I feel like the Custodes cover really needed to be a proper hero shot. Like, Doom Guy sitting on top of a mountain of demons, or a couple of Custodes bathed in light facing down a massive horde. Their whole thing is supposed to be how each Custodes is basically a superhero, but when you put them in a kind of generic ensemble shot they just end up looking like gold Space Marines.
I think the part Brad is missing about that World Eaters cover is the sense of energy and movement. I dare someone to look at that and say they don't feel the downward force in that wave of violence.
Something I love about the Genestealers cover art is how it mimics paintings of real revolutions just with a fucked up 40k twist. Look up paintings of the French revolution, the framing is very similar.
The Tau one is devastating because when you look at the full image first of all theres an ethereal with the big ass broadside right behind him, in the bottom left theres some sweet stealth suits coming in, theres a RIPTIDE above them who is obscured for some god forsaken reason and above the main Crisis battlesuit theres 2 more crisis battlesuits dropping in from above. And all this cool shit is obscured in the orange dust and its really unfortunate
Having a squad of 3 crisis suits jetpacking down, guns blazing is the most Tau energy you could put in an artwork. They're crisis suits ffs, those things descend from the sky with more firepower than the fist of god, its their whole thing. Let me fucking see that. The other thing they could do that'd be just as cool, honestly, is a riptide. Just a riptide, doing anything, would be enough to sell it.
I'm sure someone else already mentioned it, but the Ork cover has the Boyz overrunning a krieg trench line, that's why they're shooting the ground. The targets are in the ground! It's still an issue though because I only noticed that detail with the expanded artwork.
Yeah the expanded artwork changes everything. All the sudden you have the green tide, a tidal wave just overrunning the Imperial defenses. The cropping on the book is trash.
The CSM cover gives very strong classic Blanche art vibes with the detailing and lines and the sheer weirdness of it. There's a guy with a tiny Cyclops visor in the bottom right and in the top left background there is a sorcerer doing Shenanigans. It's perfect.
On the center of the Votann art, it's the vertical artillery fire on the right side: Since it's darker at the top, and lighter at the bottom, the eye goes to the Khal's knees, and when you are looking at the knee, the infantrymen at the bottom become the real center of the picture. All the fire is doing the framing, and the Khal is just too dark to work where it is.
Having watched this multiple times, I just realized that Eric was the biggest winner out of this episode. Apparently, the Sisters’ codex art was so boring that it didn’t even make the final list! 😂. (Check it - it WAS there and then when the discussion of where it should end up happened, it vanished!)
My biggest peeve with the Space Wolf one is that it looks like they are losing that battle. I'm all for fallible heroes but for my codex I at least want my faction to be winning the battle.
I mean, if you're remotely knowledgable about the lore you know for a fact that space wolves quite literally can not lose. So when they "look like they're losing" they are just winning but slower
I like how with every single one, if you look at the whole art piece it fixes every problem they talk about. Those artist were done dirty by whoever cut those pieces up for cover.
1:10:00 My only problem as an admech fan is the fact that *there is no model like that one* It just shows you a super cool model, relevant to the faction, but they don't have it purchisable. Cawl shouldn't be the only one that became 3 meters tall thanks to machinery dammit. I want more giant mechanical techpriests with equally oversized omnissaian axes.
Thats my big gripe too. All this potential for Tech Priest models, and the only one that people care about is the one many in Ad Mech would call a Heretek.
I think its a creative color choice and something that takes guts and skill to execute. For me it look like the artwork is saying that even in the most grim most vile battlefield you can find angles fighting.
The colab I have needed for months, thank you Big Brick Man(who truth betold is not actually a brick) and the Poor-men for giving this exquisite content
There’s an easy fix for Chaos Deamons. Have the Codex be like a Necronomicon that is breaking apart. That the codex book looks like a cursed tome that is barely containing the dark insidious monsters within. The opportunity for the book to be a real representation of the corruption that they invoke.
I actively beg you guys to flip through a 6th/7th edition CSM codex. A lot of the art in it doesn’t really get used anymore, and it’s all perfectly grimy, disgusting, and insane. Fits the CSMs perfectly.
I loved the red and green of the Blood Angels art! Red and green are complimentary colors. It can be pretty hard to pull off due to it's association with christmas. It's a bold art direction but I think the artist did an awesome job of it!
honestly maybe im biased but i still think they nailed it the first time with the 3rd edition necron codex art. rez orb guy is cool but i love how the original shows them as this endless tide of unsettling murder robots, bc like. That's what they do!
It’s not even a weird grip though, it just goes to show the guys here don’t have any military history knowledge as magwell grip was the norm for quite a while.
