Pentacles, Tentacle, Wallet and Whaaaa?

[Mr Mystery]

Afternoon all.

Very quick skive from my overtime shift to bring you a pondering.

In short...

Dear Chaos

Where's all the gribbly mutations, matey?

Love and hugs

Mr Mystery.



Yep. They're just sort of....gone. And that's a shame. Consider World Eater Berserkers. For the most part, they've been knocking around since the Great Crusade - yet there's no real physical mutation. Same as Deathguard, same as Emperor's Children. I'm getting the feeling Ahriman might be looking around and feeling a bit of a mug as it seems the Rubric wasn't actually necessary at all.

So what gives? We've got the spikes. We've got the daemon blended stuff (which I like!)....but....nothing gribbly

Lookit what they used to have...



Unt my personal favourite



I get there's kind of a new, less riotous aesthetic, and that's fine - but surely there's space for both aesthetics within the range? I feel like the more uniform nature of Chaos models has stifled Chaos Creativity - I just don't see the interesting kit bashes I used to.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Completely agree, always felt the chaos marine models missed the mark and were never nightmarish or mutated enough, at least not for me. Yeah those old Rogue trader ones had a lot more style to them, sort of HR giger-ish.

My fave were the two tzeentch marines at the top left : [url]http://www.solegends.com/citrt2/rc0222renegades/cat1989p018x-01.jpg[/url]

[Mr Mystery]

Yarp.

Personally, I'm not looking for full on 'lump of tentacles with a bolter', so much as a bit of old fashioned body horror. A fused weapon here, a displaced head there, hands mutated into claws - that sort of thing.

Ideally, a single 5 man plastic kit of 'mutated Marines*' - so ala Space Woofs and Blangels etc you can distribute them about squads to get some gribbly in there. Sort of look I'd find spot on is showing a CSM embarked on the path to becoming an Obliterator type - you can tell they're a way off, but also it's very much a one way street.

The possessed kit is fine, but the parts, by and large, are designed for the more dynamically posed so don't always look so good on the more staid Chaos Marines.

Thankfully, we're starting to see some of this come through in the Warhammer kits. Blightkings and the big Khorne guys both feature mtuations. Some relatively subtle, others pretty grotesque, but doubtless a mark of the master's favour.


*better name required!

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Yarp.

Personally, I'm not looking for full on 'lump of tentacles with a bolter', so much as a bit of old fashioned body horror. A fused weapon here, a displaced head there, hands mutated into claws - that sort of thing.

Ideally, a single 5 man plastic kit of 'mutated Marines*' - so ala Space Woofs and Blangels etc you can distribute them about squads to get some gribbly in there. Sort of look I'd find spot on is showing a CSM embarked on the path to becoming an Obliterator type - you can tell they're a way off, but also it's very much a one way street.

The possessed kit is fine, but the parts, by and large, are designed for the more dynamically posed so don't always look so good on the more staid Chaos Marines.

Thankfully, we're starting to see some of this come through in the Warhammer kits. Blightkings and the big Khorne guys both feature mtuations. Some relatively subtle, others pretty grotesque, but doubtless a mark of the master's favour.


*better name required!

Those Forge world World Bearers (The tainted dreadnought and Gal Vorbak especially) are a step in the right direction for me as they seemed to get the balance right just right. There should definitely be the option to go from more subtle to full on as chaos players are by and large are pretty diverse.

[Ben_S]

I agree with you. I don't know when the change happened. The 3rd edition Codex still had pictures of some pretty cool mutated marines (though most were converted) and they had the mutation sprue packaged with the CSMs. Now though it seems as if the focus has moved more towards Renegades than Legions (albeit Renegades who suddenly forgot/lost a lot of tactics and equipment...)

I think the problem with Chaos, since at least 2nd edition, has been GW not really knowing what to do with them. Are they marine-based or cultists, daemons, and mutants? Are they from the Heresy or modern defectors? Are they mono-god or several?

[Lord Manton]

I was talking about this with the gang just last night.
I hope the latest SM release is at least a little bit of a sign of things to come. Rather than putting Space Marines in your Space Marines, they revamped a couple of the older kits, making them really nice. If they could update the CSM kit and probably the Havoc box (as well as the cult marines) it would be a great opportunity to add in a nice, shiny new mutations sprue. The old mutation sprue really shows its age IMHO.
That said, a lot of the fun of Chaos is being able to do your own mutations and really have some fun with your modelling skills.

[Denzark]

Completely agree, always felt the chaos marine models missed the mark and were never nightmarish or mutated enough, at least not for me. Yeah those old Rogue trader ones had a lot more style to them, sort of HR giger-ish.

My fave were the two tzeentch marines at the top left : [url]http://www.solegends.com/citrt2/rc0222renegades/cat1989p018x-01.jpg[/url]

I run original legionnaires in my CSM army. I have put off painting all the tzeentch until last- while I work out how to deal with the fluff of rubric versus obvious tzeentch mutations...

[completeHook]

There are 10,000 years worth of renegades to be blessed by the Changer of the Ways. Although the Eye of Terror, let alone the galaxy is a big place it's not inconceivable a former Thousand Sons sorcerer and his rubric charges would find their goals aligning with some of those renegades.

[Cactus]

I agree. Heck, some of the legion of the damned look more chaotic than the berserkers.