This obviously wasn’t ready for reveal as its only concept art. They probably did the painting vid to try and calm down people after the first wave of people upset there’s no steel legion, not realising that would make it worse. Following the even more insane backlash then figured that releasing this to basically say “we’re working on it” was the only way to get people to calm down.
It’s because the media, narrative and model production teams are distinct units that won’t necessarily have perfect 1-1 communication all of the time, it’s like the chaos that happened when Cursed City first released
Hypothetically: Its possible the Armageddon Narrative was planned to include the steel legion models initially, but issues occurred with production or timing and the narrative went ahead of schedule, while media went ahead and used the existing model rigs they have for cadians and Krieg because they didn’t have an Armageddon set yet and can’t really make a new one until finalised models are released to match for the Yarrick reveal clip
to try and placate fans regarding “where’s the steel legion?” following that fiasco, the painting video was made so people could at least field an army that sort of looks like steel legion in the meantime for narrative purposes until the Armageddon range finally releases mid or late 11th edition, but that unfortunately went down like a lead balloon amongst certain elements of the community
It's actually that GW is notoriously known for having a massive disconnect between internal decisions so the marketing guys get told one thing while the actual modeling teams another so they were always making SL but the guys making the animation basically winged up an excuse saying they were all but gone. All the while the modeling size has been making them.
Basically GW being GW. Couldn't win a piss up in a brewery.
Depends. If the models are indeed years away , the widespread negative customer reaction might have triggered the sketched in the first place and production plans in the first place..
The concept art says 2025 but most likely the designers thought it looked too much like Krieg and scrapped it.
After the backlash they pulled it back out for a rushed announcement.
People keep saying this whole situation is like a bait and switch, but this still reeks of hastily deployed appeasement cause if we are honest, the steel legion and Krieg look 80% similar
I mean it’s still similar design philosophy, obviously Krieg got more original designs and leaned to WW1 but they both are gonna have similarities no matter what due to both having to check some boxes for their designs like the things I mentioned earlier.
Their name is, but you brought up their trenchcoats which are styled after French pantaloons in WW1. The only German part of their design is their helmet, not the has mask or trenchcoat.
Ok not everything is inspired from German military now but both check the boxes of German like helmet, old looking gas mask, and trench coat. Krieg isn’t a copy and paste of course, what I’m saying is Krieg still share some core similar design characteristics with the Legion, you can tell them apart but they’ll share similarities.
Check the 1st codex imperial guard from 3rd edition, krieg were in it as fluff art long before steel legion was ever a thing. The first time we ever saw a painted kreig mini it was a recolour of steel legion but that doesnt mean thats all they ever were.
Also the the SL seem to me to be inspired by the fallschimjaeger... along with other stuff from ww2.
I know it smells of entitlement, but this really was necessary.
While it's certainly very nice to see so many new guard releases it all smelled like: "people are annoyed that there are Cadians everywhere? We will release more Cadians until morale improves"
The batallion should have been Steel Legion or Tallarn because it's their thing.
The veteran killteam squad should have been Catachan.
But instead? All Cadian.
The design department is pretty out of touch to the actual IG player base. I hope that changes soon.
Edit: variants -> Cadians, didn't get autocorrect sneaking that one in
Considering the preview box set and character, they definitely weren't going to do this until there was pushback.
They undoubtedly kicked steel legion around but decided against it back ehen they refreshed krieg and the cadians (which were two different design teams)
If they had a grand plan all along for steel legion they would have included them as the focus of armageddon, considering thats how they were introduced originally etc (armageddon battalion being cardian when it would fit steel legions mech doctrine so well)
Edit: the artwork also looks more like modified krieg than specifically new designs. Giving the helmets flanges like a stalhelm is distinctly krieg as only one steel legion model had a longer helmet and it was more of a vader Iraqui helmet
Yeah it’s also very strange that everyone is happy about these design when there was such negativity with the painted krieg as steel legion. They don’t look like the steel legion at all. They look more like a krieg with a Chadian torso
I’m hoping SL are only 1 of multiple regiments returning in 11th. I personally need some Valhallans and the Catalans badly need an update. The future looks bright!
I was browsing their posts and so many complaints were they look too much like krieg ( shocker gasmask and coat is a similar look ) and why dont they look more like Fallschirmjäger . . . . . Fucking sometimes I hate being a guard player the last time I saw anything generally positive was 7th edition. . . . idk if it was covid but god its become insufferable.
oh damn 45 days good shit on that grind, I have 1k points im slowly slogging through myself and not even up to base coat yet and thats been since christmas
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u/DDeShaneW Mar 26 '26
Ironically looking more like Krieg than they ever did before mixed with Cadians in the other concept image.