StarSword 700
Foreword
Warhammer has been around since the late 80's. I had just missed the Rogue Trader era when I discovered Warhammer in the early 90's. I collected some 40k Eldar, EPIC Chaos and some Escher, but like most people I bought many miniatures at random because I they looked great and I thought I would start something. Like most people I only painted a small fraction of my stuff.
I remember sitting next to an older guy at a convention, overhearing him complain about the then new 'clowny' Orks. It made me a bit uncomfortable because Paul Bonner's Ork art was instrumental in getting me into the hobby. Today's Orks are too much growl and riveted plasticard for my taste.
I've already mentioned that I collected Eldar and Escher, so you might have figured out who my favorite sculptor was. Almost everything Jes Goodwin did had nice proportions, balanced clear detail and dynamic poses.
Around 96-97 Warhammer had become too expensive for me. Social circles broke. As I got better at drawing and painting, it became less interesting to swallow other people's designs whole.
So, here I am, one and a half decade later, making a little "40k my way" nostalgia page. I think designs like the Space Marine armour are really effective, even though I take some issue with the proportions and functionality of the designs. I think complex organic form, unstructured greeble creep and undecided silhouette is mostly detrimental to making a memorable design. The Space Marine is one of those things that you could put on a road sign and still recognize, blasting by at 80mph. I wanted to try to proxy that quality with my designs below.
Factions and fluff
I don't have a lot of time to come up with fluff here. I mostly wanted to do some paraphrase drawings. But, right out of my butt, in tl;dr; writing style, here is a list of factions. While I'm cheaply referencing popular ideas here, the product doesn't have to end up too derivative.
Humans and space elves
The space elves were pretty awesome but then the male elves went insane (hello Cthulhu) like the Saidin in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. About this time mankind was in big trouble too!
The last of the elves, a wise queen and her retinue, flees to a new region of space, saves mankind and seizes power. The Monarchy of man is now ruled by a sexy elf queen (rather than The Emperor).
Space knights / Astroknights
The elves needed a super warrior to do their dirty work, so each they altered their blood so it could be injected into humans, transforming enhancing their abilities. These troopers are also given a master crafted motorized armour. Each elven retinue member has their own army ('chapter'), with slightly different abilities.
<- Slightly chibified version.
Some sculpting process pics (failing/experimenting/learning as I go): Photo environment 1 2 3 4 5 Duping 6 7 Refining design 8 Almost done Sprue and accessory ideas
Sisters of Battle
The Queen's retinue consists of nearly a thousand immortal elves. Many are commanding their own Astroknight army. Like inquisitors, these elves are elite stuck-ups who keep things in order. Valkyrian aesthetics are common. They command with the authority of a Goa'uld guard guy (the evil guys from StarGate).
I'm experimenting with a chunky lightly armed Rhino troop transport here. Generally when I design transports, I like to keep the focus on "smooth box", since that suggests a transport function. IMO, It's dangerous to throw superfluous features and shapes around, since that changes the meaning of the 'sentence' so to speak ("It looks like I have space inside, can move around, and maybe shoot a little" to "I have super-cool spiky track-legs, streamlined insectoid bulges and a huge mysterious device making up 30% of my mass").
Chaos, Necron, Borg and Tyranid
These are merged into a Cthulhu'esque/Lovecraftian faction. Just like the Chaos forces of 40K, there are several subfactions.
- Fleshy monsters. Otherworldly Cthulhu-style beasts. Most of the time more strange than cool. In combat they rely on unnatural physical traits and mental powers.
- Flesh and machine. Corrupted humans and beasts. Something along the lines of what we see in the movie Virus. Corpses on bionic legs. They just love to experiment with technology and living samples. Like Tzeentch they are also inquisitive, looking for some important piece of knowledge. Their weapons and such all use special rules because they can't do anything the straight forward way, unlike:
- Machine. Big robots. Khorne meets Goff Orks meets Battletech. Basically a faction of dreadnoughts. Governed by a big nasty computer Skynet/WOPR and its lieutenants. Each robot is unique (like Rouge Trader dreadnoughts). They take slaves, and all carry the surname 'Master'.
- These subfactions are guided by a council of Cthulhu-like entities. However, the council members often disagree with each other and the situation is sort of a mess with a lot of back stabbing (this to allow domestic battles).
- Flesh and machine, again. Witch elves. Gotta put some Slaanesh in there somehow. Cenobites?
Orks
The Orks have great potential as a species. They have finally risen up after having been used as slaves and tread upon for many centuries. In fact, they have now enslaved a species of their own, the tinker gnomes.
Tau
I'm thinking that the Tau (a somewhat sympathetic faction compared to the others in 40k) could be replaced by intelligent humanoid bugs (MoO's Klackon or Starguard's Dreenoi). These civilized and thoughtful bugs would stand in interesting contrast against the more typical mutant-beast-like Tyranid-Zerg-Alien. Perhaps they are skilled with forcefield tech, allowing regular troops to look insectiod on the battle (and not like another armoured humanoid). Alternatively, they could have 4 legs or something. Exploration needed.