I feel like an important detail that was missed when discussing the artwork for the Tyranid codex is how the tinting effect to add the faction symbol in the background for the 10th edition codex dulled out almost all of the background. On the 10th edition cover, the Tyranids symbol in the background blanks out everything behind the Hive Tyrant in this bluish green tint where you can barely make out most of the details, but the 9th edition cover uses the base artwork. In that older version, the light of the moon/star in the sky is being clouded over by the smoke from the Hive Titan and the shadows of flying creatures. You can make out the silhouettes of dozens of Gargoyles and a few capillary towers, which actually changes the perspective a lot in my opinion. I don’t think it’s perfect, because a lot of those background details are shadowy and harder to make out than the creatures in the front, but I think it’s important to recognize that the base artwork on the 9th edition cover does a much better job of depicting the swarm that Tyranids is, and the reason that the 10th edition doesn’t in spite of literally having the technical same art piece is because of a weird graphics choice that takes away that perspective.
Fun fact about the aspect warriors: The design was made back when they were all metal, and basically identical, but with different weapons. Given the quality of the old metal sculpts, it was crazy to expect people to actually be able to tell what in the world any miniature was if you colored them all the same: I'd argue it's still tough today, since the sculpts are so old, and so close to the original design. So aspect warriors have to come in different colors just because otherwise nobody would know what the hell you are fielding, just like few can tell what in the world a crisis suit is equipped with.
The problem with Votan's art is viewers first instinct when looking at an art piece is trying to find the most "human" features subconsciously; in this case since it's a group picture, the most human element are the faces, which for Kahl is only half shown, so your brain tried to look for the next 2nd best, which is the guy at the bottom. The lighting on him is also brighter compared to Kahl (he is also closer to the viewer), so you also are more drawn to him (kinda like your eyes are drawn to lights if you walk in the dark).
what i learned is that the full art spreads of these codex covers look absolutely amazing. When the editor used the blood angels piece as a background for the discussion, it shocked me at how much better it was with a death company trooper in the front, giving direction to all the blood angels in the piece as a whole, and reducing the amount of green smoke in the background relative to the looming cityscape on the left.
Thank you Borelio for doing the honor of moving Death Guard to S. A is just not enough for how PERFECT that art is. It sold me on Death Guard right when I was getting into 40K.
I think the T'au one actually captures the essence of the faction really well. Its not supposed to be 'big epic cool gundam'. It is supposed to be that kind of Greater Good 'group effort' army. It isn't supposed to stand out, the "bland" slander is actually what they are supposed to be, in a very cool way.
Honestly if you want to capture the essence of the faction it would have been better to have them show off non tau as well though. They need to show off the kroot and other races that are supposedly allied with the tau. Honestly, gw likes to pretend their allies exist so little it's almost a wonder why they made them a multi species faction to start with.
As someone who's a fan of T'au but not that big on mechs, yeah I sort of hate how they dominate every aspect of the faction so hard. The fire warrior is probably one of the coolest designs for a "regular" non augmented or power armoured unit in 40k, and the lack of focus they give to the other species within the T'au empire borders on criminal.
I actually prefer tau's 4th edition codex a lot better for the same reasons. It's got the mechs up front, but theres a fire warrior and ethereal sharing the foreground that also gives it a sense of depth. And the background shows a huge army of firewarriors, vespids, kroot, and devilish pushing onward as a cohesive unit. The new ones are all suits and some fire warriors.
Wholeheartedly, as CSM is one of my armies but I’m mostly a (completely legally*) mostly digital player, this gave me enough hype to want to by the CSM codex even tho the edition is past its time.
The only problem with the Ad Mech cover is that the techpriest on the front is way cooler than any other techpriest we actually have. Wish GW would make special models of their codex focal point
The fix for Chaos is just look at AOS and do that - make Belakor a CSM character who gets unlimited daemon allies and split the four gods into four gods. Done.
I dont often bring in my education and my expertise into youtube comments, but sometimes it is relevant. I have a doctorates in music. My studies did include various artforms. I will now give you a professional "opinion". Your interpretation of the art is spot on. That's because art is meant to communicate to you. And the message is utterly subjective to the person perceiving the art. Yes the artists have their own message and reason for doing the things the way they do them, but every true artist knows that the moment your art leaves your eyes even for a second, it transcends what you intended and becomes things you could never even dream about. And the people who pretend to know better than you are just pretending. The truly knowledgeable people who know about art are usually humble. They usually have studied art history, understand the artist, and usually use words such as "I have always thought" or other such statements which clearly indicate that they are voicing their OPINION an quite often they will tell you WHY their opinion is the way it based on things they have read about the artist or the general movement in that particular era. So, in future, just remember when you look at art, you are both 100% correct in what you believe it is telling you while being 100% wrong at the same time.
