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Probably too much to hope for, but a Hydra alongside those flyers would be shiny.

Though if need be, under FW ruling Manticores can fire AA missiles as well.

Unless I am seriously mistaken GW just released their quarterly report, and profits were down correct? It strikes me as unlikely for alot of the big things, or things that are unlikely to make a large profit to be released.

The Summer flyers rumors seem to pretty pervasive, and I suspect several smaller flyers will be released with (I hope) flyer rules, but really big things like thunderhawks seems like a stretch. Can they really make enough money on back on developement and manufacturing for a model that will retail for $300-$400? Most of the people willing to pay that are willing to pay forge world prices, and have already bought a $600 model.

I suspect most of the flyer models upcoming will be in the size range of Valks and the Stormraven, and will probably sell for $60-$100

I don't think a plastic Thunderhawk, if it is ever released, will retail for anywhere near $300, never mind $400...

a plastic... thunderhawk or titan... that would be something I'd waste my money on... also on a Thunderbolt.

KOS wrote:a plastic... thunderhawk or titan... that would be something I'd waste my money on... also on a Thunderbolt.

Wouldn't most of us! A Thunderbolt seems a good likely candidate for this coming summer.

Alpharius wrote:I don't think a plastic Thunderhawk, if it is ever released, will retail for anywhere near $300, never mind $400...

Agreed. I'd expect the Thunderhawk to be ~$200, and $60 for most other fliers. Something big like a Marauder or =I= Gun-cutter might be $100.

GW has been quite careful till now to respect the $100 mark when it comes to their main product line plastic kits. I shudder to think what prices will be like once they decide to break that barrier. :(

I think it would be best for them if they do a thunderhawk to try and keep it down around baneblade & stompa prices. and smaller flyers like a land raider or valkyrie. They'd sell bazillions.

I could see GW do the T-Hawk for around the same price as the Baneblade or Stompa. Chances are they won't, but they could.

A Thunderhawk is so much larger than a baneblade, in its current FW incarnation. If we see a Thunderhawk for $100, it will be smaller than the FW one. It would be more similar in size to the 2nd edition metal kit... roughly 1/3rd to 2/5th smaller.

If GW chooses to stick closely to this size of Thunderhawk, $100 wouldn't leave them with much profit margin. In the not too distant past, there were army boxes in the $140 range. I think GW would struggle to justify internally such a large kit at $100 and would probably be forced by the bookeepers to set the price at a higher range.

aka_mythos wrote:A Thunderhawk is so much larger than a baneblade, in its current FW incarnation. If we see a Thunderhawk for $100, it will be smaller than the FW one. It would be more similar in size to the 2nd edition metal kit... roughly 1/3rd to 2/5th smaller.

If GW chooses to stick closely to this size of Thunderhawk, $100 wouldn't leave them with much profit margin. In the not too distant past, there were army boxes in the $140 range. I think GW would struggle to justify internally such a large kit at $100 and would probably be forced by the bookeepers to set the price at a higher range.

Exactly. How many Spues are in a baneblade kit? The FW thunderhawk is 3xbigger (or so) than a baneblade. How could they even begin to justify the profit margin of selling a model for $100 that has 3x more parts than any of their other $100 kits. Thats why I find it highly unlikely that they'll release a thunderhawk. Not to mention that the thing is so damned big you can really only use it in an apoc game anyway. The market's to small for such a big model, and that's why they have FW.

The market isn't really "too small" for a straight import from resin-to-plastic Thunderhawk.

Think of all the Marine players, of all stripes, out there right now.

They could seriously make a killing even if each Marine player only bought one at the $100 price point.

Kanluwen wrote:The market isn't really "too small" for a straight import from resin-to-plastic Thunderhawk.

Think of all the Marine players, of all stripes, out there right now.

They could seriously make a killing even if each Marine player only bought one at the $100 price point.

$150 would be the turning point for me. At that point, thats about 3 months + of my modelling/recreation budget.

But I'd still covet one tremendously up to about $200. After that, forget about it.

