Hellebore said:

And that isn't an entirely Imperium/Ad Mech STC thing to do? That's exactly what they'd do.

MILLANDSON said:

That's how Squats are made too. Take a Guardsman and chop out the middle then stick his shoulders just above his hips.

The Stormraven? ugly? perish the thought, Marine vehicles in general looking like flying or tracked bricks with guns? heaven's no!

I, personally, think it's a great model, anyone taking issue with the back of it being empty and making the model look like a flying shipping container take note how there's supposed to be a dreadnought hitching a lift on the back of it, then it starts to look more full.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Again somehow, a dreadnought attached to the back of this thing is supposed to survive atmospheric reentry, lol yeah right....

Hey whats that noise.... What that big fire ball, oups there goes the dreadnought...

i would have thought dreads would be moved around a combat theatre by these not on the initial orbital movement where a pod would be better or in a bigger transport if less opposed

your discussing re entry dynamics in a game where 8ft humans ride giant wolves into battle and troops in the best hi tech armour often walk around with their helmits off?

crisaron said:

Pfffft... my 40K trumps your so-called "laws of nature" (end quote).

Alex

ak-73 said:

Could make the claim that angle of entry into the atmosphere is such that the dread doesn't get the worse of it....

Or the strike cruiser enters the upper atmosphere of the planet, then deploys stormraven squadrons...

Hiromoon said:

Or, like the larger and oft-ignored Landing Craft (carries 60 or so Astartes and accompanying vehicles - 6 Rhino-equivalents or 4 Land Raiders), it has disposable heat shielding mounted over the cargo, which is ejected after re-entry to allow the vehicle to be dropped off quickly.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Doh! Good point! And it'd give that lovely smooth rear-end certain people seem to be... well... noisilly muttering for.

BTW, that is a beautifully ugly model! Blocky, armed to the teeth... Can we get stats for that in Deathwatch too?

I like the model: it's perfectly in keeping with the look of other Space Marine vehicles (Rhino, Land Raider, Thunderhawk- even Space Marine bikes look blocky).

darknite said:

No. That looks a million times better than the Stormraven. In fact, a 40k, thunderhawked version of that would have looked fine. Instead we get a... I can't even think of a word to describe how bad it looks. Utilitarian is fine. Unstreamlined is fine. Ugly is fine. Actually painful to look at is not. The valkyrie is an ugly, utilitarian and aerodynamically dubious craft, but it still looks good. The same goes for the rhino, land raider and predator tanks, so it can be done. Even extending the cargo compartment right to the back of the wings would have improved it. Slimming down the turret/vent thing down too. Two simple fixes that would have saved the model.

Frankly, in game (and my interpretation of the 40k universe) I am going to pretend the thing never existed.

I think the idea of the Storm Raven is fantastic, and perfect for Deathwatch given it's small-team emphasis.

I think the model is easily one of the worst plastic kits GW has done in recent memory. They haven't had a plastic kit this bad since the plastic Minotaurs.

BYE

rules for the stormraven are in rites of battle apparently

I'm not trying to troll or anything. This is the honest to god truth.

I currently have in my possession a Stormraven gunship and Librarian Dreadnought. I am currently in the process of painting them. I had a problem with the gunship though. The spray paint came out all wrong. It was drying as soon as it hit the air it seemed which baffled me because I had never had that problem before. I always got great comments on how smooth I could get a base color. Right now it's got this rough texture that you can clearly see. So I am in the process of stripping the paint off of this massive thing.

The Dreadnought I am just going to prime black like I do for my Templars and paint on the base colors. I trust the $1 spray paint that I normally use over the $14 can I bought for the Stormraven.

You can see a pic of the gunship here.

http://crusader91.blogspot.com

Oh, and I think that the pictures GW was providing were doing a horrible job at presenting this model. Once you get in front of you, you realize that it is just freakin' awesome. It's bigger than I thought it would be, but still not as big as I hoped. I don't see how it can carry 12 marines and hold a dreadnought in the rear.

