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Wait wait, what? They're *resin*? Thats absolute bs, they kept saying that these were *plastic* (which technically I suppose resin is, but its generally understood in the hobby as referring to two distinctly different materials). Like, I feel like thats a gross misrepresentation of the nature of the product, to the point that I would consider false advertising. If I bought something advertised as a plastic kit and received resin, I would be *livid*. I don't dislike resin miniatures by any means, but I base my value judgements around the type of material its cast in.
And after making all that commotion about how these are "made in the USA", as though resin miniatures aren't already being produced in this country. Absolute bull. Here I thought they were working on a legitimate plastic injection molding capability (and apparently it wasn't just me judging by some of the other comments I've seen elsewhere), instead they're just doing something fairly boring.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/11 22:37:57
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
chaos0xomega wrote: Wait wait, what? They're *resin*? Thats absolute bs, they kept saying that these were *plastic* (which technically I suppose resin is, but its generally understood in the hobby as referring to two distinctly different materials)
They were originally saying they were plastic, but their last couple of posts referred to them as "plastic resin". I was wondering if it was something similar to Mantic's Restic.
I know a few places in the states have got machines in
injection moulding with themoplastic resin (as opposed to a 2 part liquid resin), an easy one to describe 'wrong'
I've been curious about that, the videos/photos on their site kinda leave a lot to be desired, quality wise, so I don't have very high expectations as to what level of quality that system/process can produce.
Also the sites layout and design reminds me a lot of the ones of budget chinese 3d printers.
EDIT: Just learned who Blaine Pardoe is (one of the financial backers of Creative Juggernaut) - thats a huge nope from me, not giving him my money.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/12 00:06:15
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
One of the major factors in the significantly higher US costs is the set up and machining for the injection molds. While the US does have plastic injection companies the engineers & miller’s are fairly well paid for their skills (as they should be) Miniatures are incredibly detailed for their size and that’s not something a lot of plastic companies have in their set of expertise. Which is why folks like GW and Bandai are incredibly proud of their product lines as they are the only significant companies outside of China doing that work.
The companies in China have made a vested effort to produce high detail speciality items like models, their engineers and millwright are also paid a fraction of what US and Euro workers are, let alone for lesser skilled work like the packing labor. The largest investment in plastics is the milling stage and they can undercut other countries by as much as 80% because it’s subsidized by the Chinese government as a way of waging economic subversion and control against the west.
They secure and protect that work with government funding and making it priced so low that other nations can’t compete, it helps create an economic monopoly that’s very hard to break away from because you simply can’t afford to pay US or British workers what their skills are actually worth in a free market economy.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/12 03:29:58
Wait wait, what? They're *resin*? Thats absolute bs, they kept saying that these were *plastic* (which technically I suppose resin is, but its generally understood in the hobby as referring to two distinctly different materials). Like, I feel like thats a gross misrepresentation of the nature of the product, to the point that I would consider false advertising. If I bought something advertised as a plastic kit and received resin, I would be *livid*. I don't dislike resin miniatures by any means, but I base my value judgements around the type of material its cast in.
And after making all that commotion about how these are "made in the USA", as though resin miniatures aren't already being produced in this country. Absolute bull. Here I thought they were working on a legitimate plastic injection molding capability (and apparently it wasn't just me judging by some of the other comments I've seen elsewhere), instead they're just doing something fairly boring.
I am not sure if this was wrong advertising or who is wrong here but that "plastic" and "resin" being mixed up is not uncommon
usually for miniatures Resin is used for Polyurethane and Plastic for High Impact Polystyrene (a mixture of PS and rubber) yet both materials are "resin" and "plastic", throw in PVC which is the most common plastic outside the miniature world, and is also a resin
as Resin is every solid or liquid that is convertible into a polymer and Plastic is every synthetic materials were polymer is the main ingredient (so actually there are no Resin Miniatures as by the time the material is made into a Mini, it becomes a Plastic)
So I guess the models is not made of HIPS, hence the painter calls it Resin, while the company calls it Plastic without going into detail which Plastic it is (and anything from PU to PVC is possible)
the one point that sets me off is the quality, because being better than Finecast or FW Resin just means being better than overpriced garbage and this is not the quality I was hoping for
H.B.M.C. wrote: They're not even plastic and they're charging that much? Holy gak...
you know that non-plastic models are the expensive stuff right?
metal > resin > PVC > HIPS
injection molded plastic is always the cheapest and if it is really silicon mold resin the high price compared to the standard plastic Mechs is more reasonable than making just 300 with injection molding
They were originally saying they were plastic, but their last couple of posts referred to them as "plastic resin". I was wondering if it was something similar to Mantic's Restic.