Absolutely loved the chatter and was on board with most of the placement, caused me to think on these in more detail. Making this level of in depth waffle this entertaining is high art in its own right. Subscribed chaps, GGWP 😊
World eaters has the best cover. Looks like they relish fighting the blood war in the seven hells for all eternity. Rushing in like an avalanche, carrying with them an actual avalanche of skulls, both their own and their enemies. perfection. 11/10
I also connected those dots, but didn't say anything on the off chance their guest wasn't Bricky (and then have everything feel super awkward by the inevitable disappointment of not-Bricky)
Ive been a fan of both adric and poorhammer (solely singleton too tbh) for years now, since very close to the beginning of poorhammer and adric. I love to see my favorite creators come together to do some shenanigans. this is crossover episode gold to me. 15/10
I'm a hundred percent convinced that the majority of these are cropped down bits of larger pieces of artwork. The messy composition I expect comes from that.
Guys, Red and Green are Complementary colors. They are literally opposite each other on the color spectrum. The green background serves as a great way to have the red Blood Angels stand out in the art piece.
I had two things that bothered me about these covers: 1. The scale on the Custodies is weird. In the background there's a Vexila Prator and he only goes up to the dreadnaughts knee. 2. The 19th ed Space Marine isn't just a repeated of old promo art; it's the art of the 8th edition 2nd SM codex, so they are 0/2 for using new-to-cover-art.
The Black templars has this weird squatty off balanced stance. It looks like that tiny little gun is the first gun he's ever shot and it scared the crap out of him.
That ridiculous artwork of the Iron Warrior with his custom weapon makes me think of the City of Heroes “Frankengun.” When the MMORPG City of Heroes first shipped, the “weapon” powersets (sword, katana, axe, mace, gun) couldn’t be reskinned, so every mace guy would have the same hawkgirl-looking mace, for instance, and you couldn’t have a daredevil-style blackjack. Well, the gun powerset had every possible kind of modern munition as a power you could unlock (machine gun, sniper rifle, shotgun, riot gun, grenade launcher, flamethrower) and so for years and years the only gun model your cool marksman superhero could use was an unholy quad-barreled monstrosity with an AA12 mag, an underbarrel grenade launcher, and a side-mounted flamethrower
The reason why you look at the foreground Votann is literally just cause he’s the only one with white armour. The entire image is this teal colour (the damn sky and armour mix), with 3 things that stick out, the Kahls blade, the jet of fire behind him, and the dwarf with white armour.
The lighting issue with Ksons is that the main character seems to have source lighting from almost a damn ring light infront of the page, while the light is clearly behind him. He needs to be darkened a bit and the lightning in his hand casting OSL on himself
I'm going to start off with saying that I like helmets and for the Imperial Guard codex if the main guy his arm was maybe slightly forward and was wearing one of those masks that the guard can wear for the basic troop model cuz it's kind of giving me that lone Guardsmen at the line field but with the mask and the helmet it just make it better
How can the Death Guard cover not feel like Death Guard? Besides Morti and his smoke, you have all the insects in the background. The PMs in the foreground are full of tentacles and disgusting elements. This meets the requirements sufficiently. And I would have preferred to see Bricky as Night Lord =)
Not to defend it, but I think the green smoke of Blood Angels is meant to evoke the plague of Egypt, like in the old Ten Commandments movie where a green mist is what represents the Angels killing the Egyptian first-borns.
I miss the old storytelling covers of older editoons. I love the story being told on the Third Edition Space Marines cover, which was almost the end of the Crimson Fists. My buddy nicknamed it "bad day at the office"
One thing I noticed is that a lot of the lower ranked ones have a high saturation background colour and it overwhelms the foreground. An obvious example here is the Custodes one, why am I getting blue from this? Their colour scheme is gold and red. The combo that works well is two colours that contrast well and a very muted third colour in the background. Take the Dark Angels, dark green armour and off white for the hood and trim, with a pale orange/pink background. Grey knights: silver and turquoise against a purple background. The worst offenders are the Blood Angels and Orks. Blood Angels, what the fuck is that overwhelming 00FF00 green background? I look at the flying units with that colour and I'm getting Necron energy from that. Orks is just washed out yellow, it's a GREENtide! It should have been mostly green with janky grey/black metallic weapons and random purple footprints in the background.
Blood Angels should absolutely have a jump pack assault on the cover, maybe coming down out of a clear blue sky in front of an explosion with a screaming gunship behind him.
I like the artstyle of 9th/10th edition so much more than 8th. The Tau cover may look like the Space Marines, but it does everything so much better. I love it. Best covers are usually 3rd/4th edition covers for me. Especially Necrons and Tau.
