Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Valhallan42nd wrote:You're allowed to call BS all you want. It's my opinion, not fact. Is there a difference between getting someone else to paint your mini's for you, or having them painted before hand? There is an extra step, and you're then aware of the additional cost of labor. With prepaints, the company will then pass that cost along to you.

I wasn't calling BS on your opinion, I was calling BS that somehow GW's games are a "Hobby Game" and somehow other games aren't a hobby because they don't require hours of removing from sprue, clean, assemble, and paint, as by definition a hobby is anything you do outside of your occupation.

I chocked on my sandwich You scared me for a minute there

djones520 wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:You scared me!

Prepainted would kill it for me also... like it killed everything it touched...

*shrugs* AT-43 has a decent following at my LGS. I'm not against the idea of prepainted, as long as it didn't look horrible. Some of us have no artistic talent at all.

Neither do I. Over time, I've learned cheats that will help me feign artistic skill. I might still fall mid-pack when it comes to painting, but it's more satisfying to me to know that I did it. Winning the lottery might change my mind, but I doubt it.

I think the basic argument comes down to what players will want on a game day.

Like others have said, the hobbyist (guys who can paint decent enough to show thier figures in public) will continue to paint, glue, etc.

However, the non hobbyist are buying the units either way. So you fight

A. A unpainted bunch of gray figures with glue leaking out of thier joints.

B. A prepainted army that hurts your pride as a artist.


Your choice of course.

Plus some people are already hiring to have thier models painted. So what's the difference between someone paying to get models painted and telling you they painted it versus prepainted models and they tell you they painted it?

As for the hobby stores, long as there are fans of pre painted and non painted they will try to cater to both.

Games Workshop would never fully convert, if at all, too prepainted for one simple reason - Golden Demon. A major part of Games Days would be gone.

I've never seen a prepainted mini that comes close to someone's slow dedicated effort to make their minis look good. Prepaints are typically below average tabletop quality standard and they cost more than non-painted minis.

And that´s the problem.

During the last german Warmachine championship 1/3 of the armies showed up unpainted. And you need less minis than for 40K. Also at least 2/3 of the armies I encounter barely make it up to the prepainted standard AT has. There are some people who really produce a decent paintjob (and I am definitly one of them) but the majority can´t.

At least AT minis are what I call tabletop standard, i.e. not hurting your eyes when watching them from 2-3f. away. And they are easy to repaint. Heck we even do have painting competitions with AT minis over here. Besides Rackham is going to produce some kits of existing products, so if you really want you can get them unpainted (at least the walkers for now). So GW doing PPP and traditional unpainted ones seems not that far off.

?!? oh it's a joke ... that said i would start an IG army if conscripts came prepainted

Platuan4th wrote:

Valhallan42nd wrote:You're allowed to call BS all you want. It's my opinion, not fact. Is there a difference between getting someone else to paint your mini's for you, or having them painted before hand? There is an extra step, and you're then aware of the additional cost of labor. With prepaints, the company will then pass that cost along to you.

I wasn't calling BS on your opinion, I was calling BS that somehow GW's games are a "Hobby Game" and somehow other games aren't a hobby because they don't require hours of removing from sprue, clean, assemble, and paint, as by definition a hobby is anything you do outside of your occupation.

Sure thing, there are the freakiest hobbies outhere... as for prepainted the only thing hobby related you can do with it is buying them... if you consider shopping a hobby then your lucky.

There are lots of camouflaged issues PPP fans avoid to talk about like:

- If its prepainted why does it have horrible mouldlines that need to be cleaned and then PPP is ruined and you have to paint it again?
- Prepainted plastic details are subpar dont know if its the paint layer or the special plastics that takes paint but those are nasty detailwise.
- Theres already a more affordable offer for people who dont want to paint and those are painting studios like bluetablepainting... that paints better than quality level PPP and is more affordable.
- Overall Design and pose of the miniatures suffers a lot ( we seen this at rackham) theres some kind of prepainted plastic machine handling limitations for sure.
- Its more expensive!
- Every company who said ppp is better than slice bread is in trouble.

