Greetings,

Looking through the Imperial Armor booklets recently, I have been very tempted to order from Forgeworld. Seeing that prices were very high I decided to scope out reviews and youtube video unboxings before I made an order. What I have found is that there are more than a few people who say that resin and casting quality is terrible. Pitting and bent pieces made from low quality materials.

My question: Is there any truth to this? What is your experience?

Yep, its almost always awful. If you finish their job for them, then they look great. Just you have to pay a lot and do their job to get it.

So if you enjoy heating up your models in warm water to bend them straight, shaving model joints to get them to fit and cleaning all the lubricant whatever stuff off them. Then go ahead

Once all thats done the models are amazing though. But it will take effort.

I've had significantly better quality from garage resin kits than I have had with forgeworld... And with better customer service too.

Yes, for large and complicated models the assembly can take some time (Storm Eagle, I'm looking at you), but it's not really hard. And complaining that you have to wash the resin pieces before assembly is a bit unfair I think. I don't think you should ever try to assemble or paint a resin model without washing.

I think the FW customer service is great, I got a replacement part within a couple of days (international delivery) when I sent in a complaint.

Yeah FW customer service is excellent.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I've had significantly better quality from garage resin kits than I have had with forgeworld... And with better customer service too.

I doubt that, given any issue I've had has been fixed next day, special delivery. Once six months after purchase, when other half was slow at building.

95% of the parts I've had have been fine. Generally only long thin parts, like gun barrels, have issues with warping. Not had any pitting. Mould release you do have to clean off, but that takes about ten minutes for a war hound...

ive only had afew of things from forgeworld (tank,10 cataphractii and some world eater pads). Only ever had few problems, on the tank 1 of the outter hulls was warped, and had a slight bit missing (air bubble) both easy to solve and werent major. Cataphractii needed of cleaning of flash (nothing new with resin). Then theres the cleaning of the releasing agent this i can never seem to do so great but thats my problem not forgeworld. Only real problem i had was with my world eater pads, they sent some weathering powder instead . but the costomer service was great, (tho i sugest ringing as email can take some time) my problem was solved right away and pads disbatched next day and i got to keep the weathing powder

all in all i think if you dont mind paying the price and these minor issues that take all of a 10 mins to fix for the amazing models i think its well worht it

The only thing i have heard of that is highly problematic are their realm of battle tiles. Read several reports of different people that had the paint come off although they washed them intensively.
Other than that the kits that i have worked with were all fine. I have build caestus, thallax, GK Dread and some GK Special characters so far.

I've bought a few things from FW, mostly they've been good, unfortunately the only bad things I've gotten where some Aeronautica Imperialis aircraft right before they were dropped, so I couldn't get a replacement for them anyway.

They are a bit of work to put together, bending things to try and be straight and I find cleanup is more of a hassle than plastic (I think Peregrine will disagree with me ).

The quality control is poor for the price you're paying. Though I guess good quality control is tricky because you'd have to spend a bit of time examining the models, it's not always clear at first glance that a model has flaws.

I have tons of FW models over the years.

I have had a few missing parts and in one case a board that was cracked.

They immediately shipped me new/replacement parts without question.

Their Customer Service is amazing and the model quality is amazing. I have read about these horror stories but i literally have bought more than 400 models from them over the years and they are top notch.

now.. many are VERY difficult to put together and require a lot of patience! that much is true

Terrible, considering the money you pay for them. but they are very cool, which is what matters,

I've built my entire SM army as the Red Scorpions, the only problems I've had with their kits was the ones with symbols and purity seals, they tend to have an excessive amount of flashing. Other than that, the quality is high and very good. I did have them replace the Rhino Doors Kit two times, since they didn't fit the front, but I've always have good experiences with their customer service with quick responses and quick postage.

Currently I'm making my IG army and I'm using these as veterans, 25+ torsos and special weapons, not a single bad cast.
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Imperial_Guard/Cadian_Shock_Troops/CADIAN_HOSTILE_ENVIRONMENT_TROOPS_CONVERSION_SET.html
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Imperial_Guard/Cadian_Shock_Troops/CADIAN_HOSTILE_ENVIRONMENT_TROOPS_MELTA_SQUAD.html
Overall though, I'll agree with that even though the quality is fine, one could expect better from such premium prices.

I've only bought a few forgeworld models (arms for Dreadnoughts, Deimos Predator), but I have found the quality to be unbelievably bad for how much you pay. Warped barrels, un-flat hull sections, flashing, missing detail.

Everything I've gotten from them has been totally fine. That being said, if you have a problem, ring them up and they'll send you a replacement at no extra charge. Their customer service is every bit as good as GW prime's.

Hmm... so they do have bad casts from time to time then? That's unacceptable. I have built a number of tamiya models and revell kits and I have never had pitting or warping. Bad quality control is inexcusable at those prices. I bought a Chinese Gundam fake Deathscythe years ago from aliexpress that had bad casting, but the whole kit was around $7. This is unsettling news...

Hardly, when they send out replacement parts at no cost very quickly if you ring them up.

Forge World quality is decent. Certain fiddly bits will often be bent, but thats a failing of resin itself and not Forge World's issue. Any resin piece thats thin will have problems.

Their larger kits don't have the problems that smaller kits will have.

I have gotten a few things from them and never personally had a problem.

ImAGeek wrote:
Hardly, when they send out replacement parts at no cost very quickly if you ring them up.

This doesn't seem to be a good company practice though. Sending out faulty products, but replacing for those who complain. Im sure a lot of people just dont bother to complain at all. It seems to me that a better practice would be to upgrade quality control.

Well maybe but it's clearly working for them.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I've had significantly better quality from garage resin kits than I have had with forgeworld... And with better customer service too.

I doubt that, given any issue I've had has been fixed next day, special delivery. Once six months after purchase, when other half was slow at building.

Yeah... If you can ring them... And if they are not at one of the GW events (or about 3 weeks after one). Or it is around Christmas, new yeah and most school holidays.

If you email? You may as well resign yourself to a couple of months before they bother to answer anything. And all of the issues I have had with the several fw kits I have are issues which should never have occurred in the first place, especially given the price of their kits and the volume of sales and experienced cadsters they must have.

I noticed my Titan was missing a very small little piece. I email'd them and got the part 5 days later.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Forge World quality is decent. Certain fiddly bits will often be bent, but thats a failing of resin itself and not Forge World's issue. Any resin piece thats thin will have problems.

Their larger kits don't have the problems that smaller kits will have.

I have gotten a few things from them and never personally had a problem.

Same here. The only issue I had was an accident where they double packed the front cockpit window for the Avenger instead of one front and one rear. They sent out a replacement for both free of charge.

Seeing as I've had a mispacked CSM Battleforce (they missed the entire champion upgrade sprue), something like that wasn't so bad in comparison.

I've had missing parts, bad casts, excessive flash, all the usual.

They get replacement parts to you quickly, but my ONE GRIPE is that they don't actually check the replacement parts. They just ship what they have around. A few times I've had the replacement be worse or be bad in a different way.

That and I wish they'd stop shipping their stuff in what is basically a garbage bag. Without enough bubble-wrapping often enough.

That said, their customer service is good (contrary to some posters in this thread I always get a reply e-mail in a few days max). But with their prices, their QC should be better.

I've got a full Death Korps army and my Minotaurs use a lot of forgeworld as well.

1) Multi-part kits don't fit well together. I used a fair bit of greenstuff to make the Death Korps fit together properly, though their character models don't seem to have this issue, and it's minimal on tanks. My Leman Russes went together without a fuss, as did Asterion Moloc. Squads are the issue primarily. Once, I would have said this is just an issue with resin being more prone to changing shape between casting and final delivery, but having now built several other resin infantry squads without a fuss, it's definitely a FW thing.

2) Warping. While nowhere near as severe as it once was, most big kits will have some slight warping (but then so do GW's big plastic kits, I'm looking at you Baneblade). Forgeworld's resin is quite soft, so while it's easy to reshape things, it's all too easy for it to be warped in the first place. Doesn't crack or break like Finecrap or other cheaper resins, but requires a fair bit of maintenance.

These are minor issues, out of 75 Death Korps from varous kits, Moloc and Enkomi, Hekaton Aiakos (special contemptor dread) and 3 Death Korps leman russes, I've only had one actually ruined model; the vox caster from the Death Korps command squad was partially melted, which was replaced by FW within a week, and that's traveling to the other side of the planet.

I would say, however, overall that their prices really are too high for the quality of the product for most kits, especially if you're doing a FW army; their art design is fantastic, much better than GW prime, but their resin just doesn't hold up for the price. It's a running joke that the Chinese and Russian recasts are often a higher quality; and having seen a Sicaran and Macharius recast, I'd say its pretty accurate (though more prone to breaking as they use a harder resin).

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I've had significantly better quality from garage resin kits than I have had with forgeworld... And with better customer service too.

I doubt that, given any issue I've had has been fixed next day, special delivery. Once six months after purchase, when other half was slow at building.

You get that he was just offering his opinion based on his experience right? You also realise that his experience may vary wildly from yours?

You have absolutely no right to "doubt" anything he offers on that basis. Unless of course you have some sort of evidence he's lying?

Good lord, it comes to some thing when people get told their own experiences and opinions are wrong.

As for the OP - it's pretty much all been covered. Yes, the quality can vary, but if there is an issue it will generally be resolved with little questioning. Whether a company that charges such a premium for their product is really justified in conducting things in this way, and not simply ensuring a much higher percentage of their product goes out of the door in A1 condition, and whether you're prepared to indulge in the necessary to-ing and fro-ing should you get a bad cast, only you can decide.

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Terrible, considering the money you pay for them. but they are very cool, which is what matters,

your an aussie are you serious about the price of FW? its cheaper than GW. the price is rather reasonable by comparison.
iv had a few models, and things about putting them together, thunderhawk had a couple of warped panels.... they are huge and flat.. it happens, and i got some of the palantine blades. the swords were warped a bit. but thats thin flimsy swords, fellblade (had a barrel wtih an errection)

now to add to the list of other stuff i have got, i have armor kits for pred/rhinos, rhino doors cataphracti terminators, warhound, glaive, fulgrim, nurgle marines etc etc, and they are MINT....

customer service is pure GW, which is to say, some of the best without having a best mate behind the counter.. a problem is solved that day..

 SilverMK2 wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I've had significantly better quality from garage resin kits than I have had with forgeworld... And with better customer service too.

I doubt that, given any issue I've had has been fixed next day, special delivery. Once six months after purchase, when other half was slow at building.

Yeah... If you can ring them... And if they are not at one of the GW events (or about 3 weeks after one). Or it is around Christmas, new yeah and most school holidays.

If you email? You may as well resign yourself to a couple of months before they bother to answer anything. And all of the issues I have had with the several fw kits I have are issues which should never have occurred in the first place, especially given the price of their kits and the volume of sales and experienced cadsters they must have.

False, I've had multiple emails to forgeworld from things on legality questions to checking up on delivieries, they were mostly answered in under 24H.

