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First off, this NOT a moan about price hikes ok?
Since getting broadband I've been visiting a lot of the many miniature manufacturers just seeing what is available and a recurring thought struck me. Many of these manufacturers do produce really good minis and this is for me where miniatures branch off into two distinct categories; The first being the single mini that you need to own simply because it is so well designed. The other is the ones that are conscripted into our various armies. One site I really liked the minis on sale got me thinking that an army of these would look excellent on the battlefield, simply because they were well sculpted and were out of the ordinary. However, the cost of each figure would me make it fiendishly expensive to build up a force of them, so instead I can only see these minis being used for very small quick skirmish games, which is a pity.
This is where my point comes in. Has the metal figure travelled well past its function? Many of these really good miniatures will never reach the heights that they should do, simply because A) They're metal and B) The cost of metal caps how successful sales wise they could be. If anyones interested The site is www.blackcatbases.com (really great minis)
I would say that figure manufacturers that don't currently produce minis in plastic really need to start. As a buyer I'm more interested in the ability to build an army rather than buying to cater for small skirmish games ,and no real interest or desire in increasing from skirmish size because of cost. Right across the board individual metal figure prices are not good for force building.
So to finish, I'll say that metal figures are nearing the end and that the rule of plastic is well under way.
Thoughts?

It is pretty unlikely that metal miniatures will ever go away.

There are too many historical armies and scales, for which it is not economical to make plastic moulds.

Clearly plastic is making big strides in 28mm historicals, and hardly a month passes without a new range being announced, however they are all the "big name" historical armies such as Romans, Greeks vs Persians, and so on. The more unusual armies will remain in metal for a long time.

Yes but I'd suggest that there will be a point due to rising metal prices that metal minis will become a rarity on the tabletop as manufacturers may well be forced to go plastic. I think more historical periods will go plastic than you suggest, especially at 28mm scale.

I love plastic models too, but metals aren't going anywhere.

The metal itself might cost a lot more, but the costs involved with adding a new metal model to a product line vs plastics is such a huge difference it's just stupid.

For metals, you sculpt your model, make some rubbery molds and then cast them. It'll cost you a few hundred bucks to have a company do the molds for you.

For plastics, same thing but it'll cost at least $10,000 for those molds. Possibly even a lot more.

So, larger companies like GW can do tons of plastics, but smaller companies out there will be doing metals for a long time to come.

What of the cost of injection moulding equipment?

When this is cheap and effective enough for the guy in his garage or kitchen to use then you 'may' see the end of metal minis.

Resin is okay on the home to small scale but injection moulding is where its at.

I don't think that it will be long before we start to hear of metal manufacturers going to companies that produce plastic minis to cast ranges for them. I worked for a company in the gift trade and ironically we had a metal caster making castings for us!We only cast in resin, not having the space for metal casting. Infact I'm sure I seen an ad for a UK plastic mini manufacturer advertising their services.


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Hello Mr Burning! Take GW's method of producing master models. They are now using a machine that can create models by feeding the design into a computer which then programs a laser to 'cut' the models in some liquid plastic stuff(no idea what it is called). These machines are already being adapted for the desktop,i.e so you can produce products at home.

It is a lot more complicated than that to create the mini's on a large scale slipstream. As a hobby it is fine but when you're making hundreds if not a few thousand of a model even this isn't good enough: http://cart.themouldmaker.com/index.php?p=page&page_id=Services

Even though the moulds are cheaper to make the costs of metal is slowly rising. Eventually there will be a tipping point where people will stop buying them.

Moulds for plastic last longer, can have more detail but cost a great deal more to make; up to £200k!

There are fewer drawbacks working with plastic and the detail that can be brought far outweighs anything that metal has. Mantics new ranges are some of the best I've seen.

Slipstream wrote:I don't think that it will be long before we start to hear of metal manufacturers going to companies that produce plastic minis to cast ranges for them. I worked for a company in the gift trade and ironically we had a metal caster making castings for us!We only cast in resin, not having the space for metal casting. Infact I'm sure I seen an ad for a UK plastic mini manufacturer advertising their services.

Designing and making moulds for injection moulding plastic is extremely expensive. It's nothing like metal moulding where you can take pretty much anything and knock up a mould for very little outlay.

Slipstream wrote:Hello Mr Burning! Take GW's method of producing master models. They are now using a machine that can create models by feeding the design into a computer which then programs a laser to 'cut' the models in some liquid plastic stuff(no idea what it is called). These machines are already being adapted for the desktop,i.e so you can produce products at home.

What you're talking about here is rapid prototyping. This is getting cheaper but it's still a way off. The problem at the moment is that you can either have a strong material or a finely detailed material. For making production minis you really need both and the technology isn't quite there yet.

From a mechanical engineering point of view, I don't think plastic molds are going to be cheap enough for small companies / individual models for a long, long time.

