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 Moopy wrote:
Very cool!

Not sure why all praetor axes have to have massive rents in them now.

Gw seem to have gone down a bit of a bizarre road with weapons on characters/command guys these days. I often switch them out for more regular looking weapons.

warl0rdb0b wrote:
I feel they haven't released a bad one yet in the newer scale, but I agree that the Space Wolves on, and to a degree the Word Bearers ones, are lacking. Mainly the poor flames and weak poses on the Word Bearers, but that Space Trash Panda is dire,

I disagree - well at least for Word Bearers , I have the Word Bearers ones. They look awesome and are (so far) fun to paint.

warl0rdb0b wrote:
I feel they haven't released a bad one yet in the newer scale, but I agree that the Space Wolves on, and to a degree the Word Bearers ones, are lacking. Mainly the poor flames and weak poses on the Word Bearers, but that Space Trash Panda is dire,

You don't like the WB one? I don't think anyone will defend the SW one, but the WB terminator is awesome, and makes a great praetor, librarian/sorcerer, and even a dark apostle (though its not like those get terminator armor.)

The night lord praetor, on the other hand...



The helmet looks silly, not scary. The giant skull and legion numbers on the chest don't feel right, and look at the hooks on his chainmail tabbard. They forgot to sculpt detail behind the hook, so now there are just random metal chunks. I feel like a NL praetor with jump pack should be one of the best looking praetor models, and it is definitely not.

You've just described pretty much every Night Lords model in my mind. I don't think there's any saving their established look.

 GaroRobe wrote:

warl0rdb0b wrote:
I feel they haven't released a bad one yet in the newer scale, but I agree that the Space Wolves on, and to a degree the Word Bearers ones, are lacking. Mainly the poor flames and weak poses on the Word Bearers, but that Space Trash Panda is dire,

You don't like the WB one? I don't think anyone will defend the SW one, but the WB terminator is awesome, and makes a great praetor, librarian/sorcerer, and even a dark apostle (though its not like those get terminator armor.)

The night lord praetor, on the other hand...

Spoiler:

The helmet looks silly, not scary. The giant skull and legion numbers on the chest don't feel right, and look at the hooks on his chainmail tabbard. They forgot to sculpt detail behind the hook, so now there are just random metal chunks. I feel like a NL praetor with jump pack should be one of the best looking praetor models, and it is definitely not.

I don't hate the WB preators, I just feel they're a little behind the other legions in terms of how modern they look. The flames are a little clumsy, and the poses are fairly generic 'shoot/point while holding choppy weapon at ease'. They just lack, for want of a better word, purpose. I'd have loved it if one were in a pose like the old failcast Dark Apostle, or something equally bombastic and full of zeal.

And I totally forgot about that.... messy KL one, he is the polar opposite of his Termi brother.

 GaroRobe wrote:

Spoiler:

look at the hooks on his chainmail tabbard. They forgot to sculpt detail behind the hook, so now there are just random metal chunks.

That....
is a sad thing to behold.
full-on schoolboy error from the people who are supposed to know better.

The whole 3d-printlines on resin models was the first warning wasn't it?

 SirDonlad wrote:

 GaroRobe wrote:

Spoiler:

look at the hooks on his chainmail tabbard. They forgot to sculpt detail behind the hook, so now there are just random metal chunks.

That....
is a sad thing to behold.
full-on schoolboy error from the people who are supposed to know better.

The whole 3d-printlines on resin models was the first warning wasn't it?

It´s more than this for me. I generally dislike all forms of polearm weapons for SM. Everybody who served in the military know of cramped interior conditions of tanks. So unwieldy stuff like this is not beneficial for swift embarkation. Also emergency embarkation below a tank is another thing. Such a polearm would never fit through.

I know that fantastic games with monsters & psi powers can´t adhere to realism although when even the mundane aspects don´t work you start to doubt the quality of the setting as a whole.