Mantics Restic is just PVC, same basic material as the plastic Mechs
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/06/12 15:22:09
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
So is the Black Knight HIPS? Or is it just the same restic as the Clan Invasion minis? Which while still being really good, solid restic (as opposed to Sedition wars stuff from 10 year ago, or Mantic stuff), still has some of the pain-in-the-ass qualities, like cleaning mold flash, which still doesn't scrape off nicely like HiPS.
I thought the main reason for the existence of Restic is it's a compromise between the high quality of HiPs, and the low cost of boardgame PVC plastic.
(I know Restic is just PVC, but it's still a good term to mark it as different than the really nasty boardgame stuff).
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/12 16:31:08
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
They secure and protect that work with government funding and making it priced so low that other nations can’t compete, it helps create an economic monopoly that’s very hard to break away from because you simply can’t afford to pay US or British workers what their skills are actually worth in a free market economy.
You know, people say that, but I've noticed that Games Workshop is making a lot of money paying British workers British wages.
AegisGrimm wrote: So is the Black Knight HIPS? Or is it just the same restic as the Clan Invasion minis? Which while still being really good, solid restic (as opposed to Sedition wars stuff from 10 year ago, or Mantic stuff), still has some of the pain-in-the-ass qualities, like cleaning mold flash, which still doesn't scrape off nicely like HiPS.
I thought the main reason for the existence of Restic is it's a compromise between the high quality of HiPs, and the low cost of boardgame PVC plastic.
(I know Restic is just PVC, but it's still a good term to mark it as different than the really nasty boardgame stuff).
Its not HIPS nor is it apparently PVC/restic nor is it conventional resin like forgeworld/finecast, etc. Its a thermoplastic resin, seemingly a proprietary composite blend from what I could find, possibly siocast but unconfirmed.
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
It's worth pointing out that Archon studios has come out of nowhere and started significant HIPS printing - the plastic that they sell with their dungeon and lasers KS is soooo cheap compared to other companies. Apparently they do the para bellum miniatures too.
The price of their stuff just sounds like they've actually paid attention to the benefits of plastic injection molding - the more kits you sell, the cheaper they get. So, they do loads of social media advertising, people see the great price and jump on board.
It feels like traditional miniature companies are scared of the upfront costs of tooling for injection moulded plastic, and then price to compensate. Then they never get the critical mass of supporters they need and struggle.
The startup costs associated with HIPS are very very steep, especially the equipment required to achieve the detail and geometry needed for miniatures. Not just in terms of the equipment itself but also the facilities and regulatory hurdles you have to jump through, etc. Its not really the kind of thing that you can start up in a corner of your basement or garage and expand out from. The knowledge/skill involved with that is also highly specialized/extremely niche and not widespread within the plastics industry - to avoid a lengthy and extremely costly learning curve of trying to figure it out yourself you would probably have to throw a large chunk of money at someone with experience in the miniatures industry to lure them over as a consultant or to head up your manufacturing operations. That skillset is almost nonexistent in the US - I only know of one person in the country who would *maybe* qualify as an SME in that industry niche and could approach it as a technical expert on the mold engineering and toolmaking side of the operation, theres a few more who can do it from the opposite side of product/kit design and parting but those are all guys who then send their work over to a shop in China that handles the hard part of actually engineering the mold and producing the goods. There might be a few more guys in the model railroad industry in the US who could get you close but the wouldn't have much experience dealing with organic forms (which is the hard part in all of this) found in infantry and simulated fabric, etc. You would basically need to import that talent from China, Japan, or the UK, as those are basically the only places that said skillset continues to exist in a meaningful capacity these days. There is basically almost nobody out there in the US that you can go to on a contract basis to get quality miniatures produced domestically (I've tried) - theres a couple of specialty shops that could probably get "close" but they have basically zero experience doing anything approaching the level of detail and complexity expected by modern tabletop miniatures customers, if you try to solicit them for something like a GW type mini they will either turn you away as it isn't worth the time and difficulty involved for them to make it happen or they will charge you through the nose to cover their risk and the time and effort needed to get the product where it needs to be.
On top of that, you have to realize that this is a veeeerry niche and very small industry that mostly operates on extremely narrow and tight margins (GW is the only real exception to this, but GW is generally an industry outlier and basically got lucky in terms of timing by doing something that would be much more difficult to replicate today). These guys aren't "scared", they are being realistic in terms of what their actual sales volume will be. Most miniatures produced by anyone other than a handful of the largest companies in the industry won't ever sell more than a couple thousand units - in general the volume is too low to justify moving into injection molding as the economies of scale simply don't exist. In short, its just not viable for most, and the few who are pursuing it (other than GW, of course) are able to do so because they have deep pockets and/or a well-established business that can survive the risk of failure - having an established product line with proven sales volume that can leverage the associated economies of scale certainly helps too.