The only thing PPP brings to the wargame industry is a downgrade of the sculpt quality, drain resources from companies and leeches customers for premium PPP costs!

Yes I love it


Edit: The "you can repaint ppp argument" amuses me If you guys like to spend money for a painted fig and then spend money on repainting it, its your call... the diference is that you can paint a better and cheaper detailed mini more apropriate for painting in the first place... Its like the guy that dips his head in a paint bucket and trows himself against the wall... its still paint and hairs but he could use just a brush to paint the wall in the first place

Malika2 wrote:Hmm, it didn't look too bad with Rackam's AT-43 I think...

The reason for that is Rackham's dishonest practice of showing off studio paintjobs instead of the actual ones you get in the box. They look considerably nastier in the flesh than they do in promos.

The only question that matters to GW is if sales would increase because of pre-painted figures or not.

I don't see AT43 having taken a big chunk of the 40K market, which may mean something or nothing.

I was thinking about this today when I looked at Gundam kits. Gundam (and most Japanese giant robot kits) can be made to look good without even a lick of paint because the plastic parts are molded from plastic that is already roughly the color of the finished piece. I've put together a few robot kits, as as far as I can tell the different coloring has absolutely no impact on the quality of the molding. The cheaper kits have different sprues in one box (so a red sprue full of red bits, a blue sprue full of blue bits, and 3 white sprues full of white bits for example), but I've seen kits with 2 different colors on the same sprue- it looks like two half-sprues of different colors are clamped together with a socket-and-plug joint.

Now obviously a model kit for a particular robot that is probably only going to be painted in a particular color scheme to match the TV show is different kettle of fish from a Warhammer army built around customizability. And yet, I wonder if elements of this might be a more reasonable step than pre-paints. Imagine an undead army with all of the skeletons already molded in bleached bone, with all of the weapons and shields moulded in black and all of the bases molded in desert yellow. Imagine orks with all the boyz molded in green plastic and all of the armor/weapon bitz molded in black. And of course, chapter-specific Space Marine boxes could be molded in their chapter colors.

I think unpainted models are going to obviously look worse than painted models. Even if the plastic is molded in the right colors, it still has a sheen like plastic and you can see little fluctuations in color not by shadows, but by the thickness of the material behind it. But unpainted plastic that is at least in the right color looks better than unpainted grey plastic on a black base. I remember one of the first model kits I ever built was some red Gundam with big, black shoulder cannons. It was already molded in all the right colors so I barely painted anything- just ran a black ink pen over all the joints between armor plates and doused it all with gloss sealer, and it looked pretty good to my 14-year-old eye. The confidence I gained from that kit saw me through several other kits where I DID try painting. And even though most of those paint jobs turned out to be complete disasters, it's now more than a decade later and I'm still at the hobby. And though I'm not steeped in the Gundam fan community, model shops in Japan at least don't seem to be overrun with lazy kids not bothering to paint their models.

If GW must make their models easier in order to draw new people into the hobby, I'd much rather see it with plastic molding than with prepaints.

Before it closed my LGS had a bin w/ nothing but pre-painted mini's in it. Hero Clix, D&D and everything else and I've never heard anything of AT-43 til now tbh. The appeal for me was always painting and modding my minis. The only reason I got started gaming WH40k was because while I was buying some of the figures, Lilith Hesperax for one, the salesman asked if I played. The rest is history.

I've never seen a pre-painted mini come anywhere close to the level of detail available on GW's line of miniatures or of any unpainted miniatures. Even the mini's I have from Ral Partha back in the 80's have more detail than the crap that gets passed off for pre-painted mini's.

What's worse is that if GW went w/ pre-painted, they'd likely do the same thing that everyone else has by making the minis uncommon, common and rare so you'd have to buy/ebay to get the exact mini's you'd want. That kind of crap sucks.

