The Skorne are Ready to Break Your Will
December 16, 2012 by dracs
Privateer Press have put out previews of some new releases soon to be arriving for both Hordes and Warmachine.
Skorne look to be getting the best of it this time with two new releases, a solo as well as a whole unit of heavily armoured warriors.
The minions are also receiving a new goody in the form of the warlock Midas. This guy's a real porker.
Don't worry all you Warmachine players, you're getting some new goodies too. Those arcane gun men of Cygnar are hopping onto horses with the Tempest Blazers.
So guys, is it the gunmen gallopers for you? Or the sinister Skorne solo?
Lot of PP announcements this month. You’d almost think there was a new book coming out soon for Hordes.
Don’t play warmahordes. But i do love all the minions I’ve seen so far.
The Skorne unit is just another bunch of high shoulder pads with perhaps some short guys lost in the huge Lady Gaga cosplay… The Mortitheurge is a terrible disappointment of a sculpt (especially the hands and the latissimus dorsi). Midas is the Farrow “du jour” with badly sculpted gore and impractical weaponry included. As for the tempest blazers with their cartoonishly heavy horses, they basically show three or four kinds of interchangeable parts… That doesn’t make for a very varied unit (even less so than usual). Furthermore, the paint-jobs from PP are getting sloppier and sloppier. This is all quite… Read more »
I kind of feel like PP is trying too hard to put out too much all at once. Some of their recent releases are still really great and some of them (those horses) are just not. It could be that in their rush to push more out the door, they’re just not giving as much attention to everything anymore. Perhaps once the last gargantuan is out the door, more of the smaller units will start looking good again.
I know, right ?
It’s like they’re back to where they were in the beginning, carelessly churning out bad little minis for the rank and file, except now they do it because they have captive customers.
Well, I exagerate, the new minis aren’t as bad as their first sculpts…
But everything is just over the top, more cartoonish, paralleling the evolution that GW once went through.
Okay maybe you can explain to me what it is people seem to hate so much about the tempest blazers’ horses. I’ll admit I haven’t had the most contact with live horses in my life but I can’t see what is so bad about those sculpts. They are not award winning but I see no flaws that make them deserving of the flak they get and of all the gaming forums I visit I have not seen anyone mention specifically what about the sculpts are bad. I’m not trying to defend the blazers, they look like mundane mounted pistoleers to… Read more »
Well, if you want the long version…
The muzzles seem wrong, the forehead aren’t proper, the heads are overall quite acrtoonish, the neck is tubby and has no definition that I can see, the hind legs are not in proportion, the manes aren’t that well done (and don’t flow properly inaccordance with the horse’s supposed movements), and the overall proportions of the body make them inelegant instead of slenderly equine.
At best, they look like ponies.
At least, that’s what I see.
For light cavalry they look rather heavy. If I was wishing to field this unit I would look around historic models and replace the gun arm with that magic gun they have.
I grew up around horses, and there are no horses that look like these horses. Everything Romain just said for just starters. The proportions are all wrong. The bodies on these minis are round like a barrel. No horse is built that way. The snouts look more porcine than equine. The hair looks like a sea anemone rather than actual horse hair. Plus the musculature on the front legs is just plain weird. Look at the 360 degree view model on PP’s page for these minis. The muscles around the front haunch are just… wrong. I don’t know if the… Read more »
I completely agree !
Thank you @elromanozo and @mpopke Those were both very informative critiques. After reading that and reexamining the photos I can certainly see issues with the proportions and musculature. I’ll have to reserve judgement on the manes but I can see how the running head has some issues. Which is strange since the tails look good. I’m not sure I agree about the snouts since for whatever reason three of them have pitch black nostrils that stand out terribly. The painter should be ashamed bit I can’t say for certain it is the sculpt. Overall I’m still not convinced these will… Read more »
Hah! I just flashed past these last time and didn’t really notice the horses at first, man those could have looked better to say the least. But as a warmahordes player who loves the aesthetics, or the vibe it gives me any way, I can’t say PP ever been particularly good at making beautiful minis. Not consistently and not compared to what’s out there. The execution of most stuff makes it seem bulky, crude and rather unsophisticated (sure the ‘jacks shouldn’t look very sophisticated but that’s not what I’m talking about). To me, their strength lies in making big, chunky,… Read more »
And I almost forgot, given they are the second largest company (as far as I know) in this business you could expect a little bit more! But all trash talk aside I quite enjoy my PP-minis anyhow, they do got lots of character! I’m just sayin they aren’t the company who makes fancy pants minis, these are robust gaming-pieces above all.
Well Skorne really loves they huge shoulder pads. Mortithuege is actually rather decent looking model. Seems like making realistic looking horses seems to be almost impossible task to most sculpters and person who sculpted those Tempest Blazers also failed in that.
I’d say most animals sculpted, by any company (especially GW, since they should have the funds to only produce awesomeness), could have been better, or a great deal of them anyhow.
I might have sounded more harsh than needed about the looks of PP’s miniatures though. But I’d still say, considering their position on the market, they should be able to consistently put out better looking minis. And they aren’t exactly pushing the boundaries of miniature sculpting…