To you, how important are model posability and parts interchangeability?

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**-Guardsman-**

These past few years, GW has been moving away from posable models and releasing models with dynamic but non-customizable poses, even for basic troops like Chainrasps and Battle Sisters. I'm wondering what players think of this trend.

For my part, I hate it. I find it very tedious to build models that allow no variation, no matter how cool they may look. I can make allowances for characters (hence why I chose the second option), but I would still much prefer them to be posable to at least some extent.

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**Gadzilla666**

I'm going with number 2 because I hate having multiples of the same model in my infantry, but it's ok for a special character to be monopose as there will only be one of them in my army. Generic hq's, however, shouldn't be monopose, as I may have more than one of that particular type of hq in my army.

**Elbows**

Do not care. Do I want at least 2-3 basic poses for an infantry model? Yes. Do I need more than that? No. I actually prefer metal minis for a lot of my stuff simply because it's additional steps I don't have to bother with.

**Sgt. Cortez**

The best character model GW has released is the CSM Terminator lord/ sorcerer. It is completely posable, has enough Bits to support the lacking Terminator Set and has all options available to the unit, even a homunculus. When GW changed to plastic characters they should have taken that one as an example. With the new canoness and the Dark Angels guy I'm really hoping we'll see a trend towards variable characters. I'd be okay with paying 20€ for a character like that. But for a monopose with no Bits at all? Go away.

**Lammia**

What about not particularly posable but relatively interchangeable?

**Elbows**

For character models, particularly those with numerous wargear options - options are fine, even at the cost of pose-ability. GW did this "right" in the past and has since gone in the opposite direction. GW, for instance, at one point had a great little two-wizard box kit with a handful of options for heads, wands, and some doo-dads. It's not anywhere near approaching the quality of the Frostgrave wizard build-a-box options...but it was a well thought out kit which allowed a large number of wizards to be built. The modern single-pose plastics often come with zero wargear options, making it a rather stupid idea.

**Inquisitor Lord Katherine**

I'm pretty much the opposite of number 2:
I'd like characters to be poseable, especially if I need several of them, but for troops choices like Guardsmen or Grey Hunters, I'm good enough with like a dozen poses, with one caveat: none of them should stand out.

Stand outs, like the Infiltrator holding the pistol, the option to build a guardsman with a grenade, or the metal Battle Sister pulling the pin with her teeth stand out from their squad and draw attention to the fact that there's like 8 of them in the army. It's fine if there's only like a dozen unique infantry poses, because troops look best when they're largely uniform anyway, as long as there's nobody to make it really obvious.

**Cheex**

There could definitely be a middle ground.

Let's be honest, even with fully poseable models people tended to only put them together in about three poses that were truly different. Everything else was just a variation on those. Even the vaunted CSM Chaos Lord/Sorceror box or the old SM Captain box were filled with amazing bits - but realistically the poseability was very limited.

The newer sculpts provide several unique poses, and each of those is done in a way that looks a lot more natural.

What kits need are ways to vary the model's silhouette more than its pose. The new CSM box does this pretty well, with interchangeable heads, shoulderpads and backpacks, for example. With a little cutting and filing, you could also put weapons on different bodies to what they're intended for.

If there's one thing I do miss, though, it's the sheer number of weapon options in character boxes. Some newer characters are doing it better (e.g. the Dark Angels captain), but some kits like the SM Lieutenants seem a bit limited to me.

**Gitdakka**

What do you mean with the "dynamic" option? Because if im gonna have monopose models i want them to be doing fairly simple things, like standing/kneeling and firing or marching/advancing, not balancing on a rock, doing backflips or running amd shooting sideways.

So I guess monopose but not dynamic?

**ccs**

It doesn't matter too much to me.

But then when I started playing it was 99% mono=pose metal.... I learned how to convert things in that medium just fine. So mono-pose plastic isn't a problem if I want a different pose.
The one thing I've found annoying with the plastics though is when things like the legs are molded onto the mounts etc. For ex; my buddy just assembled some of the current boar riders for AoS. Those are some seriously cool orcs/boars & I have some ideas. But converting the boars is way difficult due to the orc legs being part of the boar sculpt.

**vict0988**

For Necrons the more mono-pose I can make the troops the better, one of the Immortal models in each pack of 5 has an extremely fiddly coil for its carbine that has broken on most of mine, I'd rather have one less option if that meant more options were more sturdy.

For Orks or Warriors or Chaos, mono-pose looks horrible and I thought it was really tame on the old Chaos Warriors, so while I voted "I don't care", I actually care a lot, just not about the army I play most of the time. As far as characters go, I do find it pretty lame to have 3 Overlords that look the same, but it's not a big deal. Much bigger deal if I was playing Chaos or Orks, but then I wouldn't want posable, I'd want 5-10 set dynamic poses. Same with Overlords actually, I'd rather have a different interesting pose for each weapon option than one slightly posable model with different weapon bits.