On a side note: Was this just some way to get some stuff started Kid_Kyoto?

JOHIRA wrote:I was thinking about this today when I looked at Gundam kits. Gundam (and most Japanese giant robot kits) can be made to look good without even a lick of paint because the plastic parts are molded from plastic that is already roughly the color of the finished piece. I've put together a few robot kits, as as far as I can tell the different coloring has absolutely no impact on the quality of the molding. The cheaper kits have different sprues in one box (so a red sprue full of red bits, a blue sprue full of blue bits, and 3 white sprues full of white bits for example), but I've seen kits with 2 different colors on the same sprue- it looks like two half-sprues of different colors are clamped together with a socket-and-plug joint.

Now obviously a model kit for a particular robot that is probably only going to be painted in a particular color scheme to match the TV show is different kettle of fish from a Warhammer army built around customizability. And yet, I wonder if elements of this might be a more reasonable step than pre-paints. Imagine an undead army with all of the skeletons already molded in bleached bone, with all of the weapons and shields moulded in black and all of the bases molded in desert yellow. Imagine orks with all the boyz molded in green plastic and all of the armor/weapon bitz molded in black. And of course, chapter-specific Space Marine boxes could be molded in their chapter colors.

I think unpainted models are going to obviously look worse than painted models. Even if the plastic is molded in the right colors, it still has a sheen like plastic and you can see little fluctuations in color not by shadows, but by the thickness of the material behind it. But unpainted plastic that is at least in the right color looks better than unpainted grey plastic on a black base. I remember one of the first model kits I ever built was some red Gundam with big, black shoulder cannons. It was already molded in all the right colors so I barely painted anything- just ran a black ink pen over all the joints between armor plates and doused it all with gloss sealer, and it looked pretty good to my 14-year-old eye. The confidence I gained from that kit saw me through several other kits where I DID try painting. And even though most of those paint jobs turned out to be complete disasters, it's now more than a decade later and I'm still at the hobby. And though I'm not steeped in the Gundam fan community, model shops in Japan at least don't seem to be overrun with lazy kids not bothering to paint their models.

If GW must make their models easier in order to draw new people into the hobby, I'd much rather see it with plastic molding than with prepaints.

This seems to be a far better approach then pre-painted. I used to build Gundam model kits. Their are some out their which actually have different parts of the same piece molded in different colors. Maybe GW should look into this, if only for starter sets such as Assault on Black Reach.

Sure thing, there are the freakiest hobbies outhere... as for prepainted the only thing hobby related you can do with it is buying them... if you consider shopping a hobby then your lucky.

The only thing besides of course playing the game with them!

I've always thought GW should do some prepainted stuff. As an ork player I don't want to paint 30-60 grots just to remove them from the table in handfulls.
Same with slugga boys, if I could buy them or grots i definitely would.

I'm not saying they should stop making the regular model boxes of unpainted ork boyz but in addition to them have some PPP.

As far as space marines they could easliy have pre-painted ones that look better than a large portion of the ones i've seen painted in any GW or FLGS.

NAVARRO wrote:- If its prepainted why does it have horrible mouldlines that need to be cleaned and then PPP is ruined and you have to paint it again?

The mouldlines don't 'need' to be cleaned off. Sure, minis look better without them... but I've come across a lot of 40K armies over the years that didn't have the mould lines cleaned off either, so it's not a problem exclusive to prepaints.

- Prepainted plastic details are subpar dont know if its the paint layer or the special plastics that takes paint but those are nasty detailwise.

I don't know where you get the idea that prepaint collectors 'avoid' talking about that. I mention it frequently in discussions of prepaints. It's a side effect of the softer plastic used to ensure that the models are still in one piece when you open the booster.

But while it looks a little sub-par up close, at table level, (ie: when you're standing over the table actually playing the game that the miniatures are designed for) it really doesn't make a huge amount of difference.