And in any case, none of my models have had even a tiny warping or bubble so far. a bit fleshing, but that's it.

(and the extreme amount of excess resin you get with your models can be used for bases and terrain, so that's nice)

I've had a mixed bag in terms of quality, but they've replaced everything I complained about in short order.

I've gotten worse kits from other manufacturers, but their QC could definitely warrant some work.

 BoomWolf wrote:

False, I've had multiple emails to forgeworld from things on legality questions to checking up on delivieries, they were mostly answered in under 24H.

Good for you. The multiple issues I've had with different FW models which I've attempted to email FW to resolve have all resulted in lengthy periods of time before they even bothered replying, let alone actually doing anything to fix things.

The first FW model I bought they shipped 2 of the same hull component (so I could not even start construction on the model as it was a large, single piece) and it took them over 3 weeks to reply to my first email - I eventually broke down after about 2 months of not hearing anything for weeks after each email and phoned them a couple of times; despite what people here have been saying about their phone support being excellent in my case, they were singularly unhelpful.

After a few more issues with a few more models (strangely I've had significant issues with every model I've had from them - perhaps they just don't like me ), I've stopped bothering with them.

As mentioned in my original post, I have found that garage casters have better products, at better prices, with better service than FW.

So, there may be people who have been pleased with FW... in several instances I have been extremely displeased. And have no problem with stating that.

Their email can be inconsistent. Sometimes you'll get a helpful response within a few days, sometimes you'll never hear from them. It's worth trying I guess if it isn't a serious issue (rule questions, etc) but if you've got a defective kit you're probably better off calling them just to be sure. Every time I've called them I've had the problem fixed without any questions.

Of course it would be much nicer if they had better quality control and I didn't have to constantly request replacement parts, but that's pretty much wishful thinking. They've been getting better about it recently but it still seems like every time I order something I have either a missing part or some small but important piece is miscast.

 Azreal13 wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I've had significantly better quality from garage resin kits than I have had with forgeworld... And with better customer service too.

I doubt that, given any issue I've had has been fixed next day, special delivery. Once six months after purchase, when other half was slow at building.

You get that he was just offering his opinion based on his experience right? You also realise that his experience may vary wildly from yours?

You have absolutely no right to "doubt" anything he offers on that basis. Unless of course you have some sort of evidence he's lying?

Good lord, it comes to some thing when people get told their own experiences and opinions are wrong.

Slightly hypocritical post there....

I doubted it - meaning that is an opinion of mine, I am not stating a fact. I find it unlikely that they got *better* customer support elsewhere, as I, and every irl person I know has never had a problem with their customer service. I never stated their opinions are wrong, I just doubted it based on my experience.
Trouble is - you pay a lot, so you expect more. Meaning that a quantitatively identical issue can seem worse on a higher priced kit. Meaning you attribute worse service for the objectively same service. Because we're human.

I've not had the email issues they describe, but then I do always ring up for anything important, like missing / mis-shaped pieces. I do know others who seem to have gotten email blackholed somehow....

Ok, to illustrate; I emailed a garage caster a query about a kit I purchased late on a Friday, got a reply on Tuesday morning with helpful advice and the probelm was resolved and the order sorted out. Items came internationally within a couple of weeks, well packaged and sorted out by model and further by subsection of the model. Virtually zero flash, a small handful of pits caused by bubbles.

Cheap and cheerful price, fast shipping, well packed, good quality models with excellent support. First time I ordered from them but would certainly buy from them again.

Forgeworld? Reverse absolutely everything I just said on multiple models on multiple orders.

I absolutely can compare like for like (before taking price, company size etc into consideration). It is even worse than the baseline comparison when you do compare model price etc.

And every single "I have a problem with my fw model" thread results in every reply telling the op to phone, as their email customer service is, at best, meh.

the quality and fit of the kit seems to depend on a few things.

1 - age of kit (and molds) - older the kit, the more likely you will end up with warped or ill fitting pieces.
2 - full resin or resin/plastic kit. - People seem to have a harder time getting the resin / plastic kits together.
3 - Size of model. bigger model, bigger problems.

In general, if you are not comfortable fabricating pieces, gap filling, or reshaping pieces with heat, dont invest in forgeworld.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
I doubted it - meaning that is an opinion of mine, I am not stating a fact.

So you were only stating your opinion that he was ignorant or lying, not stating as fact that he was ignorant or lying... that's so much better... I guess...

A.S.S. - nope, those are your words, not mine. Kindly dont attribute them to me.

For 2) that has been improved recently, as theyre using the same CAD as the plastic design team - see the XV-107 as the first example of this. Means the pieces fit a hell of a lot better!

Obviously I'm just being annoying... but when someone says they've had a certain experience and you say you doubt that, you're either saying you have reason to believe they're lying or ignorant, either you think what they're saying is not true or you think they've misinterpreted their experience thus are ignorant.

Nope, not annoying, just stating someone has said something they havent is rude, and more than a little derailing of the thread.

It can also mean "based on the information presented, I doubt your presentation of the situation" - which is more common. There was a bare statement only, initially, that they have now expanded upon.

So, your false dichotomy is false. Please stop espousing fallacies, mkay?

Still irrelevant to the thread, however, so maybe drop this? Or taking it privately, if you care that much about it?

If you coudl actually contribute now, that would help.

Ok we'll leave it at someone posted their personal experience and you doubted their personal experience and I find that a bit presumptuous and rude unless you have good reason to believe what they said was false or falsely presented. But the actual poster didn't seem to mind so whatever.

Please don't try to take the high ground as if I'm the only one derailing the thread, if it bothered you so much you should have reported my post instead of derailing further by replying to it.

As far as actually contributing to the original topic, I really don't think there's much more to say. I've personally been quite unimpressed at the quality I've received from FW and was unfortunate enough to have had several of the models I bought discontinued so I couldn't get them replaced.

They're well sculpted models with poor quality control and from what I've experienced a mixed bag of customer service. A previous poster said:

 Mecha_buddha wrote:
In general, if you are not comfortable fabricating pieces, gap filling, or reshaping pieces with heat, dont invest in forgeworld.

I'll add to that and say "and if you don't mind possibly getting a flawed product that needs to be replaced".

It's not that I haven't had miscasts from other suppliers, but those other suppliers have typically been small guys selling their products as a much lower price and they've also replaced them happily when there were problems.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Ok we'll leave it at someone posted their personal experience and you doubted their personal experience and I find that a bit presumptuous and rude unless you have good reason to believe what they said was false or falsely presented. But the actual poster didn't seem to mind so whatever.

Please don't try to take the high ground as if I'm the only one derailing the thread, if it bothered you so much you should have reported my post instead of derailing further by replying to it.

Again with the false dichotomies. Apparently the only person to misunderstand was you...

I generally try to rebut falsehoods and logical fallacies directly, rather than reporting. Much quicker.

For the actual on topic stuff (finally) - surely every product has that caveat, that it might be faulty? Hell, I lost count of how many xbox 360s we had replaced due to manufacturing defects. Ive not, myself and with friends who buy an appallingly huge amount (one friends addiction is up to over 10k points of 30k EC...) as well had that high a rate where I need to actually return the item. I've had one instance - macharius vulcan (1 of 3 I got), exceptionally bad - where for once they even asked for the piece back personally, but nothing more.

Not sure on the "fabricating pieces" part from Mecha - Mecha can you explain further? (Minor) Gap filling is expected in instances with resin, minor reshaping should also be expected with resin due to the nature of the product, but I've not heard of needing to fabricate whole parts - is that with regards to entirely missing bits, or GS additions to get things to fit adequately, etc?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
They're well sculpted models with poor quality control and from what I've experienced a mixed bag of customer service.

And the Chinese copies cost one quarter of the price and have better quality control.

That's about all there is to say about ForgeWorld.

I don't like the idea of buying IP-infringing copies, but if you're not phased by that, buy Chinese.



Maybe some day FW will stop being slowed, will clean their own resin, do some quality control and price "reasonably".
Until then... man do we love this hobby.

China can likely afford it - QC for resin is hugely labour intensive, and labour there is much cheaper.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
China can likely afford it - QC for resin is hugely labour intensive, and labour there is much cheaper.

Yeah, because paying a British dude to check one miniature that costs 195 pounds, is going to cost at least 195 pounds more.

morgoth wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
China can likely afford it - QC for resin is hugely labour intensive, and labour there is much cheaper.

Yeah, because paying a British dude to check one miniature that costs 195 pounds, is going to cost at least 195 pounds more.

Yeah, because that is all they would do, just check one model, and all they sell are £195 models. Not a whole host of £10 - 15 sets that are probably more tricky to check for errors than the larger sets.

Avoid hyperbole, it makes your arguments very weak.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Avoid hyperbole, it makes your arguments very weak.

Avoid weak arguments.

Since when is QC so expensive that it can't be done by European companies ??

Not only is the valuable QC employee wage not that much higher in Britain, for the same level of quality it's even closer.

It would probably cost them a few percent at first, and then, when they'd have fixed their production issues, almost nothing.


I do expect that from a company with the balls to ask £195 for a small heap of cast resin.

Dealing with replacements is very likely cheaper than having actual QC.

Which is why we don't get QC.

morgoth wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Avoid hyperbole, it makes your arguments very weak.

Avoid weak arguments.

Since when is QC so expensive that it can't be done by European companies ??

Not only is the valuable QC employee wage not that much higher in Britain, for the same level of quality it's even closer.

It would probably cost them a few percent at first, and then, when they'd have fixed their production issues, almost nothing.


I do expect that from a company with the balls to ask £195 for a small heap of cast resin.

Avoid strawman arguments. I never said it was so expensive it couldnt be done by a European company. At all. Another logical fallacy to add to the pile. Avoid them if you can, makes your arguments worthwhile.

The point is they *do* have QC. Its just on a sample basis. On a product as highly variable* as this, that might not be the right approach, but from speaking to them, it is more profitable than trying to QC everything - instead they handle returns as needed. Which, even with QCing everything, theyd likely have to do.

Yes, FULL QC does add a hefty margin. Cf. karcher pressure washers, each tested at the factory, to cheap no brand. While you pay more for that funky yellow plastic, and "made in Germany", you also pay a fair whack to know it works when you get it.

Oh, and theyre not charging £195 for a small heap of cast resin, theyre charging £195 for.... resin that has been made from a mold that was made from a 3 up that someone spent 100 hours (+ or -) sculpting. Someone they pay actually a fairly decent wage to, especially for notts

Its amazing wha tyou can find out by talking to them, as opposed to just spouting random, made up crap on the net.

*again, costs far more for a non industrialised process, as your variabilty is too high. FW is not industrialised, GW IS (on plastic) I say this working for a manufacturing company

nosferatu1001 wrote:
China can likely afford it - QC for resin is hugely labour intensive, and labour there is much cheaper.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
I never said it was so expensive it couldnt be done by a European company. At all.

You implied it couldn't be done from a business standpoint.
Which is ridiculous considering they could just ship it across the globe, have it checked in China, ship it back to England and then to customers.

