EPIC28

Playing EPIC in 28mm.

Tuesday 13 July 2021

Unpacking DKK now that the Kill Team release has been announced

 If you read this blog with any frequency at all, you've either seen this or made a conscious decision not to watch it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA3RmSKVnOw

And knowing my penchant for the DKK, you could be forgiven for assuming my unbridled joy.  

So as you follow me down this particular rabbit hole, do please remember that I'm a middle aged, self aggrandising arse with an unjustifiably high opinion of my own opinions.  And we need to wed this to the fact that I'm not GWs target audience.  And if you've read this far, you probably aren't either.  

The first hurdle to unbridled joy is my own innate snobbery.  We all like it when we know a really good pub or bar and no-one else we know is aware of it.  Or we support a local team in the national game and can feel like we're more of real fan that the thousands of Man Utd fans who've never been to Manchester.  Well, for me for a long time it was the DKK; despite not being the Steel Legion I was looking for their Forge World niche-ness and resinous awkwardness were something to revel in.  I was hooked and spent a lot of money having them painted by someone who was good at it in order to revel in the Glory that was my DKK collection.  So mainstream plasticality means the end of the FW lines and the inevitability of the DKK becoming more widespread.  Just me being an old fart. harrumph.

Allegedly, the new sprue has an interesting and diverse selection of parts.  On some of the kreig FB groups some people seem to think that they can see Grenadiers.  FW haven't stocked Grenadiers for over a year and there are no grenadiers in the selection as far as I can make out, so it's not even as if you could build one in ten as Grenadiers; y'know, buy eleven boxes to build ten rifle squads and a Grenadier squad.  Of course two or three in ten (given the modular nature of the minis) might be better (?).  But I already have Grenadiers, engineers, a platoon in summer uniform, Uhlans and so on.  There's nothing here I need...

And of course the elephant in the room is that the DKK attract a lot of inappropriate attention due to their aesthetic, which is viewed by some as redolent of Nazi militarism.  This is not helped by the fact that their name is the German word for war.  It's possible that I contribute to this myself by using German unit designations and giving the character models vaguely German sounding names.  But there do seem to be some people out there who latch on to the visuals, hear the name 'Kreig', read the backstory and instantly turn all brownshirt.  I'd like to stay away from all of that but the advent of plastic Kreig is just going to ramp it up.  Maybe.

And the last thing is that the plastics are going to be bigger and chunkier than the FW resin fellas.  Of course this is not an issue, people are different sizes.  Admiral Drax is bigger than me and Mr Lee is bigger than him.  And it won't really matter on the table top as even as a player, you are normally 4' or more away and small differences are hard to spot.  And I'm not really a subscriber to the 'they're all clones' idea either.  I'm just old and resistant to change.  To be honest I'm not sure that I'm even cheesed off that they are plastic from now on.  These days a GW plastic army is possibly as expensive as my resin one was when I bought it.  It's just me being a grouch at my loss of cache.

https://i.redd.it/hqfue7zf4fa71.png Having said all of that, you're still wondering, aren't you ?  Of course I've asked Col Gravis for a box.  But only one.  for a look.  

4 comments:

  1. ...and I'm probably bigger than all of you, by height and (sadly) width.

    lol, so this is basically an old man get off my lawn post then?

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    Replies
    1. Sounds like it and I bet he won't give us our ball back either.

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    2. I've long resigned myself to the notion that probably from when I began this blog, I was not actually in GW's target audience (new mid teenaged players, who then get hooked for life to some extent or other and continue to provide trickle feeds for decades).

      So those of "us" who are, to use a modern phrase 'Saltie' about the resin, about the lore, about the sunk costs, about the misconceptions (with our own private vision of they are supposed to be/represent) and about so many other things really have nothing to complain about.

      These plastic DKK are progress. Every Iggy faction's fb group has spend a decade or more twining on about how they should be the next ones to get a plastic kit. And now it's here, still some people are not happy.

      There's a huge amount of noise about whether or not this is a whole new iggy army or just a one off box. I suspect that not is it a one off box, but that like the Cursed City, the supply is gonna dry up pretty quick too.

      All the guff about new roolz and so doesn't bother me, so I won't mention it. If they come with newer, bigger bases, that's not gonna bother me either. I play 5ed and have spare 25s.

      There's a lot of noise out there at the minute and some of it has sort of lost sight of the fact that it's hobby and every single person doin' it can do it different and have a smile of their face. As long as they are enjoying themselves.

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  2. I say go with it. You can call yourself the DKKOG and whip those newcomers into shape with your superior knowledge and love of this faction.

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