I absolutely agree about the rules and codex points. I would absolutely buy Codexes for flavour and artwork. The rules should absolutely be able to be edited easily and shouldn't be something you have to buy constantly.
just because here's my ranking, because my opinions are objectively correct, of course. Chain Saw Man: CSM S: Ad Mech, Dark Angels, Thousand Sons, World Eaters, A: Chaos Knights, Astra Militarum, Death Guard, B: Leagues of Votann, Tyranids, Necrons, Black Templars, Grey Knights, Chaos Daemons C: Space Wolves, Custodes, Deathwatch, T'au, Space Marines, Imperial Knights, Orks D: Blood Angels, Drukhari
A dropship deployment would be great for any of the worst covers of Space Marines. Just mid-deployment in the front lines would show some amazing aspects of any of their chapters. Like Space Wolves deploying any Wolfen Units as the foreground is filled with pelt-covered Space Wolf Marines firing away, grinning their fangs. Or regular Blood Angels deploying calmly as they allow those who've fallen to the Rage clean house in front of them, the regs only there cleaning up what was left like say an eldar pleading or a chaos cultist still alive with their legs blown off. And the ultramarines deployed as a variety of units like aggressors, reivers, or dreadnoughts taking the foreground. Even orks could do that, shit. Show some whacky vehicles deploying any ork, maybe some crawling over vehicles as they're deploying.
Loved the vid but I gotta say the Ork Cover looks the way it does because they are raiding a trench, that’s why they are firing down and storming in and over.
Brad: "you play elves because you like them, I play elves because I don't care if they die. We are not the same."
‘Ate the ‘ointy ears, ‘ate the humies, ‘ate the bugs, ‘ate the robots
Nice meme!
I like to say "blood for the blood god" after I finish a game with my Imperial Guard.
I feel like the Custodes cover really needed to be a proper hero shot. Like, Doom Guy sitting on top of a mountain of demons, or a couple of Custodes bathed in light facing down a massive horde. Their whole thing is supposed to be how each Custodes is basically a superhero, but when you put them in a kind of generic ensemble shot they just end up looking like gold Space Marines.
8th edition was chefs kiss. I know they were all one figure covers, but Custodes was just immaculate.
@@nick-314i honestly do prefer one figure or max 5 figure covers for more elite armys. GK, DW, Custodes, etx
Because that's what they are
Man, what an honour! You know you've made the big leagues when you get onto Poorhammers podcast!
I thougt it was the other way around. It's an honor that Bricky blessed this channel with his presence.
@@texonmax8478I'm pretty sure the above comment was sarcasm for that exact point 😅
@@texonmax8478 This comment reminded me that the dislike button for comments is useless.
@texonmax8478 this is a real r/woosh moment isn't it reddit
Berilio is a gracious host to allow Brad, Eric and Bricky on his podcast. Thats how you know you've made the big time.
I think the part Brad is missing about that World Eaters cover is the sense of energy and movement. I dare someone to look at that and say they don't feel the downward force in that wave of violence.
"Where are big chicken?" Brad is asking the truest philosophical questions
I English gud.
Indeed!
Something I love about the Genestealers cover art is how it mimics paintings of real revolutions just with a fucked up 40k twist. Look up paintings of the French revolution, the framing is very similar.
The Tau one is devastating because when you look at the full image first of all theres an ethereal with the big ass broadside right behind him, in the bottom left theres some sweet stealth suits coming in, theres a RIPTIDE above them who is obscured for some god forsaken reason and above the main Crisis battlesuit theres 2 more crisis battlesuits dropping in from above. And all this cool shit is obscured in the orange dust and its really unfortunate
Having a squad of 3 crisis suits jetpacking down, guns blazing is the most Tau energy you could put in an artwork. They're crisis suits ffs, those things descend from the sky with more firepower than the fist of god, its their whole thing. Let me fucking see that.
The other thing they could do that'd be just as cool, honestly, is a riptide. Just a riptide, doing anything, would be enough to sell it.
I'm sure someone else already mentioned it, but the Ork cover has the Boyz overrunning a krieg trench line, that's why they're shooting the ground. The targets are in the ground! It's still an issue though because I only noticed that detail with the expanded artwork.
It's another victim of poorly cropped photos will ruin a great idea. Also, the yellow is so garbage. (I hate yellow, so personal bias is worth noting)
Yeah the expanded artwork changes everything. All the sudden you have the green tide, a tidal wave just overrunning the Imperial defenses. The cropping on the book is trash.
@@ericlee1624but yellow makes better dakka :
@@ericlee1624but yellow makes things go boom and as a bad moon player we need yellow
Now we need Poorhammer to go on to Adeptus ridiculous so Eric and DK can learn about lore
Eric would likely take over DKs position as the relative newbie to 40k lore
I love Bricky as a penatant engine it fits him perfectly.
THATS THE MODEL I WAS THINKING OF
You got bricky on here! This just shows how big your channel has got. Congrats on the massive success.
Cause Bricky only does stuff for money
So nice of Brad to let a small channel like Bricky on so he can grow his channel.
@@xXNoobKillaXxso he is like 99% like the rest of us? So human? I mean there is theory's out there ....
@@xXNoobKillaXxgotta secure the bag
@@cabellismsimp for adric harder paypig
Brickies forehead was all the clickbait required
Berilio brings some wonderful commentary in his editing this episode.
