"I miss the old sculpts." Topic
20 Posts
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Xintao | 17 Feb 2017 9:01 a.m. PST |
Seeing a lot of old lead being painted and posted lately. I miss the days of clean simple sculpts that GW used to put out. for Fantasy. I miss it so much I've started rummaging around my basement. Looking for stuff to paint. I've found 3 Bretonnian Squires, not enough for a unit, but it's a start. So what is the next logical step? You guessed it, Ebay! A quick "buy it now" sale and in about a week, more squires will be on my table.
I don't even know if they are good to have in an army, just loved the sculpt and troop type. Random Musings, Xin/Jeff |
gamedad25 | 17 Feb 2017 9:24 a.m. PST |
+1 Can't seem to let go of my 5th edition Bretonnian army. On the 40k side, I am holding on to my Praetorian Imperial Guard. |
chuck05 | 17 Feb 2017 10:01 a.m. PST |
Im not a fan of the new style either. The figures are too busy for my tastes. Another way to go would be to check out the Perry Miniatures site. I believe they sculpted the Bretonian line. They have a good selection of Medeval figures. |
Garand | 17 Feb 2017 10:19 a.m. PST |
The Perry miniatures are noticably smaller than their sculpts for GW. If you're looking for minis to supplement the Brets collection I would look at First Rank's HYW range, which fits well size wise and are high quality figures with similar proportions to GW, or Black Tree's Men of Averaign, which is a deliberate "not-GW" range. They have Mtd Squire substitutes as well… Damon. |
Xintao | 17 Feb 2017 10:55 a.m. PST |
No, it's not the Brets. It's all of them. I was just talking about GW figs in general. All those sculpts from the 1990's and into the early 2000's. I just picked the squires cause that was the first thing I came across. I only ever painted an Empire army back in the day, mainly do to lack of funds, but I wanted them all. It's like pokemon, gotta catch them all. Jeff |
Thomas Thomas | 17 Feb 2017 11:46 a.m. PST |
The old Bretonians to which the squires belong (though the name makes no sense) are perhaps the all time high point for GW sculps. The accompanying army list was also a great high point. Brets degenerated thereafter in both looks, fluff and game play. I'm working on a version of A Game of Fire and Ice that will attempt to at least recreate the flavor of the Old World esp. Franconia (nee Bretonia) and the Empire. It uses the faster play DBX style mechanics but with a distinctly Old Hammer feel added in (including Banners, Musicans, elder races etc.) Hope to have in finished in time for NashCon. The Perry plastics are a bit smaller but I've mixed them without difficulty. One option is to buy extra Perry horeses (you can get them on the website) and use them instead of the steriod versions that come with the figures. Front Rank also a great choice but come only in metal so are a bit more expensive – both great figure lines. Thomas J. Thomas Fame and Glory Games |
Richard Brooks | 17 Feb 2017 2:59 p.m. PST |
Black Tree's Men of Averaign are a decent match for the old Bretonians, at least the infantry. link |
Bashytubits | 17 Feb 2017 3:07 p.m. PST |
The early GW and Citadel stuff was pretty good, I am with you Xintao. They were/are loaded with character. |
Garand | 17 Feb 2017 3:35 p.m. PST |
Always find it a little amusing people that talk up the 90's and 00 era of GW figures. Personally I loved a lot of the "classic" 80s era figures, and would LOVE to see these come back into production, especially the Norse Dwarfs and Wood Elfs… Damon. |
Xintao | 17 Feb 2017 4:52 p.m. PST |
I love those too. It's just I started playing in 1990. I'd buy new Norse Dwarves and Wood Elves. Xin |
HUBCommish | 17 Feb 2017 6:23 p.m. PST |
Speaking of old school minis, GW is about to release an updated version of their iconic Chaos Warrior from 1985, Slambo. Be advised, price is in NZ dollars. Also, he's huge. That's a 40mm base he's on. link |
Bashytubits | 17 Feb 2017 7:23 p.m. PST |
Always find it a little amusing people that talk up the 90's and 00 era of GW figures. Personally I loved a lot of the "classic" 80s era figures Well my first love was Ral Partha true 25s and I still have gazillions of them. |
doug redshirt | 17 Feb 2017 8:27 p.m. PST |
Thomas are you going to publish this new addition too. I have a bunch of 15mm fantasy armies that I was thinking of moving over to your Fire and Ice rules. |
Mike Target | 18 Feb 2017 9:08 a.m. PST |
I always preferred the older stuff. The 5th ed bretonnians are some of my favourites too. Its like the SW questions. Which was the better trilogy, 1-3 or 4-6? Obviously its 4-6! Its not even a fair contest. Like the newer GW figures all 1-3 bring is their better, flashier SFX. They lack the character of their older counterparts… |
Pictors Studio | 18 Feb 2017 8:50 p.m. PST |
I did prefer the older Brettonians to the later versions. The later version did seem to be much more over the top than the 5th edition ones. Although one thing that drove me crazy about the 5th edition ones was that the plastic KotR didn't have swords. As in at all. I do prefer a lot of the newer stuff though, especially with the Chaos stuff. It is just so characterful and evil looking. The chaos stuff was mostly always good but, especially with the Nurgle stuff, they seem to have gotten it just right now. The Nurgle stuff always looked a little bit too cartoony and it didn't really look as revolting as it should have. Now it looks, when painted, like you might not want to touch it. |
Mithmee | 19 Feb 2017 8:26 p.m. PST |
Sorry but GW is into their Age of Sigmar miniatures these days and petty soon 40K is going to go the same way. |
Judge Doug | 21 Feb 2017 8:37 a.m. PST |
Thanks, Hubcommish! I ordered me a SLAMBO! link |
Thomas Thomas | 21 Feb 2017 3:04 p.m. PST |
