Hive Fleet Leviathan Descends In New Warhammer 40k Releases
November 15, 2014 by brennon
True to form the new releases from Games Workshop are now out and about on their webstore with both Shield of Baal: Leviathan and some more Tyranids monsters in the form of the Zoanthropes and Venomthropes making themselves known...
Shield of Baal: Leviathan is the new campaign book that we've already mentioned when talking about the leaks. It will contain two books filled with rules, scenarios and background on the Hive Fleet and it's attack on the shield worlds. Despite the name Baal being in the title there are no Blood Angels to speak of, instead being replaced with Astra Militarum, Militarum Tempestus and Sisters of Battle holding the fort.
Zoanthropes and Venomthropes making up the contingent of dark nasty things coming out for the Tyranids and supplementing this assault on the worlds of the Imperium. I actually don't mind both of these since the new look isn't too jarring for me. I would have potentially liked the miniatures to be less 'all tentacles' and with a bit more substance and beef to them but you can't have everything. I'll keep to Carnifexes and such for that!
There's also a lot of extra stuff for you to have a look at for the holiday season if you so desire. Especially if you like Warhammer 40,000 to be honest. As well as the Dark Vengeance Starter Bundle there is also the return of the Ultimate Paint Set, a new Citadel Project Bundle and even a special edition Carry Case.
Anything you have your eye on?
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Boring is a word id use to describe what GW have turned the tyranids into .. could be the awful paintjobs but im guessing its just worsening whats already there; badly designed miniatures
The new Zoanthropes are so ugly, that I would actually feel embarrassed if I was to use them with my nids… which will never happen. Things have really gone down hill for GW.
Here’s a history of the model’s look ha ha:
http://www.40kforums.com/vb/entry.php/1086-Forces-through-the-editions-Zoanthropes
Hehe, yeah the model was kinda strange & ugly in the early days. But, that was also days with less global experience in model making… and, more importantly, days where GW had a budget that was a tiny fraction of what they have today.
GW explains their very high prices with their figures being high-end. I dont think their new models warrant that description.
i don’t know, they’re meant to be support floating brains. They already put an Queen Alien from Aliens forehead on them and made them even bigger, not too sure what else they can do :p
I do prefer the original though that’s more for sentimentality than quality of model.
I like the new Nids mopels, looks like a meter of taste to me.
What I don’t like is GW releasing 40k Campaigns only in English, while the End Times Books were all available in German (and other languages) too.
For multi purpose kit this is great. As for people bad mouthing saying all things GW is ugly, boring and worse things on earth, get over it. It’s very clear that your outlook is very jaded for whatever reason. Some reasons may be very valid reason for your venum to GW but it looses it sting as its clear you’re the ones harming yourself by obsessing over toppling them. Its like watching ex girlfriends that are spurned by a former lovers happiness with someone else. They just have to break it up out of hate! If this kit was made… Read more »
What are you on about? If i want to comment on overprized turds made by an arrogant company, thats what im gonna do, you get over that. We have another guy in here who threatens to leave BoW everytime they take negative comments about GW personally. Stop overanalyzing others opinions, its waaay too energy consuming.
Thing is they look like mantic minis, but without the mantic price .. had mantic made these i wouldnt have liked them any better, but would say to myself; their stuff is getting better and better, cant wait to see what they can do a couple of releases ahead.
As I said people have valid points. I myself do think that they are an arrogant company as you said. It’s just a bit over the top how often people (and no I’m not singling you out, but in general) slam them. It is some what ironic that you speak about getting over it yet that’s exactly what I’m speaking about. GW has shown they could care less about what you think of what they make or your opinion in general. They are blind and deaf to you. Move on and don’t waste your energy on such a company as… Read more »
Basically what you are saying is; if you dont have anything nice to say about GW dont say anything …I dont agree, so my advice is; stop reading comments you deem negative and anti-GW. Its not wasting any of my energy writing 4 lines of text, but typing an entire A4 on a forum might. There im done with these nonsense attempts at opressing opinions.
There are plenty of Mantic models that look like shit, cartoony shit at that….. but given they basically give their stuff to you for free (I mean, their prices are mad!) one can’t complain!
