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Modern GW just isn't interested in presenting a product that can be built any other way than officially presented. They also want boutique models that are "the most intricately detailed on the market".

This has led us to ever more fragile monopose CAD-designed models. Space marines (and now Custodes, too) will always buck that trend because of their robust, simple armor joints, unless you are faced with starter set models like those from Dark Vengeance (Librarian and Terminators, especially).

In fairness most of the big competition in alternative models are just as high detail and fragile as well. So GW is just following what the market keeps saying it wants (at least one portion of it).

The thing that really put me off the new line of miniature is the sum of really distinguishable detailed models and the fact that they are monopose.
It really kills me to have two exactly identical minis (bar those extremely simple, like intercessor and similar). Thus, this reduce my attitude of buying more than a single kit anyway.

Death Guard for example. Two identical plague marine, blister and guts and all, really bother me.

To purchase my Alpha Legion heavy troop army I buy HH line (lealist and chaos) third party model etc. All of them with the idea of converting them all. If they were monopose and I have to suck up the fact that my Veterans will be 4-5 different figures at most, repeated x3 times, I never bother to collect them in the first place.

Think I've been luck in buying them before the new style will percolate on the entire line.

So, no problem related to silly building, or details, or style. But the monopose on Troops and similar stuff that you need to purchase in bulk... that's really annoying. Character, elite, vehicles. There are already a lot of stuff that is intrinsically monopose. Keep the multi-pose for stuff that you need to purchase multiple times.

 Cybtroll wrote:
The thing that really put me off the new line of miniature is the sum of really distinguishable detailed models and the fact that they are monopose.

Conversions are still pretty easy in plastic. I recently built a Chaplain, Apothecary and Librarian out of DI Primaris marines. Re-posing is often even simpler, and swapping arms between models is fairly trivial, head swaps are easy (for the most part). So you can't really rotate or swap the torso without extreme conversion work, that's it.

Note that limited poses had been the standard for a long time when most of your army was in lead/pewter. I have some metal Tau Stealth team and there's 2 poses of Shas'vre and maybe 4 poses of regular units?

 Cybtroll wrote:
The thing that really put me off the new line of miniature is the sum of really distinguishable detailed models and the fact that they are monopose.
It really kills me to have two exactly identical minis (bar those extremely simple, like intercessor and similar). Thus, this reduce my attitude of buying more than a single kit anyway.

Death Guard for example. Two identical plague marine, blister and guts and all, really bother me.

It's fairly simple to covert the Deathguard to look different (have a look at my thread for some ideas if you're interested https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/734222.page), and even easier for the marines where you can get as much variety as you used to get with a 'traditional' kit as you're not limited as much by gut bellys etc

as to the fragility of some of the recent stuff, some of it appears to be down to flaws/imperfections in the moulds (or perhaps where the plastic is stressed being popped out of the mould), I;ve build far too many Bloat Drones and one of the spikes on the DI version almost always snaps off when the others of the same thickness don't all it takes is a slight scratch or grove in the plastic and it will break pretty easily when a smooth bit won't so my strong suspicion it that's the issue

just try it on a bit of sprue frame, bend it and it won't break, but put a thin line across it with a knife and snap it's in two bits from far less pressure

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kosake wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Counter point: GW is not obligated to invest effort into making their products compatible with third party stuff, and those "weird" cut patterns have a functional purpose.

Which functional purpose would that be, aside from making the model monopose with very limited customization options?

Allowing shapes that can't be done with other mold methods. For example, undercuts are impossible with injection molded plastic because the metal molds are too rigid to release an undercut part (unlike the molds for resin casting). So if you want a piece with undercuts you have to break it down into multiple parts. The straightforward way is to just add a bunch of tiny pieces that you glue together, the more complex way is to carefully pick the split lines on a multi-part figure so that they cut through the middle of any undercut areas. With CAD software figuring out those complex split lines is much easier than it used to be, and if your goal is to reduce total part count then it's absolutely worth doing. The same kind of thing is likely true of other limits. Maybe using a "weird" split line solves a problem with the plastic flow not getting into the deepest corners before it cools too much, etc.

Well, that is pretty much the point I don't think is true. Have you seen the parts and how they are arranged on the sprue? These bits are full of undercuts, never mind the assembled models. Seriously, I spent some time wondering how the mold would even have to be to allow some of the outlandish orientation of the parts. Explaining weird cuts with casting requirements does not add up if your parts are more difficult to cast than the pre-assembled model would be. Pre-assembled models that would either be just as monopose, or even much easier to kitbash and convert. Thus my suggestion that some of the cutting is done to prevent recasters by introducing complexity and undercuts. Thus the comment of Azreal13 that recasters end up pre-assembling the models or subassemblies for EASIER casting. So, whatever the reason behind the cuts, it is not because they become easier to cast that way.

