

But with travel now being infinitely more easy, fast and cheap compared to back then, it stands to reason that all different genomes will eventually melt together into a common equilibrium, which would be olive skin, black hair and brown eyes. Especially given a period roughly twice as long.

This is not to say that individual instances of red hair, blue eyes or white skin could never occur anymore; they would just not be dominant enough in the global population to create phenotypical identical groups.

Unless said groups would once again become isolated

[Luigi]

Any thoughts on the upcoming relaunch of Warhammer Fantasy?

[Pattus Magnus]

I’m happy to see that some of the old plastic models will be back in production. I haven’t followed the WFB rules for quite a few editions (3rd was the high point of my WFB gaming, with some “old hammer” since then) so I don’t have a strong investment in that aspect.

That said, I am curious about what direction the new version will go on some of the game mechanics - resurrecting the to-hit table had me scratching my head (the change in AoS to a single target number in each profile was simpler and didn’t feel to me like game play lost much from the shift). It may end up being kind of like the new version of Epic 40K - sort of like the classic version, but stripped down a bit.

[Belligerentparrot]

Any thoughts on the upcoming relaunch of Warhammer Fantasy?

There were some thoughts a few pages back, but thanks for trying to bring us back on topic 

I see they've just published some stuff about how army lists work. I really like the way there are multiple required units: the Brettonians must have at least one unit of knights and one unit of peasants. That should mean the armies look pretty flavour-ful. Old Warhammer, at least 3rd/4th from memory, suffered from having flavour-ful lists but players eschewing 90% of the options on any given list.

Also, major heroes are restricted not just in terms of % of total army cost, but also in terms of size of army, something like 1 per 1k points. I don't know if that will make it more or less Herohammer. (If I can only take one major hero, does it makes sense for me to max their load out to make them extra-super-major? Hard to tell at this point).

[Luigi]

I'm... very neutral about it TBH.

It's always nice to see support for a favourite game but I do have to admit that in the almost 10 years the game was abandoned the community had develop on its own in terms of rules and ways to play.

As time goes by I've also found myself less and less interested in the game mechanics themselves and more involved with lore building and the painting aspect of the hobby with the rules themselves being just an excuse to put miniatures on the table.

Having said that, I'm happy to see restrictions on list building that seem to suggest a less cheesy approach to the  game.

As per the models... I'm hoping on a flood of plastic on the second hand market, but other than that I'm very indifferent I already have miniautres to last a lifetime so I won't need to rush and get anything new.

[Elbows]

To be fair, that's more or less always been Games Workshop's key to success.  Their games are generally middling to crap.  However, their aesthetics and lore are what actually drive their business (and they're well aware of it).  I think a lot of people are in the same neutral position.

They like the look of the Old World, the nostalgia (I do as well, though mainly from a more Mordheim standpoint), but then that's combined with mediocre rules and eye-watering prices. 

[Mammoth miniatures]

Any thoughts on the upcoming relaunch of Warhammer Fantasy?

I give it five years before they quietly drop it.