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OK, so until a few years back GW made some decent multipart character model kits. The Empire General and Wizards for example are spectacular kits with tons of uses.

On the 40k side we didn't get too many good ones, the SM commander was a big disappointment (one lighting claw? seriously?) and the Chaos Termi lord was meh at best. Did anyone else in 40k ever get a multipart hero kit?

But even so, they were useful products for conversions.

But now the move is to one-post plastics replacing several metal/finecast figures. The new plastic commissar comes to mind, replacing a half dozen monopose figures with different weapons and poses. But he has one pose and one set of weapon options. Sure he's easier to convert but...

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why is GW making models that combine the worse of both worlds, monopose with no options and much more expensive to produce?

My only theory is the premium price they command, most plastic kits are 2-4 sprues for $30-$40, but now GW is selling 1/4 of a sprue for $20. But since character models sell fewer units, especially if they all have the same pose that can't be profitable.

Maybe it's about the sculpting? Monopose models allow for more dramatic poses vs the limited options in a multipart kit?

Seriously, any thoughts?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Monopose models allow for more dramatic poses vs the limited options in a multipart kit?

I suspect that's the main reason. Sculpting for a specific pose lets them work with more dramatic, characterful poses more easily.

Not that it couldn't be done with multi-posable kits, but it's certainly easier this way.

But again, the problem is most players won't buy multiple ones.

The new plastic Commissar is decent enough, but I'd only buy one. A plastic Commissar kit with multiple weapon and head options, I'd buy 3 or 4. GW would have to include more/larger sprues but would sell more.

Why would GW choose art over commerce?

Or do they really think we'll buy several of the same monopose plastic model?

The one that burns my bacon is the Painboss. I realize that the pose that he is in would not be attainable with a head and neck that is compatible with the Ork boy/nob bits, but, unlike the Flash Gits, they made no effort to fix that. Even the new Big Mek has a wrench arm that is compatible with other ork sprues (as well as his head). It's a real disappointment given the general kitbash friendliness of the orks.

I have two major suspects. GW's disengagement with their customer base, and their seemingly maniacal reliance on accounting.

On their mania for accounting, I really feel, from speaking to people formerly in the company, that GW's decisions to, among others, split Chaos into three books for fantasy, and into two books for 40k, and to drop Lost and the Damned, and Tau Auxiliaries, and drop old-style lootas (where they could have SM or IG weapons), was because bean-counters wanted to make sure that they could account for 'which army' people were buying. With multipart characters, it is impossible to say whether someone is buying a model because they want that model, or because they want "those bitz". I know that sounds ridiculous, but hey, they used to be able to sell IG troops to Tau players, and Devastator kits to Ork players, so who's ridiculous now?

With allies and summonable daemons I'm hoping that the pendulum is swinging the other way, but who knows?

On top of that, GW doesn't hold Games Days or tournaments any more. They don't attend tournaments. They don't have a forum, nor a Facebook page. Aside from my own (very low) opinion of that, it also means that GW gets really limited feedback on what actual fans are actually doing. They don't SEE people converting models and kitbashing them, and they don't provide many avenues for their fans to share that in such a way that GW can see it (you can post here, but their Twitter feed is kind of hidden even on their OWN site).

I think that the combination of the two has created a filter bubble where GW doesn't see any benefits of multipart characters, and doesn't see any detriment to not offering them. It's really sad, but the recent trend with the Ogryn and the Mega-nobs is heartening (where a non-character kit contains options for making characters). I think this might be a good "back door' way for GW to keep making multipart heroes.

With the infantry kits they release now, why bother with the fancy character builds like you describe? What modelling opportunities are you expecting for any army that can't be found in kits like the Ork Nobz, SW Grey Hunters, DE Wyches and Warriors, or AM Militarum Tempestus? There's nothing they would put in the kits you want they don't already include in other kits.

PS the new commissar comes with bolt and plasma pistols.

A single monopose plastic mould is cheaper than a larger mould with multiple poses or separate parts.

However perhaps this is only a first wave and more poses will be done in the future.

GW may also be sticking it to bitz sellers. HQ options usually have the best looking stuff. By making it mono pose you cant cut and resell.

When the alternative is probably making a monopose finecast model I'm not going to complain. At least a monopose plastic model is probably going to be cast correctly and won't bend/break as soon as I look at it too hard.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
A single monopose plastic mould is cheaper than a larger mould with multiple poses or separate parts.

I see this as very much the reason, and I don't disagree with it in theory.

They can get 4 monopose plastic characters onto a single mold. If they break this up between different armies, they have 1 mold reaching potentially 4 different customer bases, which makes the return on the mold a lot easier to work off. If they wind up with a character that doesn't sell, they have 3 others selling. Though this does mean they will have piles of a character that doesn't sell and they can't not cast.

Where I disagree with it is in pricing, but that's a whole other discussion.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
But again, the problem is most players won't buy multiple ones.

The new plastic Commissar is decent enough, but I'd only buy one. A plastic Commissar kit with multiple weapon and head options, I'd buy 3 or 4. GW would have to include more/larger sprues but would sell more.