- Theres already a more affordable offer for people who dont want to paint and those are painting studios like bluetablepainting... that paints better than quality level PPP and is more affordable.

Surely it's easier to buy a box of minis already painted (meaning you have them immediately) than to have to send them away to someone else to paint them?

- Overall Design and pose of the miniatures suffers a lot ( we seen this at rackham) theres some kind of prepainted plastic machine handling limitations for sure.

That really comes down to the company's own design choices. Star Wars Minis don't suffer any so far as complexity and pose goes compared to GW... Miniatures that require casting in multiple parts are simply bumped up the rarity scale to account for the extra time (and therefore extra expense) required to assemble them.

- Its more expensive!

It can be. And it should be. Buying a bookcase is also more expensive than buying half a dozen planks of wood and some varnish.

Of course, in the collectible prepaint games, the collectible nature of the minis helps out a lot with prices on the more basic stuff, which means that you can often pick up the common minis (and in many cases the less in-demand uncommon or rare minis) for next to nothing.

- Every company who said ppp is better than slice bread is in trouble.

WOTC don't seem to be suffering any worse than GW is at the moment...

The only thing PPP brings to the wargame industry is a downgrade of the sculpt quality, drain resources from companies and leeches customers for premium PPP costs!

That, and results in more painted miniatures on the table, and more people playing who would be put off by having to paint their own minis.

Edit: The "you can repaint ppp argument" amuses me If you guys like to spend money for a painted fig and then spend money on repainting it, its your call...

I think you're missing the point of that argument somewhat. It's not that people like buying prepaints and repainting them specifically. It's that they satisfy both sides...

Buy an unpainted miniature... if you don't like painting, you don't paint it. If you do like painting, you can repaint it if it doesn't suit your standards. End result, one painted, and one unpainted miniature.

Buy a painted miniature... if you don't like painting, you don't paint it. If you do like painting, you can repaint it if it doesn't suit your standards. End result, in both cases, is a painted miniature on the table... which we all agree is a good thing, no?

I'd fully agree with that last point by insaniak, when I had Heroclix I could have used them as they came. However I went looking through comics, websites and found the correct schemes for the heroes and villians I was using and painted them that way.

Aye I could have used them as was, often I did, but for those I painted over the top and got a good table standard on. It was even sweeter playing with them as they looked spot on.

I Still have some Brotherhood now, and went as far as removing Rogue's flying base for her Brotherhood version. As although she didn't have the ability they hadn't made a seperate fig. So you can even do a bit of converting on Heroclix figs if ye want.

The reason for that is Rackham's dishonest practice of showing off studio paintjobs instead of the actual ones you get in the box.

The only one being dishonest is you.

They normally have it in the text accompanying the picture if the mini is studio or PPP. As soon as minis are available to regular buyers, they change the pics in their online-store to the ones showing the ppp-minis.

The boxes have a see-through window, so everyone is able to see what he is shelling out his bucks for.

You don´t expect them to show PPP minis in the books? That would be like asking GW to show unpainted plastics in their books.

er doesn't the gw cat. does also have unpaint sprue in it? or do you mean in the codex and rule book which tell you how to play the game ... including how to paint your minis?

Agamemnon2 wrote:

Malika2 wrote:Hmm, it didn't look too bad with Rackam's AT-43 I think...

The reason for that is Rackham's dishonest practice of showing off studio paintjobs instead of the actual ones you get in the box. They look considerably nastier in the flesh than they do in promos.

Boxes are open window, so you can see them for yourself.

GW and Privateer Press don't tend to fill their promotional materials with images of entire
silver and plastic armies. And I've seen the text that says "studio painted" for the prepainted
plastics.

Probably the part that suffers worst in the Rackham line are the figures with human skin and
anything done up in a metallic paint. The rest of it looks fine on the tabletop.

In Japan they sell marker pen kits to go with the Gundam models. I suppose it's an easy way for children to colour their Gundams. I haven't tried one though.

