Well, September is almost upon us and with it new releases from Games Workshop… ok, most will be about Ogre Kingdoms… never been a fan of those, together with Vampire Counts, Daemons of Chaos and Beastmen, it’s one of those armies I would never consider to collect… But there is one release that took me quite by surprise… first I read about it yesterday on Bell of Lost Souls and just today I found two pictures on Warseer: a new plastic Saurus Oldblood. I don’t write on Warhammer Fantasy Battles that much because I gave up that game many years ago, but I do want to get into it with 8th edition – and the Lizardmen are my main army (mostly because my original Chaos Dwarf army was killed by Games Workshop and my Dark Elves had far too many pewter units… still love those two, though… and I got some Skaven, Dwarves and Nightgoblins, too…). Unfortunately, Lizardmen kits can mostly be combined with other Lizardmen kits, so every new sprue is good news for me indeed.
As an Oldblood, though, it’s some years too late… we all know the current pewter model and I own that one twice, actually, unfortunately both with the same head, shield and weapon… got one as a gift, that is. It is nice but it really needed an update… I supposed they would bring just the old one in Finecast, but now it’s an entirely new sculpt in plastic and that’s good news…
Of course there is already some whining that he will come with no further weapon options (the army book allows spears, halberds, two-handed weapons and two single-handed weapons), but then I think with this creature being in plastic, it will be relatively easy to provide different weaponry from other Lizardmen sprues (with the possible exception of two-handed weapons – but there’s Chakax for that)… and I guess if the sprue for this Oldblood has the same size of all the other new plastic miniatures, there simply wasn’t any more room for more… so in the end, I don’t really see this as a handicap, but as a chance – and though the chances for extra bitz are slim (at least as far as I can tell from the bits of the text that are on the photo), we haven’t seen the sprue yet – there might be surprises on it, you know?
Design-wise the model is nothing really new – a mixture of the old pewter Oldblood on foot and the gear of the mounted pewter Oldblood – but I like some of the detailing of his armour, his teeth (sharper than those of the pewter models) and especially his sculpted base. So far most of the sculpted bases of the new plastic models were nice, but not too spectacular, but this one really catches the lustrian spirit, so to speak.
I will surely buy this one – perhaps not this month, but surely this year as I intend to re-awake my Fantasy armies around christmas, when I got some days off… I already bated all my fantasy pewters and this one might be a fine starting point for bringing my army to a “new age” – just like Miss Dark Elfin sorceress… though it might be I end up doing a conversion from the upcoming Dark Eldar Lhamaean miniature here – agreed, it’s resin/Finecast, but then the new Dark Eldar look like the better Dark Elves for me… just need to get those 40K miniatures some fantasy weaponry… and of course my gaming pal Boswell will be delighted if he gets even more Dark Eldar bitz for his army…
And with that to bed – and to the fearful question: will I be able to finish my review of August’s White Dwarf before the next issue is released on Saturday? Or at least while it’s still August? And will that said new issue come to me in time or like the one from August, more than 20 days late? We’ll see and you’ll read – here!
