Why Marauder?

[Basement Dweller]

I think for me the love of the marauder minis is mainly the nostagla...looking at the blisters and copies and white dwarf and not being to get them. The few I had, i treasured and painted poorly...

I also love the cartoony era of 4th edition. Again, nostalgia playing a big part...but also the lack of reality makes them easier to paint...no pressure to make them look "realistic"...

 

[Aiteal]

Marauder...
Fighter command blister contains one of the best minis ever (you know which one I'm talking about)

Cheers,

Blue

Woahhh Blue
That is beautiful, even though I prefer my warhammer humans to be rag-tag dirty jumped up peasants who look like they are defending their village against chaotic forces that they simply don't comprehend and instead just fear, I make an exception for him, there's no doubting that guy is an accomplished and seasoned fighter. He looks like he's taken down anything chaos or the goblinoid hordes have ever thrown at him

I agree about the doom steeds, but I don't think there are many of us that do. I've won all of the eBay auctions for them in the last 6 or so months and I've rarely had any competition for them.

I gave away all mine years ago
For me the combination of the mail barded war horses and the falcatta armed riders with all the extra bits like the lances and repeating x-bows, just screams 'advanced race gone bad'.
Not, debased humans granted fleeting power by fickle chaotic gods or hordes of hooligans who just enjoy a good punch up, but more the cream of a warrior society that rides out to do what it does best, waging war and conquering what they consider lesser races.

 

[Blue in VT]

Cheers Aiteal! Much appreciated.

These are perhaps my favorite three Empire figures of all time...I wish they had sculpted a unit if pikemen to go with them!

And these are no rabble...these are part of the Army of Cuhaven a semi autonomous city state on the edge of the empire that is quite properous...due mainly to a large population of ex pat dwarfs who mine the hill and mountains around the city...a bit of fluff I've been working to explain my ever increasing puff and slash empire/dwarf army...

Cheers,

Blue

 

[zoggin-eck]

Up until recently, I never cared who made what model, whether they looked "old school" or not, so never really considered if I "liked Marauder or not".

Turn out there are plenty of models I've enjoyed painting, or spent time looking longingly in White Dwarf over

For me, my favourites are:

Giant - I need to paint mine
Orcs - different armour makes a nice change
Dark elves - really different, even if they aren't my fave dark elves
Treemen - Arms out stretched I love these ones.
Minotaurs - I have a unit of the single piece ones. They look tiny, but so do many older "ogre sized" models.
Spiky organ gun - If not so much the crew
Giant Ogres - I always wanted them because they look like the Heroquest ones (use as unit champions). I guess they are pretty static, though.
Flagellants - I'm painting some right now. Really characterful models.
More plastic shields!

A special mention goes to the goblin gigantic spider riders. In hindsight, they are tiny models with not very "gigantic" spiders, but for a long time I copied the 4th edition army book battle report, and used one as a general (even when I owned much more useful orc models!).

 

[Erny]

Marauder...
The Doom steeds were great, as iconic as the 3rd edition Goodwin high/wood elf cavalry are to high/wood elves

how do these Doomsteads scale up with the Chaos steeds of the time? I'm looking for some variety for my chaos warriors to ride...and have considered these in the past but have never had one in hand to compare scales.

Cheers,

Blue

They are much smaller then the citadel ones and a bit smaller than the Marauder ones, probably wouldn't look right with a hulk of a CW on their backs. Look great with a DE on them.

Anyone that doesn't like marauder or Iron Claw has no soul. Even if they deny it and say it is just a matter of opinion. Soulless husks...

 

[Hetz]

how do these Doomsteads scale up with the Chaos steeds of the time? I'm looking for some variety for my chaos warriors to ride...and have considered these in the past but have never had one in hand to compare scales.

Cheers,

Blue

As Aiteal said, not great for Chaos warriors

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

There are some gems in the Marauder range, but it's easy to see why Citadel surpassed Marauder and made the surviving cut in the end. A few miniatues, like the Empire drummer, are however excellent enough to warrant a purchase right across the Atlantic (as Blue in VT found out). On these gems the age doesn't show at all.

 

[Phlegmforlorn]

That every mini have a unique expression, just look at the current plastic ogres and compare to the ones Marauder
released for instance.

 

[Blue in VT]

Thanks for that picture Hetz...very helpful.

Blue

 

[Naagruz]

There are some gems in the Marauder range, but it's easy to see why Citadel surpassed Marauder and made the surviving cut in the end.

Honestly, I thought it was the other way round. Marauder-style ate Citadel & became the standard for the new era.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

That every mini have a unique expression, just look at the current plastic ogres and compare to the ones Marauder
released for instance.

On the other hand, compare the Marauder Ogres to the Jes Goodwin / Bob Olley Citadel ones.

There are some gems in the Marauder range, but it's easy to see why Citadel surpassed Marauder and made the surviving cut in the end.

Honestly, I thought it was the other way round. Marauder-style ate Citadel & became the standard for the new era.

I'd concur with that, Marauder for me represents, in terms of miniatures at least, the start of 4th Edition style.

 

[Phlegmforlorn]

I like those too!