That's not what I meant at all. Generally speaking they'll pre assemble pieces because it's simpler to produce a thigh than two half pieces of thigh, both from a logistical point of view and as a service to their customers who won't then have to work to make two pieces fit together in a medium which doesn't have as high a tolerance as plastic and is also a 2nd gen copy.

Because of the limitations of steel moulds, there will never be a kit made in plastic that will be harder to re-produce in resin, only those that aren't as durable because of a more fragile medium.

 Kosake wrote:

Well, that is pretty much the point I don't think is true. Have you seen the parts and how they are arranged on the sprue? These bits are full of undercuts, never mind the assembled models.

I suspect that you have misunderstood what is meant by 'undercuts'.

Plastic models are cast in a steel mould, which means that parts have to be designed so that they come out of the mould correctly. So detail has to be designed in a very specific way to allow for that. This often means either fudging detail by stretching it or adding flat areas, or dividing up the part to avoid having areas where the mould won't work. Or using a sliding core mould, which allows for the mould configuration to be changed during casting, which lets you cast parts that would otherwise need to be multiple parts in a single part - but that's more expensive, and not something GW have used on miniatures to date (although possibly on some of their terrain - at least one sprue out there, possibly from the objective pack, has clear parts on the corner of a normal sprue).


Resin or metal models don't have this same limitation, as they are cast in flexible rubber or silicon moulds, which can be flexed to remove them from the model and so allow for undercuts and sharper detail than plastic.

You know what annoys me, the new sprue themselves specifically how they attach backpacks

They used to be simple top and bottom points that were thin enough to twist out then file the burr

Now they attach to the ball vents and the points are so thick that you get a flat spot or worse if you aren’t careful resulting in misshapen deformed backpacks

 Kosake wrote:
I guess some of these might have popped up in conversations over here, but I reckoned, it might be a worthwile topic for a consolidated discussion.

[snip wall'o'text]

So, all in all, this makes me feel like the designers are more interested in preventing you from using some non-GW custom bits or milking 3$ more for the odd paint pot than actually making a high-quality product.

Welcome to the post-Chapterhouse world we (GW) live in, where options are far more limited (if they even exist at all), there are more fancy poses, but less opportunities for modelling, and when kitbashing is a dirty word.

Good grief, this thread. How did we survive with monopose metal miniatures....

 Graphite wrote:
Good grief, this thread. How did we survive with monopose metal miniatures....

Because there wasn't option. Then superior version appeared. Now it's taking backward steps. That's not good.

I actually prefer monopose miniatures. I am pretty mediocre at model assembly, and when they were multipart as the old ones were I often ended up with goofy or poor poses. With the new kits I always get a dramtic and cool pose because it has been designed to go together that way by an artist who knows their craft.
I understand that that sucks for those of you who are really good at posing your miniatures, but personally it suits me down to the ground!

 Graphite wrote:
Good grief, this thread. How did we survive with monopose metal miniatures....

With pain and blood and sweat and tears! Much blood was spilt upon spikes held together on spikey models until the glue gods blessed the union of metal to metal with a seal.

Taking their regular sacrifices in skin as well whenever one would apply too much of the precious holy water between the joins

tneva82 wrote:

 Graphite wrote:
Good grief, this thread. How did we survive with monopose metal miniatures....

Because there wasn't option. Then superior version appeared. Now it's taking backward steps. That's not good.

It's not a step backwards, it's a side step. The models them selves are often quite nice, dynamic looking, but exchanging the flexability of the older more static models to achieve that.

I'd love to see more things like some of the absurd bs they pulled in the early necromunda kits where a few small components give you a massive range of options as to what your individual characters look like, but that's no where near as important in 40k as it is necromunda. Particularly when a major focus is on ease of build.

That said, I wound up with some of the easy build berzerkers and with a hobby knife and some time converted them into characters for my slaves to darkness army removing any khorne symbols and swapping appropriate gear on. Didn't spend more than a night on each one and quite happy with them. They're not hard to modify and an enterprising bits maker could most likely make generic bits that can be relatively easily swapped on by operating off some generic cut points. Not as easy as they once were, but hardly impossible.

 Overread wrote:

 Graphite wrote:
Good grief, this thread. How did we survive with monopose metal miniatures....

