Wednesday 19 September 2012

I am the night

Given that no one reads this and the fact that the images are readily available and heavily proliferated over the interwebs I'll refrain from the act of posting the pictures of the chaos models, an act which is strenuous upon my unsteady consitution on heated summer days.

I'll start with the rules that have been proposed to be in the chaos book (suffice to say the price makes me rage against multiple, simultaneous, defensive, and simultaneous, multiple, devastating machines) the possession thing sounds cool, but I would have like the eating people part to be seperate from the actual upgrade, and something unto itself.  The idea of there being only 4 powers per god is music to me as it means that the powers are not random, or at the very least they are more consistent than your usual, core powers.  I would have prefered Tzeetch to get 6  or something, but c'est la vie.

Also the fact that Phil Kelly's writing the book pleases me to no end, the apparent changes in design philosophy mean that the book will be much more unbridled than the last few books, which pleases me greatly.  Unless this is the worst book of PK's career by impossible degrees, this book looks good.

I'm largely satisfied by the new models, while I am solidly disappointed in some aspects.  Stylistically speaking the overall look of the new chaos models is entirely confused, and not in a good way.  Some of the models are very cartoonish, and kind of derivative (Mutilators), whilst some are just silly in my opinion, and some are kind of breaking with the established style chaos took from the Dark Vengeance kit.

Here's a quick rundown of my thoughts:
-Dark Apostles: good overall, but he's covered in those purity seal things that are as think as (thick cut) bacon, and look a bit silly.  They shouldn't have attempted such an ambitious form if they couldn't do it well.
-Dark Techmarine: Pretty good overall, not crazily good, but it has its own theme and holds well to it while bringing some traditional chaos paradigms into the mix.  I'll be converting my own, but I'd call it a success.
-Champion thingy: Woo, 85-100% satisfied here, depedning on what's in the kit.  Stylistically it gives me what I want, and has an enjoyable content that appeals to most chaos players by not being to weighted in any of the themes chaos models carry.
-obliterrators 'mutilators': Wow, fail.  I may be the only person in the world who liked the old obliterators, but these are disgusting.  To start with the faces are ridiculous, they look like astronauts in those centrifuge test things they put them in whose faces have peeled back from the forces.  The mutations they have covering their bodies are just derp; I can deal with rampant mutation reducing them to horrifying messes of flesh and armour, and I can deal with weapons merging into their limbs in horrifying ways, both are cool, especially when combined, but this is ridiculous.  They just have the flesh mutations covering them nonsensically, and look like someone green stuffed them over.  If the rules and fluff are good I'll convert my own, and I think the concept was good, but this may be some of the worst execution I've ever seen.
-Warp Talons: I think they really dropped the ball here.  These shouldn't have been a combi-kit, the shape of regular marines doesn't suit them.  The shape should have been smoother and predatory, rather than the traditional bulk of marines.  They're over stylised in a way which is distracting from what should be a very captivating overall form.  I've got to grab some of the old models.
-Jump Marines (not sure what they're called): These are okay, but they don't go above their calling, and the combi-kit weighs down the aforementioned warp talon kit.
-Helldrake:  This is solid, I'd say I'm 70% satisfied with this.  It's overall form looks good, and the concept is great.  Where it falls flat is in the execution again, balancing all of its shapes and in some parts like the head it looks like a toy.  I will probably do minour conversion work to make it look like the front half of a dragon that has been torn off from its back, the existing shape should lend itself well to this.
-Forgefiend: With the body, although I'm not in love with, is very well done.  The legs are pretty cool and it matches existing daemon engines in a pretty good manner.  I'll reserve my judgement of the weapons until latter, and i really dislike the head, but I think I can see it being awesome with some conversions.
-Mauler: I'm excited for this one.  The limbs look great, and it's only feature I dislike is the head.  I think it's a shared kit with the Forgefiend, so my previous comments apply too.  I hope these are monstrous creatures as I have horrible luck with vehicles.  If not, I guess I'll get them regardless, but never use them.

Overall I'm somewhat satisfied, but I was really hoping for more, and the Dark Vengeance kit had truly whet my appetite.  These comments were very cursory, I'll post full reviews after I'm seen, painted, and assembled mine.

And posted pictures.  :3

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