Archon has been around for a loooong time (well, maybe not Archon itself since its almost universally agreed to be a shell brand or whatever for Prodos) and its only recently that they got into the HIPS game. As for ParaBellum - Yeah, apparently some (but not all) of the minis are made by Archon, but as I understand it thats a temporary thing while ParaBellum stands up its own HIPS capabilities in-house (which they can afford to do as they are financially backed by a fairly large and varied network of family businesses). From what I understand theres a couple ex-GW/Renedra toolmakers/mold engineers who moved into part time consulting in retirement that hop around europe advising companies on this sort of thing, I would imagine they may have worked with Archon, ParaBellum, and also Warcradle in helping them get their operations off the ground. You could probably get one of those guys to come stateside for a stint, but that obviously comes at a much higher price.
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
Small companies can get into modern CAD based HIPS easily, it is a maturing technology and costs a fraction of what it did not too long ago. Archon took the plunge, so did Renedra. It is then a licence to print money.
The problem would be having a market share to guarantee investment return. Catalyst is small minded, they have that market share and have had for years. They could easily get investment for the tooling for HIPS it might exceed what they could expect to crowdfund but allowing for what Chris Roberts raised i am not so sure.
Ok. Lets work it out. If CAD based HIPS costs say $20M USD can you crowdfund that. I think yes, you don't use kickstarter you go to the Battletech forums, the MWO forums, here and advertise your intentions, then set up your own. Let everyone know how many mechs they will get for their pledge and over what time period.
Divide the expected costs by the expected number of fans to find the average fans need to pay to unlock the goal of buying the hardware, be up front over this. Calculate a reasonable average via questionaire or even pre-pledges. Offset the remainder with a bank loan, which you should get as the expected return of in house Battletech miniatures should be good.
Catalyst should have got off their arses and done this years ago rather than go to China with Kickstarter.
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
Yeah, I think the kickstarter and my own tendency to bargain shop had given me a false idea of what Catalyst and Ironwind metal were charging for metal mechs these days. From the kickstarter, those new plastics are 4 or 5 dollar each, and absolutely gorgeous!
Plenty of folks are knocking off 10 and 20% online for new metals, and a few retail sites move them for 5-10 dollars each too (looking at you bvtraders- keep it up, you maniacs!).
But the Ironwind Metals store has 2 different Black Knights up for 18.50, for metal minis. 25 is still very pricey, but I think I'd be ok paying that for a command mech, or if I had a really good idea for a model that required extensive reposing.
Otherwise, I'm definitely sticking to the forcepacks- I like paying 30 for 5 mechs and a Black knight much more than 25 for a posable sword mech- but it's not a mech I'm invested in.
Klawz-Ramming is a subset of citrus fruit?
Gwar- "And everyone wants a bigger Spleen!"
Mercurial wrote:
I admire your aplomb and instate you as Baron of the Seas and Lord Marshall of Privateers.
Orkeosaurus wrote:Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.
Orkeosaurus, on homophobia, the nature of homosexuality, and the greatness of George Takei.
English doesn't borrow from other languages. It follows them down dark alleyways and mugs them for loose grammar.
As many of you know, the much-anticipated release of the “Clanbuster” Black Knight happened last week—and promptly sold out in about an hour. Social media quickly lit up with a frenzy of comments, so the BattleTech team thought we’d post some insights and answers to the most common questions.
Please keep in mind just how very unusual this product was—BattleTech has never released anything like this before. Catalyst Game Labs simply had to roll the dice on whether or not customers would desire unassembled plastic miniatures at a price that would be viable for a U.S.-based manufacturer.
We hedged our bets and ordered 300 as an initial print run. However, there’s something about this miniature that is unlike most of our catalog, making Catalyst’s initial stock order easier to understand:
Creative Juggernaut is domestic, so they can simply print “on demand” and deliver product faster than any overseas producer can ship.
And that’s the crux. This is not intended to be a rare item; we can keep ordering more until every miniature-loving fan has them. In fact, production of Black Knights has been ongoing, so you can expect to see them back up for sale in the next 60 days.
Now on to the Q&A:
“Why didn’t you communicate this further in advance?”
That’s a really good question, and as always hindsight is 20/20. We felt that building up anticipation for a week or more on a mere 300 items was not the way to go.
“Is this the direction their business model is going?”