Why would GW choose art over commerce?

Or do they really think we'll buy several of the same monopose plastic model?

I doubt they're looking at it that way, but rather just that these were designed specifically as a replacement for an equivalent metal/'Fine'cast model. Character models have never really been aimed at getting people to buy multiples... they make up for it with the insane pricing.

Unless it's warhammer fantasy, where multiples are normal.

Vampire Counts can easily run 4-5 Cairn Wraiths or Banshees, and even 2-3 Necromancers.

This is where monopose hurts though, since it gets pretty boring.

On top of that, GW doesn't hold Games Days or tournaments any more. They don't attend tournaments. They don't have a forum, nor a Facebook page. Aside from my own (very low) opinion of that, it also means that GW gets really limited feedback on what actual fans are actually doing. They don't SEE people converting models and kitbashing them, and they don't provide many avenues for their fans to share that in such a way that GW can see it (you can post here, but their Twitter feed is kind of hidden even on their OWN site).

Has anyone actually ever seen GW do a customer survey or ask for feedback? I've never known them once do a survey of any kind, so how do they know anything about their customer base? I think they use assumptions and guesswork , and have the arrogance that people will simply buy what they make because it's Warhammer.

GW has always had monopose figures, mainly done in metal. Almost all Warhammer Fantasy characters are monopose and always have been.

This new "kit" format seems to be an outgrowth of the Space Hulk/Dark Vengeance type of model making. People buy lots of both just for the models and GW hears that from their store owners. Competition like Infinity, Wyrd, and PP sell tons of monopose figures.

Given that GW honestly believes they're selling models to collectors who just love to paint, it's pretty understandable that they would go this route. I expect that multipose models will only be found in kits that make units and not in any kit that makes a character or other special figure.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

On top of that, GW doesn't hold Games Days or tournaments any more. They don't attend tournaments. They don't have a forum, nor a Facebook page. Aside from my own (very low) opinion of that, it also means that GW gets really limited feedback on what actual fans are actually doing. They don't SEE people converting models and kitbashing them, and they don't provide many avenues for their fans to share that in such a way that GW can see it (you can post here, but their Twitter feed is kind of hidden even on their OWN site).

Has anyone actually ever seen GW do a customer survey or ask for feedback? I've never known them once do a survey of any kind, so how do they know anything about their customer base? I think they use assumptions and guesswork , and have the arrogance that people will simply buy what they make because it's Warhammer.

They used to. It is another of the things they gave up during the past 10 years, presumably to save money.

The thing is you can do customer surveys and stuff much easier and cheaper now with the internet than in the old days when you had to do everything on paper.

GW don't do any e-marketing at all, as far as I can see, despite trying to build a huge database of registered users through their web store site. Perhaps they aim to start doing it at some future time.


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 Breotan wrote:
GW has always had monopose figures, mainly done in metal. Almost all Warhammer Fantasy characters are monopose and always have been.

This new "kit" format seems to be an outgrowth of the Space Hulk/Dark Vengeance type of model making. People buy lots of both just for the models and GW hears that from their store owners. Competition like Infinity, Wyrd, and PP sell tons of monopose figures.

Given that GW honestly believes they're selling models to collectors who just love to paint, it's pretty understandable that they would go this route. I expect that multipose models will only be found in kits that make units and not in any kit that makes a character or other special figure.

That was then and this is now. In the early days when most models except the original plastic Beakies were metal monopose, they at least did a variety of different monopose SMs and so on, so you could get variety into a unit.

In historicals people always used to be fairly happy with ranks of identical monopose figures, particularly for regular troops, but most manufacturers offered some kind of variation to stop units being totally boring. As time went on and technology improved, companies began to offer figure codes which had several variations on the base pose and equipment. This was even achieved in 15mm, which is quite a feat.

Nowadays, of course, there are increasing numbers of plastic historicals on the market, so GW really seem to be working backwards from what looked like a leading position.

What makes it more strange is that GW buyers are very enthusiastic about plastic multi-pose figures and deride stupid old metal and mono-pose and tend to see multi-pose as a necessity for a modern game.

When you look at the small numbers of figures needed for 40K, I agree that they look nicer if they are all posed differently.

I've no problems with them as monopose plastics but, like Loki, I have problems on their price. I'd take a good-looking pose over customization any time. But if you can combine both somehow.... that'd be best.

Reason is simple easier to make molds for and cheaper to produce means more profit for the treasure chest!

Because sculpting is hard guys!!!


I'd love multi-part multi-option kits for character models. Imagine a full-blown Warboss kit? Or plastic Autarch kit? Archon? They'd be great.

Instead we get a Nurgle Herald that costs almost as much as 10 Plaguebearers. WTF???

Howard A Treesong wrote:Has anyone actually ever seen GW do a customer survey or ask for feedback?.

in the late 90s, they had a survey in White Dwarf about their games. To encourage people to full out out and return it, one random survey respondent won a tour of the factory and one of every single boxed set they had in production at that time.