We need to think about this for a moment. each and every piece of Space Marine Kit is designed with Grim Dark and Man Sauce in mind. It looks super masculine and 'ard. this baby is just cut from the same cloth. Just lean back, admire, and let the Grim Darkness pass through you and around you then turn the inner eye and watch it pass.......

MILLANDSON said:

I suppose that's why the rhino looks like a shortened land raider, or the land raider looks like a longer rhino.

People are defending the design of this vehicle far too much, to the point of appearing as apologists. The overall design is out of scale, that is fairly objective. The individual components on the vehicle all look by themselves good. But they are too close together or simply not scaled to each other correctly.

All it needs to be good is better scaling. It doesn't even need a new design. It looks like a vehicular charicature, which is odd given the designs of other 40k vehicles aren't anything like it. It looks like it's been designed by committee. Move things around within its silhouette and it will look much much better.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

So now you've basically gone "you can't defend the design even if you do like it, because then you are an apologist fanboy"? I thought you were above such ad honinems Hellebore, but I guess I was wrong.

I like the descriptor of 'vehicular caricature'!

Hellebore said:

Hellebore, most of the vehicles seem out of scale. The Storm Raven rules say 12 figures, but I'll be darned if I can figure out where the other six are going to stand with any sense of comfort for 9 foot tall giants in power armor. The Thunderhawk is almost the same way, as is the Rhino and Land Raider. Unfortuantely most of these improper portions are carried on in artwork and fluff, using the miniatures of vehicles and men as 'true scale', so we're a little screwed at this point.

And stop being an apologist for those who don't like the vehicle.

MILLANDSON said:

i said appearing as apologists . Would you like me to call your statement a strawman fallacy because it wasn't what I said?

Not if people are going to use reasons that are wrong, no. You can say you like the out of scale design, but you can't say the out of scale design is in keeping with other marine vehicle designs, because they aren't. It's pretty simple, measure the sizes of the parts of the storm raven and see how big they are in relation to each other and then see how that is unlike their other designs. Its tail fins alone are around a fifth the size of the overall vehicle.

Like it all you want, it won't change the facts of its scale, or that those scale problems are not found on other vehicles and if they are, certainly not to this degree. It's a parody of a thunderhawk.

It's very disappointing because they have shown that they can do so much better. I really don't understand how it ended up so out of scale given the huge quantity of available material they had to work from. The Aquila lander is ugly, but at least it's scaled correctly.

When the main argument of pro stormraven people is 'you hate the marine aesthetic' which is a strawman of most people's arguments (like mine - it's out of scale which ISN'T a marine design aesthetic) I don't mind calling people apologists at all. Certainnly if I'm getting strawmanned rather than people addressing the argument it makes people appear like apologists to me.

The fact is, any time someone dissents about something the mighty GW have done, dozens of people jump up in defence, regardless of legitimacy. I'm tired of having to defend my own position against people who start from the premise 'GW can do no wrong' and work from there. GW can and have done wrong and the stormraven is an inexplicable example.

They have great looking thunderhawks, valkyries and so on. Yet with the stormraven it's like they took a decade backwards in design. The wings are far too far backwards, too high and the front of the vehicle is out of scale with the rear. The landing gear are too close together which makes it look like a plane resting on its nose.

I'm disappointed that with such a great vehicular design in the thunderhawk they could botch it so badly with the stormraven. It's almost like they had an area they wanted it to cover and squashed it to fit without rescaling everything to that size. Or it was designed by committee.

There is no reason for it to be out of scale gievn the precedent of other vehicles or that the marine design aesthetic doesn't call for such gross distortions of size. Hence why I can't see the arguments people use in support of it as being true, as there is no precedent or basis to them. Which is why they seem like apologising to me.

Hellebore

Ill be using one for our game, but as far as the model....

The thunderhawk already looks like a flying bus, paint the thing yellow and its the magic school bus.

If thats the case, then the stormraven is definatly the short bus. Its a flying tank with wings.