 Prometheum5 wrote:
You've just described pretty much every Night Lords model in my mind. I don't think there's any saving their established look.

That poor model makes me feel embarrassed just looking at it. Night lords as a concept are already a bit silly, I think their models need to be subtle to pull of their schtick and not look like He-Man villains.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 SirDonlad wrote:

 GaroRobe wrote:

Spoiler:

look at the hooks on his chainmail tabbard. They forgot to sculpt detail behind the hook, so now there are just random metal chunks.

That....
is a sad thing to behold.
full-on schoolboy error from the people who are supposed to know better.

The whole 3d-printlines on resin models was the first warning wasn't it?

It´s more than this for me. I generally dislike all forms of polearm weapons for SM. Everybody who served in the military know of cramped interior conditions of tanks. So unwieldy stuff like this is not beneficial for swift embarkation. Also emergency embarkation below a tank is another thing. Such a polearm would never fit through.

I know that fantastic games with monsters & psi powers can´t adhere to realism although when even the mundane aspects don´t work you start to doubt the quality of the setting as a whole.

I mean, he is using a jump pack, so he won't be riding in a tank or going under one anyway. He'll probably just fly away.

Either/Or wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:
You've just described pretty much every Night Lords model in my mind. I don't think there's any saving their established look.

That poor model makes me feel embarrassed just looking at it. Night lords as a concept are already a bit silly, I think their models need to be subtle to pull of their schtick and not look like He-Man villains.

I was going to say that the Night Lords were the first of the marines to get Flanderised to the point of ridiculousness. But as far as I can tell, they've always been that way. Certainly the Space Wolves got more Yiffy and the Blood Angels got more.... bloody... over time. But the Night Lords have always been a bit batty. Right from the old Night Lord lord with his (as far as I can tell) 7 bat-winged skulls, the Night Lords conversion kit with the super duper bat-winged helmets and to a lesser extent, the OG 2nd ed raptors with their bat-winged jump packs (although they were a generic unit and may have pre-dated the aforelinked Lord, i'm not sure). Point is, they've always been ridiculous where as others have gotten ridiculous over time.

The bat-winged skull is fine as far as a Legion symbol goes. It's no more silly then any other. And I don't even mind a bit of skin wearing. Nothing quite strikes the fear into your foes like wearing their mothers face on your helmet. Even Chaos Marines as a whole have a long tradition of using skin as armour/banner adornments. So it's really not that strange or out of theme. But when you have little ribbons of it pinned to your back pack and a random patches nailed loosely here and there.... Well... it loses it's impact somewhat. Especially when it doesn't actually look like skin all that much.
So instead of getting the actually monstrous terror-wielding skin-mask wearing boogymen Legion, we got insane bat-winged backstabbing mustache twirling batmen Legion.

Had the Night Lords been done as they should have been (monsters under the bed who will come and punish you if you're naughty) I think they'd be far less of a joke and something of an actually "respected" Legion.

 Snrub wrote:

Either/Or wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:
You've just described pretty much every Night Lords model in my mind. I don't think there's any saving their established look.

That poor model makes me feel embarrassed just looking at it. Night lords as a concept are already a bit silly, I think their models need to be subtle to pull of their schtick and not look like He-Man villains.

I was going to say that the Night Lords were the first of the marines to get Flanderised to the point of ridiculousness. But as far as I can tell, they've always been that way. Certainly the Space Wolves got more Yiffy and the Blood Angels got more.... bloody... over time. But the Night Lords have always been a bit batty. Right from the old Night Lord lord with his (as far as I can tell) 7 bat-winged skulls, the Night Lords conversion kit with the super duper bat-winged helmets and to a lesser extent, the OG 2nd ed raptors with their bat-winged jump packs (although they were a generic unit and may have pre-dated the aforelinked Lord, i'm not sure). Point is, they've always been ridiculous where as others have gotten ridiculous over time.