Doug et al: I've been getting lots of requests/questions re expanding Fire and Ice. So yes I am going to publish an "Old World" version of Fire and Ice. First thanks to all the players and their kind responses – you can't have a game without players. I've been reviewing feedback and considering what to do next. In the short run I plan to finish A Game of of the Old World (or Oldhammer for short). This will expand Fire and Ice into the "Old World" and have an historical campaign based on the Hundred Years War and a fantasy campaign based on a Fantasy Old World. It will cover all the elder races and Old World based human armies that once dominated fantasy gaming. This world was abandoned by the Marketing Bullies, leaving players with lots of armies but no home. I want to help these folks out by creating a game to use their Old World miniatures. The races will not be generic as in Old Hott and undead will be distinctive in function and army list. Still I hope to retain the playablity and easy rule pick up of the original Fire and Ice. I'm also getting lots of requests to expand out of the medieval world into ancients – I suspect because of the "Pike Fix" of the old DBX problem that would allow Pike based armies to function better in the DBX world. Still thinking about this… Thomas J. Thomas Fame and Glory Games |
Achtung Minen | 21 Feb 2017 4:51 p.m. PST |
Agree completely. The best GW sculpts were from about 1992 to the late 1990's. That covers the 2e Space Marines which were lovely, the Kev Adams Orcs (not the awful square-jawed ones that came later), the Trish Morrison Treemen and Giant Eagles/Scorpions/Spiders etc, the Gary Morley Wood Elf Scouts, the Perry brothers' human models (Empire and Bretonnia especially), the stout Dwarfs by Aly Morrison and Collin Dixon… I could go on. There was a wonderfully cohesive design to all of them… the models all have perfectly full, even thick, proportions, but with graceful curves and lines. They are solidly built, ever so slightly exaggerated in order to really pop on the tabletop, and they all paint up beautifully. No one did it as well as GW in that era and no one has beat them since. I've got loads of lead from the 1990's and I wouldn't part with it for the world! |
Deuce03 | 05 Mar 2017 10:00 p.m. PST |
Everyone seems to have their own opinion of which period of GW figures was best. I think to an extent it depends on the range, and also the age you were when you first encountered them. With that said, nobody can deny that the 80s sculpts have character, but in a lot of cases "character" is a polite way of saying "rubbish". The best 80s sculpts still hold up today and in particular it was a golden age for monsters and large gribblies. But there are a lot of oddly-proportioned figures and horrible faces there too. During the early 1990s the quality became much more standardised, plastic came in in a bigger way, and it was rare that any real shockers at least in terms of individual design were released. On the other hand the figures also became a bit bland. It was a good period for human figures, and dwarfs retained a strong line, but some of the more monstrous factions suffered a little. Figures tended to be chunkier than previously, which was in some respects an improvement, but disappointing in others. This was also the era of the dreaded diagonal basing, where figures, especially plastics, were inexplicably made too wide or too long to fit on their base size and so had to be based facing off at 45-degree angles. Where that wasn't the case, and sometimes even when it was, the odd "half-squat" posture was retained for some models, like the plastic Chaos warriors, which in retrosepct was never a good look. I think the reason that people like the late 90s-early 00s period so much is that it was a period where the sculptors had a good grasp of how to sculpt realistic-looking anatomy and posture, but started adding more of the character back into the figures that had been lost during the 90s. There are a few dodgy ones, and there's no accounting for taste, but there was a real understated quality to the figures of that era. It's notable that this is the last time the Perry twins sculpted for Warhammer, I think. In the late 00s, though, the rise of plastic and the increased emphasis on the "wacky" parts of the setting led to an increase in detail but a corresponding decline in anatomy and aesthetics. A lot of sculptors in this period seem to be unable to sculpt good-looking humans, with odd hunched postures, laughable faces and ham-hands coming back into fashion. And if you can't sculpt humans, you can't sculpt elves either. Even the dwarfs, who until this point had been pretty much bulletproof, suffered: the plastic dwarf infantry of this era are, imo, some of the worst models GW ever released. When they got it right, the results could be spectacular, but there are some seriously ugly figures produced by this period. And possibly because of the plastic medium few of the figures ever seemed to have the character of their 80s counterparts which used to make up for it. The current range has largely overcome these issues and once again we're seeing figures that don't look like they come from the uncanny valley's ugly stepsister. But the trend for needless clutter, flamboyant posing and exposed delicate parts has if anything got worse. Figures now are much more fiddly to paint than they once were and this is the case right down to the horde infantry. This makes them not only much more of a chore but can also make them look *worse* when deployed in numbers. They are, as a rule, much harder to convert than older figures were, thanks to the dramatic posing and so on, so the modelling part of the hobby is rather more by-numbers than it used to be. Further, they're increasingly hard to use as gaming pieces, and more vulnerable to damage when they are (whether in transport or on the table). Producing spectacular models has got in the way of practicality. The range has also narrowed, both in breadth and depth. I think part of the reason people look back on the c.97-04 period as "peak Warhammer sculpting" is not only because of the quality of the figures being produced during that period – which was high, but not necessarily as high as it's ever been – but because the range was much more extensive. Not least because they hadn't yet discontinued older figures en masse, so you still had the option of buying metal figures from ten years earlier if they'd shovelled out a rare for a troop type you needed. Once they cut themselves off from that in the mid-00s, you were limited to the figures currently on sale and if you didn't like those, well, hard cheese. |
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