You pretended that there was a good reason for FW's QC to be that bad. There isn't.

 Shandara wrote:
Dealing with replacements is very likely cheaper than having actual QC.

Which is why we don't get QC.

True. I mean what's cheaper, 10 quid an hour for a QC person or 10 quid worth of resin now and then when you get a complaint?

Sigh

Full QC is expensive. Which is true. Can they afford it without raising prices? Not likely.

You do understand that FW often cast to order, yes? Not sure customers would like the delays introducted by your "method"

There is a reason, and its a good one. They do sample check QC, and resolve other issues through (generally great) customer service replacements.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Shandara wrote:
Dealing with replacements is very likely cheaper than having actual QC.

Which is why we don't get QC.

True. I mean what's cheaper, 10 quid an hour for a QC person or 10 quid worth of resin now and then when you get a complaint?

Exactly.

If the average replacement cost per item is cheaper than the average cost of the time it would take to employ someone to provide QC full time then it makes absolutely no sense. If you have the infrastructure in place that the majority of complainants aren't going to be too traumatised should they need something replacing, which GW/FW appear to, then it is a no brainer. Especially when you consider a percentage of product that would probably, objectively, be worthy of replacement but will get fixed and filled by the hobbyist without complaint.

At least, that's the economic argument.

The counter point to that is that if you wish to market yourself as a premium brand, if you're supplying product that needs to be replaced once, or even multiple times, before the consumer gets what they feel they have paid for, you are damaging that image.

GW management obviously feel the cost of maintaining their image isn't worth the investment necessary, but then, I guess GW management's judgement can be considered suspect at this time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Sigh

Full QC is expensive. Which is true. Can they afford it without raising prices? Not likely.

You do understand that FW often cast to order, yes? Not sure customers would like the delays introducted by your "method"

There is a reason, and its a good one. They do sample check QC, and resolve other issues through (generally great) customer service replacements.

I'm not sure if you're making a joined up point here or simply throwing everything you can at the argument because you somehow feel obliged to defend GW, but you get that casting to order would be the absolute worst excuse for poor quality right? Making one kit, or even using an order to make a small batch of kits, and failing to check them would be pretty shoddy.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Shandara wrote:
Dealing with replacements is very likely cheaper than having actual QC.

Which is why we don't get QC.

True. I mean what's cheaper, 10 quid an hour for a QC person or 10 quid worth of resin now and then when you get a complaint?

Exactly.

If the average replacement cost per item is cheaper than the average cost of the time it would take to employ someone to provide QC full time then it makes absolutely no sense. If you have the infrastructure in place that the majority of complainants aren't going to be too traumatised should they need something replacing, which GW/FW appear to, then it is a no brainer. Especially when you consider a percentage of product that would probably, objectively, be worthy of replacement but will get fixed and filled by the hobbyist without complaint.

At least, that's the economic argument.

The counter point to that is that if you wish to market yourself as a premium brand, if you're supplying product that needs to be replaced once, or even multiple times, before the consumer gets what they feel they have paid for, you are damaging that image.

GW management obviously feel the cost of maintaining their image isn't worth the investment necessary, but then, I guess GW management's judgement can be considered suspect at this time.

I'd argue that GW doesn't try to market itself as anything (mostly because they don't market pretty much anything beyond "it's new and shiny!"). I mean if they could sell us on the idea that they were a premium brand we wouldn't bitch about prices nearly as much, but as is we are painfully aware of said prices and how much they hurt.

Ok, fair point. Substitute "market" for "position."

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Sigh

Full QC is expensive. Which is true. Can they afford it without raising prices? Not likely.

You do understand that FW often cast to order, yes? Not sure customers would like the delays introducted by your "method"

There is a reason, and its a good one. They do sample check QC, and resolve other issues through (generally great) customer service replacements.

You do realize FW not having them cast by the Chinese in the first place is a completely stupid move, yes ?
You do realize that it would cost half the price with full QC, better quality and no last minute casting if they did it right, yes ?

There's a reason and it's simple: FW is a garage business grown fat that has nobody discuss their slowed price/quality ratio because they're a monopoly of sorts.


Their sense of business is horrible, they would shift at least 5 times more titans if they were at half price, and at least 7 times more if there wasn't the scary "omg got to remove mold lines and put GS and pin and " and instead there was a "we'll mount that gak for you and ship it mounted in an awesome carrying case for an additional buck".

They'd also rather give jobs to people in their home country than outsourcing to China like everybody else, which I really admire.

FW isn't a "garage" business. It's a small section of GW and has been from it's inception. If it was something like Chapterhouse and it grew out of control you'd have a point, but it isn't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brother SRM wrote:
They'd also rather give jobs to people in their home country than outsourcing to China like everybody else, which I really admire.

I've always felt that this was likely one of the biggest reasons GW in general isn't as cheap as it could be. They are really adamant about keeping local labor, and that's really expensive, especially on the pound. Yes, you could argue economically that outsourcing could make sense (even if it was just to the US because of how much weaker the Dollar is to the Pound), but there is an ethical argument for not laying off all your employees just to make an easy buck (or quid).

 ClockworkZion wrote:
FW isn't a "garage" business. It's a small section of GW and has been from it's inception. If it was something like Chapterhouse and it grew out of control you'd have a point, but it isn't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brother SRM wrote:
They'd also rather give jobs to people in their home country than outsourcing to China like everybody else, which I really admire.

I've always felt that this was likely one of the biggest reasons GW in general isn't as cheap as it could be. They are really adamant about keeping local labor, and that's really expensive, especially on the pound. Yes, you could argue economically that outsourcing could make sense (even if it was just to the US because of how much weaker the Dollar is to the Pound), but there is an ethical argument for not laying off all your employees just to make an easy buck (or quid).

They behave like a garage business, I know they're a lot bigger, but they really don't operate like a real business.
I don't think GW can outsource more than just miniature production though, and since they're having machines doing that with questionable QC, I wonder if it wouldn't be better in the world's biggest factory.
And I don't think it has anything to do with their prices.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
FW isn't a "garage" business. It's a small section of GW and has been from it's inception. If it was something like Chapterhouse and it grew out of control you'd have a point, but it isn't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brother SRM wrote:
They'd also rather give jobs to people in their home country than outsourcing to China like everybody else, which I really admire.

I've always felt that this was likely one of the biggest reasons GW in general isn't as cheap as it could be. They are really adamant about keeping local labor, and that's really expensive, especially on the pound. Yes, you could argue economically that outsourcing could make sense (even if it was just to the US because of how much weaker the Dollar is to the Pound), but there is an ethical argument for not laying off all your employees just to make an easy buck (or quid).

Doesn't Warlord Games also make their stuff (like Bolt Action) in the UK? They have much lower prices on resin than FW, probably about 30% cheaper, and you can buy their stuff in brick and mortar stores at a discount as well.

Morgoth - GW went down the China production route. Didnt work well, so why would it work better for FW?

They could charge half for a reaver, made in China, but would still get undercut by the resellers, only this time not recasters, but using the original molds, on grey shifts. Making their job that much easier.

Not sure how you think that is a great idea. What businesses do you run again?

and again, they actually make a thing about being British. It has value in some sectors to NOT have "made in china" on your stuff.

morgoth wrote:They behave like a garage business, I know they're a lot bigger, but they really don't operate like a real business.

"Act like" and "are" are not equivalent terms. Just because you think they act like a garage business doesn't make them one. They're a part of GW as a whole and whatever they're doing is based on the limitations of what they're allowed to do (as even after hiring more people they don't have as many people doing the casting work as GW's plastic department).

Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:Doesn't Warlord Games also make their stuff (like Bolt Action) in the UK? They have much lower prices on resin than FW, probably about 30% cheaper, and you can buy their stuff in brick and mortar stores at a discount as well.

I don't know anything about Warlord Games honestly, but the historical wargames market is really cutthroat since it's all so interchangeable. They may be making a much lower margin then GW does on their products to stay competitive with other historical wargames.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Morgoth - GW went down the China production route. Didnt work well, so why would it work better for FW?
They could charge half for a reaver, made in China, but would still get undercut by the resellers, only this time not recasters, but using the original molds, on grey shifts. Making their job that much easier.
Not sure how you think that is a great idea. What businesses do you run again?
and again, they actually make a thing about being British. It has value in some sectors to NOT have "made in china" on your stuff.

China isn't that easy, I'll give you that.
I can see how it may not have been a success.
How many counterfeit iPhones have you seen recently ?
There's no difference between resellers and recasters in the end, from a buyer's perspective it's still the same quality and the same import risk.

And while some people may feel strongly about being British, everyone feels strongly about paying through the nose for not-completely-incredible quality.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Morgoth - GW went down the China production route. Didnt work well, so why would it work better for FW?

Didn't it? I'm genuinely unaware of the reasons why production was recalled, could you enlighten us? Or was it another instance of GW punching itself in the face purely to maintain total control over all aspects of the business?

They could charge half for a reaver, made in China, but would still get undercut by the resellers, only this time not recasters, but using the original molds, on grey shifts. Making their job that much easier.

Pretty sure this is what happens on a number of kits already as a hangover from when kits were produced over there. If you genuinely think that there is still a living to be made out of undercutting FW if FW were to cut it's RRPs by half, what does that say about how badly overinflated their prices are now?

Not sure how you think that is a great idea. What businesses do you run again?

This is a fallacious and frankly juvenile thing to say, please try and do better.

They actually make a thing about being British.

Do they? I haven't really got that impression from reading anything they produce. I'm more inclined to believe it has more to do with what I mentioned WRT your first point.

It has value in some sectors to NOT have "made in china" on your stuff.

Maybe but I'd be sceptical this sector is one of them.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
It has value in some sectors to NOT have "made in china" on your stuff.

Maybe it's different in the UK, but when I think "made in Australia", I tend to expect better quality than "made in china" (though maybe not as good as "made in Germany" ).

Azrael - the reasons I was given was exactly as listed - issues firstly with production quality, secondly with copying. Will not name who I know this from, but I'm personally confident in the accuracy. Cannot help you though.

AS for counterfeit iPhones - saw plenty when I was last in China. Hell, they have counterfeit shops there.....

From memory, CEOs letter talked about it, and the boxes have it stamped on - or used to.

Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

All - Not any different here, really. Made in China generally results in some concerns around quality, with made in Japan and Germany generally ranking quite highly. Oddly one thing the UK is very good at is car assembly - why so many manu. are still producing here. We're just crap at runnign the companies

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Azrael - the reasons I was given was exactly as listed - issues firstly with production quality, secondly with copying. Will not name who I know this from, but I'm personally confident in the accuracy. Cannot help you though.

AS for counterfeit iPhones - saw plenty when I was last in China. Hell, they have counterfeit shops there.....

From memory, CEOs letter talked about it, and the boxes have it stamped on - or used to.

Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

All - Not any different here, really. Made in China generally results in some concerns around quality, with made in Japan and Germany generally ranking quite highly. Oddly one thing the UK is very good at is car assembly - why so many manu. are still producing here. We're just crap at runnign the companies

You will see plenty of counterfeit everything in China, nobody even remotely hopes to sell IP in a country that doesn't believe in IP, your argument is therefore moot.

