Iron Dwarves Citadel & Shroud Mage Cruiser for Uncharted Seas
November 29, 2011 by brennon
Some Uncharted Seas previews today from Spartan Games, continuing their theme of 'bigger is better'. First lets check out the Iron Dwarf Guardian Class Floating Citadel...
As the name would suggest this is a floating citadel used by the Iron Dwarves to create bastions of rock solid defence in the remote corners of the empire. With 360 degrees of fire this could hold its own in the centre of your fleet.
If magic and elemental might is more your thing however, you might be interested in the Shroud Mages and this beauty, the Darkness Class Cruiser.
With heavy cannons to the fore and broadsides which pack a bit of a punch even if this isn't as big as the Citadel, it could still do some damage. Added to that the Shroud Mages ability to boost the movement of their ships, and powerful Red Ram Ratings, they are a formidable side.
Both these previews are for models set to release at the beginning of 2012.
Loving the stuff coming out of Spartan for Uncharted Seas, but what about you?
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Great models. Lots of sunbathing surface on the Guardian and I like how the Shorud cruiser is not too samey, compared to the other SM ships.
Keep it up guys.
I don’t know about this one. The footprint looks a bit like something my dog left out on the lawn last night…. Not sure about the circuit / Tron like plating designs. Part of the fluff?
The designs on the plating of the Shroud Mage ships are constellation maps from their sky.
Ok, makes sense now, but still looks too much like circuit board connections to me. I think its the uniformity of the holes. Stars have different sizes / brightnesses, so I think if the holes themselves varied up a bit, then perhaps it would be less circuit boardy… I think I would rather just paint the images, rather than actually have them be big gaps in the armor plating…
Given that there ARE two sizes of holes (one for the actual joined constellations and one for the loose stars) and you’re asking for diameter randomness in what – 1/600 scale which will barely be seen (maybe even by some painters) I’m going to have to call this nitpicking again.
All sculpts shown for sale, no matter their level of dynamism and/or detail, boil down to a binary choice – you buy it or you don’t. Now of course there IS a minimum standard which everyone could probably agree on if it were worth the time debating, and it IS important to push for better sculpts, but all mini purchases are from people who like the sculptor’s vision enough to buy it even if it isn’t quite right, hence conversions.
If 1/600 ‘star sizes’ is how narrow your focus is, I can’t imagine you buy too many minis, but at least here there’s a solution for you – fill the holes and paint on the new canvas.
If you can see the variation here (in the mock up), you should be able to see it on the model, otherwise whats the point? To me (check that now, I am premising this statement with a subjective bias, as I did the original statement), this just does not work. I don’t see the holes and lines as constellation patterns. They are just too simple to come across as such. Perhaps the 5 point constellation in the back, that one gets close. To me, they just look like random geometric designs. Break out your astronomy books. There are very few 3 point constellations that are not a part of a larger constellation – Orion’s belt for example is a part of the major 12+ point constellation (if you include the bow / lion mane), yet this model is dominated by 3 point constellations. And on every star map I have ever seen, the size of star point varies in size according to brightness relative to earth. So if you want them to look like constellations on star maps, then make them look like actual constellations on star maps. If you can’t do it in the sculpt, then just do it in the paint.
And given their location, on the armor plating most likely to take hits, they seem out of place – intentionally weakening the armor. They almost look like battle damage – holes from shots received, and cracked armor plates.
Are you ok with mini’s that grossly represent facial proportions? Facial proportion / expression are almost too subtle to really be seen, so why bother right? Thanks to Brennon, I see what they are trying to do here. I think its an interesting idea, and my feedback, should it be worth bits of memory it consumes, might actually be useful.
With regard to your binary solution, there is one other possibility besides to buy or not to buy, and that is to prefer the model aesthetically, or to not prefer it. To comment, especially when you have already premised the comment with the admission of subjective bias, is basically a statement of taste, and that is in the eye of the beholder. I think restricting comments to only those items we would actually purchase is counterproductive to the discussion, and also counter productive to BoW’s intent, which is to encourage the hobby, and to introduce the vast and interesting variations of all tabletop mini games.
I also disagree with your statement that “all mini purchases are from people who like the sculptor’s vision enough to buy it even if it isn’t quite right.” Given the massive level of supply and the high cost usually associated with collecting a multi faceted army, I would say this is false on its face. I know that there are lines of mini’s that I have thought about purchasing, and in some cases it has been a design element that seemed out of place that has discouraged me from buying the mini (GW Beastmen come to mind.) I find this very much the case for mini consumers who focus more on the look of an army rather than on its field-ability.
I’ll grant you the constellations don’t contain enough stars to really capture the imagination through the shape produced (I know it’s a fantasy world rather than our own but still…) but I was focusing on the dot sizes rather than the lines, which I agree with you on, though they are too straight to look like battle damage to me.
The talents of some sculptors really do capture facial features and nuances of expression very well – I’d never suggest they stop – but in this case we’re talking about something with nothing like that level of granularity, since it’s just a circle. Any more than two or three sizes probably wouldn’t be worth the extra effort (though I should add a disclaimer here – I’m no astronomer, my only contact with circles representing stars is to do with sci-fi jump points so that’s what informs my views here).
I’m not trying to stifle the discussion when it comes to the aesthetic qualities of minis, I just think that beyond a certain point it becomes futile to do so since there are so many potential minute differences of opinion from person to person. Trying to keep up would be impossible for any company – the amount of changes to satisfy one potential customer over another is infinite and thus more than what you refer to as ‘the massive level of supply’ – so there’s a degree of criticism that can’t be acted on making stating differences a moot point at that level.
That said, ignore me if you genuinely do use a higher magnification to paint with than those ‘helping hands’ jobbies give you – working for a long time under that level of intimacy with a model probably will make you see things differently and hold a model to a higher standard of perfection. Personally…I’d just go mad. 😉