User Comments - Duncan Wright

"I have to say, all these early pictures were pretty crappy. I think you might want to take a look at the new photos, cause I initially agreed until I saw the official pics on the site. In my opinion, they are an awesome new direction and you should definitely take another look."

Thanks Duncan for taking time to read this blog and respond, my apologies for having to 'publically post' a response, but the eternal war between Disqus and Blogger comments continue! I have the digital version of Whitedwarf magazine (which I actually like and have subscribed to!) and have had a close look at the new chaos range, and my standing point remains stronger than ever, you have however cited something very important in your statement and that is 'Direction'.While In some cases it cannot be disputed that the physical design and sculpt (or cut?) of certain figures such as the dragon and the Mauler Fiend are high (while others like the Maulers are simply crap on a stick), it is actually the concept/direction that does not sit well for me. For a lot of older gamers who played Chaos in the 'good ol days', these new designs do not fit into the vision of God centric Chaos created over the last 20-30 years, and this is completely Games Workshop's fault. 

Chaos has always been about the four Gods and were always an all inclusive entity; Daemons, Mortals and Beasts of were all mixed into one; which made for some visually stunning and atmospheric armies.When GW split the Chaos books into Daemons and Chaos Space Marines, it also split the design ethics and diluted the creativity by taking away links to the four Gods (God specific Daemonic troops); instead of Noise Marines with daemonettes, you now have Noise marines with and a liberal sprinkling of Obliterators, and this is ultimately generic-ism. It started with lesser daemons and more undivided cults and now points towards Daemon Forge creations. While you do indeed have Cult troops, by taking them as the core of your army you automatically neuter yourself  due to lore based limitations and no God specific Daemons to augment your force (outside of the allies matrix). With the four Gods background primarily in the Daemons book, what do Chaos Marines become? merely spikey Marines. 

As I said at the start while the new Chaos Dragon, Mauler Fiend and some of the new Chaos Marines are technically very fine models, they follow a trend of undivided additions that alienate Four Gods players, while it is possible for players to proxy/convert it still feels cheap to play something that is not part of your list - a reason why I can't play Nurgle Bloodcrsuhers or Slaanesh Berserkers. A big part of me feels that perhaps Chaos Marines should phase out God Cult troops completely (Khorne/Slaanesh/Nurgle/Tzeentch), as it will allow greater acceptance/freedom for the design team to implement generic/undivided entities. 

Perhaps Cult troops truly belong in the Daemon lists as Elite units.

Follow up comment:

"Thanks for taking the time to respond. I can defend the models, and even the undivided part, but daemons and chaos marines should be part of one army".

And I think this is truly the crux of the argument, while there is nothing wrong with having a undivided army at all, removing the God specific Daemons from the Chaos Marines felt like a massive punishment for wanting to play mono-God. While most of the new models are nice in their own way, stylistically and thematically they they do not cater to Mono-God players.

Thanks again Duncan and please, please grab yourself a  Disqus account so everyone can see the excellent points you raise without me having to create a post for it hehe

thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th legion

Nurgle: Great Unclean One Day 1

An actual hobby post yay! The Forge World Great Unclean One is a wonderful model, it has been sitting on my shelf for around two years, it is a reject from my old Death Guard project and something I have always wanted to start painting. Today I decided to try (again) on making a start on the figure, my previous attempt had ended in failure when I was not happy with the colours and generally crappy brush technique I had applied at the time. In the last two years of painting again, I feel that I have (re) learnt enough techniques to try and paint high detail models like this again, and I hope that figure shows some evolution of technique once completed.

Blacklist: Idiot eBayer of the week

So after 11 years of buying and selling on eBay I got my first negative feedback, what a way to start you day! A buyer has accused me of stealing his money and not sending an item...only problem is it has a tracking number! I received one email from the buyer a while ago and I responded by providing his tracking number (even though it is already on his invoice). Apparently he has waited a month and still no package, instead of sending me a message to discuss where it is or even the concept of a refund, he leaves me a negative.