And some of Mantic’s stuff, of course, is brilliant.
But yeah, i’m pretty stoked with these models, I think some of the Venomthrope…. (get it!?) was a little harsh.
The books are alrady sold out… I don’t understand… If they sell so good, my not-so-business-oriented mind tends to think that the more I print, the better it is for my wallet. There are things about life I don’t understand it seems.
Supply and demand. You can charge more for a product that has a limited availability.
Going into how a business balance product cost with product price is an issue for another time.
I think its a typical tactic in standard publishing were they purposely make a limited amount of a first print run run to drive buzz and a somewhat artificial sense of demand that more people are buying something in a idea to push more copies of later print runs. It also helps if the book isn’t as well received and bombs their aren’t tons of copies ending up in discount bins driving down the perceived value, and they can use the revenue from the limited run to finance later runs without taking such a big risk. Something like that.
I think it suits GW to make people think they have to get the book on pre-order to make sure they don’t miss out.
Except, it’s not a limited first run, according to the ‘best information’ we have, it is the only print run; which is what makes the whole thing so idiotic. They were sold out before the buzz was even generated, and now any forward momentum they had is gone. Now you have a flood of people making their way to the site to order via sources like BoW, BoLS, Warseer, etc., only to find out they weren’t moving at Internet speed and they were too late because they don’t treat their email like an Instant Messenger. I totally appreciate the idea… Read more »
It was the same with the end times books and its been pretty much confirmed that soft cover versions are coming for those, so I guess we will see.
I, for one, is not obsessing over badmouthing GW. I just tell my honest opinion, based on the aesthetics of the models. The new Zoanthrope is a plain ugly figure in that respect; – The spine (tail?) growing out of one of the center one has the plain look of a modeller having to put a stinger on the model, for whatever new rule, without being giving time (or having the skill) to make it even slightly convincing. – The heads of the models throw all visual balance out the window, and results in a model that is even more… Read more »
You dont have to explain yourself in detail to anyone if you dont wish, or why you have a certain opinion, but detailed criticism (positive or negative) is interesting to read. Good post, but dont feel you have to everytime just to avoid being called a “hater” 😉
Thanks for the input 🙂
Time was that GW creative was stocked with guys who had been university educated in the 70s and early 80s. They’d had Latin shoved down their throats as schoolkids and probably a bit of Greek too, and they used that to come up with cool names for their creations. Presumably it was Rick Priestly who gave us the Tyranids (the tyrant dynasty), the Carnifex (the butcher), the Zoanthrope (the beast-man), and the Termagant (“the thrice-wandering” albeit probably not the intended meaning here). Now GW creative is stocked with people with no idea what these things mean and who spew out… Read more »
You have a very good point and the names did at a time mean something. Now it may very well be from a hat. Also with some names being so generic of old they needed to come up with made up names for them to copyright. That might be the true reason behind it all. We can’t necessarily comment on the education of the staff that make them, as many may wish to tip the hat to historical names, places and events but the copyright police in the company nix them.
Don’t confuse copyright with trademark. You can trademark a Latin word like Carnifex to market a given product. You can’t trademark anything with a pre-existing trademark in the same area, or something which is considered too generic (such as “phone” or “hamburger”).
I hear they just copyright the words “a”, “and” and “the”. We’re f@#$ for sure 😉
I think they just slapped a TM on “f@#$” too lol
“We can’t necessarily comment on the education of the staff that make them.” That is fair point and just to clarify, I wasn’t trying to cast any aspersions on their education. More that there was a demographic shift in university attendance and concurrent shift away from teaching schoolkids Latin which combined together means most university graduates nowadays have never done any. Not that it’s a bad thing, I’m sure teaching schoolkids Latin constitutes cruel and unusual punishment lol (see the “Romans go home” bit of Life of Brian for a good example lol). It’s just resulted in much of the… Read more »
Vemomthropes are poison-gas dispersing creatures, so I guess it slightly makes sense eh? :p
What does the “-thrope” bit mean in Venomthrope? It certainly doesn’t mean “dispersing”.