You largely overestimate the work of designers (sounds like iPropaganda to me). Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Car assembly is done on UK ground because import taxes prevent it from being made elsewhere.

nosferatu1001 wrote:


Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

It isn't so fallacious to compare a company which makes miniatures, in resin, in small scale, with pretty uniformly high cast quality, that retains the most in-demand commission freelancers to manufacture their masters (which will cost orders of magnitude more than salaried designers, especially when we fairly regularly hear of how x model was originally developed by y staff member on their own time - costing GW literally nothing)

Yet...
http://www.mierce-miniatures.com/
http://kingdomdeath.com/

(And even these compete well in price with FW in many instances, despite having far fewer economies of scale to leverage)

The fact is, GW and FW fail in comparison to whichever approach you take, if you try and make a case for them as a high volume mass-market retailer, there are other companies doing it cheaper, or at a higher quality for a similar price, if you try and make a case for them as a boutique retailer, then similar applies.

As a rule of thumb, recasters are around half to two thirds of RRP from what I've seen/been told, so if you genuinely think that they could continue to make a living in the volume they sell charging ~£6 for 5 marines (which would be what it would need to be if FW cut their prices) then you're frankly deluded, especially where the genuine article would still be much more affordable, readily available and better supported.

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

It fits in well with the 40k setting.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

Yeah, because every Western economy is whiter than white when it comes to it's historical development. We just happen to live in nations where people are free to act like moral superiors because fate has decreed they're in a country separated from similar behaviour by a few decades. Nations in glass houses and all that.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

Cheap toys, fruit, phones, clothing, shoes, coffee, ore... The core-periphery system of trade is a bitch, ain't it?

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

You're so naive...
The whole world is made in China, every American or European company that you know basically just imports stuff from China, multiplies the price by ten and shoves it up your ass.
Bad companies fail, and "just moving to China" will not save them.

You're more of a slave than your parents were, the chinese guy is less of a slave than his parents were, and all you can do is point at him and say he's got it worse ?
There's a guy around here with a profile picture with a quote from Goethe that reads " None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Read it. again. again. again. and some more.

morgoth wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Azrael - the reasons I was given was exactly as listed - issues firstly with production quality, secondly with copying. Will not name who I know this from, but I'm personally confident in the accuracy. Cannot help you though.

AS for counterfeit iPhones - saw plenty when I was last in China. Hell, they have counterfeit shops there.....

From memory, CEOs letter talked about it, and the boxes have it stamped on - or used to.

Its exceptionally easy to undercut a low-material-cost business when you dont have to pay for designers. You know, those people that like to be paid? Its why it is fallacious to compare a recasters price and a manufacturers price and assume that, becauser its higher, an OEMs prices are a rip off. It would still be worth their time to recast if FW dropped their prices.

All - Not any different here, really. Made in China generally results in some concerns around quality, with made in Japan and Germany generally ranking quite highly. Oddly one thing the UK is very good at is car assembly - why so many manu. are still producing here. We're just crap at runnign the companies

You will see plenty of counterfeit everything in China, nobody even remotely hopes to sell IP in a country that doesn't believe in IP, your argument is therefore moot.

You largely overestimate the work of designers (sounds like iPropaganda to me). Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Car assembly is done on UK ground because import taxes prevent it from being made elsewhere.

I'll just add one thing to rebut, as the rest is too easy for others to rebut.

I work for a car company. What you posted about uk manufacture is unadulterated crap. Utterly so. Ford, Honda, etc all manufacture in the uk, and not elsewhere in the eu, for sane reasons. It isn't import duty. (UK actually has very low imprt duty for cars, hence why no ckd or pkd comes to the UK for final assembly. But hey, you know so much

Ford even used the UK as a global example for the focus mkii production run.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

I'll just add one thing to rebut, as the rest is too easy for others to rebut.

I work for a car company. What you posted about uk manufacture is unadulterated crap. Utterly so. Ford, Honda, etc all manufacture in the uk, and not elsewhere in the eu, for sane reasons. It isn't import duty. (UK actually has very low imprt duty for cars, hence why no ckd or pkd comes to the UK for final assembly. But hey, you know so much

Ford even used the UK as a global example for the focus mkii production run.

Ok, so maybe I was wrong, and maybe (maybe, because taxes are WAY more complicated than just what you see on the surface) there's another reason for cars being produced in the UK.

Ford... they can't even make a single good car, why would you take them as example ? Mercedes and every other good brand is still produced in Germany.


Besides, there are car factories all over the EU, so I don't know what you've been smoking but ...

A good reason to manufacture cars in the UK would be that the UK gives those car manufacturers better fiscal conditions, while having much lower barriers for selling from the UK rather than from their evil lair (japan for honda,...).

Apart from those that can't move (local business) and those that rely on extremely skilled labor (very high-tech, not cars or phones), most businesses that stay in the EU are there because they get great tax deals or because skilled workforce is cheaper here.



So either, we live in a world of fairies, the low education segment of the British Car Assembly Industry is the best in all the low education segments in the world, and you're right, and Ford and Honda should start shipping all their cars from the UK rather than their home base.

Or, we live in reality, where people take business decisions based on business outcomes, and there's a good business outcome associated with their presence in the UK, such as much easier / possible car certification lane, lower car sales taxes, and other possible goodies.

FIY the US has incredible taxes on cars, Mercedes there cost twice the price, and the Japanese had to compete with +100% taxes for a long time. I doubt the UK is so clean as to make no difference between local and remote production when every other country does.

morgoth wrote:
Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Really? How much do you think would be a fair price to pay someone for sculpting a titan-size model at FW levels of detail? When you answer, remember that:

1) Even ~$10,000 (10x retail price) doesn't buy you all that many hours of skilled labor, and this is something that takes a lot of hours (FW have stated that the design process for a titan takes months). You might get it for less than $10,000, but not for so much less that $10,000 is a completely unreasonable estimate.

2) Designing a viable model kit takes a lot more work than making a one-time sculpture. You can't just throw some stuff together and call it a day, you have to be aware of things like how the molds are going to work, how difficult assembly is going to be, etc.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

I don't think you have any clue how much developing electronics costs. You're paying teams of engineers at $50k minimum per year, millions of dollars in chip design, etc. Even the software tools used to design the chips costs millions of dollars. And that's just the hardware, add on millions more to pay for the software engineers, testing, etc.

 Peregrine wrote:

morgoth wrote:
Professional miniature sculptors don't ask more than 10 Titans RRP to sculpt one Titan which is made of copy paste upscaled parts with a bit of GS added for the fun of it.

Really? How much do you think would be a fair price to pay someone for sculpting a titan-size model at FW levels of detail? When you answer, remember that:

1) Even ~$10,000 (10x retail price) doesn't buy you all that many hours of skilled labor, and this is something that takes a lot of hours (FW have stated that the design process for a titan takes months). You might get it for less than $10,000, but not for so much less that $10,000 is a completely unreasonable estimate.

2) Designing a viable model kit takes a lot more work than making a one-time sculpture. You can't just throw some stuff together and call it a day, you have to be aware of things like how the molds are going to work, how difficult assembly is going to be, etc.

Same goes for the iPhone, there is maybe .01% of the iPhone price that goes to design, everything else is marketing, shadow margin and legal margin.

I don't think you have any clue how much developing electronics costs. You're paying teams of engineers at $50k minimum per year, millions of dollars in chip design, etc. Even the software tools used to design the chips costs millions of dollars. And that's just the hardware, add on millions more to pay for the software engineers, testing, etc.

1) I've followed sculptors, and no one sculpt in all the 40K universe cost $10K. You have no idea how fast those guys are, it's insane.
2) It does, but it's not more than one day of playing around in CAD
3) You have no idea. The A chips are just standard ARM chips tweaked a bit using the kit given by ARM, and even if the iPhone had cost one hundred million dollars (pinky on lips), which is dubious, they still made over a hundred billion dollars (pinky on lips AGAIN) on it so it's still less than one percent. And given how each and every next iPhone is just a slight variation on the previous one, and that all are just assembly of existing components not designed by Apple, I'd be surprised if it cost a hundred million dollars (pinky on lips) AGAIN for every last stupid model including the very bendable 6.

I'd echo the general opinion from what I've heard around the shop.

The main problem with FW models is that they're resin, which means they come with all the limitations of resin models like melting into puddles of goo at the slightest application of heat (like being in a hot car), and having endless casting problems. Of course, they gain the benefits of resin too (like finer detail), but in any case, you've got to work for it.

The main benefit to FW is that it's a GW subsidiary which means it has GW-esque customer service. As mentioned, I've known people who write in to say something is wrong and it's immediately (attempted) fixed immediately at no charge, while letting the purchaser keep the defective part. That no-BS attitude is always nice.

In a way, they're just a better-designed version of finecast, with all its pros and cons. Or, to put it another way...

mitch_rifle wrote: but they are very cool, which is what matters

I've'n't purchased forgeworld myself, but as I have a bit of skill with greenstuff, I wouldn't reject the quality of production out of hand.

morgoth wrote:

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Made in China results in the best quality there is in the world to the very rare exception of extremely high tech stuff from Germany, Korea and Japan (and some other high education countries), where highly educated workforce is still an advantage.

Brilliant parody, this made me laugh out loud!

Companies produce in China because of bargain basement wages. Even so, wages are rising fast, and more companies are finding problems once they've moved production there. Hornby, for instance, had a huge spike in profits from moving production offshore... then nearly went bust last year, because the supply chain was unreliable. Google insourcing.

It doesn't surprise me that some people don't mind a repressive, corrupt regime that imprisons artists and reneges on promises of democracy. Of course political murders, corruption and cronyism don't matter, as long as we can have cheap toys.

You're so naive...
The whole world is made in China, every American or European company that you know basically just imports stuff from China, multiplies the price by ten and shoves it up your ass.
Bad companies fail, and "just moving to China" will not save them.

You're more of a slave than your parents were, the chinese guy is less of a slave than his parents were, and all you can do is point at him and say he's got it worse ?
There's a guy around here with a profile picture with a quote from Goethe that reads " None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Read it. again. again. again. and some more.

Haha, took the words right out of my mouth. That being said, I like my Chinese made products. They seem to be of superior quality than most things made anywhere else. Japan quality is second to none too. It's pity..."made in the USA" used to mean something. Now, it just means that an arrogant overpaid under educated person used premium materials and assembled whatever item carelessly.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
I'll just add one thing to rebut, as the rest is too easy for others to rebut.

I work for a car company. What you posted about uk manufacture is unadulterated crap. Utterly so. Ford, Honda, etc all manufacture in the uk, and not elsewhere in the eu, for sane reasons. It isn't import duty. (UK actually has very low imprt duty for cars, hence why no ckd or pkd comes to the UK for final assembly. But hey, you know so much

Ford even used the UK as a global example for the focus mkii production run.