How do I discuss a refund when you don't even request one from me, am I meant to be psychic?

The best bit - I just checked the tracking, it states, item never collected and being returned. I strictly state to the buyer, to check his sorting office for the item and it looks like he could not even be bothered to do that...I mean how lazy is that? Your package in in the sorting office...you can't be bothered to pick it up...you can't be bothered to ask for a refund...and apparently that is all the seller's fault?

GENIUS

My concluding thought is that the buyer did initially want the item, then changed his/her mind and instead of picking up the item, decided to wait for it to be returned and avoid postage expense.I hate the fact that I can't leave an honest negative feedback for the person, so this is the next best thing. i would honestly recommend to all eBay traders, to add this buyer to the block list, the buyers name/ID is:

 connor19502009connor

I am fed up with how eBay takes no actions to protect it's smaller sellers, so from now on I will be doing my own black list or terrible buyers and sellers right here on my blog. All evidence will be presented and it will be up to you the readers to decide whether or not these individuals should be black listed from your sales. But for this week, congratulations connor you are the idiot eBayer of the week.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Auctions

New auctions up today for seven days, including lots of Warmachine/Hordes Hard back rule books, some Forge World items and some rather nice figures from Andrea miniatures and Soda Pop.

Check out the full listings HERE

Now that I have gotten a handle on the new Blogger interface, I will be adding a nice little hobby update tomorrow.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Nurgle: Daemonic Reinforcements

You can always see when I am 'fully dedicated' to a project, I tend to unload a bunch of cash on resin to supplement it. I already have some resin goodies in the form of the Nurgle daemon prince and huge Great Unclean One, but these were inherited from the old Deathguard project and are used as regular codex entries anyways, so what do I have in mind? Decimators, two of them and these are what I consider to be Daemon Engines.

Two of these bad boys should be arriving by the end of the week, I have opted for dual Butcher cannons on both to help pop transports and carve up infantry lines - especially once they benefit from a maxed out tally, 16 strength 8 shots with no armour save is going to be terrifying on the table. But all of this comes at a cost, being more expensive than a Land Raider, these two items take up valuable points in what is already a very elite army. I do have a full worked out list, and I will be sharing that (and my thoughts on it) soon.

Looking forward to un boxing these!

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Rant: Chaos Undi-whelming...

Ok by now everyone has seen the photos of the Chaos goods from next month's White dwarf, if not here is the link: Chaos Stuff. Not going to post the photos as I think credit needs to be given to the guy who posted it first, now for the random bit, my thoughts. Like everyone else, I have been waiting for a long time for Chaos to get it's due and quite frankly I am so far unimpressed. In concept, the dragon sounded interesting, it had been hyped as being similar to the Tzeentch Firelord (below).

Wrath of Kings: Dancing Master

Trying not to fall back into bad habits can be very difficult when figures like this turn up. I have a tendency to get distracted by awesomely sculpted figures. So far the Wrath Of Kings miniature range published by Coolminiornot has not really hit the mark for me. They have very nice painted promo pieces (as to be expected) but the designs themselves don't really stand out to me, however today they released a figure that has caught my eye and wallet: The Dancing Master. 

This figure is listed as a limited edition and currently the CMON store has 21 left in stock. I did decide to have another look at the figure range after making this purchase and visited the official Wrath Of Kings site, but still I don't see anything that makes the figure range pop out to me to collect more, perhaps this is something to do with what I perceive to be a current staleness in the Fantasy genre line?

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios
The 14th Legion

Nurgle: Epidemius (Finecast Ver) Unboxing

Reinforcements and supplies have just arrived. I have been very keen to get my hands on the two bottles of Athonian Camoshade and do a little experimenting with shades on my Nurgle forces, the other part of my delivery, I was less excited about. Like most people I still have apprehensions concerning the Finecast casting procedure and ordering a figure which is not only expensive but cast by via infamous means feels like financial Russian roulette, which does not exactly inspire confidence. Previously I have been sent Terminators with half  melted shoulder pads, bubbles where faces should be other various melted abominations, so as you can imagine opening this £30.00 box of resin left me nervous to say the least.