The bat-winged skull is fine as far as a Legion symbol goes. It's no more silly then any other. And I don't even mind a bit of skin wearing. Nothing quite strikes the fear into your foes like wearing their mothers face on your helmet. Even Chaos Marines as a whole have a long tradition of using skin as armour/banner adornments. So it's really not that strange or out of theme. But when you have little ribbons of it pinned to your back pack and a random patches nailed loosely here and there.... Well... it loses it's impact somewhat. Especially when it doesn't actually look like skin all that much.
So instead of getting the actually monstrous terror-wielding skin-mask wearing boogymen Legion, we got insane bat-winged backstabbing mustache twirling batmen Legion.

Had the Night Lords been done as they should have been (monsters under the bed who will come and punish you if you're naughty) I think they'd be far less of a joke and something of an actually "respected" Legion.

The Night Lords borrowing from Vampire Counts (the WFB army) goes back to their initial design sketches in 2nd ed:


And yeah, skin doesn't look that scary flapping in the breeze on a model, which is why I've stuck to hanging body parts (arms, hands, heads) and mounting skulls on them over trying to do skin. Plus casual corpse desecration is pretty on brand for them based on the Night Lords trilogy. It's basically habit by the time the Horus Heresy starts so I'm okay with getting a little silly with it, like I'm doing on my Spartan:


But honestly how hard you want to lean into the mutilation and trophies of judgement schtick is really up to each person.

See, that's just a really cool idea which fits the theme perfectly.

Also color me curious, what're those actual bodies / body parts model wise? I take it some kind of Night Haunt corpse cart? I don't know much about AOS.

 Snrub wrote:
the OG 2nd ed raptors with their bat-winged jump packs (although they were a generic unit and may have pre-dated the aforelinked Lord, i'm not sure).

Raptors didn't happen until the first 3rd ed Chaos Codex(the 2nd ed Chaos Codex didn't have jump troops, much less Raptors) and predate the 3.5 Night Lord Lord. The Raptor wings actually had a purpose: Rules and fluffwise, they fit the wings to the jump pack to create a demoralizing scream using the in built wind pipes that formed the "fingers" of the wings. However, that rule existed only in their original entry in that first 3rd ed Codex.

 morganfreeman wrote:
See, that's just a really cool idea which fits the theme perfectly.

Also color me curious, what're those actual bodies / body parts model wise? I take it some kind of Night Haunt corpse cart? I don't know much about AOS.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Vampire-Counts-Corpse-Cart

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
the OG 2nd ed raptors with their bat-winged jump packs (although they were a generic unit and may have pre-dated the aforelinked Lord, i'm not sure).

Raptors didn't happen until the first 3rd ed Chaos Codex(the 2nd ed Chaos Codex didn't have jump troops, much less Raptors) and predate the 3.5 Night Lord Lord. The Raptor wings actually had a purpose: Rules and fluffwise, they fit the wings to the jump pack to create a demoralizing scream using the in built wind pipes that formed the "fingers" of the wings. However, that rule existed only in their original entry in that first 3rd ed Codex.

Also Raptors were mercenary units at the time of their introduction, and the Night Lords hadn't been flanderized into the 'All Raptors All The Time' Legion.

Maybe the playing up of the batwing theme through 3.5 and later editions was to get away from their 2nd edition 'Eavy Metal scheme, where any person asked to name the legion based on their appearance would surely have declared them to be the 'Lightning Lords' or Storm Lords'.

You know, this is all subjective. Have any of you considered that actual Night Lords fans actually like all of the skulls, bat wings, flayed skin, random body parts, and spikes? And maybe if you don't like those things, then the 8th Legion just isn't for you? Maybe just stick with the more "sedate" legions, with Roman helmet plumes and such, and leave the Night Lords models for the actual Night Lords fans. Cool?

Actual Night Lord fans? Are they Scottish?

Bat wings, hooks and chains, and flayed skin are all fine details for Night Lords. The problem is GW's design methodology that pushes to add as many details as possible to character models.