These, not so much...same, same

 

[Blue in VT]

Yeah the comparison is pretty stark...with the Jes Goodwin you get a lot of great characters...a few not so great ones...and they are useful for individual characters but don't really fit together as far as armor and weapons etc. ...ie there is no unit there.

With the marauder you have all excellent sculpts that fit together as a unit much better than the Goodwin ones...IMO

I see the advantages of both sets....but in a pinch I'll take the marauder.

this just goes to show that its all subjective and this discussion is rather pointless...if you don't like them...then I'm not going to change your mind by telling you why I do.



Blue

 

[whiskey priest]

and one of those Jes Goodwin ogres is in fact a Bob Olley.

Just saying

 

[Zhu Bajie]

this just goes to show that its all subjective and this discussion is rather pointless...if you don't like them...then I'm not going to change your mind by telling you why I do.

No but it does help understanding a different point of view. You like the Marauderer ones in comparison to the Olly/Goodwin because they fit better as a "unit", which is true - the Citadel ones show their role-playing / skirmishing roots, and the ogres represent different ogre tribes or whatever. They don't really make up a unit tho, because they're all armed differently, but the consistentcy of the costume design might help. I don't like the Marauder ones because I think the sculpting is quite 'simple' and stylised in a way that is less gribbly than earlier Citadel and less naturalistic, that I'm not a fan of Landsknechte look (although that might change at some point) because I'm interested in early-medieval rather than late. I might take to the Marauder ones if the paint-scheme wasn't quite so jolly.

IIRC my initial impression of Marauderer when they first came out was that they were very toy like, lacked detail and were overly simple, all based off the same 3 poses, and I didn't like them at all. Having gone back and looked at them I think my original judgement was wrong, they have more personality than I'd credited them for, but they were one of the reasons I stopped buying fantasy and got more into 40k at that time, along with the (in my opinion) horrible YMCA posed Wood Elf command that Jes did.

 

[whiskey priest]

I think it's unfair to deride marauder for having limited number of troop models in their regiments. The chaos marauder regiment for instance. You have to look at the regiments of renown that citadel produced which often only had one trooper model to see that a precident had been set. I do agree that the sculpting style was occasionally more simplistic than the citadel lines but it could be argued that that comes from having a single (or at least pair of) sculptor(s) rather than several different ones. I suppose it goes back to wether there was a specific brief from GW or wether it was the morrisons trying something new out.

 

[dieselmonkey]

With the marauder you have all excellent sculpts that fit together as a unit much better than the Goodwin ones...IMO

I know it'd not what you actually meant, but my Marauder Dark Elves are some of the worst ranking figures I've got, in terms of how they stack together in a unit!

Yes, they're lovely sculpts, but it's like the Morrisons (at the time) just either forgot, or gave up on the idea of getting units to fit together on the table.

 

[lenihan]

As a High Elf player, Marauder's legacy is an interesting one. The scalemail High Elves that remain standard to this day really emerged from Marauder. Look, for example, and the Aly Morrison swordsmasters and Axemen. And I'll be honest, I loved (and still love) the scalemail High Elves. But I do think that these first attempts at high elves-with-pointy-helmets-and-scale-mail-as-standard are really messy and ugly in their detail compared to the Gary Morley Citadel resculpts. I own both, and find the Morley ones infinitely preferable to the Marauder ones, although I know its a matter of taste.

(Judge for yourselves; compare http://www.solegends.com/citcat1995-6/c ... 178-02.htm and http://www.solegends.com/citcat1998/1998P072-02.htm )

Of course, now that I've broadened my tastes a bit, I think that the 4th/5th and onwards edition High Elves (as lovely as they are) are a bit too uniform and these days I want a bit more of a spread in style of my elves... so perhaps Marauder's influence in generating this 'house style' for High Elves was too restrictive. Still, they created the High Elf aesthetic of my childhood, and for that I am eternally grateful.

 

[Naagruz]

this just goes to show that its all subjective and this discussion is rather pointless...if you don't like them...then I'm not going to change your mind by telling you why I do.

No but it does help understanding a different point of view. You like the Marauderer ones in comparison to the Olly/Goodwin because they fit better as a "unit", which is true - the Citadel ones show their role-playing / skirmishing roots...

I don't think this discussion is about making converts one way or the other, but it's interesting hearing what people think.

I'll second that Blue is dead-on about the Marauder figs having a more homogenous feel. One of the big shifts from 3rd to 4th was towards making more defined & standardized units. You could do the same thing with 2nd-3rd, but it often meant hunting down duplicates of specific sculpts through a mess of blisters.

Like Zhu, I feel the Marauder style, for some ranges, was more toy-like & reflected GW's turn towards younger gamers. Undead minis, for example, got sanitized going into 4th. No more Kev Adams zombies with entrails (& maybe a testicle) hanging out.

 

[Captain Crooks]

Marauder made all my favourite monsters, like the iconic giant, griffons, pegasi and of course, dragons I also like approximately 1/3 of their High Elves from the 4th edition - their swordmasters and shadow warriors were pretty awful but noone has made a more satisfyingly strong and hardy-looking white lion unit since - I have a big unit of them! The dark elves from that time I'm also fond of, mainly because my best friend collected them and still has them on his shelf, and I'm hassling him to finish painting them after 20 odd years...

I guess a lot of it comes down to nostalgia, but Marauder will always have a special place for me!