Slapping Death Guard into S after a universal A using EDITOR POWER was pretty good.
“travesty”
The hero we neeed
The CSM cover gives very strong classic Blanche art vibes with the detailing and lines and the sheer weirdness of it. There's a guy with a tiny Cyclops visor in the bottom right and in the top left background there is a sorcerer doing Shenanigans. It's perfect.
My two favorite Warhammer channels colliding at the speed of Tzeentch. I love it.
Well, now I feel silly ordering a combat patrol... I could have gotten a Poorhammer hoodie
Holy…those color transitions for the blood angels codex was so WELL DONE! 29:30
Really showed that they chose the worst color for the background haha glad the editor put that in
@@rebeccaward2152They absolutely did not. Green and red work the best, they're a common pairing for a reason
The worst and most painful part about the admech codex art, is that the cool tech priest is not a playable model :)
Man, just putting Cawl together was bad enough for me. Can you imagine trying to assemble that absolute abomination?
@@kylek1119 building is probably the most fun part so send me yours if they make them, and I'll build it for you :) (I like the way this sucks!)
On the center of the Votann art, it's the vertical artillery fire on the right side: Since it's darker at the top, and lighter at the bottom, the eye goes to the Khal's knees, and when you are looking at the knee, the infantrymen at the bottom become the real center of the picture. All the fire is doing the framing, and the Khal is just too dark to work where it is.
Having watched this multiple times, I just realized that Eric was the biggest winner out of this episode. Apparently, the Sisters’ codex art was so boring that it didn’t even make the final list! 😂. (Check it - it WAS there and then when the discussion of where it should end up happened, it vanished!)
My biggest peeve with the Space Wolf one is that it looks like they are losing that battle. I'm all for fallible heroes but for my codex I at least want my faction to be winning the battle.
They're space wolves, they'll make a comeback, it's their thing
I mean, if you're remotely knowledgable about the lore you know for a fact that space wolves quite literally can not lose. So when they "look like they're losing" they are just winning but slower
You guys and bricky definitely line up in terms of vibes.
Happy to see you guys grow, even if sometimes I scratch my head at your takes!
@@alexandrudorries3307 the necron arks for one, they’re great models.
Definitely felt less like two hosts and a guest and more like three buddies shooting the shit and arguing
The best crossover episode! And for an episode I was waiting since Bricky announced it when reacting to the index previews! I love this
I like how with every single one, if you look at the whole art piece it fixes every problem they talk about.
Those artist were done dirty by whoever cut those pieces up for cover.
So the codexes just take a big art piece and cut a chunk out of it? Yeah that would explain why some of em look a bit goofy
1:10:00
My only problem as an admech fan is the fact that *there is no model like that one*
It just shows you a super cool model, relevant to the faction, but they don't have it purchisable.
Cawl shouldn't be the only one that became 3 meters tall thanks to machinery dammit. I want more giant mechanical techpriests with equally oversized omnissaian axes.
Thats my big gripe too.
All this potential for Tech Priest models, and the only one that people care about is the one many in Ad Mech would call a Heretek.
I think the green background of the blood angels is for contrast, it does lead to gross looking colors, but it lets the front marines pop.
I think its a creative color choice and something that takes guts and skill to execute. For me it look like the artwork is saying that even in the most grim most vile battlefield you can find angles fighting.
Yeah I'm honestly a big fan of the vibrancy, the actual marines on the cover may look a bit underwhelming but damn does it help them stand out.
It brings a sense of urgency and danger, but the marine is a bright spot amidst the chaos.
Red and green are literally complementary colors so yeah.
Bricky brings an energy with him and it added to this Episode. I just found this channel and have been enjoying it a lot and this was fun
The colab I have needed for months, thank you Big Brick Man(who truth betold is not actually a brick) and the Poor-men for giving this exquisite content
Berilio putting Death Guard in S-Tier was correct. That art is gas! 🔥🔥🔥
Sisters SHOULD have Repentia on the cover to REALLY get across the idea of Zealots! Probably front and center and dying
Also tatas for cheap pandering.
There’s an easy fix for Chaos Deamons. Have the Codex be like a Necronomicon that is breaking apart. That the codex book looks like a cursed tome that is barely containing the dark insidious monsters within. The opportunity for the book to be a real representation of the corruption that they invoke.
Holy crap the editing is so good in this episode.
I would absolutely love to see you guys do more videos with Bricky, your chemistry is superb and the vibe is a delight to listen to.
I actively beg you guys to flip through a 6th/7th edition CSM codex. A lot of the art in it doesn’t really get used anymore, and it’s all perfectly grimy, disgusting, and insane. Fits the CSMs perfectly.
I loved the red and green of the Blood Angels art! Red and green are complimentary colors. It can be pretty hard to pull off due to it's association with christmas. It's a bold art direction but I think the artist did an awesome job of it!
Thank you! My art degree burst into flames when I heard that. Which is fine because it is still an art degree.
