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**yakface**

Posted By Elusive71 on 02/12/2007 4:29 PM

It seems that some people are getting their arguements confused. This isn't a modeling skills pissing contest.

The problem at hand which I believe Nyarlathotep was addressing and which was further clarified by fullheadofhair and Keezus is that considering the premium prices GW asks us to pay, you'd think the product would be of a higher quality. For what they charge, we really shouldn't have to putty, sand and file as much as we do. These aren't garage kits ya know.

Like many of you, I've built kits by other manufacturers and yes, those airplanes and gundams needed filling and sanding on occasion to look their best (but rarely for basic assembly), and sometimes there was even some warpage. But when I compare the price of the kit VS. the damage control required to remedy flaws in a kit my 25 years of kit building tells me that something is amiss with GW's product, pricing structure, attitude toward their customers, or all of the above.

I expect to fill and file my gundams or whatever, but I don't mind because Bandai doesn't overprice their kits. So filling and filing is inevitable with GW kits? Fine. Start including files, putty, and spare blades with the kits, and maybe their prices will be justified.

What you say is understandable, but what we are specifically talking about in this thread is the split barrels on the heavy weapons.

These weapon barrels were split by choice, by the sculptors.

So the question is: Why did the sculptors split the barrels on the Heavy Weapons?

Now, some posters seem to believe that it is incompetance (or even negligence) on the part of the GW sculptors. If you want to equate it to the percieved 'overall decline of GW quality' then one can throw the conspiracy theory net out wide enough to say that Tom Kirby snuck into the production offices and asked the sculptors to split the barrels of the weapons in order to punish gamers who don't want to putty/sand their models.

But the reality of the situation has to be this: The sculptor was attempting to replicate the look and quality of the metal sculpts to the best of his ability and a conscious decision was made to split the barrels in order to accomplish this.

Now, I don't know the exact details of plastic mould-making, but I do know that in order to have anything resembling a hollow barrel on a plastic miniature you have to use a split barrel, as plastic moulds don't allow 'undercutting' (aka no detail on the fame can be smaller than the widest point of the model on one side.

That's why (for example) on the Carnifex weapon sprue you have a split (empty) barrel for the Barbed Strangler but a one-piece Venom Cannon (with no hollow barrels).

In short, it was a design choice, pure and simple.

Obviously some think that this was a poor design choice and others think this is a wise design choice. I guess it depends on whether you look at the glass half-empty or half-full.

But everyone should take a moment and realize that the choice was made for a purpose, and that purpose was to attempt to replicate the superior quality of the metal models. In that pursuit, perhaps they failed in your eyes, but that's what they attempted to do.

And with that final word, I'm going to lock this thread.