Hi everyone, welcome to the final Forge World newsletter of the year.
In this issue, we thought we would give you a much larger than usual list of the projects we are currently working on. Some of these we have told you a bit about already, some we havn't.
Over the last few months, Daniel Cockersell, the guy who made the Chaos War Mammoth and our giant Khorne Bloodthirster, has been working on what can only be described as his largest and most detailed model yet, an enormous two-headed Chaos Dragon.
Daniel did take the work-in-progress master model to Games Day UK in October, but in the two and a half months since then his Dragon has changed considerably and it is now nearing completion.
Nothing I can tell you about the superlative level of detail on this model would do it the justice it deserves, so I'm not even going to try! We're not going to show any pictures of the Chaos Dragon now, we're going to wait that little bit longer and show it to you all when Daniel has finished and is happy with it.
Many of you will be familiar with the work of Mark Bedford. Mark has done freelance work for Forge World over the last few years whilst working in for Fanatic, but now he has joined the Forge World Design Studio on a full-time basis. He has dived straight in and been working on a Tallarn Mukaali for the past couple of weeks. What's a Mukaali? It is a large and powerful riding beast used by some Tallarn Rough Rider units after finding it to be well suited to campaigns in desert environments. In fact, earlier this morning I found three different Mukaali sitting on his desk just waiting for the riders to be finished.
If I tried to describe what a Mukaali looks like I would just completely confuse you, believe me, it's that different. You'll just have to wait till next year!
Daren Parrwood has been going Tau-tastic since finishing off the huge Imperial Bombard the other week. He is working on several new conversions for Tau Battlesuits. So far I have seen new heads, arms, weapons and legs lurking on his desk. With these conversion kits, the Tau Battlesuit becomes far more posable and dynamic.
Daren has also just finished the master models for the Epic 40,000 versions of the Tau Piranha and Tetra. These are lovely little models with every last bit of the detail you have come to expect from Forge World Epic models.
Not wanting to be left out, Will Hayes is working on a new variant of the Tau Tigershark. It is early days yet, but I do know that this version loses the Drone carrying ability of the original and replaces it with what appears to be two twin-linked Railguns poking out the front!
We've noticed that there have been all sorts of rumours on the internet about the Elysian Drop Troops we're working on and we thought we might put some of you out there out of your misery with a few facts about what we're planning.
Okay, Forge World is going to release a whole range of Elysian Drop Troops early in 2005. The troops are made completely of resin and have been sculpted by the famous Simon Egan.
Will Hayes has made all the weapons for the range, the lasgun he has turned into an amazing bull-pup style carbine which will also be available to the troops in a variant with a built in grenade launcher and also a bipod equipped sniper version. I really like the new mortar Will has made which features a drum magazine!
The Elysians are being made in lots of parts to allow an almost limitless variety of poses. Separate heads, bodies, legs, arms and equipment will make for lots of modelling fun.
In my opinion, the Elysians are right up there at the cutting edge of 40K design. These are among some of the finest models Forge World has made, so far!
You'll just have to wait a little while longer until we can show you photos of the finished models, but it will be worth the wait.
All the models we've talked about here today, (except the Chaos Dragon), will be linked into the next big Imperial Armour book; Volume 3 - The Taros Campaign.
Warwick Kinrade has been working almost exclusively on this project for the past number of months. Volume 3 looks like it could be our biggest book yet, with Warwick muttering about 300+ pages! I'm not sure if we've mentioned this next point specifically or not. Volume 3 will include sections allowing historic battles from the Taros campaign to be fought not only in 40K but also in Epic 40,000 and BFG too!
It just remains for me to send you the link to our annual e-Xmas card and wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/xmas04.htm
Thx,
Ewen Little.
Forge World.
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No epic, but still- the Elysians sound fabulous (and think of those 40k players with bottomless pockets who will be rushing out to buy whole armies of them...
).The Tau and Tallarn stuff sounds fun too, and eventually I daresay we'll see much of it in 6mm scale....
Indeed, I seem to have missed it!
And I agree with Tas, about the Epic Taros Campaign. 