Oh goodness no. This is a specialty item. In this case, we chose to produce unique ’Mechs to go alongside the recent Battle of Tukayyid. We like the idea of being to produce and release new miniatures alongside sourcebooks and events in the future. There is no intention of having miniatures like this replace the core line products such as the Force Packs.
“What’s up with the price?”
This is a special release item, not the standard baseline product (such as Force Packs)—so extra value items like variant parts and custom pose-ability are natural features for a product like this. And $25 is exactly in line with the pricing of a convention exclusive or specialty item. Premium items are produced at a higher quality and in smaller numbers, which require a higher price.
Price-to-value is something we think about all the time. We are proud of the roughly $5 per miniature price on our Force Packs and box products, and it took an enormous amount of work to achieve that. It’s clear that the $25 price surprised some folks—some are in disbelief that domestic production is five times the cost of foreign production. And therein lies the confusion. The fact is the production cost on these Black Knights was far more than five times that of foreign production. There’s no fighting the math on that, we simply need to face it and build our product models accordingly.
Which is actually why Catalyst wanted to slowly begin exploring domestic plastic production. There was much feedback during the Kickstarter campaign about using China for production, and while we explained that there was no viable alternative, there was still a strong narrative of simply “trying to save a little money.” That perception is false. What we priced out with domestic companies that could have produced those box sets, would have resulted in retail prices of $200 or more per product. Which is why we decided to start testing the possibilities with things like this specialty product line—to weigh the strengths (production flexibility) against the weaknesses (production speed and costs).
“Why were we limited to only buying one?”
This was entirely to reduce scalping and to help ensure that the miniatures went to individual fans and not the secondary market. With limited quantities and a possibility of a quick sell through, we wanted to make sure we spread these as wide as possible.
“It sold out faster than I could place my order.”
We simply had no idea how fast it would sell out. We weren’t not going for FOMO, or creating scarcity to bump prices, we simply sold out of the initial print run much faster than expected. Not to worry, though—as we said above, we are already producing more.
“Is there a way to reduce International Shipping?”
We are working on it. We hear you and understand that this has been a problem, with no simple solution. We are working to set up three international warehouses to resolve this issue. The first will be servicing Australia, and we expect it to open soon. The second will be in Europe, which we hope to have established by the end of this summer, and the third will be in the UK soon after. The plan is to stock our game lines in all these locations so that everyone can get their games for a fair price. Please be bear with us until then.
“Will selling unassembled plastic minis compete with Iron Wind Metals?”
We have no interest competing with Iron Wind Metals. They are good friends of ours. Now that we’ve released our first domestic plastic miniature, I think it’s clear we aren’t trying to undercut them on price. Iron Wind Miniatures has nearly four decades worth of miniatures to choose from—we are simply delivering a different product model.
Thank you all for your ongoing support of BattleTech, for your passion of the game, and for keeping an eye on our continued expansion. Game on!
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
ComStar Command Level II - King Crab, Highlander, Black Knight, Exterminator, Sentinel & Mercury
Spoiler:
UPDATE #173 Post-Pandemic Shipping (A Tragedy in Two Parts) & ComStar Command Level II Photos
Spoiler:
Greetings, Backers!
We know a lot of you are patiently waiting, and have faith in your Wave 2 product showing up. Someday. For you, we can report that everything is still moving forward, albeit slowly and with great frustration, and we hope to have more positive news very soon.
We also know that for a lot of you it’s all about information. What’s going on? Why are we still delayed? So we are going to do a recap and new update on the shipping issue below. Let us know if you have any questions.
Part One
Just to recap, when Covid hit, it caused a LOT of delays in China. Even though we had left a lot of extra room in our schedule, it apparently wasn’t enough. First, our factories delayed us until after Chinese New Year. That was frustrating. Then they rolled us back an extra few months as they supposedly reopened from CNY slower than expected. FINALLY, they declared us ready to ship at the end of May. A lot of our material made it onto ships, heading to our distribution hubs around the world. But not everything.
Part Two
Also during Covid, there was an issue of all shipping heading one direction, from China to the rest of the world. As the US also shut down all domestic distribution centers and warehouses, containers piled up for months. This has caused a global container shortage, with ships anchored in our waters here, waiting for empty containers to take back to China. Meanwhile, once China opened up again, they were producing product, even though there was less shipping than normal to carry it. We have had our product bumped off at least four different ships now, as all ships move to “premium service” only. And last week one of our regular port cities in China partially closed because of a new Covid outbreak, and the ship we expected to pick up our last two containers (on June 25) bypassed the port completely. Didn’t even stop. Abandoning thousands of containers--including ours.