Daggermaw wrote:

Sure thing, there are the freakiest hobbies outhere... as for prepainted the only thing hobby related you can do with it is buying them... if you consider shopping a hobby then your lucky.

The only thing besides of course playing the game with them!

Depends if your going to game with it or put on a display... If you want just a gaming piece theres tons of tokens or cheaper prepainted things at toysrus. Really Im not making fun, I was building a diorama with pirates and needed some sharks so I went to toysrus and got a tube packed (20 diferent sharks) with nice PPP 28mm compatible sharks for something like 3 euros.
The big price lie about ppp entering wargames is that it wants to ride the fame of super detailed metals or resin or multipart detailed plastics (wich are expensive since quality is much superior) but they are in fact subpar and ridiculous expensive.



gezzz insaniak so many quotes I will try to answer but next time im going to pass since it takes time i dont have

insaniak wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:- If its prepainted why does it have horrible mouldlines that need to be cleaned and then PPP is ruined and you have to paint it again?

The mouldlines don't 'need' to be cleaned off. Sure, minis look better without them... but I've come across a lot of 40K armies over the years that didn't have the mould lines cleaned off either, so it's not a problem exclusive to prepaints..

- I did not say it was exclusive to prepaints its exclusive to unfinished miniature. Problem is you buy a miniature already painted and should be finished/ ready to go... Its sold like a finished product I say its a major tecnical flaw and incomplete product... specially if you pay silly prices. The only thing this proves, to me, is that its a mediocre product that tries to sell the image " great already painted armies on the table that you have to pay extra for" and the truth is its a incomplete product its far from finished and well tt painted.
You dont "need" to clean mouldlines, and you dont need to paint minis, you dont need to do nothing mate, theres lots of ways of having fun on "your" hobby I'm just expressing "my" way of having fun and Im not imposing it to anyone just sharing ok?
Sure there are 40k armies with mouldlines and?
Just because its cr@ppy you can take cr@p with a premium price from a company? By that order of ideas you can buy soda caps and play with proxies since some folks use them... just dont espect to me to buy those sodacaps by the price of a miniature.
And, mouldlines in a player army is player choice... mouldlines on a product you buy, its acompany imposition, big diference.

insaniak wrote:

- Prepainted plastic details are subpar dont know if its the paint layer or the special plastics that takes paint but those are nasty detailwise.

I don't know where you get the idea that prepaint collectors 'avoid' talking about that. I mention it frequently in discussions of prepaints. It's a side effect of the softer plastic used to ensure that the models are still in one piece when you open the booster.

But while it looks a little sub-par up close, at table level, (ie: when you're standing over the table actually playing the game that the miniatures are designed for) it really doesn't make a huge amount of difference. ..

Sorry, maybe i got that idea from the long debates about prepainted in lots of forums, even here for the past... 1, 2 years?
Yes i agree that these miniatures look okish far away... although they are priced to look good upclose.

insaniak wrote:

- Theres already a more affordable offer for people who dont want to paint and those are painting studios like bluetablepainting... that paints better than quality level PPP and is more affordable.

Surely it's easier to buy a box of minis already painted (meaning you have them immediately) than to have to send them away to someone else to paint them? ..

Sure its easier... and more expensive... to us in short term... but providing such a service will it prove to be profitable for a company that invests in it? dont you see a dispersion of focus and resources here? How many quality miniatures would be canned from a company shedule in order to suport the subpar PPP? Long therm what would this mean to us? broke companies stuffed with PPP? I'm making just questions her wich i have no answers ok? because our litle "its easier to buy" can make a hell of a diference for a company future... and for us in the end.

insaniak wrote:

- Overall Design and pose of the miniatures suffers a lot ( we seen this at rackham) theres some kind of prepainted plastic machine handling limitations for sure.

That really comes down to the company's own design choices. Star Wars Minis don't suffer any so far as complexity and pose goes compared to GW... Miniatures that require casting in multiple parts are simply bumped up the rarity scale to account for the extra time (and therefore extra expense) required to assemble them...