I don't know much about car production in Europe but I found this odd, so I googled. Apparently the UK is the 13th largest manufacturer of cars, behind:

China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, India, U.S.A., Brazil, France, Spain, Russia, Mexico, Iran.

If you normalise by population, funnily enough they are still 13th, but the countries ahead of them change to: Slovakia, Czech Republic, China, South Korea, Slovenia, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Spain, France, Canada, Hungary.

They're about equal with Hungary. It is interesting to see where cars are made. The only Western European Honda car manufacturing plant is in the UK, though the only bike manufacturing is in Italy and all other things come out of France or are imported from outside Europe.

Funnily enough, the UK Honda group is currently looking for employees for "quality"

I will say though, I don't really care if my products are made in the UK unless they are competitive on price and quality. Forgeworld have the sculpting quality bit pretty good (though it's hard to say they're better than a bunch of others, they're up there) but fall short on the price and casting quality.

morgoth wrote:
1) I've followed sculptors, and no one sculpt in all the 40K universe cost $10K. You have no idea how fast those guys are, it's insane.

Again, a titan-size model takes months to design and sculpt. This is direct from FW, as an explanation for why they haven't made a warlord titan yet (so they have no incentive to lie about it).

And you didn't answer my question: how much do you think is a reasonable price to design and sculpt a titan-size model?

2) It does, but it's not more than one day of playing around in CAD

If you think it's just a bit of "playing around in CAD" then you don't really know how the process works. Even ignoring the fact that a lot of FW stuff is hand-sculpted, not done in CAD, "playing around" is just a good way to waste money on a kit that is poorly optimized, costs too much to manufacture, and has too many casting problems.

 Peregrine wrote:

morgoth wrote:
1) I've followed sculptors, and no one sculpt in all the 40K universe cost $10K. You have no idea how fast those guys are, it's insane.

Again, a titan-size model takes months to design and sculpt. This is direct from FW, as an explanation for why they haven't made a warlord titan yet (so they have no incentive to lie about it).

And you didn't answer my question: how much do you think is a reasonable price to design and sculpt a titan-size model?

2) It does, but it's not more than one day of playing around in CAD

If you think it's just a bit of "playing around in CAD" then you don't really know how the process works. Even ignoring the fact that a lot of FW stuff is hand-sculpted, not done in CAD, "playing around" is just a good way to waste money on a kit that is poorly optimized, costs too much to manufacture, and has too many casting problems.

I can design and sculpt a titan in months, and I'm not a sculptor.
Titans are not much harder to design and sculpt than smaller miniatures because they lack a lot of the detail (in terms of details per square inch, it's clear that titans are worse than standard GW plastic).

Real sculptors, if you use your friend Google, you will see ask from $400 and up with detail quality that beats standard GW plastic.
If you were to ask them to design a low detail large size sculpt, like a Titan, it would probably cost you $2000-3000 at most.

Playing in CAD is actually not applicable to FW, they don't use anything modern, so adapting the pieces to the molds is probably done by hand, winging it and relying on their experience in casting, so yes I said something dumb, sorry.

morgoth wrote:
Ok, so maybe I was wrong, and maybe (maybe, because taxes are WAY more complicated than just what you see on the surface) there's another reason for cars being produced in the UK.

Maybe? No, you were wrong. CKD and PKD, if you're purporting to talk about car manufacture, you know these terms, yes?

morgoth wrote:Ford... they can't even make a single good car, why would you take them as example ? Mercedes and every other good brand is still produced in Germany.

Wrong. a) seen mercedes JD power scores during the late 90s and early 2000s? At one point they had THE WORST CAR out of over 100 surveyed models. b) not all mercedes, BMW and AUDI are made in germany. I'll give you a hint...I work for one of them. You'd be amazed where car plants are for German brands. and c) Ford do actually make some good cars - fiesta and focus are both very good carsa, s-max is class leading. etc. Leagues above Fiat, Alpha, etc

morgoth wrote:Besides, there are car factories all over the EU, so I don't know what you've been smoking but ...

I never said solely UK, you're just skipping over in your haste to poorly rebut

morgoth wrote:So either, we live in a world of fairies, the low education segment of the British Car Assembly Industry is the best in all the low education segments in the world, and you're right, and Ford and Honda should start shipping all their cars from the UK rather than their home base.

Car assembly is surprisingly not that low skilled - but you would know this, given youre an expert, yes?

Have you seen the lengths of apprenticeships ever? Or their content?

morgoth wrote:Or, we live in reality, where people take business decisions based on business outcomes, and there's a good business outcome associated with their presence in the UK, such as much easier / possible car certification lane, lower car sales taxes, and other possible goodies.

Cars have to be certificated in each territory. Location of production doesnt matter. Exporting out of the EU has one rate only - th eimport rate at the other end

Apparently skilled workforce isnt one of these business decisions.

morgoth wrote:FIY the US has incredible taxes on cars, Mercedes there cost twice the price, and the Japanese had to compete with +100% taxes for a long time. I doubt the UK is so clean as to make no difference between local and remote production when every other country does.

Erm, nope. Just priced up one, including local sales taxes. Same for BMW. Now if you want a place that is truly insane, go to China- an imported MINI costs the same as a locally produced 5 series.

just gonna add titans have more detail than just on the "surface" have you seen the insides of say thunderhawks, reavers, warhounds, or god forbid the inside of a Manta. iv seen a few of each that surface area isnt just the outside, there is tons of details on the insides etc etc as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
oh and if you REALLY want to look up a sales tax.

look at importing a bently to china.
ill give you a hint, if you buy one, you buy the govt one as well and they get change from theirs

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Wrong. a) seen mercedes JD power scores during the late 90s and early 2000s? At one point they had THE WORST CAR out of over 100 surveyed models. b) not all mercedes, BMW and AUDI are made in germany. I'll give you a hint...I work for one of them. You'd be amazed where car plants are for German brands. and c) Ford do actually make some good cars - fiesta and focus are both very good carsa, s-max is class leading. etc. Leagues above Fiat, Alpha, etc

And welcome to the ignore list. You know nothing about anything and you keep on running your mouth anyway. Whatever your JD scores may be, Mercedes > Ford, at every level.
There is no Ford car to compete with an SLS, and I don't think Ford has anything to match my C220.
Fiesta, Focus and S-max are poor quality cars for the poor, maybe above some of the worst like Fiat indeed, but not seriously contending with car makers from München.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
just gonna add titans have more detail than just on the "surface" have you seen the insides of say thunderhawks, reavers, warhounds, or god forbid the inside of a Manta. iv seen a few of each that surface area isnt just the outside, there is tons of details on the insides etc etc as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
oh and if you REALLY want to look up a sales tax.

look at importing a bently to china.
ill give you a hint, if you buy one, you buy the govt one as well and they get change from theirs

Why would you buy a Bentley though, unless you're feeling hardcore American inside...

morgoth wrote:
I can design and sculpt a titan in months, and I'm not a sculptor.

Really? Can I see some of your work? I'm assuming you have some, and wouldn't be making claims about your ability to build a titan if you don't have some pretty solid scratchbuilding experience. I've seen enough first-time scratchbuilds to know that if you don't have lots of previous experience to show off your first titan is going to be garbage.

Titans are not much harder to design and sculpt than smaller miniatures because they lack a lot of the detail (in terms of details per square inch, it's clear that titans are worse than standard GW plastic).

1) Details per square inch is a terrible standard. Copy/pasting a bunch of skulls and purity seals all over a model adds lots of detail per square inch, but doesn't produce a good model. A large part of the difficulty of making a model isn't the physical creation of the detail parts, it's figuring out what detail to use, including things like which areas to leave blank. And that involves concept art, test models, etc, all of which take time and add to the cost of the finished product.

2) Titans are MUCH harder to design than a 28mm character model, simply because of the sheer size. For example, a 28mm figure has few, if any, structural concerns to worry about. A titan has to support its own weight with a reasonable amount of pinning work on the joints. A 28mm figure has a limited number of features (weapon, armor, etc), a titan has tons of different design elements to deal with. A 28mm figure can be sculpted around a default skeleton to get the basic shapes right, a titan has to be designed from scratch. Etc.

Real sculptors, if you use your friend Google, you will see ask from $400 and up with detail quality that beats standard GW plastic.
If you were to ask them to design a low detail large size sculpt, like a Titan, it would probably cost you $2000-3000 at most.

Can you provide a price quote from a sculptor willing to do a FW-quality titan for that much, or are you just speculating based on costs for 28mm character models?

morgoth wrote:

me wrote:Wrong. a) seen mercedes JD power scores during the late 90s and early 2000s? At one point they had THE WORST CAR out of over 100 surveyed models. b) not all mercedes, BMW and AUDI are made in germany. I'll give you a hint...I work for one of them. You'd be amazed where car plants are for German brands. and c) Ford do actually make some good cars - fiesta and focus are both very good carsa, s-max is class leading. etc. Leagues above Fiat, Alpha, etc

And welcome to the ignore list. You know nothing about anything and you keep on running your mouth anyway. Whatever your JD scores may be, Mercedes > Ford, at every level.
There is no Ford car to compete with an SLS, and I don't think Ford has anything to match my C220.
Fiesta, Focus and S-max are poor quality cars for the poor, maybe above some of the worst like Fiat indeed, but not seriously contending with car makers from München.

Wow, so I correct you with facts, and this is your response? Pure troll.

2000s M-Class. Worst car you could buy, based on feedback from actual customers. Its why Mercedes had to put back in, and more, the money they took out of QC in the late 90s. Current gen e-class mid life upgrade cost them 2 billion, fixing isues from the first revision, and the convertible and coupe wont have the bodywork updates, as it costs too much. S class is a fab car, but the A class is just another hatch, the B class is ok, but sells well but with too little contribution. Theyre still lacking volume, hence why they're subvening so much - currently you can get a merc C or E for only 300 a month in the UK, throwing the cost of retail through the roof and reducing their contribution margin to near zero. But it gets their volume back, which is what is needed.

Focus and fiesta are not poor quality cars, you really need to take your head out from where youre sticking it, it isnt pretty. Oh, and you have a C220, CDI i presume? Quite a good car, interestingly peaky but low refinement engine, and gearbox (assuming auto) is still the 7 speed slush box, yes?

Oh, and car makers, or MAKER, from Munich? Audi are just down the road in Ingolstadt, and Mercedes is Stuttgart, so you cant even get that right.....

 Peregrine wrote:

morgoth wrote:
I can design and sculpt a titan in months, and I'm not a sculptor.

Really? Can I see some of your work? I'm assuming you have some, and wouldn't be making claims about your ability to build a titan if you don't have some pretty solid scratchbuilding experience. I've seen enough first-time scratchbuilds to know that if you don't have lots of previous experience to show off your first titan is going to be garbage.

I can give you a list of all the things I've designed and/or built if you like... modular terrain, LARP weapons, solid state NAS, thermal cutter (angled, for foam blade edges) and so much more.
But really, it doesn't matter. If I can build a shitTitan in one month, then a real sculptor with experience can build an awesomeTitan in two weeks.
Because that's how experience works.

