New Games Workshop Stuff

In one huge newsbite Games Workshop released information about their upcoming Chaos Marines Codex and models, Horus Heresy Books and White Dwarf. I'll start with Chaos.

Though the book hasn't been released I'd hazard a guess to say that the focus has changed from Renegade Chapters to specific Post-Heresy Legions, making sense considering no-one likes or has even heard of renegade chapters beyond the Red Corsairs. The codex has re-used the same artwork from Blood Gorgons (a 7/10 book in my head), and I was really looking forward to some new art. If the next codex reuses art there will be a proverbial internet firestorm.... It's hardback (yay!) and $83 Australian (boo!) but it certainly looks nice. There was a collector's edition but that sold out in five minutes so oh well! Lucky whoever got copy 666. Now onto the models. The Helldrake is quite a nice kit, though the positioning of its wings are quite off-putting, and it's body is far too short. The Forge/Maulerfiend kit looks like a hefty chunk of plastic with some very nice detail, and it's great to see GW making some Daemon engines. There's an aspiring Champion kit which ties in with the look of the Dark Vengeance Chosen, though this leads into the biggest source of anger on the webz. The current Chaos marine kit sucks. I'm sorry, but they don't look like 10,000 year old heretic superhumans who've spent 9,000 years in a half-existent realm called the Warp, toyed with by daemonic gods and riddled with all manner of curses, gifts, diseases and afflictions. They look like normal marines with horns and arrows on their armour. In fact I've used more of their kits than the normal marines (which suck even more) due to the nice heavy bolters and legs they possess. The terminators..... such a wasted oppourtunity. Everyone was looking forward to cult terminators and cult marines, but with only one new plastic unit (explained shortly) the release seems a little odd. 

The new Raptors and Warp Talons look good and suitably chaotic with all manner of hellish embellishments, and here lies my point. The old Raptors suck. The old chaos marines suck. The new Raptors look great. Why can't we have great, new looking Chaos Marines just like in Dark Vengeance? And if the fluff is correct, the Dark Vengeance CM are renegades, so.....Lift your game GW. Maybe there's a huge horde of legion-specific models just on the threshold of being released!

The new Warpsmith is exactly what I'd imagine a chaotic techmarine to resemble, though there's no mention of Iron Warriors in his description. Curious. It's much the same with the Dark Apostle model, which is an average model at best. His pose with all those fluttering papers looks clumsy and I'm not a fan of that head. The new sorceror looks like a mix between the old and new visual direction, though I'll be making my own.

The final new unit are Mutilators, and the only thing I like about them are their claws. Their bodies are butt-ugly.

Overall the aesthetics of the first wave is amazing, finally giving Chaos a new look that is different to their previous stolen Imperial look. I just hope there are more models to come.