The vicious aliens who spread quickly (Tyranids, Zerg, Orks)
How about plants? I'm thinking Bellsprout (Zergling), Victreebel, Scyther (Genestealer), Cactuar, Sudowoodo, Bulbasaur.
WIP
Some seeds, waiting to... blossom. Some of the thumbnails started out as EPIC scale redesigns. I need to find a demonette design. Maybe cybernetic.
And some Gretchin sized creatures, based on the Goblins/"Svartalver" from Prince Augusts Fantasy Armies line. They're kind of beaky and interesting, as opposed to the needle-nose-needle-chin goblins we typically see.
Some Demon Engines.
I quite like the Demon Engines in EPIC, so I decided to paraphrase them. Seen here are the Juggernaut of Khorne, Brass Scorpion, Doom Blaster, Cauldron of Blood, Tower of Skulls, and a Doom Wheel / Lord of Battles hybrid. And a Plague Tower, top. Top left: Blood Reaper, and Cannon of Khorne. I should migrate the Slaanesh mechs on my Slaanesh page to this porject , because those are paraphrases anyways.
Scale feel test.
- 28mm heroic (32mm chunky + big head)
- 25mm / 1:72 (realistic proportions)
- 15mm (chunky + big head) (Dunno of all 15mm is 15mm though.)
- 6mm EPIC scale
I prefer to use scales like 1:xx. Millimeter scales can be confusing, because sometimes the measurement includes bases, or you just measure up to the eyes, not the top of the head. Ideally, the scale description should contain information about proportion too, so you can tell if the figures from different systems work together.
It seems like the 40K scale has fluctuated over the years and with different sculptors. Maybe the older figures were a bit more squat. I'm assuming that human figures are close to 180cm tall, maybe taller for male warriors, shorter for females. My Escher might be around 1:58. I have a Cadian Soldier that appears to be 28mm tall, so that's more like 1:64. The heads are generally 5mm or a bit more (in some cases closer to 6mm). I found a Dark Elf crossbow guy who seems to be around 1:57. I don't know how big these guys are in the fluff. Space Marines are certainly not to scale with other figures (7+ feet in the fluff). If my Space Marine scouts are just taller-than-average guys, they might be around 1:58.
So, maybe the 40K scale can be described as 1:59, 5.8 heads, chunky (trunky/malt cross), where the parenthesis describes the nature of the chunkyness. My Red Blok AT-43 guys are 33-34mm for males, and 30-31mm for females. The heads that I measured are just a tiny bit smaller than 40K's. I would describe the scale as 1:56, 7 heads, with a slight chunky trunkyness to the proportions.
A realistic 1:72 scale would just be 1:72. 7-8 heads, and a non-chunkyness would be assumed values.
Proportion types.
Rules
Another thing that pushed me away from 40K was the rules for unit design becoming stricter. Nowadays I don't have time to paint up armies. I always liked painting more than playing, so I want each figure to be a little fun project. I don't want to paint 10 Space Marines with bolters then roll some dice to see how many that die each turn.
Still, it's a good idea to support some kind of army building structure. After having pondered the dilemma briefly, I came up with a possible solution that uses penalties. Let's consider the idea of putting a Shuriken Cannon (an Eldar heavy weapon) on the following units:
| . | Eldar Guardian | Gretchin | SM Dreadnought |
|---|---|---|---|
| Racial compatability | Native | Alien (+ cost, - to shoot) | Alien (+ cost, - to shoot) |
| Lifting | Heavy (- to shoot, - to hit, - to move) | Very heavy (Heavy * 2) | Ok |
| Handling | Not trained (- to hit) | Not trained (- to hit) | Not trained (- to hit) |
These penalties would modify cost as well as the ability to aim and fire. It would discourage players from doing certain things, but if they want to, they can have fun and still be legal. The can of course be factions, like certain types of Orks, who are naturally talented at using looted alien weapons and thus are not penalized as hard.
The penalties can be stacked, so two "- to hit" penalties would become "-- to hit". Movement penalties might become so severe that the trooper starts to stumble under the burden, or simply falls to the ground immobilized. Of course, a small Gretchin could handle an immobile heavy weapon if it is mounted on a tripod or something to that effect. However, this doesn't count as carrying the weapon, and the weapon might still be a bit hard to aim, unless the tripod pivot is motorized.
...If the tripod also has wheels, the Gretchin could ride around on it. Needless to say, stuff like this would add to the cost. Anyways, all sorts of fun could be had with simple physics based rules like these. Perhaps it would be possible to come up with a working system, then turn the best exploits into official units. This would sort of make the system consistently internal to the game universe, as if the inhabitants really tried to make the best units they could and aren't using arbitrary restrictions because of some 4th wall breaking game balance god pointing fingers.