**Jidmah**

I'm torn. For horde units like gretchin, boyz, lootas or pox walkers, I couldn't care less about posability. Heck, I would sacrifice posability for never having to glue on shootas on boyz ever again.

For my plague marines it's different though. Due to conquest I have six instances of the ETB set and two DI sets. With their unique poses and looks, it's very obvious that I'm fielding the same model over and over again. So some interchangeability for heads and arms would be great.
Obviously, the "big" plague marine set does it way better than these entry-level sets. But, the price difference is huge, you can have 20 ETB/VI marines for the same money as one 7 marine posable set with all options.

**Jackal90**

My gaming started with pretty much pure mono pose models so I’m really not bothered by it.

I do like conversion opportunities though, so I’ll likely just swap and chop as desired.
My current project is a 30k militia army using Necromunda enforcers as my troops, so tons of different poses and models to be created from the kit.
This one kit will be grenadiers, medics, characters, tank and artillery crew etc, so great fun to chop and change a generic box.

Still love the old mono pose goff orks though.
I’d quite happily take 30 of those in a unit.
Only chops I’d make is unit upgrades (nob, heavies etc)

**nareik**

The middlehammer plastics have really grown on me as they are generally very well posed. The subsequent posable plastics were very exciting at the time, due to the possibility of variety.

The possibility of variety is a double edged sword. The multipose plastics that are designed with dynamic pieces. These have e the potential to look great and unique, but unfortunately it isn’t always so easy to assemble them in a way that looks kinaesthetically pleasing: we’ve all seen khorne berserkers that look like they are drunk disco dancers.

There is a middle ground to be had where the models don’t look too repetitive but also are difficult to assemble badly. The current smaller boxes with maybe half a dozen cheap troops do this pretty well for me.

**Sgt_Smudge**

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:I'm pretty much the opposite of number 2:
I'd like characters to be poseable, especially if I need several of them, but for troops choices like Guardsmen or Grey Hunters, I'm good enough with like a dozen poses, with one caveat: none of them should stand out.

Stand outs, like the Infiltrator holding the pistol, the option to build a guardsman with a grenade, or the metal Battle Sister pulling the pin with her teeth stand out from their squad and draw attention to the fact that there's like 8 of them in the army. It's fine if there's only like a dozen unique infantry poses, because troops look best when they're largely uniform anyway, as long as there's nobody to make it really obvious.

Agreed. I'm fine with limited poseability as long as I'm not left with the same 5 guys all doing the same dramatic thing across the army.

Guardsmen are actually pretty bad for this, IMO, as the grenade throwing army really sticks out in every model it's used on.

Meanwhile, Primaris, for all their limited posing, don't seem to have such a massive problem with it. Simply changing the head and arms usually breaks up the momentum of the model significantly, to the point where otherwise static torso rotations can look completely different.

Cheex wrote:What kits need are ways to vary the model's silhouette more than its pose. The new CSM box does this pretty well, with interchangeable heads, shoulderpads and backpacks, for example. With a little cutting and filing, you could also put weapons on different bodies to what they're intended for.

Also this - if you have a bunch of models with the same extreme silhouette, it gets old quickly.

**vipoid**

The first option would be my preference and it's why I think the DE kits from 5th are still some of the best in 40k. Almost everything is interchangeable - you can swap legs, torsos, arms, heads.

Characters aren't/weren't quite as interchangeable, though you could still freely swap their heads and arms.

On the character front, this makes it very easy to not only customise the official characters but also to create your own. Scourge legs can give a model a dynamic pose, without needing him to be standing atop an entire cathedral (unlike, say, the new Drazhar). Then you've got stuff like Scourge Heads, Incubi Heads and Wych-mask heads - all of which look fantastic for characters. Plus, different kits would usually have weapons modelled in different poses (so if you didn't like the pose of the agoniser-arm from the Kabalite kit, you could use the one from the Wych kit or the Scourge kit instead).

I really wish this design philosophy had been maintained after 5th.

**Slipspace**

I like the quality of a lot of the monopose stuff now. The newer monopose gets around some of the problems of multi-pose models looking really weird with obvious joins etc. But I also don't like the lack of diversity in a lot of the current kits. I'd rather see a middle ground, maybe with fewer sculpted-on weapons which makes doing conversions much more of a pain than it used to be.

Character models should be much more dynamic IMO. Dark Eldar are terrible for this, with most of their HQs being a single monopose model designed in such a way to make converting different weapons more annoying than it needs to be. Characters always seemed much more personalised in the past, with each player having their own spin on their various character models. Now they mostly seem to be the same monopose models, often ridiculously posed leaping over some random piece of terrain that looks terrible when you see them next to al the other models on the tabletop.