 Peregrine wrote:

Titans are not much harder to design and sculpt than smaller miniatures because they lack a lot of the detail (in terms of details per square inch, it's clear that titans are worse than standard GW plastic).

1) Details per square inch is a terrible standard. Copy/pasting a bunch of skulls and purity seals all over a model adds lots of detail per square inch, but doesn't produce a good model. A large part of the difficulty of making a model isn't the physical creation of the detail parts, it's figuring out what detail to use, including things like which areas to leave blank. And that involves concept art, test models, etc, all of which take time and add to the cost of the finished product.

2) Titans are MUCH harder to design than a 28mm character model, simply because of the sheer size. For example, a 28mm figure has few, if any, structural concerns to worry about. A titan has to support its own weight with a reasonable amount of pinning work on the joints. A 28mm figure has a limited number of features (weapon, armor, etc), a titan has tons of different design elements to deal with. A 28mm figure can be sculpted around a default skeleton to get the basic shapes right, a titan has to be designed from scratch. Etc.

It's a terrible standard, but that's how you measure the work to be done, most of the detail on the big models is really a lot of copy paste.

There is no real concern with titan's structure, you can pin them with 5mm steel rod and you could pose them in just any pose even with the very heavy resin, I don't think it's that much of a challenge for a pro sculptor tbh.

 Peregrine wrote:

Real sculptors, if you use your friend Google, you will see ask from $400 and up with detail quality that beats standard GW plastic.
If you were to ask them to design a low detail large size sculpt, like a Titan, it would probably cost you $2000-3000 at most.

Can you provide a price quote from a sculptor willing to do a FW-quality titan for that much, or are you just speculating based on costs for 28mm character models?

Wow! I've never heard anyone say Forge World quality isn't good! I have a load of FW models from a Warhound Titan, to Tau flyers, Nids, etc and I have nothing but excellent quality, so much great detail! I was missing a bit and the customer service folk took care of me pretty quickly.
I am quite sure that if you buy something that isn't good quality that they will take care of you. Get off the fence and get some FW!

 Kelly502 wrote:
Wow! I've never heard anyone say Forge World quality isn't good! I have a load of FW models from a Warhound Titan, to Tau flyers, Nids, etc and I have nothing but excellent quality, so much great detail! I was missing a bit and the customer service folk took care of me pretty quickly.
I am quite sure that if you buy something that isn't good quality that they will take care of you. Get off the fence and get some FW!

Right away, let me sell my child's soul and I'll have the money to afford it.

They have good quality alright, it's just not on par with their prices.

Save up...

morgoth wrote:
If I can build a shitTitan in one month, then a real sculptor with experience can build an awesomeTitan in two weeks.
Because that's how experience works.

So who knows better: the FW sculptor (who gets paid to do this stuff) that says "titans take months to design and sculpt", or the random forum poster with no scratchbuilding experience who assumes it should only take a couple weeks because "that's how experience works"?

It's a terrible standard, but that's how you measure the work to be done, most of the detail on the big models is really a lot of copy paste.

No, that is NOT how you measure work to be done. It's an absolutely useless standard that has nothing to do with how complex or difficult to design a model is. In fact, if you tried to hire me based on that standard I'd tell you to STFU and stop wasting my time.

There is no real concern with titan's structure, you can pin them with 5mm steel rod and you could pose them in just any pose even with the very heavy resin, I don't think it's that much of a challenge for a pro sculptor tbh.

You know why? Because the person who sculpted the titan did a good job of designing it. Getting to a finished product that anyone with some pinning experience can pose and assemble takes skill and a lot of design work.

How much more proof do you need ?

Let's start with more than the zero proof that you've given so far.

Why believe a Titan costs 10K+ to sculpt and mold if the only reasonable examples point to 2-3 K ?

Because your "reasonable example" is based on a ridiculous assumption that a titan is only a little harder to sculpt than a 28mm character. You haven't actually provided any support for your $2-3k number, you've just assumed that it must be true.

Peregrine - or support for anything else theyve stated so far this thread.

Anyway, Forgeworld quality varies greatly from time to time. My Decimator only came with some minor faults that could be easily fixed and re-fitted.

morgoth wrote:

And welcome to the ignore list. You know nothing about anything and you keep on running your mouth anyway. Whatever your JD scores may be, Mercedes > Ford, at every level.
There is no Ford car to compete with an SLS, and I don't think Ford has anything to match my C220.
Fiesta, Focus and S-max are poor quality cars for the poor, maybe above some of the worst like Fiat indeed, but not seriously contending with car makers from München.

Not sure if trolling, or if he has no clue what he's talking about.

 Peregrine wrote:

So who knows better: the FW sculptor (who gets paid to do this stuff) that says "titans take months to design and sculpt", or the random forum poster with no scratchbuilding experience who assumes it should only take a couple weeks because "that's how experience works"?

Tell you what: We'll make a bet.
If I can get someone to build ME an Eldar Titan with equal detail to the ForgeWorld ones, for say 3K€, you pay for it and I keep the Titan.
Just find a way to have that bet formalized and your money put on escrow, and I'll find a way to get that Titan for free.

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
Anyway, Forgeworld quality varies greatly from time to time. My Decimator only came with some minor faults that could be easily fixed and re-fitted.

morgoth wrote:

And welcome to the ignore list. You know nothing about anything and you keep on running your mouth anyway. Whatever your JD scores may be, Mercedes > Ford, at every level.
There is no Ford car to compete with an SLS, and I don't think Ford has anything to match my C220.
Fiesta, Focus and S-max are poor quality cars for the poor, maybe above some of the worst like Fiat indeed, but not seriously contending with car makers from München.

Not sure if trolling, or if he has no clue what he's talking about.

All I'll add to this is the only other time I've seen this poster this active in a thread, it was over in Tactics where they argued that there wasn't anything fundamentally wrong with the Waveserpent in terms of game balance....




Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

So who knows better: the FW sculptor (who gets paid to do this stuff) that says "titans take months to design and sculpt", or the random forum poster with no scratchbuilding experience who assumes it should only take a couple weeks because "that's how experience works"?

Tell you what: We'll make a bet.
If I can get someone to build ME an Eldar Titan with equal detail to the ForgeWorld ones, for say 3K€, you pay for it and I keep the Titan.
Just find a way to have that bet formalized and your money put on escrow, and I'll find a way to get that Titan for free.

Cool, I'll adjudicate, and if I deem the finished article to be a pile of gak, or consider it unsuitable for mass reproduction or contravene any of the other criteria which FW would need to consider that a one off, bespoke sculpt wouldn't have to take account of, Peregrine gets his money back doubled

Deal?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Deal?

Of course, if you throw in a free Lamborghini if I win, and you get a certificate of trustwothiness from HM, no problem.

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
Anyway, Forgeworld quality varies greatly from time to time. My Decimator only came with some minor faults that could be easily fixed and re-fitted.

morgoth wrote:

And welcome to the ignore list. You know nothing about anything and you keep on running your mouth anyway. Whatever your JD scores may be, Mercedes > Ford, at every level.
There is no Ford car to compete with an SLS, and I don't think Ford has anything to match my C220.
Fiesta, Focus and S-max are poor quality cars for the poor, maybe above some of the worst like Fiat indeed, but not seriously contending with car makers from München.

Not sure if trolling, or if he has no clue what he's talking about.

Both, quite possibly. They backed themselves into a corner by talking about car manufacture as if they knew anything, when they clearly dont.

Hell, they even had Mercedes in Munich...sure people in the huffhouse would be interested to know who theyre apparently working for now....

morgoth wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Deal?

Of course, if you throw in a free Lamborghini if I win, and you get a certificate of trustwothiness from HM, no problem.

WhY would I need to do anything of the sort? I'm just the judge, you're the one throwing around wild speculation you can't/won't back up with any sort of fact.

Just to provide some context, I know that Rob from Mierce mentioned in one of the Kickstarters that a single 28mm sculpt costs four figures GBP (around £1500 IIRC but not 100% of exact figure) from one of the top flight sculptors that they use. Even if one were to consider the FW sculptors are salaried, the sheer difference in man hours required would out your budget under pressure before you even start.

It wouldn't surprise me if you can find someone who can knock together a Titan that externally looks just as good for a few grand. I think getting someone who can sculpt the interior bits, pilots, etc and then turn it in to a silicone mould ready for casting resin parts, you might struggle to find someone capable of doing that willing to do it for so little money.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
It wouldn't surprise me if you can find someone who can knock together a Titan that externally looks just as good for a few grand. I think getting someone who can sculpt the interior bits, pilots, etc and then turn it in to a silicone mould ready for casting resin parts, you might struggle to find someone capable of doing that willing to do it for so little money.

I don't think the interior bits would be that much of an issue tbh.
The titan is like sculpting a WTF scale miniature, the interior bits are more like sculpting a 28mm scale vehicle.

The silicon molds are another story though, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone asking another grand or two to make high quality reusable molds.
But then, that's not part of the IP, and that's something the Chinese have to do just as much as ForgeWorld.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Just to provide some context, I know that Rob from Mierce mentioned in one of the Kickstarters that a single 28mm sculpt costs four figures GBP (around £1500 IIRC but not 100% of exact figure) from one of the top flight sculptors that they use. Even if one were to consider the FW sculptors are salaried, the sheer difference in man hours required would out your budget under pressure before you even start.

Really ?
A guy who sells miniatures telling you it costs a ton to make them ?
That sounds a lot like software vendors who tell me they put 40 man years in their product - never mind that their company did not spend a quarter of that on programmers.

You can't expect a miniature sculptor to be salaried tbh, the guy would have to churn 50+ miniatures a year to be kept busy full time, especially considering how so many of these miniatures are copy/paste in large part...


Point being: the "IP" of the original FW sculpts did not cost that much, and would not cost that much if it had to be re-created.
It's not the reason FW is expensive.

Morgot, I don't know where you're getting your info from, but miniature making for mass production is expensive as all hell.

And FW can't "copy/paste" parts as they do resin casting, which requires a physical master to make the mold, unlike plastic casting where a machine can create the steel mold needed from a computer input of what the sprue looks like.

That means all duplication is done by hand.

morgoth wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
It wouldn't surprise me if you can find someone who can knock together a Titan that externally looks just as good for a few grand. I think getting someone who can sculpt the interior bits, pilots, etc and then turn it in to a silicone mould ready for casting resin parts, you might struggle to find someone capable of doing that willing to do it for so little money.

I don't think the interior bits would be that much of an issue tbh.
The titan is like sculpting a WTF scale miniature, the interior bits are more like sculpting a 28mm scale vehicle.

The silicon molds are another story though, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone asking another grand or two to make high quality reusable molds.
But then, that's not part of the IP, and that's something the Chinese have to do just as much as ForgeWorld

I'm not saying the interior bits are any harder to sculpt than a typical 28mm figure, I'm just saying that I imagine people who can sculpt models of the quality that FW puts out (opposed to just a random garage hobbyist who can knock together a plasticard titan) would probably charge you a decent amount of money per hour to do it. Maybe you could still find someone willing to do it for so little.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
That means all duplication is done by hand.