Everything has to be over the top and it results in models that look like 80s action figures.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
You know, this is all subjective. Have any of you considered that actual Night Lords fans actually like all of the skulls, bat wings, flayed skin, random body parts, and spikes? And maybe if you don't like those things, then the 8th Legion just isn't for you? Maybe just stick with the more "sedate" legions, with Roman helmet plumes and such, and leave the Night Lords models for the actual Night Lords fans. Cool?

Night Lords decoration makes me think of the outrage when Gondor got its foot knights way back when. Swan knights or something like that? People trashed them for silly large helmet wings, with the problem being that they were silly large. Weta had wing designs on helmets and the models based on the movies were accepted just fine and formed the baseline for what expected of the model range, which was a largely realistic rendition of the movie characters. With the foot knights, GW had a GW moment and forgot what style they're supposed to work with.

I always get this same idea with the bat wing helmets, and to a lesser degree other decorations. It's not that people have an issue with the style, but the execution tends to get in the way I'd love to see GW make Night Lord helmets with reasonably sized wings (in plastic, because little resin wings suck). I think the Praetor posted above got the size right and the wings are a decent adornment that doesn't dominate the model, but the wings don't look very integrated, are too thick (probably because thin resin sucks) and look like they come out of a tacked on skull prop's cheekbones. All the elements that should be there are there, but they're just not very well done. Getting all those parts to mesh with each other and the armor they're built on is a really important thing to get right, and GW frequently* doesn't seem to be able to do that very well.


* In relative terms. Night Lords don't have a history of getting all that many models.

 morganfreeman wrote:
See, that's just a really cool idea which fits the theme perfectly.

Also color me curious, what're those actual bodies / body parts model wise? I take it some kind of Night Haunt corpse cart? I don't know much about AOS.

Vampire Counts Corpse Cart. I think it's still sold as part of the Soulblight army now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Geifer wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
You know, this is all subjective. Have any of you considered that actual Night Lords fans actually like all of the skulls, bat wings, flayed skin, random body parts, and spikes? And maybe if you don't like those things, then the 8th Legion just isn't for you? Maybe just stick with the more "sedate" legions, with Roman helmet plumes and such, and leave the Night Lords models for the actual Night Lords fans. Cool?

Night Lords decoration makes me think of the outrage when Gondor got its foot knights way back when. Swan knights or something like that? People trashed them for silly large helmet wings, with the problem being that they were silly large. Weta had wing designs on helmets and the models based on the movies were accepted just fine and formed the baseline for what expected of the model range, which was a largely realistic rendition of the movie characters. With the foot knights, GW had a GW moment and forgot what style they're supposed to work with.

I always get this same idea with the bat wing helmets, and to a lesser degree other decorations. It's not that people have an issue with the style, but the execution tends to get in the way I'd love to see GW make Night Lord helmets with reasonably sized wings (in plastic, because little resin wings suck). I think the Praetor posted above got the size right and the wings are a decent adornment that doesn't dominate the model, but the wings don't look very integrated, are too thick (probably because thin resin sucks) and look like they come out of a tacked on skull prop's cheekbones. All the elements that should be there are there, but they're just not very well done. Getting all those parts to mesh with each other and the armor they're built on is a really important thing to get right, and GW frequently* doesn't seem to be able to do that very well.


* In relative terms. Night Lords don't have a history of getting all that many models.

FW definitely did a better job with the Night Raptors and Sevetar with integreating the wings.

 Geifer wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
You know, this is all subjective. Have any of you considered that actual Night Lords fans actually like all of the skulls, bat wings, flayed skin, random body parts, and spikes? And maybe if you don't like those things, then the 8th Legion just isn't for you? Maybe just stick with the more "sedate" legions, with Roman helmet plumes and such, and leave the Night Lords models for the actual Night Lords fans. Cool?