Warhound: $100ish.. = pretty much instabuy.

wolfshadow wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:The market isn't really "too small" for a straight import from resin-to-plastic Thunderhawk.

Think of all the Marine players, of all stripes, out there right now.

They could seriously make a killing even if each Marine player only bought one at the $100 price point.

$150 would be the turning point for me. At that point, thats about 3 months + of my modelling/recreation budget.

But I'd still covet one tremendously up to about $200. After that, forget about it.

Warhound: $100ish.. = pretty much instabuy.

i'd suspect that the warhound, if sized the same as the FW version, would run about $150 due to the size and compared with the baneblade. If they redid it in the size of that ugly little armorcast version, it could come in at $100. I won't even venture a guess at the thunderhawk since i haven't seen either version (metal or resin) in person in many years.

edit: as a side note... does anyone have any pics of a stompa next to a FW warhound? i'd be curious to see the scale between those too and it might give us a more accurate basis for the wild conjecture in this thread (that i'm currently contributing to!).

I think the mythical plastic Warhound and/or Thunderhawk will come in at the $149 to $199 price range.

Higher than that, and sticker shock will prevent sales...

I think that range is reasonable. The Warhound in terms of size is baneblade with legs. The thunderhawk is really double a baneblade. GW could easily play certain tricks to drive down costs such as making individual sprues that get used twice... like on a T-hawk's wings and weapons, or a Warhound's weapons and weapon mounts and leg joints... and that could always bring down the price but even then you're still looking at something in the $140~$150 range.

I think with the thunderhawk, it'd be easy enough to shrink its size down a little; 19" x 17" is a bit ridiculous to fit on a table. Even at say 15"x13.5" it'd still be impressive and look like it could carry a bunch.

I think GW is more inclined to pluck at lower hanging fruit. Things that are "fighter" sized aircraft and vehicles in the Baneblade size first. This isn't to say GW won't do large kits, just that they'll likely work up to them.

I think the Thunderhawk is really likely, in the long run, and stands a good chance of being GW's largest plastic kit ever, one day. The simple fact is all the Space Marines arries collectively constitute something like half of all the sales revenue GW brings in... effectively more than Warhammer Fantasy. That means something like 1:2 players has marines of some sort. If GW could justify a $100 kit for orks and that catered to a fan base smaller than 5% of sales... in an instance of direct proportionality of supply/demand GW could get away with $1000 Marine kits... now we know that few would really go buy that and that its a more parabolic curve. Point is the higher volume of potential purchasers supports a higher price resulting from the size and lower per potential buyer sales.... this is the sales model FW works by. The "sticker shock" could be absorbed simply because of the volume of potential buyers. Think of it this way to justify a Stompa sized marine kit, only requires 1:10 marine players to buy it. To justify a $150 dollar kit only need 1:7 marine players. Even still that rational assumes that every ork player bought a Stompa to justify its sale, thats not the case meaning an even smaller group of buyers is needed to justify it.

I just think, for me anyway, $100 is really my limit for a model, anything more than that and I feel like it's just too much money for 1 toy. I get the idea lots of folks are like that, so thats why I think they should try to keep it in the baneblade price level. Like was mentioned they could double up on sprues like for the wings, weapons, etc. If they can't make it $100, I'd rather see them release something different that could be $100 or less and let FW handle the rest.

easy just make it a 50pt upgrade for all other marine chapters besides BA to deepstrike your land raider (but make it so all deepstriking landraiders need a thunderhawk)

what could go wrong with that?

warboss wrote:edit: as a side note... does anyone have any pics of a stompa next to a FW warhound? i'd be curious to see the scale between those too and it might give us a more accurate basis for the wild conjecture in this thread (that i'm currently contributing to!).

Here's one off google:

Really makes that $150-$199 price seem about right.

cool, thanks for the pic find. yeah, it has enough bulk to warrant a $150 price. for me personally, that'd be the most i'd be willing to pay for one though as its a self imposed limit on what i'm willing to pay for a plastic toy soldier.