Not strictly true. You often see models, metal and plastic alike and long before the days of CAD models, where the sculptor would make a master body, recast it, then use that as the basis for other models. You see it heaps where a certain model might have 9 variants, but it's actually the same 3 basic models just with different details.

EDIT: Actually I guess that's still by hand so maybe I'm just tired and talking out my backside But yeah, it's not like they're resculpting things, they just cast duplicates and modify them as needed.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Morgot, I don't know where you're getting your info from, but miniature making for mass production is expensive as all hell.

And FW can't "copy/paste" parts as they do resin casting, which requires a physical master to make the mold, unlike plastic casting where a machine can create the steel mold needed from a computer input of what the sprue looks like.

That means all duplication is done by hand.

What I mean is that a big part of the making a new master is not about making anything new.
The vast majority of FW's work is to make molds of conversions, and sometimes to make molds of scratch built.
Sure the Tau Manta's outside is largely original, maybe not the engines, maybe not the cockpit, maybe not ... surely not the insides, etc.
On Imperial vehicles the hull panels often don't seem to be original either, leaving not so much in the way of actual "sculpt from scratch" work.

Mr. Eldar Vampire Raider has a plan in his mind.
First, he gets a cast of any other Eldar thingy with a Pulsar.
Gets two pulsars, gets rid of the rest of the kit.
Then, he's like mhhh... what about a falcon's head ?
Takes a falcon sprue, the bits he likes, removes the rest.
Then he scratch builds the wings, sticks the falcon and pulsar bits on it, green stuffs around for texture, details and so on.

That's for a very special FW item.

How it works for - yet another - imperial FW item.

Gets standard guardsmen.
Sculpts new heads.
Sends to be made into a mold.

Gets standard guardsmen.
Adds MOAR SKULLZZZ.
Sends to be made into a mold.

Gets standard Leman Russ.
Sculpts a new gun.
Sends to be made into a mold.

Gets standard Imperial Knight.
Scratch build / sculpt new dickshield.
Sends to be made into a mold.

You do know they do a lot of original stuff that they can't base off other other models too, right? The Spartan Assault tank for instance, or any of their Titans. And I doubt they chop model kits apart like you claim. Especially since some of their products predate the plastic model kits.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
You do know they do a lot of original stuff that they can't base off other other models too, right? The Spartan Assault tank for instance, or any of their Titans. And I doubt they chop model kits apart like you claim. Especially since some of their products predate the plastic model kits.

Then they chopped the FW apart to create the plastic model kits Still a nice saving.

Is that Spartan Assault tank not almost a standard Land Raider ?

The titans, like the Eldar Vampire Raider, are part of those works where there had to be a lot more original sculpting yes.
But then, the imperial Titans aren't that detailed, a lot of the parts are just like one sheet of bent plasticard + rim + rivets, or just PVC tubing / ABS rods of various diameters.

I'm not saying it's not a lot of work though, I just don't think most of the imperial stuff would be hard to re-create or very time consuming, especially if you have heaps of standard models on hand, resin casting tools, ...

morgoth wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Just to provide some context, I know that Rob from Mierce mentioned in one of the Kickstarters that a single 28mm sculpt costs four figures GBP (around £1500 IIRC but not 100% of exact figure) from one of the top flight sculptors that they use. Even if one were to consider the FW sculptors are salaried, the sheer difference in man hours required would out your budget under pressure before you even start.

Really ?
A guy who sells miniatures telling you it costs a ton to make them ?
That sounds a lot like software vendors who tell me they put 40 man years in their product - never mind that their company did not spend a quarter of that on programmers.

You can't expect a miniature sculptor to be salaried tbh, the guy would have to churn 50+ miniatures a year to be kept busy full time, especially considering how so many of these miniatures are copy/paste in large part...


Point being: the "IP" of the original FW sculpts did not cost that much, and would not cost that much if it had to be re-created.
It's not the reason FW is expensive.

The ignorance you're showing at this point is really staggering.

For a start, nearly all of FW/GW's sculptors are salaried. That's what their design studios are comprised of, miniature sculptors, painters, authors etc who have sacrificed a percentage of their creative freedom and the rights to what they create in exchange for a regular, stable income.

Secondly, why on earth would I doubt what I was told by someone WRT the cost of production when all the figures they offer support that, and are in line with what other similar manufacturers do? Especially when I have some small personal experience in the area of artists and commissions and know that the figure given is neither unrealistically high nor uncommon, especially when you're talking about "celebrity" sculptors.

Regardless, how about providing some sort of evidence that supports your assertions rather than attacking the veracity of mine because reasons.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Honestly, starting with an argument I fundamentally agree with and executing your points so badly that I end up taking the opposing standpoint to you is an especially splendid style of fail.

Congratulations.

morgoth wrote:
Is that Spartan Assault tank not almost a standard Land Raider ?

No, not really.

morgoth wrote:
The titans, like the Eldar Vampire Raider, are part of those works where there had to be a lot more original sculpting yes.
But then, the imperial Titans aren't that detailed, a lot of the parts are just like one sheet of bent plasticard + rim + rivets, or just PVC tubing / ABS rods of various diameters.

If you think just because the materials are simple that it makes construction simple there are a lot of scratchbuilders who will want your head.

morgoth wrote:
I'm not saying it's not a lot of work though, I just don't think most of the imperial stuff would be hard to re-create or very time consuming, especially if you have heaps of standard models on hand, resin casting tools, ...

I don't really think you get it all that much. There is a lot that goes on. We probably don't even see a third of the stuff they try. The failed prototypes, the things that don't cast properly, the kits that turn out to be too complicated to build...there is a lot of trial and error into producing everything. You really can't assume, based on the apparent complexity (or lack there of) in a model's design how long it actually took to make.

So the Spartan is just another Land Raider, but with different track units, sponsons, upper and lower hulls?

That tank shares so much with the Land Raiders I don't understand how you don't see it.
Scratch building that with an LR kit on hand would take maybe 25% of the time of doing it from scratch.

I know it's not easy to scratch build, I create stuff all the time.
Just saying, I believe it's a lot easier to make your own Imperial Titan than your own Eldar Titan from scratch.

I see a lot of failed prototypes that made it to production.

The revenant Titan with its collar mounted jetpack and ugly head, the Imperial ugly titans, Santa Grimnar, ...

Oh, and tracks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:
That tank shares so much with the Land Raiders I don't see it.

I know it's not easy to scratch build, I create stuff all the time.
Just saying, I believe it's a lot easier to make your own Imperial Titan than your own Eldar Titan from scratch.

I see a lot of failed prototypes that made it to production.

The revenant Titan with its collar mounted jetpack and ugly head, the Imperial ugly titans, Santa Grimnar, ...

No goal post moving for you.

We are discussing the practical design and manufacturing aspects of the models, don't be moving it to aesthetics, where you'll then turn around and claim "you're allowed not to like a model."

Whether a model works from a technical view (can it be broken down into components and then mass produced and re-assembled by the consumer) has NOTHING to do with how the model looks or the design choices behind it.

 Azreal13 wrote:
So the Spartan is just another Land Raider, but with different track units, sponsons, upper and lower hulls?

Basically!

Oh, and I've been told multiple times that it's not technically a Land Raider.

morgoth wrote:
That tank shares so much with the Land Raiders I don't understand how you don't see it.
Scratch building that with an LR kit on hand would take maybe 25% of the time of doing it from scratch.

It has a different hull, different tracks, it's bigger, it's wider, has a different engine.....I don't know how you think it's nearly identical to a Land Raider unless you're thinking of the original Land Raider which hadn't been in product in nearly 20 years and is the wrong shape and size:

morgoth wrote:
I know it's not easy to scratch build, I create stuff all the time.
Just saying, I believe it's a lot easier to make your own Imperial Titan than your own Eldar Titan from scratch.

Even so, that doesn't mean it can't take a very long time to perfect that Titan kit.

morgoth wrote:
I see a lot of failed prototypes that made it to production.

The revenant Titan with its collar mounted jetpack and ugly head, the Imperial ugly titans, Santa Grimnar, ...

You're confusing "asthetics I don't like" with "a kit that has technical problems that would prevent it from being mass produced and sold".

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Oh, and I've been told multiple times that it's not technically a Land Raider.

You're confusing "asthetics I don't like" with "a kit that has technical problems that would prevent it from being mass produced and sold".

It's not technically a Land Raider, it just looks like one, acts like one, has the tracks of the old one, the forward assault door of the new one, side plates that look a lot like existing ones, sponsons that are nothing special, weapons that already existed, exhaust tubes that look like previous ones, etc.
But it's not a Land Raider, it's a completely different vehicle. I guess you need that kind of justification when you paid the full price for it.

I think you're disrespecting all scratch builders by pretending there's even remotely as much work in making your not-really-a-land-raider from land-raider bits compared to actually creating something from scratch (even if it's a replica of an existing model).

So no I'm sorry I'm not going to say: this must have taken months. Or even weeks. If your job is to build miniatures, you can surely assemble that in a day from existing parts and all that.
This is of course not the case for some other things, but that Land Raider ? come on.

Honestly I don't see why you're even arguing, the point is that GW / FW does not have any real IP costs that could justify their prices.
I don't see how you can argue against that.

GW had an operating income of 130M last year, do you really think one percent of that, 1.3M went into creating new sculpts ?? At the rate of professional sculptors, that would result in 3250 new models equivalent to a Primarch. They must be throwing a lot of failures AND successes away if that's true.

I'm telling you, the real share of IP in GW/FW is close to nothing, and it could hardly be different, because there's so much more to selling miniatures than just sculpting one new miniature.

What costs a ton however, is printing, packaging, marketing, shipping, more marketing, more and more marketing and more MOAR DAKKAAAAAA.

Anyway, I think you get my drift.

what moar marketing you chump.? seriously GW and marketing, your troll has surely come to an end.

there is no way for me to go and get the existing kits for a LR and make a spartan, they are just THAT different... its like saying a baneblade is the same as my glaive... totally different chasis. and thats only the starting point.

and what if we want to discuss are GW's profits from?how about the existing range? the SM kit for example. it works for them and i bet that they make MORE money from it than they would from a warhound each year. So yeah and as a business you wanna bet that they want to milk past expenses as far as they can. because guess what? every company does that. except GW unlike say Ford/Mercedes can sell a 20 year old sculpt as new and usable, so that keeps their yearly moneys ticking over..

I'm seeing that alot of people are desperately trying to justify costs for sculpting and cost for certain models.

This reminds me of when my city commissioned something like 6 million dollars to an unknown artist so that they could make a statue for our central park. Long story short, the tool artist spent over a year designing what literally looked like a snake piece of gak. He used poor quality materials on the thing too. People were pissed that it took so long to produce an ugly POS statue. They were not pro artists but most of the city folk understood that it was an abusive scam. The artist dissapeared to scam another city...