Well, IMHO theres no need to go so low on design quality just to provide something half painted... Its unbalanced.

insaniak wrote:

- Its more expensive!

It can be. And it should be. Buying a bookcase is also more expensive than buying half a dozen planks of wood and some varnish.

Of course, in the collectible prepaint games, the collectible nature of the minis helps out a lot with prices on the more basic stuff, which means that you can often pick up the common minis (and in many cases the less in-demand uncommon or rare minis) for next to nothing. ..

Dont know about you but 20 years ago there was already prepainted toys ( multipart, assembled, painted that were considerably cheaper)... browse your toy shop and you will be surprised about how similar products are and how so diferently priced...
The stunt these PPP companies are making is gluing their faulty mediocre goods to the expensive wargaming market.
I have no problems with people wanting to buy and using PPP, I do have a problem with companies selling cat for a rabbit on my farm.

insaniak wrote:

- Every company who said ppp is better than slice bread is in trouble.

WOTC don't seem to be suffering any worse than GW is at the moment... ..

Just look at the companies majority please

insaniak wrote:

The only thing PPP brings to the wargame industry is a downgrade of the sculpt quality, drain resources from companies and leeches customers for premium PPP costs!

That, and results in more painted miniatures on the table, and more people playing who would be put off by having to paint their own minis...

Really? good, its a awesome trade off isnt it? Dumb down everything...buy sodacaps for the price o lead miniatures just to have more people is the way to go... I respec that you aprove that, personally I just dont.

insaniak wrote:

Edit: The "you can repaint ppp argument" amuses me If you guys like to spend money for a painted fig and then spend money on repainting it, its your call...

I think you're missing the point of that argument somewhat. It's not that people like buying prepaints and repainting them specifically. It's that they satisfy both sides...

Buy an unpainted miniature... if you don't like painting, you don't paint it. If you do like painting, you can repaint it if it doesn't suit your standards. End result, one painted, and one unpainted miniature.

Buy a painted miniature... if you don't like painting, you don't paint it. If you do like painting, you can repaint it if it doesn't suit your standards. End result, in both cases, is a painted miniature on the table... which we all agree is a good thing, no?

Yes. but we were talking diferent things... The plastics that hold PPP doesnt satisfy both sides ( heck i dont know other sides I'm jsut refering to my take on this hehe)... but then again you can paint whatever you like.
To sum up a bit, I respect others choices and hobbies etc, no problem in PPP... AS LONG as it doesnt interfere with the current lines or companies...like happened to rackham ( from best minis to worst minis company in a year)...

PS- insaniak mind Im portuguese so english not y first language if i sounded rude( some people say i sound like that) was not my intention... I'm completely calm just trying to answer all the zillion quotes you did.


As for the Honesty or lack of it by rackham... well everyday most companies produces lies in form of publicity for their products... does it make it honest? nope... do I like it? nope... but i have to live with it.

I stand corrected.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:You don´t expect them to show PPP minis in the books? That would be like asking GW to show unpainted plastics in their books.

When being prepainted is one of the signature features of the game, then yes, I expect them to show prepainted miniatures in the books. In the same way, GW considers painting to be an important feature in the game, so it shows off painted miniatures in the books.

Rymafyr wrote:

On a side note: Was this just some way to get some stuff started Kid_Kyoto?

Nah I'm just pimping the Warstore hoping for another free backpack.

But I think it's something worth talking about, my last dalliance into Star Wars prepaints really got me excited about the idea of opening a box and playing a game. Rather than opening a box, opening a rulebook the size of a college textbook, assembling, painting and converting for a month or two, then coming back and playing a game.

I think some of the ideas here like color coding the snap-tight minis are interesting and could work.

And hey, those aren't bad paintjobs they're selling.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:I'd fully agree with that last point by insaniak, when I had Heroclix I could have used them as they came. However I went looking through comics, websites and found the correct schemes for the heroes and villians I was using and painted them that way.