It's enough bulk, but would GW have the fully detailed interior that the FW one has?

though I hope they only make the lucius pattern in plastic (if they ever make a plastic one) 'cause that means when I get my Mars it would still be exclusive

FM Ninja 048 wrote:It's enough bulk, but would GW have the fully detailed interior that the FW one has?

though I hope they only make the lucius pattern in plastic (if they ever make a plastic one) 'cause that means when I get my Mars it would still be exclusive

I would want the one that looks the most like metal gear rex... no apparent reason

FM Ninja 048 wrote:It's enough bulk, but would GW have the fully detailed interior that the FW one has?

though I hope they only make the lucius pattern in plastic (if they ever make a plastic one) 'cause that means when I get my Mars it would still be exclusive

I think it woul likely have detail on the inside. For each piece that composes the main hull of the Warhoud, there is an inside surface and it makes little or no difference if that inside surface is blank or has detail.

If it makes you feel better, it would be very difficult for GW to manufacture the large curved surfaces of a Mars pattern, without making it as one big piece. Given that it exceeds GW mold sizes they need new equipment and on top of that it curves around, it would never come out of a plastic mold. Given the changes that would need to be made for that basic style to work, it would look different enough you couldn't really call it Mars pattern any more. The Lucius pattern, its really easy imagine it going together and I imagine GW would go with it for that reason alone. I could then see FW do a conversion kit to turn a plastic Lucius pattern into a Mars pattern.

I think a lot of SM players would buy a Thunderhawk kit even though it sounds too large to be playable on table in a normal game.

GW should look at the boost in sales of sideline models too. For instance, a $100-$150 Warlord would make those not quite so rare on the battle field.
To counter the sudden influx of Titans GW would sell alot more TH/SH Termies as guys build up Hammer-units to deal with the problem. Or Las-Las Preds, Land Raider varients, etc.

The cost of developing and selling a new kit from drawing board to actual packaged model must be off-set by projected sales. Sales must be projected to be high enough to cover all development and marketing costs plus produce a profit of a minimum percent set by their business model and at a price where the kits will actually be purchased in sufficient quantity. Kits that can't meet that all those criteria will never be produced.

Those sideline sales are no different than the sales they saw when Baneblades and Stompas came out. Anyone who would buy those to supplement their force has them and wouldn't necessarily need more. So it wouldn't be that drastic.

I think GW understands that and thats why their current efforts are aircraft units. The sideline units to fight those are different than the ones that fight in Apocolyspe against superheavy tanks and walkers. So there will be a higher volume of sideline sales with this.

I expect parallel to the aircraft models release we'll see GW release rules that add a number of anti-aircraft options to ground units. Such as a Skyrays, Manticores, and Whirlwinds getting some upgrade option. If the aircraft play is tied to Apocalypse style rules, GW would likely make these options tied to formations, requiring groups of multiples of those to get the anti-aircraft benefits and thus boosting their sales.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrassScorpion wrote:The cost of developing and selling a new kit from drawing board to actual packaged model must be off-set by projected sales. Sales must be projected to be high enough to cover all development and marketing costs plus produce a profit of a minimum percent set by their business model and at a price where the kits will actually be purchased in sufficient quantity. Kits that can't meet that all those criteria will never be produced.

You have put more succinctly what I was trying to get at. The fact is so many players play marines that even at a higher price the likelyhood of enough players buying a thunderhawk to justify the larger price tag is better than it was for Ork players buying Stompas. So it really just comes down to GW having enough resources to allocate to it.

maby deathstrikes as well on a sucessful hit, remove ALL fliers from play

Well their marketing budget for new stuff can't be that big.. I mean, isn't it like..

Step 1: Get the newest intern to make new Dakka & Warseer accounts and post totally made up rumors that are 99% false 3 years ahead of time to build a buzz.
Step 2: 1 year before release, rinse and repeat with another new intern, and new fake rumors followed by a blurry, tiny, bad quality pic.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!

There needs to be a plastic Hydra.