All of this has caused an insane escalation in shipping rates as companies who can afford to do so pay extortionate rates to move their freight to the front of the line. A 40’ container cost about $6500 two years ago. Last year it bumped to $8-10,000. Today, to rescue those two containers containing our Kickstarter product, we are paying something like $17,000. Per container! If you want the math on that…for something like A Game of Armored Armored Combat, that adds about 38% to our cost of goods. Or, put another way, eats away 20% of our gross margin. But we are paying it, because we believe we owe you the best resolution we can get.
FULFILLMENT DATES
Every time we think we have a handle on the schedule, the world shifts. All we can say is that we believe most product will be in hand by July 10th, and 100% of our product will be delivered on or around August 1st.
We are working with QML to determine if they have enough to begin shipping Wave 2 by the end of July, or if they feel they must wait for those final two containers arriving 8/1. At this moment, they believe that EU, UK, and AU shipments will begin earlier than the US, but the US will still get started no later than mid-August and delivered to backers before CGL heads to Gen Con in September. That’s a huge milestone, because if the backer shipments aren’t going out, we will NOT bring Wave 2 materials to GenCon, and that will also hurt the company, but less than it would if we were to break faith with you, who made all of this possible!
SHIP NAMES
We’ve had some backers asking about ship names so they can also track deliveries, and we’re happy to share what we know.
This is the best info we’ve been able to dog up about ships:
TAYMA V.0017W: Final ship to the EU
CAPE PIONEER V.888E: Wave 2 - Main Shipment to US
YM WITNESS V.030E: Wave 2 - Secondary shipment to US
???: Final Shipment to US, Rebooking
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/06/26 10:52:03
I didn't back this particular Kickstarter, but just want to say how much I appreciate this level of communication from any Kickstarter creator. This should be the norm, not the exception.
Shame about the containers, but it's nice to have a KS that isn't plagued with failure and incompetence. Everything that's happened with this has been so far beyond Catalyst's control.
As a Battletech neophyte- is the Black Knight supposed to be so much larger than the King Crab? It's 25 tons lighter, and also looks the size of the Highlander?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/26 14:11:55
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
AegisGrimm wrote: As a Battletech neophyte- is the Black Knight supposed to be so much larger than the King Crab? It's 25 tons lighter, and also looks the size of the Highlander?
I think it's just (another) bad photo - I would guess the Black Knight is about the same high as the Highlander but not as bulky, and the King Crab is hunched over.
While they're trying to keep the KS stuff in scale with itself, the rest of it is a bit of a mess - the metal Thanatos is much bulkier than the metal Highlander, despite being 15 tonnes lighter, for example.
There's some weird stuff though like ferro-fibrous armour, XL-engines, and endo-steel skeletons that are supposed to be bulky. To complicate matters, the Timber Wolf has all three and it's a bean-pole in all its incarnations.
Nurglitch wrote: There's some weird stuff though like ferro-fibrous armour, XL-engines, and endo-steel skeletons that are supposed to be bulky. To complicate matters, the Timber Wolf has all three and it's a bean-pole in all its incarnations.
Dont look at BattleTech that way. You have to take the rules as aggregate, so the component rules when blended together come to an in canon whole. Timber Wolf legs are not bulky but they have 'no room' for additional equipment. If a warrior wants to add leg weaponry (its rare anyway) he is told that doing so will 'compromise the endo steel load bearing structure' and has to back down with or without shooting the scientist who tells him the unfavourable information.
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
The two vessels containing the majority of our Wave 2 product have finally made port in Savannah. Four containers are processing through customs, and should reach our warehouse within the week. A fifth container has been flagged for examination; it will be delayed a few days, but should also make it to our warehouse in a reaonable time this month.
We have a few fill-in shipments that will be required to 100% fulfill Wave 2 to our backers, but QML will not need to wait for these to start. As such, they will begin planning the large shipment process, which will take weeks, and fill in those final items at the end. We do not have any exact dates yet for worldwide fulfillment, beginning or ending, but expect to soon!
At this time, QML expects to begin fulfilling Wave 2 in July for AUS and UK. August for US and EU. No word on Asia or the Rest of the World yet.
Nurglitch wrote: Did they ever mention the Imp or the Annihilator?
Shimmy has done a concept sketch for the Annihilator and I believe there's a 3D render out there somewhere but no word on when it may see production as a miniature or featured in a Recognition Guide.
'It is a source of constant consternation that my opponents cannot correlate their innate inferiority with their inevitable defeat. It would seem that stupidity is as eternal as war.'
- Nemesor Zahndrekh of the Sautekh Dynasty Overlord of the Crownworld of Gidrim