@@Grumbliki laughed at this joke way too much 😂
The necron one is c teir at best but the boys tried to spare Brads feelings. Cute.
honestly
maybe im biased but i still think they nailed it the first time with the 3rd edition necron codex art. rez orb guy is cool but i love how the original shows them as this endless tide of unsettling murder robots, bc like. That's what they do!
"im in a hell of my own making" describes all of us who play warhammer.
That Striking Scorpion comment nearly killed me 😂
The crossover and partnership the world needed!
It feels like GW saw that old chaos warrior art and decided to make a similar one for CSM. It honestly looks even cooler
I'm cry laughing from Bricky pointing out the "Axeface McGee" 🤣
Bricky's gigantic forehead joined the battle
I never noticed how weird the gun grip was on the Astra Militarum codex because I was too focused on the guy’s absolutely horrifying dental work.
It’s not even a weird grip though, it just goes to show the guys here don’t have any military history knowledge as magwell grip was the norm for quite a while.
I feel like an important detail that was missed when discussing the artwork for the Tyranid codex is how the tinting effect to add the faction symbol in the background for the 10th edition codex dulled out almost all of the background. On the 10th edition cover, the Tyranids symbol in the background blanks out everything behind the Hive Tyrant in this bluish green tint where you can barely make out most of the details, but the 9th edition cover uses the base artwork. In that older version, the light of the moon/star in the sky is being clouded over by the smoke from the Hive Titan and the shadows of flying creatures. You can make out the silhouettes of dozens of Gargoyles and a few capillary towers, which actually changes the perspective a lot in my opinion. I don’t think it’s perfect, because a lot of those background details are shadowy and harder to make out than the creatures in the front, but I think it’s important to recognize that the base artwork on the 9th edition cover does a much better job of depicting the swarm that Tyranids is, and the reason that the 10th edition doesn’t in spite of literally having the technical same art piece is because of a weird graphics choice that takes away that perspective.
Fun fact about the aspect warriors: The design was made back when they were all metal, and basically identical, but with different weapons. Given the quality of the old metal sculpts, it was crazy to expect people to actually be able to tell what in the world any miniature was if you colored them all the same: I'd argue it's still tough today, since the sculpts are so old, and so close to the original design.
So aspect warriors have to come in different colors just because otherwise nobody would know what the hell you are fielding, just like few can tell what in the world a crisis suit is equipped with.
The problem with Votan's art is viewers first instinct when looking at an art piece is trying to find the most "human" features subconsciously; in this case since it's a group picture, the most human element are the faces, which for Kahl is only half shown, so your brain tried to look for the next 2nd best, which is the guy at the bottom. The lighting on him is also brighter compared to Kahl (he is also closer to the viewer), so you also are more drawn to him (kinda like your eyes are drawn to lights if you walk in the dark).
I love the Poorhammer editing, but this episode is going beyond the usual and kills it.
codex art let's gooooooooo!!!!! hey GW, CREDIT YOUR ARTISTS.
what i learned is that the full art spreads of these codex covers look absolutely amazing. When the editor used the blood angels piece as a background for the discussion, it shocked me at how much better it was with a death company trooper in the front, giving direction to all the blood angels in the piece as a whole, and reducing the amount of green smoke in the background relative to the looming cityscape on the left.
When you look at the full art for the Orc codex you can see they're assaulting a krieg trenchline
Thank you Borelio for doing the honor of moving Death Guard to S. A is just not enough for how PERFECT that art is. It sold me on Death Guard right when I was getting into 40K.
If GW insists on having daemons be its own faction separate from their marines they should use chaos undivided as the cover
I think the T'au one actually captures the essence of the faction really well. Its not supposed to be 'big epic cool gundam'. It is supposed to be that kind of Greater Good 'group effort' army. It isn't supposed to stand out, the "bland" slander is actually what they are supposed to be, in a very cool way.
Honestly if you want to capture the essence of the faction it would have been better to have them show off non tau as well though. They need to show off the kroot and other races that are supposedly allied with the tau. Honestly, gw likes to pretend their allies exist so little it's almost a wonder why they made them a multi species faction to start with.
As someone who's a fan of T'au but not that big on mechs, yeah I sort of hate how they dominate every aspect of the faction so hard. The fire warrior is probably one of the coolest designs for a "regular" non augmented or power armoured unit in 40k, and the lack of focus they give to the other species within the T'au empire borders on criminal.
I actually prefer tau's 4th edition codex a lot better for the same reasons. It's got the mechs up front, but theres a fire warrior and ethereal sharing the foreground that also gives it a sense of depth. And the background shows a huge army of firewarriors, vespids, kroot, and devilish pushing onward as a cohesive unit. The new ones are all suits and some fire warriors.
I am very impressed by the editor's work with switching blood angels background. It's so smooth and nice.