Aye I could have used them as was, often I did, but for those I painted over the top and got a good table standard on. It was even sweeter playing with them as they looked spot on.

I Still have some Brotherhood now, and went as far as removing Rogue's flying base for her Brotherhood version. As although she didn't have the ability they hadn't made a seperate fig. So you can even do a bit of converting on Heroclix figs if ye want.

I remember hacking up 4-5 figures and dragging out my paints to make an accurate female Hawk for my Titans team since DC brought Hawk and Dove back as a pair of estranged teenage sisters. Probably my most intensive Clix custom.

NAVARRO wrote:gezzz insaniak so many quotes I will try to answer but next time im going to pass since it takes time i dont have

You listed a bunch of points that proponents of prepaints supposedly don't reply to... This being Dakka, you shouldn't be too surprised that someone replied to them as a result

Problem is you buy a miniature already painted and should be finished/ ready to go...

It is.

Sure, they would be better with the mould lines finished off... But they're not sold as GD-quality display pieces. They are gaming miniatures. Most people barely even notice mould lines on them, any more than they would object to them on action figures.

I'm not saying that you should like it... I was just addressing your point about it not being 'prepainted' if it has mouldlines, which frankly didn't make a lot of sense

Sure its easier... and more expensive... to us in short term... but providing such a service will it prove to be profitable for a company that invests in it?

It has been for WotC. It was for Wizkids. It all comes down to the company, and whether or not they have the infrastructure to support it, and the ability to put out product that people want to buy.

Well, IMHO theres no need to go so low on design quality just to provide something half painted... Its unbalanced.

I can't help thinking that you're a little biased based on your own experiences with Rackham. Not all prepaints are sub-par sculpts. Some of my favorite minis in my collection are from the Star Wars range, and the detail on those particular minis is as good as any of GW's plastics.

Sure, there are dogs in the range, and there are some entire ranges of prepaints that aren't good... But the same is true of paintable minis. GW puts out some absolutely horrendous miniatures, as did Rackham. And there are entire ranges of miniatures that I would simply never even consider buying. Being prepainted doesn't automatically mean it's rubbish. Being rubbish does.

The stunt these PPP companies are making is gluing their faulty mediocre goods to the expensive wargaming market.

Action figures, by and large, have a much wider audience. In the same way that historical model kit companies can put out vehicle kits more detailed and cheaper than GW's tanks, companies producing action figures can afford to charge less for their product than someone selling wargaming miniatures.

But really, the difference isn't that big. I can buy a Star Wars action figure for about the same price as a booster of Star Wars miniatures. For a comparable amount of plastic, and a similar standard of painting. Except that in the case of the miniatures, that's 7 different paintjobs for the price of one... which seems like a better deal to me.

Just look at the companies majority please

You said every prepaint company has done badly. Not just the majority.

But I'll play along...

Mongoose - failed at prepaints through some poor business decisions that cost them a lot of money, followed by a product that when it was finally released turned out to be complete rubbish.

Rackham - Hit a distinct low when they released prepaints, having just alienated a large part of their customer base (which in the grand scheme of things wasn't that big to begin with) by scrapping their entire range and completely changing direction... but without the customer base or the market saturation to sustain it. Whether or not that will eventually come good is still in doubt...

Wizkids - were huge. Had several ranges that were basically like printing money, even with them annoying a large chunk of their customer base by completely revising one of their games and invalidating people's collections. Games went on for too long without anything substantially new, which saw them start to lose popularity, and people eventually lose interest in collectible games when they have to keep buying to remain in competitive play as older sets are removed from official play... but we have no way of knowing whether or not they were doing badly at the end. The reason given by Topps for closing them down was a refocusing of Topps' business direction, which may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with Wizkids' sales.

WotC - Has several popular ranges of collectible prepaints, all of which are doing what they're supposed to do. No signs of any of those going away any time soon.