Night Lords decoration makes me think of the outrage when Gondor got its foot knights way back when. Swan knights or something like that? People trashed them for silly large helmet wings, with the problem being that they were silly large. Weta had wing designs on helmets and the models based on the movies were accepted just fine and formed the baseline for what expected of the model range, which was a largely realistic rendition of the movie characters. With the foot knights, GW had a GW moment and forgot what style they're supposed to work with.

I always get this same idea with the bat wing helmets, and to a lesser degree other decorations. It's not that people have an issue with the style, but the execution tends to get in the way I'd love to see GW make Night Lord helmets with reasonably sized wings (in plastic, because little resin wings suck). I think the Praetor posted above got the size right and the wings are a decent adornment that doesn't dominate the model, but the wings don't look very integrated, are too thick (probably because thin resin sucks) and look like they come out of a tacked on skull prop's cheekbones. All the elements that should be there are there, but they're just not very well done. Getting all those parts to mesh with each other and the armor they're built on is a really important thing to get right, and GW frequently* doesn't seem to be able to do that very well.


* In relative terms. Night Lords don't have a history of getting all that many models.

Yes, execution is important. And I'd personally rate the Jump Praetor at the bottom of the available Night Lords models (though I still think it's "OK"), and agree with Zion that they did a better job with the wings with the Night Raptors and Sevatar's helmets (and the skull faces as well, along with the Terror Squad heads).

But when people start complaining about the wings in general, along with things like flayed skin, spikes, chains, etc, I really just have to think "This really just isn't the Legion for you". All of those things are pretty core to their identity. It's like complaining about bionics on Iron Hands models.

Also I find it inherently more frightening that dudes in sorta cartoonish colors and armor doing the ripping and tearing (along with enjoying it) compared to a more muted Super Soldier.

the bat wings are ok if a bit chunky, and the skin is fine (well if painted so it looks like a skin trophy, rather than a random bit of fabic or cardboard)

but that terrible skull helm, ugh, nasty, all the menace of a tellytubby

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
But when people start complaining about the wings in general, along with things like flayed skin, spikes, chains, etc, I really just have to think "This really just isn't the Legion for you". All of those things are pretty core to their identity. It's like complaining about bionics on Iron Hands models.

I don't think that anybody has been complaining about wings, flayed skin, spikes, chains etc. existing at all in this thread. It's specifically the implementation of (some of) those features which people have been highlighting as not being very well done (like for example the chain/hook with no texture behind it, or models being plastered in wings).

Batwinged skulls are a legion symbol for Night Lords and wearing those as decoration is really not far removed from the various other legion symbols used on Praetors and the like.

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

 SirDonlad wrote:

 GaroRobe wrote:

Spoiler:

look at the hooks on his chainmail tabbard. They forgot to sculpt detail behind the hook, so now there are just random metal chunks.

That....
is a sad thing to behold.
full-on schoolboy error from the people who are supposed to know better.

The whole 3d-printlines on resin models was the first warning wasn't it?

It´s more than this for me. I generally dislike all forms of polearm weapons for SM. Everybody who served in the military know of cramped interior conditions of tanks. So unwieldy stuff like this is not beneficial for swift embarkation. Also emergency embarkation below a tank is another thing. Such a polearm would never fit through.

I know that fantastic games with monsters & psi powers can´t adhere to realism although when even the mundane aspects don´t work you start to doubt the quality of the setting as a whole.

I mean, he is using a jump pack, so he won't be riding in a tank or going under one anyway. He'll probably just fly away.

This NL model is not the only one with a polearm. Also fighting in any kind of cramped interiors (space hulk corridor, tunnels, etc.) will make such a weapon difficult or even worthless to use.

Chainglaives: cool in theory but really not practically.

I wish that more helmets were shown. I was thinking of getting some Mark VI Marines for my Word Bearers, but I will be holding out until I see the helmets.

Not going to lie: I've been looking for Night Raptors heads online. Found some of too but it's a question of getting them.

Honestly GW would be getting more money out of me if I could source things from them but 3rd party it is for at least some of my stuff.