Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Oh Ghost Ark, You Complete Me.....


The Ghost Ark is not a kit.
The Ghost Ark is a curse. 
As models go, you have quick little jaunts like, say, the Rhino. It fits together quickly and simply, and is a solid little mid-afternoon jaunt in the hobby park. You see the leaves, you feel the wind on your face, and you’re done. A little too soon, perhaps, but it was pleasant. 

Then you have the Ghost Ark. The Ghost Ark is not there to remind you of life, putting the spring back into your step after spending hours in the dreary office of Other Models. The purpose of the Ghost Ark is to punish you for not buying enough Necron stuff in the first place. 



How dare you, Ghost Ark says. How dare you not buy flights of Destroyers and triads of Wraiths from the last codex. What was wrong with Pariahs, who did everything a single infantry unit could do, and better than everything else in our meager codex? How dare you reject them? 

But--but the only things that worked in the entire list were the Warriors, Immortals and Destroyers, Ghost Ark. What was I to do? I used Pariahs once or twice, but there wasn’t enough points left for everything else. And Wraiths, they just died too quickly. 
This chap is my new favorite Necron, ever. 
Shh, shh. That is all in the past. Ghost Ark says. I am here now. 
Yes, Ghost Ark is here. Make no mistake, cool and serpentine, this thing is the very best of the Cutting Room floor: 
Do not, repeat, DO NOT throw away concept sketches. EVER.
The art department at Lucasfilm knows this, and now GW does, too.
The pilot is in as many pieces as they could make a figure. I was was surprised that the legs were attached as an integrated piece, because they were separate from the pelvis, which is its own separate bit. There are the obligatory torso halves, but there are separate HEAD and NECK pieces, for pete’s sake. One arm is separated at the elbow for no apparent reason. Then you have a spinal column connecting him to command chair. 
What other infantry-sized miniature has a separate neck?
Still my favorite part of the entire model. 

Sorry, did you want quality out of your Necron vehicles? No one (with any common sense) bought flights of slab-sided, boring monoliths, so in retribution, here is your delicate plastic flower. That is our revenge, Necron player. Drown in the depths of our design. Choke on our cyclopean geometry. Ghost Ark is the other side of the diabolical eldritch coin. A pyramid with a big gay emerald on it was iceberg tip of the horrible writhing squid monster sleeping beneath the surface of a lackluster codex. Therein lies an underworld of poorly-written fluff 
and way too many open-topped vehicles.  

Like the well-engineered Rhino, this thing does fit together like a dream (well, a different sort of dream). But make no mistake, there are quite a few places to go wrong in this garden of earthly delights, and if your attention to detail wavers, Ghost Ark will not forgive you. Slovenliness will be met with disaster, so you’d better have your wits about while you’re working on this. 
You should most definitely not be writing a review. Ghost Ark will punish this most severely.  
Ghost Ark #2 of 4 turned out rather bendy. Maybe they flex in flight like a fish?
At any rate, this is a mold issue of some kind, and 100% not my fault.  
Necron players are going to be buying and assembling these things in spades, in their many hundreds. Why not? It’s an AV13 transport that restores warriors to their units, has banks of gauss weapons it can fire on the move, and is generally a good idea. Marines wish they had something as good as Ghost Ark. Imperial Guard... well, they have the Vendetta, which is arguably better. Not since we got that graceful bird have we been gifted so.
I will say it this but once, ever, GW, so you’d better  listen up: this makes up for the awful tragedy that is the Storm Raven.
The Cestus... well, you’ll have to give us a while for that one. 


On second thought, no, it's just too bloody ugly and stupid. 



8 comments:

Mordian7th said...

Hah! I cracked up reading this post - very, very funny! Love how they turned out, that burnished penny look you have going is just fantastic. Great work, man!

Von said...

So... do you actually like it/the new Necrons or not? I experience confusion in this matter. I feel that you're pointing out issues well but I lack any sense that a conclusion has been reached... and I wouldn't be reading 40K blogs if I wanted to make up my own mind about things, would I?

Mark said...

@ Mordian7th: thanks man! I was a bit unsure about whether it would work, but it goes so well with all of the other models (Tyracrons included) that it looks like the way to go.

@ Von: I was going to cover your question more in-depth in the next post, but the short answer is.... eeeeeh I'm cautiously optimistic. It's got a few things that were done well (tesla weapons) but it's also got a lot of things that could have been done better.

Minitrol said...

"but it's also got a lot of things that could have been done better."

Is this not standard Games Workshop policy?

I believe when you start you are given a bottle of useless glue, a whisper which tells you hope much a model really costs to make and a kitten de-motivational poster with the caption "Don't Aim Too High"

Nice painting by the way! I kinda like the wavyness...makes it seem ... intentional...

Anonymous said...

hi, i love the paint scheme. any chance of a tutorial showing how you do the rusty penny look?

Mark said...

@ Anonymous: check the comments section of the WIP article from November 2011.

Lots of people are asking this, so I may just do a photo tutorial some time.

Cornumortem said...

The Cestus needs forgiveness, it's not easy transporting all those termies & smashing through bulkheads.

Mark said...

Nope, not gonna happen. The Cestus, like the Stormtalon, is incompetence heaped upon stupidity.