Sorry, but that hardly looks like the 'all prepaint companys fail' that you claimed... The problems that Rackham and Mongoose had didn't come because they were selling prepaints specifically. They came because they made crappy business decisions and put out product that people didn't want.

Really? good, its a awesome trade off isnt it? Dumb down everything...buy sodacaps for the price o lead miniatures just to have more people is the way to go... I respec that you aprove that, personally I just dont.

Hyperbole much?

I don't approve of using sodacaps for miniatures. I most certainly do approve of more people having painted miniatures.

Yes. but we were talking diferent things... The plastics that hold PPP doesnt satisfy both sides

Again, I think you're generalising through lack of actual familiarity with different ranges. There are a whole stack of miniatures in several of the prepainted ranges I collect that I would more than happily repaint if I had the time. Every range has the good and the bad. That's not exclusive to prepaints either.

I could just as well claim that unpainted miniatures don't satisfy those who want to paint either, just because the minis put out by a particular company are rubbish.

To sum up a bit, I respect others choices and hobbies etc, no problem in PPP... AS LONG as it doesnt interfere with the current lines or companies...like happened to rackham ( from best minis to worst minis company in a year)...

Sure, I can understand that. But your problem there isn't with prepaints. It's with Rackham's business decisions.

They chose to go with prepaints instead of the range they already had. Only they know their reasons for doing that, rather than running with both.

PS- insaniak mind Im portuguese so english not y first language if i sounded rude( some people say i sound like that) was not my intention... I'm completely calm just trying to answer all the zillion quotes you did.

No problem

Where are pre-painted miniatures painted?

for that matter, where are GW miniatures cast?

insaniak wrote:
WotC - Has several popular ranges of collectible prepaints, all of which are doing what they're supposed to do. No signs of any of those going away any time soon.

To be fair, the D&D Miniatures game is being disbanded. The latest set, from this November, will be its last. Future WOTC releases (still PPP, no longer CMG) will be aimed more in the direction of the D&D RPGer crowd, and it will be interesting to see how that range fares, because that demographic is also being catered to by non-prepainted miniatures companies like Reaper (you can get most of the critters in the D&D Monster Manual in the form of Reaper minis with serial numbers filed off).

In any case, of course, DDM was hardly a failure. Five years of releases, seventeen sets, untold thousands of players, and some rather nice miniatures (and some uglies), make for the sort of product line that "lesser" companies would die for.

Agamemnon2 wrote:To be fair, the D&D Miniatures game is being disbanded. The latest set, from this November, will be its last. Future WOTC releases (still PPP, no longer CMG) will be aimed more in the direction of the D&D RPGer crowd,

Yeah, the miniatures range isn't going anywhere... it's simply changing focus slightly. Although not that much, since the reason for the change is that the miniatures were already selling more for RPGers than for wargamers anyway. So all they're really doing is dropping the extra rules development and focusing on what more of their customers actually wanted in the first place.

...and it will be interesting to see how that range fares, because that demographic is also being catered to by non-prepainted miniatures companies like Reaper (you can get most of the critters in the D&D Monster Manual in the form of Reaper minis with serial numbers filed off).

I'm similarly interested in seeing how Reaper's prepainted range develops, if it actually manages to go past the initial release. They're doing exactly what (IMO) Rackham should have done, and what I think GW will have to do eventually... keeping the core range, and releasing picked ranges in prepaints for those who want them.

Belphegor wrote:Where are pre-painted miniatures painted?

for that matter, where are GW miniatures cast?

In the furnace where gamers lives burn away to nothing.

Belphegor wrote:Where are pre-painted miniatures painted?

Mostly in China or Hong Kong, at least in the case of WotC, Wizkids and Mongoose. No idea where Rackham are doing theirs. I believe Privateer's Monsterpocalypse minis are painted in the US, but I could be wrong.

for that matter, where are GW miniatures cast?

USA and UK. Although there have been occasional rumours over the last few years that at least some of Forgeworld's resin stuff is being cast in China.