Monday 10 September 2018

Eldar War Walkers

Eldar war walkers from the Saim-Hann Craftworld stalk an industrial zone on the Imperial Prison Colony World of Neu-Diemenslandt.
These war walkers used to be mounted on little round bits of cardboard, with green paint and flock covering it all up. I'd forgotten that until I prepared them for re-painting. While my basing isn't going to win any awards, and is quite utilitarian by some gamers standards, it has still come a long way since the models were first painted when I bought them in the 90's.

The paint jobs are a bit rough. I have quite a few older Eldar models like these that need a bit of work, so haven't spent a lot of time on them. Next time I'm doing a heap of free hand symbols on something, like my next formation of shining spears for example, then I will try to remember to add them here.
The energy field eggs with the little crewman inside them are a bit of an odd sculpt, but I thought it would look ok just painted blue and a bit glowy. It adds to the overall coherency of the force (with a red, white and bone with glowy blue bits theme), and doesn't look too bad, but I was hoping that it would look a bit better. I think it is one of those units that will look quite good on the tabletop, where it contributes to the synergy of the overall force, but are a little bit ordinary up close. If life was different and I had unlimited free time (and enough money put aside for some nicer brushes!) I'd have a great time painting up all of my models in as much detail as I could. But responsible adults have to make sacrifices sometimes, and that's fine. 
I'm not sure how the Epic scene is going to develop in the coming year or two. Naturally I'm hoping (with a little but of trepidation) that Adeptus Titanicus does really well, and the game gets fully supported, with rules for vehicles, smaller walkers, infantry, and Xenos.

But I think that would be a long journey, and a quick look at Games Workshop's website tells me that there are a lot of other boxed sets and games competing for people's cash, with even more on the horizon. So the sales figures for this great game may not be as high as I'd like them to be. The price (here in Australia anyway) is another thing that stops people like me from supporting it as much as I'd like, as I simply can't justify spending that much on models, more money on weapons options, and more on cards, and that much on other gaming trinkets. I just can't.

Some people can, and I am both envious that they can, and disappointed that they cross that ambiguous line in the sand, where we all as a community say to Games Workshop, "No. That is just silly. It's way too much money" and (hopefully) force them to address their pricing. As an Australian, trying to support a family, build a house and maintain a healthy and conscientious lifestyle, my pricing line in the sand for Games Workshop products was passed a long, long time ago. I'm not their target market, so I get it, but I wish they shifted their target to allow people like me to support the awesome hard work that they put into a product like Adeptus Titanicus. Because it is awesome. The rules sets look great, it will work very well for tournament play, and the models are superb. And I will probably never own it.

I can persist with community-driven versions of the game, and I do enjoy them, but the idea of updated official rules and models has me excited.

Time will tell if my excitement is warranted!

2 comments:

  1. Your old eggwalkers look great, I painted six of them up recently too :)
    New AT doesn't look like ever being a fully supported combined arms game to me, more a sideline thing. In New Zealand the prices are also crazy with their weird exchange calculations, so won't be jumping into it.

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  2. Thanks Chasseur. It's one of those games that I'd like to see developed further, but yeah, it's likely to be a novel boxed game rather than a fully supported system. The pricing certainly isn't going to help the sales figures in our parts of the world. It's a shame, because they went to the trouble to do it in plastic, but then priced it out of reach. I'm no expert in these things of course, but it seems like they've set it up to fail.

    Anyway, looks like our war walkers will be sticking to other systems!

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