Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

Post by Shadowspite »

Saintofm wrote:Agreed. Actualy female armor would be something more akin to what we've seen on Game of thrones or Dragon Age: Looks like what the males have, but slightly modded to better fit the female frame.

I should clarify that the pic I linked to was only to show what I was thinking for the breastplate, not the rest of her armour (which is not very stormcast-y), nor her build/physique (which is fine for a normal human, but not what I think a female stormcast would look like).

Yes the boob bumps ruin the armor's main job of deflecting blows but as long as it looks like actual armor and not this next picture,

Fair warning, I'm going to digress a lot here. :P

The negative effect of breast cups on armour protectiveness tends to get overstated, actually. The Romans gave their officers breastplates with sculpted pectorals (similar to the male stormcast minis), and if anyone understood how armour worked it was the Romans. It's only with the advent of gunpowder weapons that having concave curves (i.e. 'cleavage') on your armour really hurts. And even then it would only matter in very specific circumstances (i.e. the musket ball is right at the edge of the range at which it might penetrate your armour). If you have the technical skill to make a breastplate with 'boobs' that doesn't have a point in the cleavage area where the metal is actually thinner or weaker, then the curve alone is unlikely to compromise its protectiveness.

The reason real-world historical armour for women didn't have breast cups is nothing to do with them screwing up the protective aspects of the armour and everything to do with the fact that the few women warriors that have existed in the real world all came from cultures that didn't use rigid breastplates at all. Scythians and Sarmatians wore lamellar (and their women warriors seem to have been mostly horse-archers, who rarely wore armour at all). The Chinese (they had a couple of female generals historically) wore either lamellar or mail. The ancient Britons and Irish and the early mediaeval Picts wore mail or nothing at all. The Dahomey 'Amazons' didn't wear body armour (partly culture, partly climate, but it wouldn't have helped against European guns anyway). The Byzantine Varangian Guard (at least one contemporary account claims that after one battle, several dead Varangians turned out to be women) wore mail.

If the Romans had been feminists, their female officers probably would have had sculpted breasts on their armour, just like their male officers had sculpted pecs and six-packs. And none of them would have been killed by their cleavage "deflecting a weapon into their heart" or whatever nonsense gets spouted about boob-plate.

The real issue with realistic armour is coverage vs. flexibility/heat/fatigue, and the sweet spot is determined largely by what weapons you're facing (and the climate - although that didn't stop mid-east cultures from developing cataphracts and clibanarii). And a lot of the fantasy armour tropes people take for granted are wrong, but probably not the ones or for the reasons you're thinking of. Wearing just a helmet and carrying a shield was pretty common throughout history. Heck, going entirely naked wasn't unknown (usually from a combination of culture and climate). Leather armour is heavy, hot and noisy - fantasy thieves and assassins really should stop wearing it. Full plate is much lighter, more comfortable and more flexible - except you are probably wearing a load of heavy, hot and cumbersome leather and padding under it.

Probably the best (overall) armour anyone has ever invented (pre-gunpowder weapons) is mail. It's very flexible, relatively cool in hot weather (you don't actually need leather or padding - you can wear it over normal clothes), and much better at protecting you than anything else bar heavy plate (well-made mail actually resists penetration better than some early plate). It's also much quieter than pretty much any other sort of armour (except perhaps several layers of silk). It doesn't clink and jangle much unless you let it flap around loose. Fantasy assassins and thieves should probably wear oil-blackened mail shirts as standard.

The only problem is it's very time-consuming to make. You need a higher technology base for proper plate, but once you have that you can knock out dozens of sets of cuirasses in the time it takes you to make one mail hauberk. Outfitting an entire army in mail is so expensive in time and resources that only the Romans ever really tried. But everyone from the English Civil War on could give their armies buff coats, helmets and cuirasses (though once pike blocks gave way to skirmishers and gun-lines, armour went only to cavalry, of course, as infantry were no longer primarily melee troops).

OK, historical digression over.

I'm generally OK with breast cups on 28mm minis, because any loss in 'realism' (snort!) is more than made up for by you being able to tell the mini is actually female, absent any other features. To put it bluntly, it's hard to get across that a 28mm mini is meant to be a woman without giving it visible boobs. A curved breastplate that looks female without cups is better, IMO, but that's much harder to sculpt.

Take the current DE plastic warriors. They all look male to me, because GW have done away with the 'boob-plate' torso that the previous models had. Until I read some of the more recent BL novels, I wrongly assumed GW had changed the fluff to get rid of DEs having women fighting alongside the men (as it turned out, they'd actually changed HE fluff so that they too have female soldiers now - but you wouldn't think so from the models).
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

Post by Saintofm »

Good armor is in general. in modern costs, a good set was was like a sports car with all the bells and whistles, and a custom paint job with an epic dragon detail on the hood.


I will concede to your experties in armor, though the arms race between arm and armor added some plates and padding to the mix. Then again, when plate was popular, there was a layer of mail for the areas you couldn't have the plate.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Shadowspite wrote: I really want to see a SCE mini that is obviously, unambiguously a physically-powerful, statuesque woman
...
Like this for example?