With pain and blood and sweat and tears! Much blood was spilt upon spikes held together on spikey models until the glue gods blessed the union of metal to metal with a seal.

Taking their regular sacrifices in skin as well whenever one would apply too much of the precious holy water between the joins

Brilliant.
And let's not forget those precious moments when the metal parts were so heavy, that almost no amount of glue would keep them together for long.

The new plastics are the best of both worlds though. The great poses you used to only get in metal, with the ease of.plastic to.make.changes. No longer do.you need a dremel to.do.a.decent conversion job of a character model.

 Flinty wrote:
The new plastics are the best of both worlds though. The great poses you used to only get in metal, with the ease of.plastic to.make.changes. No longer do.you need a dremel to.do.a.decent conversion job of a character model.

Best would be for models, especially characters, to come with a few options though, maybe two or three heads, a couple of different weapon arms perhaps - the bulk of the pose gets fixed but you can at least vary the load out a bit - or weapon attachment points designed to allow weapon swaps with the rest of the range.

for characters its a royal pain when there are zero options without extensive work, especially on a model you are likely to want more than one of.

for line units it matters a bit less as long as there are a decent number of poses - a box of ten, all different, with weapon options is plenty, a box of five starts to be a problem when its the core of an army - the same was true in the days of metal, but we have gone from that to highly configurable multi-part kits and back towards "dynamic" but monopose kits

Didn't need a dremel to make good looking characters from kitbashed plastics either...

I dunno, my carnosaur can make:
- Old Blood on Carnosaur
- Scar Vet on Carnosaur with choice of 3 weapons
- Skink priest on foot

- Skink Priest on Troglodon
- Scar vet or Old Blood on foot

That is not bad, and certainly more options than the old metal.

 Kosake wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Counter point: GW is not obligated to invest effort into making their products compatible with third party stuff, and those "weird" cut patterns have a functional purpose.

Which functional purpose would that be, aside from making the model monopose with very limited customization options?

About a page late but another thing about glue edge geometry is that the more angles and surface area the better the joint. a single flat glue spot will be easier to sheer than one glued up in an S shape or a ball and socket or whatever. it also makes lining up complicated models easier by having everything keyed.

personally i have zero issues with the CAD Craziness.

It's got better - the peg-and-socket joints on the 2009 Space Hulk Terminators or the easy-to-build Intercessors are fiddly because it's not always easy to see how the peg slides into the socket at whatever odd angle it's on, and I've accidentally snapped a few.

I don't mind the new direction GW is taking at all, I'm a huge fan of the more dynamically posed and detailed models they're putting out and it isn't hard to chop them up and convert them to avoid carbon-copies. However, some of the attachment points ARE egregiously placed.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Modern GW just isn't interested in presenting a product that can be built any other way than officially presented. They also want boutique models that are "the most intricately detailed on the market".

Gee, their WC channel is strangely full of conversion videos then:

https://www.youtube.com/user/GamesWorkshopWNT/search?query=convert

[and that's just these that have 'convert' in title, there are dozens using other words like recent 'how to skip purchasing IG command squad' or 'how to add fur' ones]

Mind if I inquire why if they don't want it to be built any other way?

 Irbis wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Modern GW just isn't interested in presenting a product that can be built any other way than officially presented. They also want boutique models that are "the most intricately detailed on the market".

Gee, their WC channel is strangely full of conversion videos then:

https://www.youtube.com/user/GamesWorkshopWNT/search?query=convert

[and that's just these that have 'convert' in title, there are dozens using other words like recent 'how to skip purchasing IG command squad' or 'how to add fur' ones]

Mind if I inquire why if they don't want it to be built any other way?

Nice of you to ignore the second paragraph where he explains SM models are the exception (of which much of the WHTV videos seem to be about by the looks of it). Go on, go grab some DG and tell me that they are as designed for converting as a tactical marine is.

As for those specific videos- let's dissect what he said. MODERN GW. The Cadian kit is from 2003, so hardly modern and was built under a different design paradigm.

A good number of the videos in AegisGrimm's search list are all modern kits - Intercessors, Dark Eldar, Easy-to-build Marines, Genestealer Cultists, Blight Kings. If you're put off conerting because you might have to … cut bits off a model! then that's a shame, but it's still much easier to convert most GW models now than it was back in the "good old days" of the 1990s.