Business model
Games Workshop products such as Warhammer 40K/Fantasy are pretty dominant. It's not very difficult to find someone to play with, even out on the countryside (and outside of UK). GW has stores which constantly puts their products out there, hold events, and saturates the market enough to cause a form of social reinforcement. It's much more difficult to find people who own At-43 or Warmachine armies.
Running stores is pretty costly for GW though. If I understood it correctly, they barely make money nowadays. Their prices have gone up quite a bit the last 15 years.
First, I would have to tackle the problem of "no one to play with". Perhaps it would be possible to make some form of single player rules, where various AI tables are used to control the enemy army. This system could be simulated in a computer too. This would in turn allow for net play against human components, using a play by email system.
Each player would have certain standardized terrain bits and markers to duplicate of the setup of the opponent. It would work a bit like remote chess matches, where both players have a board, and they read each others moves off the screen (or a printed picture in a newspaper in some cases). However, a big disadvantage with a "copy what's on the computer screen" system is that.. it might feel meaningless to move the actual figures. Also, it might be boring to play against a bunch of markers. Maybe the players could spice up the exchange with pictures of their boards and figures.
A computer is not able to understand fuzzy situations, but a simplified version of the rules could be used, with very 'digital' terrain pieces. The players would just copy the setup on the computer screen with their models, so the computer would be more like a GM that you can't argue with.
A hidden models/ line of sight system might be possible with the computer acting as GM. This would make even single player games versus the AI interesting.
The player could also play some sort of single player campaigns (not necessarily fair matches), with units leveling up, being able to purchase new squad members, etc.
I'm thinking about a smaller skirmish scale for this. Plastic figures doesn't have to be that expensive, if sold from a central storage of some sort. Perhaps owning two armies isn't so unfeasible. The biggest problem would be to match figures with an opponent who have done a lot of conversions. in that case you'd have to use markers.
For me, the hobby was much more about painting and converting than playing. Still, it's fun if the game system actually supports wild conversions, because it makes your creations feel legit.
Fluff is quite important. In some cases, bad fluff can make me project negative feelings onto the physical miniatures. Good fluff can make a mediocre miniature look more interesting. I'd probably opt for releasing the fluff for free on a web page, as a form of advertisement. I've pretty much stopped buying physical magazines anyways.
In the bleak final days of mankind, there is only quibble!
No, hmm... Endless war, feeding on the last dying hope of a million worlds!
At the brink of destruction, man becomes the monster and wages war on the abyss!
A billion years of war! A billion more ahead! Oh, woe!
Conflict, conflict unchanging. Arcadia forever distant. Sisiphys weeps T_T
Eons coming to a final end. Pokemanz... illuminated by the last starlight. *splash* *harden*
Inverted writing guide.
Journey of the Stars
A short story, dedicated to the Na'vi.
Jimmy stroked his furry ears, as the autopilot carefully set his rocket down on the neutron star. The star, which previously had been obscured by the moon in the Alpha galaxy, had been knocked out of orbit by an asteroid. It was now drifting by Jimmy's home planet, 23-74-68-Cobra, at a distance of 4 miles.
Mining neutrons was time consuming, as neutron star are much harder than limestone rock. Luckily Jimmy had acquired a cheap Aiénehlothrix from the Gyondor-Táel. The Aiénehlothrix shimmered and a shovel appeared in Jimmy's hands. The Aiénehlothrix uses powerful technology to fulfill the user's every wish. Jimmy's family was starving, and he was hoping to sell some neutrons to the Shrimps from District 9. They had recently taken Jesus into their hearts, so neutrons had become a valuable commodity!
Jimmy had just scooped up the 100th neutron, when a loud bang threw him off his feet. The neutrons fell out of his basket and rolled across the ground. Rolling, like grains of lost hope.
It felt as if infinity wrapped in on itself; the quantum planes of space manifolds concurring. Jimmy looked around, and saw that his rocket had fallen over! Gasoline was leaking out. A single spark would set it on fire. The neutrons would react with the fire and the star would explode, destroying the galaxy of planets!
Mankind, who were now cat hybrids due to a virus infection started by the scientific community, could not survive this kind of explosion, even if using up all of their nine lives.
So, Jimmy slurped. And he slurped. Sluuurp. His little tongue playfully caressed the fluids. The gasoline would be neutralized by the yeast in his stomach!
When he was finished, the King appeared. He had observed everything from the surface, through his binoculars. Jimmy's reward was to create the perfect Anarcho-free-trade society. The old socialism ways had always been inferior!
Jimmy also operated his eyes so they were red and he could look on people and scare them. And he operated his legs so he could jump buildings. Sometimes he would land in a crowd and slowly look up and everyone would be like, oh you're so cool Jimmy. Jimmy Wrathborn... Starsaver.
- by Arne Niklas Jansson, 2011