Collegia Titanica put out this blog entry with information from GW staff and seminars at Games Day Australia.
Forge World
- Warlord Titan? Big kits are a balance of cost in time vs how much they’ll sell realistically. For instance the Manta took one and a half years for Will Hayes to produce, during which time he wasn’t getting much else done. Could he have made fifteen other kits that would have sold more in that time? That’s the numbers they run and why big kits are rarer. They do want to make a Warlord though.
- That Bran Redmaw mini seen but not released? Gone. Mark wasn’t happy with the quality so asked for it not to be released. Another sculptor has taken over the character.
- They monitor the GW studio release schedule to avoid putting something out just before a new codex (ie why Necrons are due now, not last year).
- Some units are designed for a specific book, some are designed just for the hell of it.
- They deliberately put extra characters in books, Badab being a prime example, so that if they have a spare moment they have a backlog to draw on for ideas.
- Next book is Necrons, Minotaurs and Death Corps of Krieg.
- “So we’ll be doing a big Necron vehicle.”
“It’s not just going to be a bigger pyramid, is it?”
“No… it’s an upside down sandcastle.”
- A Dark Eldar superheavy would fit their raider aesthetic, but still be big, “like and ocean liner”.
- I asked later about the low content of xenos in some books (particularly corsairs in IA12). Mark’s reply indicated there will be more in the Dark Eldar book, and that sometimes they hit time constraints or ideas just don’t work and they don’t have time to redo them.
Horus Heresy
- “Will you be making the Primarchs?”
“If you’ve read the Black Library books you’ll understand when I tell you ‘I can’t say’.”
- They want to make all the weapon options/units available they can to “stop little companies springing up in Poland”.
- The Marine armour variants were testing the waters for a HH series, which they have been working on for a year or so.
- They are working closely with Black Library to include bits of each other’s work (the Caestus appears in Fear to Tread for example). This also means they don’t mess anything up, and might even lead to BL characters appearing in mini form.
- Mechanicus? Almost certainly, but not for a while - it’s something Mark really really wants to do.
- They know it can’t be all marines all the time, and there will be xenos and non-marine forces dealt with in time.
- First book will begin at the start of the Heresy, but the lists will be designed to show off pre-Heresy forces and their fighting styles, as no divergence into chaos had happened yet.
- The Horus Heresy series is going to be ongoing, much like the Imperial Armour books, and each line will have a separate team working on it.
- The HH series is designed in such a way that people can use their existing armies as much as possible.
- Running quotes: “It’ll be like Christmas… it’ll blow your minds.”
This seminar was literally just under an hour, and it was straight into the design team one with Jes, Kevin Chin and Jeremy Vetock.
Design Seminar
- Jes loves plastic. LOVES it. If he could he’d do everything in it as for a sculptor it’s far better with almost no distortion or deformation. He foresees a future with only special characters being finecast, and generic characters all being single frame plastics like the recent Warhammer releases and the limited Dark Vengeance Chaplain.
- They want to continue putting every unit option on a frame where possible. And lots of head options.
- They’re aiming to expand the digital aspect of the company. Jeremy got very excited about the prospect, but no specifics.
- Don't call the background "fluff" around Jes. One guy did and he corrected him, pointing out that it was Jeremy's job to create that, and calling it fluff devalued it. The questioner corrected himself by saying "the expanded universe background setting", which pleased Jes no end.
- A young lad asked the following “How come Tau and Space Marines are ‘battle brothers’?” and got a huge cheer and round of applause from the audience. The reply was that yes, Tau and Marines often murdered each other on sight, but there were enough times when they didn’t to justify it. The allies matrix is there as a guide, not a proscription.
- "Why did they swap Marine chapter symbols from right to left shoulder?"
"I don't remember."
One of the attendees ventured that it was so (in universe), that when advancing the enemy would see the chapter symbol on a PA guy and know who's killing them, while terminators shoot one handed, so keep it on their right.
Jes thought that was a superb explaination, so he was going to accept that. He then went on a ramble about contradictory history and so on for a bit.
- If they can they would like to introduce 40k Dogs of War type units to use as allies to bring in lesser races. One of the reasons they brought allies back.
- There is a mathematical formula for points cost, based off a man (Warhammer) or a Marine (40k). This is then adjusted by feel for how the unit works within a given army or theme of the army.
- No release date/info for Sisters, but they definitely aren’t canned and will be re-done properly.
0 comments:
Post a Comment