Even that video about Cadians doesn't quite help your argument - the conversion being shown has nothing to do with the ease of assembly of the kit, as it involves cutting off the lasgun and gluing on a plasma gun (after cutting more bits off that). The techniques in that video apply perfectly well to any Death Guard miniature too.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
A good number of the videos in AegisGrimm's search list are all modern kits - Intercessors, Dark Eldar, Easy-to-build Marines, Genestealer Cultists, Blight Kings. If you're put off conerting because you might have to … cut bits off a model! then that's a shame, but it's still much easier to convert most GW models now than it was back in the "good old days" of the 1990s.

Even that video about Cadians doesn't quite help your argument - the conversion being shown has nothing to do with the ease of assembly of the kit, as it involves cutting off the lasgun and gluing on a plasma gun (after cutting more bits off that). The techniques in that video apply perfectly well to any Death Guard miniature too.

No they don't. Look how the DG kits go together. There is no variety. Every body must be assembled in one way with no deviation. This is especially egregious with he Blightlords as the fly guy will be in every single unit you have of them. It's interesting you bring up the Blightkings as it is like night and day with those two kits and hard to think they're so recent to one another. The Blightkings kit is full of random useful bits that I'm still using on many of my numerous and extensive conversions ( I know what I'm talking about mate. ) in my DG.

All of the above kits you mention are not put together like the DG minis. Seriously, just look at the sprues (I believe HBMC has already linked them ITT EDIT- It's in another thread). There is very little room for customisation compared to literally every other kit out there. You cannot swap legs around, there are no alt torsos unlike the Blightkings or several other SM kits (every SM kit, regardless of if it was loyalist or CSM was retrocompatible with one another, 'member that?)- The DG are a disturbing look into the future possibly with homogenization of kits.

The Cadian video was all about cutting off one weapon and gluing on another one. The Death Guard are just as suitable for that as a plastic Cadian. They could just as well have used a single-piece Steel Legion trooper.

Looking at the Death Guard sprues, all the arms seem to be the standard Space Marine arm joint, same with the backpacks and heads.

Personally I'd rather have the details on the Death Guard, Primaris Marines and the like. The old Marines and Guardsmen usually looked awkward if you tried to rotate the torso more than a degree or two anyway, and you end up with a break in the details at the waist that's hard to hide. YMMV.

The Pusgoyle Blightlords also seem to have at least six different heads in a box of two models, which helps.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

The Pusgoyle Blightlords also seem to have at least six different heads in a box of two models, which helps.

Sorry, I was referring to the Blightlord Termies, not them (of which I didn't actually know were called that. Stupid GW...). Where you cannot even build a unit of 10 (there are if you count the ETB kit a grand total of 8 Blightlord models) before you start repeating yourself. It's like they never considered somebody would want multiple units of them.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
A good number of the videos in AegisGrimm's search list are all modern kits - Intercessors, Dark Eldar, Easy-to-build Marines, Genestealer Cultists, Blight Kings. If you're put off conerting because you might have to … cut bits off a model! then that's a shame, but it's still much easier to convert most GW models now than it was back in the "good old days" of the 1990s.

Even that video about Cadians doesn't quite help your argument - the conversion being shown has nothing to do with the ease of assembly of the kit, as it involves cutting off the lasgun and gluing on a plasma gun (after cutting more bits off that). The techniques in that video apply perfectly well to any Death Guard miniature too.

Wait..what videos are you talking about, Spanish Inquisition? (Not really sure if you are for or against me, but search-checking seems a bit wierd ??) Most of those things listed are not even for armies I own, other than maybe a passing thought of a skirmish-scale warband of all- Primaris marines to be truescale marines (I have been scouting out how I can best make them all unique poses, if I do), or using Genestealer Cultists as Delaque gangers/post apocalyptic RPG under-dweller bad guys. I have two kids, I waste a lot of time trolling online instead of modelling and painting nowadays.

As for converting and ease thereof... I have a Kroot Merc army, which is usually enough to give me some street cred, lol. One single unit box to make an entire force, including HQ models that can take other races' weapons but have Kroot rifles with unique stocks sculpted into their hands, sniper rifle cavalry that usually are made from Cold Ones (mine alsomhave their legs taken from metal Gorkamorka muties), and a winged unit (never quite got around to doing that one, but I was going to use Tyranid gargoyles as a basis...maybe). The leader of my Van Saar (original Necromunda) was an idea stolen from back in Citadel Journal (I think?) where you take the old Adeptus Arbites trenchcoat leader w/ shotgun, saw off the head, and attach a sawn off head from a Van Saar leader.

I have ridden the converting train a few times in my day (my day starting about 1995, lol). We converted metal because you didn't get a choice. But I also definitely think modern GW looks at converting models differently than when I was just out of high school (3rd edition 40k era).