My point being is that you don't need to be a "pro sculptor or artist" to be able to give an estimate on how much time something should take to create or how much it should be worth. I do not believe it takes months upon months to sculpt. This is just commom sense. It should not cost thousands. Thinking that it takes months and thousands to complete shows that alot of people are out of touch with what a dollar is worth and what an hour is worth. Dont highball just to justify your compulsion to buy something.

As to the Spartan...yeah that may not be a LR, but it looks so similar to one that I think the ones who designed it were lazy.

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
there is no way for me to go and get the existing kits for a LR and make a spartan, they are just THAT different... its like saying a baneblade is the same as my glaive... totally different chasis. and thats only the starting point.

Then you're not really good at craft building.

It's friggin easy to go from LR to Spartan or baneblade to glaive.

 Vigilant wrote:
I'm seeing that alot of people are desperately trying to justify costs for sculpting and cost for certain models.

I'm not trying to argue that they're priced as well as they could be, I'm just think that some people greatly underestimate how much a model costs to make, and how long it takes to make it.

I'll also add that artists rip the public sector off for work all the time, and that it makes a poor comparison with the topic here.

Just two recent, local examples to me, hundreds of thousands were spent on a sculpture as part of a new road route near me, all it ultimately was was some rocks supported by a steel frame to hold them on edge, and a local university spending £150k on 7 (seven) chairs for their graduation ceremony because they're hand made (at least, I think that's the reason they're using to justify it)

As with any market, the suppliers will sell at the highest price they can, but add in the subjective nature, and not small amount of pretension, of the art market and you get anomalies like this.

The miniatures market isn't really comparable because miniatures aren't really art for arts sake, they are created to be sold on a commercial basis, and therefore their development costs need to be at a level where this is possible.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Vigilant wrote:
I'm seeing that alot of people are desperately trying to justify costs for sculpting and cost for certain models.

I'm not trying to argue that they're priced as well as they could be, I'm just think that some people greatly underestimate how much a model costs to make, and how long it takes to make it.

Pennies on the dollar. They may say it took them a gazillion man hours and thousands of dollars. The truth being it was probably significantly less. Things are overpriced because of branding. Thats what you are paying for. Dont sugarcoat it. Nike uses inferior materials but sell for as much or more than my all weather Tony Lamas, that are made from premium materials.

I understand that branding means alot and I'm okay with that. I buy the latest in tech, branding is not the issue. The issue is or was quality.

I think it'ssafe to say that branding is the real reason they command the price they have. It's official stuff. Not because it's hard to produce.

With FW I'd actually argue their pricing has to do with them expecting to sell lower numbers of models when compared to GW main and so they aim to recoup development costs over a smaller number than GW does.

That's just an assumption on part of why they price like they do. GW main on the other hand is a different beast.

Resin molds also degrade faster than plastic molds do as well IIRC. So once they make a set of molds there is only a limited time before they have to make a new set.

This is why sometimes seemingly random items will be temporarily listed as out of stock on the FW website. Its basically means they're making another mold set at the moment.

Yep, a resin mould degrades shockingly quickly. Takes a whole to redo.

I've noticed a distinct lack of evidence from.morgoth still. Nothing to substantiate their claims, just waffle.

Yeah well, if the chinese can make a Revenant Titan for $60 with shipping and make a profit on it, I believe FW is making huge profit on theirs (about $240).
And considering the price difference... the whole surface of the FW titan could be covered in Eldar runes, and four set of weapons provided, all flash and moldlines removed, and why not zenithal primed already.

morgoth wrote:
Yeah well, if the chinese can make a Revenant Titan for $60 with shipping and make a profit on it, I believe FW is making huge profit on theirs (about $240).

The Chinese can make a cheap titan because they don't have to pay the sculptors, don't have to pay for customer service, don't have to pay the rules author, don't have to pay anyone a decent wage, etc. All they have to do is make a set of molds and cast copies as they're ordered. Talking about how much FW/GW make in profit by comparing them to recasters is like complaining that the music industry is too greedy because anyone can get pirated mp3s for free.

And considering the price difference... the whole surface of the FW titan could be covered in Eldar runes, and four set of weapons provided, all flash and moldlines removed, and why not zenithal primed already.

Why would anyone want some of those things? Despite your obsession with detail per square inch most people would probably agree that adding a bunch of clutter by throwing runes everywhere would be a step back, not an improvement. And why would I want someone other than me to put paint on my model that I'll just have to strip off before I can use it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:
It's friggin easy to go from LR to Spartan or baneblade to glaive.

No, it really isn't. None of the parts are shared between a GW Land Raider and a FW Spartan. You might be able to kitbash a pile of GW LR parts into something vaguely like a Spartan, but it won't be the real model. Likewise with the Baneblade and Glaive, they share a few parts of the hull (most of which aren't really visible once the model is finished) but the vast majority of the kit is new work. And TBH the fact that you're trying to claim otherwise pretty strongly suggests that you've never even seen pictures of the models you're talking about.

 Peregrine wrote:

morgoth wrote:
Yeah well, if the chinese can make a Revenant Titan for $60 with shipping and make a profit on it, I believe FW is making huge profit on theirs (about $240).

The Chinese can make a cheap titan because they don't have to pay the sculptors, don't have to pay for customer service, don't have to pay the rules author, don't have to pay anyone a decent wage, etc. All they have to do is make a set of molds and cast copies as they're ordered. Talking about how much FW/GW make in profit by comparing them to recasters is like complaining that the music industry is too greedy because anyone can get pirated mp3s for free.

And considering the price difference... the whole surface of the FW titan could be covered in Eldar runes, and four set of weapons provided, all flash and moldlines removed, and why not zenithal primed already.

Why would anyone want some of those things? Despite your obsession with detail per square inch most people would probably agree that adding a bunch of clutter by throwing runes everywhere would be a step back, not an improvement. And why would I want someone other than me to put paint on my model that I'll just have to strip off before I can use it?

We have already established that the sculptors are a very minor percentage of the costs, the Chinese also have customer service, the rules... seriously man. seriously.

All they have to do is 95% of the work and that's good enough.
The music industry IS way too greedy. The day you can buy songs for 10 cents and 9 of those cents go to the artists, I'll tell you it's fine. Until then it's bs.

The extras are just examples of what FW could do to justify their insane pricing. A bit more detail on titans wouldn't be a bad thing, it would give people less incentive for Freehanding and texturing to compensate the blandness of the models.

Removing the Flash is clearly a good thing, mold lines as well.

Priming ? you could select what priming you want and no priming if you're that crazy about one very specific primer (which they could still offer as a service given the slowed prices).


The point is: if FW want to be a good deal, they either have to deliver more or price lower, that's it.

morgoth wrote:

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
there is no way for me to go and get the existing kits for a LR and make a spartan, they are just THAT different... its like saying a baneblade is the same as my glaive... totally different chasis. and thats only the starting point.

Then you're not really good at craft building.

It's friggin easy to go from LR to Spartan or baneblade to glaive.

im what? its what?



if you want to say all 4 of those are interchangable and have very minor changes between them then as i believe someone said you have no idea what your talking about.

now that these pics are here, im sure you can move your goal posts again. this thread is reading like a choose your own adventure with how often you redirect and change the story.
Ps: heres a couple more side by sides of them.



snd something funnily enough you dont know. FW is a good deal to aussies. its cost is now the same or BETTER (depending on exchange rate) than normal GW... funny thing that. i have also got a bunch of FW marines cos they are amazing

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
if you want to say all 4 of those are interchangable and have very minor changes between them then as i believe someone said you have no idea what your talking about.

They're still only variants of each other / mostly kitbash and less than 25% new sculpt.

morgoth wrote:
We have already established that the sculptors are a very minor percentage of the costs, the Chinese also have customer service, the rules... seriously man. seriously.

No, you have created numbers out of thin air, decrying people with way more actual knowledge than you and just going "nu uh, i'm right" whenever youre challenged, and shifting goalposts more times than a stadium rebuild.

YOU have decided it is a small percentage. People who know have stated it isnt. I'm going with the people with credibility over your opinion, sorry

nosferatu1001 wrote:
sorry

Don't be sorry, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving my opinion more credibility than it could ever have had without your intervention.
You gave me an occasion to refine that position, and to detail and explain exactly why I hold it, while at the same time showing that only people who believe more than they think would stand against that position.

morgoth wrote:

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
if you want to say all 4 of those are interchangable and have very minor changes between them then as i believe someone said you have no idea what your talking about.

They're still only variants of each other / mostly kitbash and less than 25% new sculpt.

no, no they really arent. you have no idea do you, and to add to that your total condescension is amazing.

you have never seen nor held these models but just presume i can tell you there is significant differences, but all youll say is "nooo im right, you know nothing your no go" and redirect your bs to something else

and editing people posts like you did above shows you to be a total troll and a waste of peoples time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Can you articulate the differences between a BaneBlade and a Glaive? have you ever owned them? or if you want to tell me the similarites besides that they are both tanks and have tracks?
Because if you said FelBlade and glaive youd have half a chance, but the baneblade is very different.

do the same for the LR and the Spartan. iv got them here to look at so i can tell you the differences. but i want you to show me the 75% of them that is the SAME.

morgoth wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
sorry

Don't be sorry, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving my opinion more credibility than it could ever have had without your intervention.
You gave me an occasion to refine that position, and to detail and explain exactly why I hold it, while at the same time showing that only people who believe more than they think would stand against that position.

I could have sworn I was on "ignore", guess you have to keep checking for more of your ill-founded opinions being debunked with facts...still think that Audi and Mercedes are in Munich?

Dont quote edit, it reduces your credibility to zero when you mangle context so horribly. Well, maintains that credibility in this case.

Carry on though, you've just about shot any chance you have of people thinking you have a valid opinion about any topic, given your pontificating here on a topic you are clearly quite, quite ignorant of.

You showed absolutely nothing of note, apart from your frankly comical opinion that a baneblade and fellblade are 75% identical. That, that is pure comedy gold.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

morgoth wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
sorry

Don't be sorry, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving my opinion more credibility than it could ever have had without your intervention.
You gave me an occasion to refine that position, and to detail and explain exactly why I hold it, while at the same time showing that only people who believe more than they think would stand against that position.

I could have sworn I was on "ignore", guess you have to keep checking for more of your ill-founded opinions being debunked with facts...still think that Audi and Mercedes are in Munich?

Dont quote edit, it reduces your credibility to zero when you mangle context so horribly. Well, maintains that credibility in this case.

Carry on though, you've just about shot any chance you have of people thinking you have a valid opinion about any topic, given your pontificating here on a topic you are clearly quite, quite ignorant of.

You showed absolutely nothing of note, apart from your frankly comical opinion that a baneblade and fellblade are 75% identical. That, that is pure comedy gold.

now now nos i can see the 75%



totally the same... me
and if we really want i can put a felblade in there just so you can see all 3

Yep, totally the same. Absolutely 75% identical, or "copy paste" as morgoth seems to think you can do when modelling in physical material and not CAD.