Nurgle: Nurgling Scratching s

Finally had a chance to sit down and work out a colour scheme for my Nurgling swarms. I am starting to get 'trigger finger' as the sheer magnificence of the daemon plastic kits are trying to lead me away from Nurgle (namely Bloodcrushers and Seeker chariots, however I am managing to keep my focus soley on Nurgle, a mild relief for my wallet. I have to admit, that despite the fun I have had with this models, these figures are actually a bit on the annoying side to clean due to the amount of small details and subsequent mould lines, no breakages yet but some near misses with the craft knife.

I am very please with the colour scheme, it is still green to match the army but a different and more vibrant shade (actually it's rotting flesh, is that a green?). So the army will still look unified but show diversity of colour to stand out of the crowd and enough to keep my painting interesting and challenging. The Nurglings are packed with character and while they can be quick to paint, I could not help but pick out the wagging tongues, sores and wounds. I think with this painted in, the swarm base really stands out a lot more.

Nurgle: Unusual Growths

The forces of Nurgle threatened to take over my dinner table last weekend as I started work on the remaining boxes of Plaguebearers and Nurglings. In a bid to try and keep things a little more efficient I cleaned my two paint stations; which were covered in clippings and odd figures; and decided to designate one as 'painting' and the other as 'building' - the joys of simple logic! So let's have a look at what and the various stages of this project's growth.

Auctions

New auctions added this week:

• Warmachine/Hordes hardcover books
• Khador Bombardiers
• Forgeworld Rhino Dozer blades
• Forgeworld Minoaturs door set
• Forgeworld razorback Heavy Bolter turret
• Dark Age Swamp base inserts
• Infinity Aleph Posthumans boxset
• Infinity hardback Rule Book 2nd Edtion 
• Hasslefree Miniatures Ashlee Campbell

Visit my store HERE

Happy shopping,

DiStudios
The 14th Legion

Forgeworld: Elemental Of Fire

Dogs walked, time for some hobby goodness. Forge World have released another Warhammer monstrosity in the form of the Incarnate Elemental Of Fire, this figure stands at 6" tall and is sculpted by Steve Whitehead. Background aside, the figure has all the hallmarks for a very interesting Daemon Prince/Greater Daemon conversion, the wreathed in fire look would fit pretty well with a Tzeentch army, while the head sculpt would be fantastic as part of a Nurgle sculpt. 

The figure is up now on the Forge World site with a shipping date of 28th September, I would expect people going to Gamesday will have early access to this figure at the Forge World stand. On the subject of Forge World, the release schedule seems to have 'altered'...start of the year rumours put forward the idea of a new Imperial Armour book release chronicling the Minotaurs vs Tzeentch/Necrons. With the recent announcement of the Horus Heresy being the next focus, I wonder if the Minotaurs project has been shelved completely?

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th legion

Dark Vengeance - Farce or Working as Intended?

Well there is a lot of controversy surrounding last weekend's release of the Warhammer 40,000 Dark Vengeance box set. Bell of lost souls reported yesterday a delay of the general edition boxset, and the status of the Limited Edition is now - unavailable both via the GW website and most independent retailers. This news prompted me to check the status of my order with an independent retailer, I was under the impression that I made the 'cut' for the Limited Edition box set as I ordered over the weekend...

Nurgle: Rise Prince Of Pestilence! Wip

The Chaos Forges have been burning late recently hence the lack of blog posts, here is the second of my trio of Nurgle Daemon Princes (First Daemon Prince Here), I was originally tempted to build from the box and play, but my need to convert took over all rationale. I just want to put emphasis on the fact that there is still a huge amount of work to do on this figure, I am probably 80% through working on the bulking of the figure and no major detailing has been sculpted yet except some skin on the spore chimneys.