The Stormcast Eternals, and what the studio changed
Games Workshop's designers described the brief behind the new Stormcast in unusual detail: not fixing them, but making one painted model turn into an army.
Two Stormcast Eternals are the first models on this blog, in a showcase post that is mostly about where my edge highlighting went wrong. So when Games Workshop published a studio interview about redesigning the range, it was the first time I had read designers talking about models I was actually holding.
The brief in it is not what I expected.
The question they set themselves
A designer puts it directly: “How do we make it so that someone who buys and paints a Stormcast Eternal gets the urge to collect a whole army?”*
Read that again, because it is a commercial question phrased as a craft one, and it is unusually honest. Not “how do we make a better warrior”. Not “how do we fix what people complained about”. How do we make finishing one model produce the desire for thirty.
Everything else in the interview follows from it.
The direction, and the specific changes
The stated direction was grittier and more gothic elements added to warriors who had been straightforwardly heroic. The team drew on concept art spanning years, including older sketches by John Blanche.*
The changes named are small and physical, which is what makes them worth reading:
Larger vambraces. Reinforced nose bridges on the masks, for a more brutal edge. Chainmail instead of scalemail, for a grittier texture. Axes rather than hammers as the primary weapon. Flame motifs where there had been sunbursts and lightning bolts. Skeletal beastmarks on the pauldrons in place of standard heraldry. Larger, more ornate collars paired with more modest helmets.*
Why that list is more interesting than it looks
Nothing in it changes what a Stormcast Eternal is. They are the same size, the same silhouette, the same golden-armoured immortals. What changed is the surface texture and the accent motifs.
And if the brief was to make one painted model demand an army, that makes sense in a way I only understood after painting two of them. Scalemail is the same operation repeated until you resent it. Chainmail takes drybrushing and a wash. A sunburst is a flat shape that punishes an unsteady hand; a flame motif is more forgiving because it is supposed to be irregular.
I want to be careful here, because that reading is mine and not theirs. The interview gives the brief and the changes. Whether the changes were chosen for paintability is my inference from having struggled with the older ones, and Games Workshop does not say it.
The credits, and the thing I noticed after
Six people are named on this project: Darren as design lead, Christian the sculptor, Sam as design manager, Phil on narrative, Ben as product developer, Max from ’Eavy Metal.*
All six by first name only. That turned out to be a pattern rather than an accident, and it became its own post: the people behind the plastic.
One thing the interview does not claim
That the redesign was a reaction to the models being unpopular. I went in assuming it would be, because that is the story the internet tells about Stormcast Eternals. The motivation the studio states is collectability, which is a different claim, and putting the internet’s version in their mouths would be inventing a motive.
If you own the older ones, as I do, the useful takeaway is smaller and more concrete: the new kits are the same models with a rougher surface and different accents, chosen by people who wanted you to finish one and immediately want another.
- *Warhammer Studio Interview – Designing the New Stormcast Eternals
Warhammer Community · 25 June 2024
Backs Games Workshop's design team on remaking the Stormcast Eternals: the brief was to make someone who paints one want to collect an army, the direction was grittier and more gothic, the team drew on concept art spanning years including older John Blanche sketches, and the specific changes named are larger vambraces, reinforced nose bridges, chainmail instead of scalemail, axes instead of hammers, and flame motifs instead of sunbursts. Designers are named by first name only.