Sign me up for one of those. I tried to find a female commander model for my army, but it's hard to find one that fits the theme:
http://druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=77114
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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As a woman engaging in what is, after all, a predominantly male-dominated hobby (Yes there are lots of girl gamers out there, but we're still very much in the minority), I would be very happy to see more female figures/characters in the game. It's a telling fact I think that a great many girl gamers (for want of a better term) play armies like elves or eldar - these have more female models than most others (Bring back the Amazons please) so they have an instant appeal to many of us.

As for the point about impractical armour, well there are good arguments on both sides of this debate but ultimately, it's a fantasy scenario, so I think it's OK to have armour that's exaggerated for effect - just as the scale of the heads, hands and weapons is exaggerated. Many people talk about the impracticality of female breastplate armour, but nobody seems to mind the fact that most Warhammer miniatures are wielding weapons that even the strongest bodybuilder would struggle to lift.

And as for the witch elves with their big 80's style hair...

Just an observation :)

But ultimately it would be nice to see more female models - GW has always had a major problem with this issue, unlike most of the other miniature companies that offer a wide range of female models across a wide variety of ranges. Come on guys, don't discriminate against us please.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Yeah, even over-sexualised female minis in silly armour are better than no female minis at all. In my time working in a GW store, I encountered exactly zero women who were discouraged from getting into the hobby by the existence of scantily-clad witch elves, but I knew three who quit due to the complete lack of females in the armies they were actually interested in (High Elves, Dwarfs and Empire as it happens - IIRC the only female WHFB minis GW sold at the time were DEs).

Back at the topic: here's what's in the box.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

Post by cultofkhaine »

Back at the topic: here's what's in the box.


The links broken
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Volomir seems to have taken it down again. I suspect he got his copy early and GW are not happy about him showing it off yet...
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Too bad about the link. We'll just have to wait or find a new one.

As for the a response to the two posts prior to Cult of Khaine: Being a big fat white guy and a nerd in the San Fransico Bay Area, I can tell you I can think of maybe a dozzen females that had any nerdy inclination for this, be it Warhammer at the GW store I used to haunt before GW being GW closed it, and my current one at a Indipendent Hobby Store, I would love to see more of a female presence. Right now there are maybe two that come on D&D and Pathfinder Night, and they are outnumbered by at least a dozen or so guys. Its not much, but it somehow is enough to keep the fanboy funk away.

Now compare this to any anime convention, there is plenty of female presence, and a sizeable number doing a number of cosplays that leave little to the Imagination (Black Rock Shooter; A few DOA girls; Ivy) and so on.

There will always be girls who will want to cosplay as Morathi, but most of them I think I looking for less sugary cheesecake meant for one taste, and want something with more depth. I know comparing anime as a whole and warhammer is apples to wattermellons, but that has a very loud, proud, and at times scary female fanbase as there are things made for them often by them. What is with GW?
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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I don't normally have much time for Natfka, but he's managed to get hold of the pics from Volomir's unboxing: LINK.

ETA: In case anybody was wondering what a 'Saih' is (as in the female aelf mage's title), it's an Arabic word meaning 'Devoted One' (with a strong connotation of self-sacrifice). And it's pronounced 'sah-eeh', not 'sigh'. GW have actually screwed up a bit and used the masculine form - since she's female, it should probably be 'Saihya'.

ETA2: I will just say that, having now seen the sprues, I like the look of the minis rather better without the 'Eavy Metal paint scheme. The Mistweaver Saih especially. She'll make an awesome sorceress for my Slaanesh Chaos army. :mrgreen:
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Well got my official email from GW to announce it's release. The link on the email was broken back to their site :cry:

At $265 AUD I think it is extremely overpriced for a board game. There is some great stuff in the box and it would probably be my first AoS purchase but I just cant justify the price - its a shame, if they knocked $100 bucks of the price I reckon they would sell a tone more!
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Wow, you Australians are getting screwed. It's apparently going to be £95 in the UK, which should be about $AU188.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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That's crap :cry: $188 is a bit more reasonable. I might have better luck on ebay.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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If I cand send it cheaper than Gw can, I'd gladly help out.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Shadowspite wrote:Wow, you Australians are getting screwed. It's apparently going to be £95 in the UK, which should be about $AU188.


And I thought it was just video games they got screwed over by terrifs there. That and their ratings board.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

Post by cultofkhaine »

GW have bought out an app as well to help track your character - I think this is an excellent idea and does away hopefully with the old character sheet but....

Link to page

They also want to slug me with in app purchases for upgrading my character :roll:

@Daeron - thanks for the offer I might take you up on that - want to look at the game more first before I donate an arm for it.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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GW seem to think that all their customers have smartphones. I don't, and I've no intention of ever getting one. If all the expansions for this game are going to be exclusive to smartphone owners, then that's another mark against buying it, as far as I'm concerned. Even if the core game is perfectly playable without the app, I don't want to encourage GW to go further down the road to smartphone/app-exclusive content.
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Re: Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower cover art

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Excellent unboxing video and rules/gameplay review videos from Firestorm Games: LINK
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