29:30 Red and Green go GREAT together, all opposite colors clash wonderfully. Blue-Orange, Purple-yellow, red-green
Holy fuck this thumbnail had me rolling
Wholeheartedly, as CSM is one of my armies but I’m mostly a (completely legally*) mostly digital player, this gave me enough hype to want to by the CSM codex even tho the edition is past its time.
1:14:30 Clearly the Blood Angels codex is part of a bigger picture you see. :D
Oh boy, now I can't wait until I get to buy my "Rhinos are free" shirt with a picture of a flying rhino bouncing off someone's head.
The only problem with the Ad Mech cover is that the techpriest on the front is way cooler than any other techpriest we actually have. Wish GW would make special models of their codex focal point
The fix for Chaos is just look at AOS and do that - make Belakor a CSM character who gets unlimited daemon allies and split the four gods into four gods.
Done.
I dont often bring in my education and my expertise into youtube comments, but sometimes it is relevant.
I have a doctorates in music. My studies did include various artforms. I will now give you a professional "opinion".
Your interpretation of the art is spot on. That's because art is meant to communicate to you. And the message is utterly subjective to the person perceiving the art. Yes the artists have their own message and reason for doing the things the way they do them, but every true artist knows that the moment your art leaves your eyes even for a second, it transcends what you intended and becomes things you could never even dream about.
And the people who pretend to know better than you are just pretending.
The truly knowledgeable people who know about art are usually humble. They usually have studied art history, understand the artist, and usually use words such as "I have always thought" or other such statements which clearly indicate that they are voicing their OPINION an quite often they will tell you WHY their opinion is the way it based on things they have read about the artist or the general movement in that particular era.
So, in future, just remember when you look at art, you are both 100% correct in what you believe it is telling you while being 100% wrong at the same time.
Okay, hear me out. The demon codex should have been Bel'lakor in the center with one of each greater demon around him
Absolutely loved the chatter and was on board with most of the placement, caused me to think on these in more detail. Making this level of in depth waffle this entertaining is high art in its own right. Subscribed chaps, GGWP 😊
EDITOR POWER SAVES THE DAY !!! LEZZ GOOO !!!!
World eaters has the best cover.
Looks like they relish fighting the blood war in the seven hells for all eternity.
Rushing in like an avalanche, carrying with them an actual avalanche of skulls, both their own and their enemies.
perfection.
11/10
I knew it! As soon as he said his host was stuck last episode I immediately knew it was bricky!! Let’s go baby!
I also connected those dots, but didn't say anything on the off chance their guest wasn't Bricky (and then have everything feel super awkward by the inevitable disappointment of not-Bricky)
Ive been a fan of both adric and poorhammer (solely singleton too tbh) for years now, since very close to the beginning of poorhammer and adric. I love to see my favorite creators come together to do some shenanigans. this is crossover episode gold to me. 15/10
Absolutely love this crossover, got into the lore because of ad ric, and got into playing because of Poorhammer! Super fun video
I'm a hundred percent convinced that the majority of these are cropped down bits of larger pieces of artwork. The messy composition I expect comes from that.
Guys, Red and Green are Complementary colors. They are literally opposite each other on the color spectrum. The green background serves as a great way to have the red Blood Angels stand out in the art piece.
Beat me to it😅
It still doesn’t look good, I hate that colour combo
I had two things that bothered me about these covers:
1. The scale on the Custodies is weird. In the background there's a Vexila Prator and he only goes up to the dreadnaughts knee.
2. The 19th ed Space Marine isn't just a repeated of old promo art; it's the art of the 8th edition 2nd SM codex, so they are 0/2 for using new-to-cover-art.
The Black templars has this weird squatty off balanced stance. It looks like that tiny little gun is the first gun he's ever shot and it scared the crap out of him.
That ridiculous artwork of the Iron Warrior with his custom weapon makes me think of the City of Heroes “Frankengun.” When the MMORPG City of Heroes first shipped, the “weapon” powersets (sword, katana, axe, mace, gun) couldn’t be reskinned, so every mace guy would have the same hawkgirl-looking mace, for instance, and you couldn’t have a daredevil-style blackjack.
Well, the gun powerset had every possible kind of modern munition as a power you could unlock (machine gun, sniper rifle, shotgun, riot gun, grenade launcher, flamethrower) and so for years and years the only gun model your cool marksman superhero could use was an unholy quad-barreled monstrosity with an AA12 mag, an underbarrel grenade launcher, and a side-mounted flamethrower
These videos get edited and out to us so fast! Thank you!
The reason why you look at the foreground Votann is literally just cause he’s the only one with white armour. The entire image is this teal colour (the damn sky and armour mix), with 3 things that stick out, the Kahls blade, the jet of fire behind him, and the dwarf with white armour.