I think there may have been a similar survey during 3rd edition, but I think that one has a less impressive prize...

Knowing GW it's likely to give bits sellers the finger. Make it impossible to convert or salvage for the bits. Something like the new SM Captain though is ridiculous. $30 for a mono-pose dude with an odd loadout, and sculpted in such a way that you can't even do a weapon swap. I hate assembling multi-part kits sometimes but at least you get some variety.

 Breotan wrote:
GW has always had monopose figures, mainly done in metal. Almost all Warhammer Fantasy characters are monopose and always have been.

The difference however is that metal/resin molds are relatively cheap to make but plastic costs $1000s of dollars per mold.

So the economics for years was that you did plastics for what you would sell a lot of, metal/resin for things you'd sell a few of.

Which is why I just can't wrap my head around making plastic commissars/SM commanders/chaos champs that you'll sell one per player. And if a player doesn't like the look of that particular model you'll sell zero. I don't like the current plastic commissar so no sale, but if it was a kit that let me make my own...

I guess in the end it's frustrating to me because I got into mini gaming due to GW's multipart plastics, the old RT beakies. Then I got back into it when the Catachans and Zombies came out (my second army was an IG zombie force).

I don't want to correctly assemble Lord Hugesword Asskicker and paint him in the right colors.

I want to create my own heroes and characters and cannon fodder. So GW's current line of good-looking but hard to convert plastics is a total turn off.

GWs cost in mold making is relatively little as it's all done in-house. So the cost will be limited to labour and I imagine any small character kit will be in multiples per mold and using spare capacity in existing plastic manufacture.

Generally I think that these kits are really very good. IG already have lots of character options in the various HQ boxsets. Indeed these combined with the Commisar example give a great swath of options as the character kits are immensely convertable by virtue of being plastic.

Over time hopefully the character ranges will be expanded by both more monopose and either individual multipose kits or options in unit boxes.

Obviously historically there was a huge range of monopose metals it will take time to reach those levels of choice.

The idea of multi-pose plastic would be to replace multiple mono-pose metal figures with a single flexible kit.

Apart from the utility to the end user, GW would save by not having to carry multiple SKUs. For example, they could do a Space Marine Captain with enough optional heads, shoulder pads and accoutrements to customise the same kit to any of the variant chapters.

Or at least that would be my business reckoning, perhaps not GW's.

The last GW I bought was the Sternguard box, which gives youi enough bits to assemble every marine in possibly infinite number of ways. So I'm not getting your complaint that GW is mainly monopose these days.

 Peregrine wrote:
When the alternative is probably making a monopose finecast model I'm not going to complain. At least a monopose plastic model is probably going to be cast correctly and won't bend/break as soon as I look at it too hard.

Maybe a monopose plastic will be those things, but it will certainly cost every bit as much as a 1/16 scale [compared 1/56] miniatures from a traditional model, that likely comes with some option as well. GW needs to understand Plastic miniatures are worth a lot less than resin and metal

On a similar note, I was enthused for the Wild West Exodus plastics but I hear they too are monopose with each set of arms only fillng one body.

Sigh...


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 sing your life wrote:
The last GW I bought was the Sternguard box, which gives youi enough bits to assemble every marine in possibly infinite number of ways. So I'm not getting your complaint that GW is mainly monopose these days.

I've been mostly getting metal the last few years (yeah I know, I know) but I hear the new Ogryns can only be put together one way. The right way. The GW way.

Yeah files and knives and bitz and green stuff can turn anything into anything, but GW does not seem to want to make it easy.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
On a similar note, I was enthused for the Wild West Exodus plastics but I hear they too are monopose with each set of arms only fillng one body.

I'm thinking WWX is a skirmish game, so you're only use only going to use one set of plastics, consequently you're not really going to see any repeats of a miniature.

Not a popular opinion but I prefer the monopose HQ figures as it gives the collector a reference of date and value of the model. I know this has little value to gamers but GW is not all about gaming.

Case in point the limited release SM when the webstore is redone. The model holds more value in a single pose rather than made with miltiple flexible poses.

Really it seems like plastic for bulk units, resin/metal for characters would have been the way to go, with all actual units being done in plastic (as opposed to the old days when some of them were all metal). But the problem with monopose is that as was said if you don't like the kit, then you won't buy any. It should have been a character kit with different heads, weapon loadouts and other bits. So like the SM Captain should have had different weapons, heads, sculpted shoulderpads for different Chapters; the Chaos Champion could have the same with different looks for each god.

My Herald of Nurgle is a monopose plastic, and after assembling it I can't help but feel like monopose allows them to hide the seams between the different pieces even better than they used to. I barely had to touch it.

I wouldn't be surprised if GW makes monopose miniatures so that it makes it that much more difficult for third party bits suppliers to have their pieces added to the original GW model.

 Quarterdime wrote:
My Herald of Nurgle is a monopose plastic, and after assembling it I can't help but feel like monopose allows them to hide the seams between the different pieces even better than they used to. I barely had to touch it.

I'm thinking this is one of reason they're doing this.