**Brutus_Apex**

I like posability and interchangeable parts for my models.

I really don't like having any two models alike.

That being said, I come from a time of metal models where you only had 4 or 5 poses per unit, so I guess you could say I'm used to it.

I usually try to mix things up still though. I had no problems creating individual poses for all of my new Death Guard marines for example.

What I really want however is interchangeability between unit kits. I like being able to swap weapons, arms, heads etc. from different kits from the same range.

**vipoid**

Slipspace wrote:
Character models should be much more dynamic IMO. Dark Eldar are terrible for this, with most of their HQs being a single monopose model designed in such a way to make converting different weapons more annoying than it needs to be. Characters always seemed much more personalised in the past, with each player having their own spin on their various character models. Now they mostly seem to be the same monopose models, often ridiculously posed leaping over some random piece of terrain that looks terrible when you see them next to al the other models on the tabletop.

I definitely agree on this point.

**Nurglitch**

I think I realized this past summer that my hobby wasn't GW, or even Warhammer 40k, but collecting multi-part kits like the Tactical Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and so on, and kit-bashing or customizing them. While the new Primaris and CSM kits are gorgeous, I don't have any interest in collecting them because that's not my hobby.

**edwardmyst**

I've played and modeled for thirty years now, so seen all shapes and sizes. I enjoy the converting side, so the more options/posability the better.

**warhead01**

While I prefer posabllity for models I also like push together minis. I think there is a sweet spot between the two.
I used to really enjoy converting model especially characters but now days my hands hurt too much to do lots of extra work. and while I enjoy building and painting mini's, anything that makes it easier is something I look for.
What I would like in more miniatures is legs torso and head already attached, although this does present a few problems as I may want an alternative head. However if I were just building to paint and play that would be the rout I would gladly take.
On the other hand I am all for completely interchangeable parts for minis' I wish GW would sell both as an option. For example maybe 20 Guardsmen in up to 4 poses and a second kit of 5 or 6 minis that are the same but you build them from the ground up. ( I see that have push together Cadians now days.) When I think about my example I think about large model count armies as the prime mover for saving time.
I think the characters and squad leaders should always be one of those models where the player has a lot of control over how they personalize their models.

**Melissia**

Any model other than named characters need to be pose-able.

For example, Canonesses need to be pose-able, and that they aren't is the main thing I'm disappointed with in the Sisters release (everything else is amazing). I have to have three of them in my list and them not being pose-able is annoying me immensely, will have to do some clever crap to try to work around the model limitations.

**Strg Alt**

When I buy a boardgame it doesn't matter much that all minis from one specific group are monopose. However, GW has to go the extra mile and I expect them to release kits with posable models.

**Galas**

The peak of miniature design (In regards to the equilibrium between variety, the hability to mix different kits and possability) was the pre-primaris space marine range.

I know I know I prefer primaris to tacticals and the poses and miniatures are cooler etc etc.. but the hability to have a box with pieces of 12 different plastic kits and being able to mix all of them was phenomenal.

**Voss**

None of the above, really.

I like some ability to build variations, but everything interchangeable doesn't seem viable to me. The distinction between characters and troops doesn't really matter to me when it comes to building models, I prefer more subtle distinction of character rank.
That said, despite the limited poses, the BSF chaos renegades and cultists are far more exciting and interesting kits than any of the standard 'slightly re-position the basic gun' kits that make up the troops choices of a lot of the faction lines.

'Cool and dynamic,' if it means what I think it does, is right out.
Practical designs all the time. No floating/jumping/perched on rocks crap.

**An Actual Englishman**

As an Ork player who loves a kitbash and hates (with a passion) repeat models?! Sir I posit to you there is no more important aspect of a model set!

**catbarf**

I'd submit GSC Neophytes and Skitarii Vanguard/Rangers as a great example of how plastic kits can be designed.

The legs and torsos are specific pairs, but then there are a variety of interchangeable arms, and the heads both have a fair amount of variety and can be independently posed.

They're also both great-looking kits that have dynamic poses without the repetition you get from monopose sculpts.

The parts don't need to be completely interchangeable and customizable- but just having some ability to mix and match body/arms/head adds the variety that one-piece models otherwise lack.

**Deadnight**

Played metal heavy Warmachine for years. I am perfectly ok with a more limited variety of more dynamic poses.

Truth is, I have the converting skills and enough bits that I can make them unique if I want to.

Awesome models trumps it for me. And so long as I can paint them, I'm fine.

**NinthMusketeer**

I am a heavy converter, so if I want to change something I have no problems doing so. Therefore I like when the default poses are nice because then they look cool when I do not want to change things.

But I also recognize that I am the exception.