The lighting issue with Ksons is that the main character seems to have source lighting from almost a damn ring light infront of the page, while the light is clearly behind him. He needs to be darkened a bit and the lightning in his hand casting OSL on himself
The Black Templars Codex's ugly cover art was actually a selling point for getting the launch box with the John Blanche cover
1:02:00
If the striking scorpion had been making eye contact with the viewer and giving a thumbs up it would have been an automatic S-tier
I'm going to start off with saying that I like helmets and for the Imperial Guard codex if the main guy his arm was maybe slightly forward and was wearing one of those masks that the guard can wear for the basic troop model cuz it's kind of giving me that lone Guardsmen at the line field but with the mask and the helmet it just make it better
How can the Death Guard cover not feel like Death Guard? Besides Morti and his smoke, you have all the insects in the background. The PMs in the foreground are full of tentacles and disgusting elements. This meets the requirements sufficiently.
And I would have preferred to see Bricky as Night Lord =)
I feel like in every dispute on this tier list, my immediate thought was, “No, Brad is right about this.” Dunno what that says about me.
Not to defend it, but I think the green smoke of Blood Angels is meant to evoke the plague of Egypt, like in the old Ten Commandments movie where a green mist is what represents the Angels killing the Egyptian first-borns.
The axe on the Custodes codex looks like a pair of callipers, what's he doing with em? Contract work for Rogal Dorn?
The special edition Black Templar codex art should have been the main codex art too. That one is amazing.
Congratulations to Bricky his career will explode with this poorhammer episode!
I miss the old storytelling covers of older editoons.
I love the story being told on the Third Edition Space Marines cover, which was almost the end of the Crimson Fists.
My buddy nicknamed it "bad day at the office"
One thing I noticed is that a lot of the lower ranked ones have a high saturation background colour and it overwhelms the foreground. An obvious example here is the Custodes one, why am I getting blue from this? Their colour scheme is gold and red.
The combo that works well is two colours that contrast well and a very muted third colour in the background. Take the Dark Angels, dark green armour and off white for the hood and trim, with a pale orange/pink background. Grey knights: silver and turquoise against a purple background.
The worst offenders are the Blood Angels and Orks. Blood Angels, what the fuck is that overwhelming 00FF00 green background? I look at the flying units with that colour and I'm getting Necron energy from that. Orks is just washed out yellow, it's a GREENtide! It should have been mostly green with janky grey/black metallic weapons and random purple footprints in the background.
Blood Angels should absolutely have a jump pack assault on the cover, maybe coming down out of a clear blue sky in front of an explosion with a screaming gunship behind him.
Bricky finally made it on a good channel Good for him!
I like the artstyle of 9th/10th edition so much more than 8th. The Tau cover may look like the Space Marines, but it does everything so much better. I love it. Best covers are usually 3rd/4th edition covers for me. Especially Necrons and Tau.
I absolutely agree about the rules and codex points. I would absolutely buy Codexes for flavour and artwork. The rules should absolutely be able to be edited easily and shouldn't be something you have to buy constantly.
does anyone have a source on such high quality pictures on the full art versions of these codex arts? Some of these are crazy cool
The "your add here" almost made me die from laughter.
just because here's my ranking, because my opinions are objectively correct, of course.
Chain Saw Man: CSM
S: Ad Mech, Dark Angels, Thousand Sons, World Eaters,
A: Chaos Knights, Astra Militarum, Death Guard,
B: Leagues of Votann, Tyranids, Necrons, Black Templars, Grey Knights, Chaos Daemons
C: Space Wolves, Custodes, Deathwatch, T'au, Space Marines, Imperial Knights, Orks
D: Blood Angels, Drukhari
“Sweatpants so comfy your wife/gf will steal them”
Now THAT is how you advertise
A dropship deployment would be great for any of the worst covers of Space Marines. Just mid-deployment in the front lines would show some amazing aspects of any of their chapters. Like Space Wolves deploying any Wolfen Units as the foreground is filled with pelt-covered Space Wolf Marines firing away, grinning their fangs. Or regular Blood Angels deploying calmly as they allow those who've fallen to the Rage clean house in front of them, the regs only there cleaning up what was left like say an eldar pleading or a chaos cultist still alive with their legs blown off. And the ultramarines deployed as a variety of units like aggressors, reivers, or dreadnoughts taking the foreground. Even orks could do that, shit. Show some whacky vehicles deploying any ork, maybe some crawling over vehicles as they're deploying.
The skulls on the World Eaters cover make it look like they're surfing an avalanche of skulls.
S-Tier Cover, 10/10, Game of the Year.
The video editor needs a raise.......... for being in "PODCAST" form, these episodes are OUTSTANDINGLY edited. Big kudos.
Form a compensation standpoint, the singing spear flows to the Autarch’s lance uniting imaging
Loved the vid but I gotta say the Ork Cover looks the way it does because they are raiding a trench, that’s why they are firing down and storming in and over.
I was gonna say, literally shows them fighting Krieg, of course it's trench.