Doesn’t it mean something like “man”? Venom Man, makes sense to me anyway lol
Not quite, though it does mean that in Zoanthrope. “Anthropos” means man, though usually in the sense of “mankind” rather than an individual man, which would be “aner”. So “misanthrope” combines the verb “to hate” with “mankind” and gives a word used to describe someone who doesn’t like people. As far as I’m aware “thropos” doesn’t mean anything. To be fair, “Pharmanthrope” (venom-man) sounds naff lol.
Ah, I was thinking along the lines of “Lycanthrope” which I assumed meant Wolf-Man.
It does mean wolf-man :). Luk-anthropos is the Greek from which we derive lycanthrope. It has to be “-anthrope” for it to mean man, it can’t be “-thrope”.
Its misspelled, supposed to be Thorpe .. !
“Poison-gas dispersing”? That sounds like me when I have dairy 🙁
I will bash GW without a second thought but … I really like this new wave. Could do with the options of being more dynamic (not a fan, but the option is really needed) but I think they’re pretty cool, somewhat Lovecraftish now, madness… There is only so much you can do with what are essentially FLOATING BRAINS though. The design is functional with their fluff, which is always important. Neither of these alien-types are front line troops: they both float across the battlefield (would have liked them to have been airborne though). I really like these models, They are… Read more »
Love the new models, love the new campaign idea … couldn’t wait to see the formations and updates in the Baal campaign books. Intensely dislike/hate/despise the artificially created limited availability of a product that has an updated rule set (not to mention great shelf appeal for those of us that appreciate a well stocked bookshelf) purely to foster a false sense of security in the reinforcement of the ‘collector’ sales model that GW’s current management layer seems to feel is the core driver for their audience. While it’s pennies in the grand scheme of things, there are currently 6 of… Read more »
It really is baffling why GW do such limited print runs of these campaign books. It’s almost as if they don’t want to make too much money.
Right now, I think because slumping sales leading to revenue being down are a core criticism of the last couple of quarterly reports there is a move to being able to show on paper that ‘massive demand’ for a product in the segment still exists and that the money flow problem is ‘obviously some where else.’ It’s a manufactured critical success by artificially restricting the amount of product available in the consumer purchasing to company production ratio that was guaranteed to clear every unit out of the pipeline regardless of how much more opportunity there was. Pathfinder RPG on its… Read more »
I must admit that I rather like the new Venomthrope/Zoanthrope dual kit (though I concede Redben’s point about the slightly silly naming conventions these days, though the cod latin/greek period of ‘Nid names probably wasn’t much better if I’m honest; I mean, a soldier creature named after a rather misogynistic term used to decribe a woman considered a ‘scold’? Really?). The Venomthrope has always basically been a lithe, lightly built drifting creature that spews out spores and poisoned gas while whipping a mass of barbed, venom-laced tentacles through the air, and the model conveys that. The Zoanthrope was originally a… Read more »
I think we all know why they will never call it a limited hardback and announce a soft cover down the road. If they did that, most of us would hold off buying the expensive version for the soft and cheaper one. Then again, I would put it out of the picture that a soft cover would come out later but at the same price.
I would add that I really like the idea of this type of campaign book in 40K (problems with availability aside), and with ‘Nids being my favourite faction this was probably always going to appeal to me.
I do find those new nids be rather meh. Funny thing is, Shield of Baal: Leviathan seems to be already sold out in GW web store. That Citadel box looks nice but it’s too expensive.
I like the new kits tbh, even though they try to give them too much ‘character’ within their facial expressions for my liking. They’re better than other ‘nid designs of the past, although I’d hate to transport a ‘nid army now, with so many big beasties, tentacles and floating pods of doom – there’s no way you could use one of their big, heavy, bulky cases to do so anyway. I don’t much like their paints – the paints themselves are great but I get 5-6ml more with Vallejo and Army painter for cheaper in much better pots/bottles. With GW’s… Read more »
I think the new Tyranid models look gorgeous, especially the floating brains/testicles used as Tyranid drop pods. Well done GW, good job there. Anything they release will have mixed opinion. I’m in the camp that absolutely loves them.
The only negative thing I have in what GW are doing is the amount of ‘limited edition’ stuff they keep churning out, thus trying to force the fans to buy buy buy before it all sells out! It’s that mentality that I don’t like.