If I was feeling a little more energetic I'd search and link to where we discussed this last

I'm no expert on production overheads but my understanding is along the lines of the general consensus (plastics depend on large production runs)...

But the point I wanted to make, apropos OP, is that while there are some absolutely fantastic character models out there in metal, I actually enjoy building custom character models from plastic bitz.

I have a (very talented) friend who built a whole set of basic D&D PCs from the (WHFB) Free Company and Mordheim sprues with a couple random legs bitz for the shorties in the bunch.

Plastics can be cheaper than metals at the moment, when a company chooses them to be. People always talk about the costs of moulds and the like but small companies like Mantic are churning out plastic figures at a fraction of the price GW charge. So what is GW's excuse? Yes they have greater overheads, but that should be wiped out by economy of scale. If GW can't operate more efficiently than Mantic and Warlord Games then I think they have real issues. But they don't, GW charge their prices because it's what they think they can get away with not because of the cost of materials etc.


Plastic have a volatile future though, their costs are related to oil prices and that's looking to increase as costs for extraction run low and supplies are in greater demand, I don't know when this will be pronounced enough for the customer to see othr than when they fuel up their car. Plastics are also prone to sudden leaps in price if there are problems with oil producing nations, say wars and the like which are not unlikely in the future.

Mr. Burning wrote:What of the cost of injection moulding equipment?........

I'm not sure if it would do the trick but I have had an equipment supplier quote approximately £1,500 for a plastic injection machine for a school I am building. Naturally sudry equipment and the moulds would add to the cost.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Plastics can be cheaper than metals at the moment, when a company chooses them to be. People always talk about the costs of moulds and the like but small companies like Mantic are churning out plastic figures at a fraction of the price GW charge. So what is GW's excuse? Yes they have greater overheads, but that should be wiped out by economy of scale. If GW can't operate more efficiently than Mantic and Warlord Games then I think they have real issues. But they don't, GW charge their prices because it's what they think they can get away with not because of the cost of materials etc.....................

In GWs defence [whether we like it or not] you are paying for the shops as well as the overhead. It's just their chosen method of advertising and presence in the market.

Mantic do not have this additional overhead and therefore offer cheaper mini's. The sprues offered by Mantic are smaller and have less options and would therfore naturally be less expensive to produce the original mould, which if what we are lead to believe is true forms a large proportion of the cost.

More generally, if metal was on the way out I suspect that GW would be the first to ditch it, having the technical advantage in plastics as they do; but I do not see that happening.

Re the general cost of materials i.e oil [plastic] vs metal. Both have risen at similarly high rates over the last couple of decades but the raw material cost of a miniature is minimal. The majority of the cost will be held in labour and transport [both also affected by the price of oil]. I would expect an increase of 5% of the cost of metal to have a negligable impact of the price of a miniature. [if my experience of procuring fabricated metal products for large construction projects is anything to go by].

Those shops must create a huge volume of sales that Mantic and others simply don't have access to. I appreciate that GW have huge costs in maintaining their shops, but they will have massive sales, if GW are expensive because they have the shops then the shops aren't really paying for themselves. I don't really think that's the case, GW prices are dictated by managerial drive for maximum profit not in relation to actual costs.

Elmodiddly wrote:

Even though the moulds are cheaper to make the costs of metal is slowly rising. Eventually there will be a tipping point where people will stop buying them.

Highly doubtful. GW has mostly plastic and the highest prices on the block and its not stopped people from buying. The metal models would have to exceed current GW prices to even come close to being stopped.

you cant kill the metal.

nuff said

Yes - on a less technical note metal has a certain something to it - the weight of it, the feeling of it being quality product and the feeling of naffness plastic conjures up. Of course saying this I realise plastics have improved a great deal since I last tried them.
What worries me about this theory is peak oil, have we reached it yet? this could cause the price of plastic to go up while the petro-chemists seek a biologicaly based alternative plastic substance. There are some out there already but I've never heard of anyone casting minis out of em

Slipstream wrote:Yes but I'd suggest that there will be a point due to rising metal prices that metal minis will become a rarity on the tabletop as manufacturers may well be forced to go plastic. I think more historical periods will go plastic than you suggest, especially at 28mm scale.

I agree it will certainly rise, however it is difficult to believe the Carlist War, Incas or Old Kingdom Egyptian are likely to go plastic in a hurry.

I don't think the price issue is very important. My research suggests that the materials cost of metal is about 10% of the figure, while for plastic it is about 2%. That doesn't really make any difference unless you can defray the cost of moulds for plastic by huge production runs. GW can do this more easily, which is why they have led the way.

That is why I think only the more popular ranges will be done in plastic. We have had the situation for a long time that GW plastics are more expensive than most other metals, anyway. It doesn't seem to affect sales. Wargame figures are a luxury product.

15mm and 6mm figures use such small amounts of metal that there is very little advantage in swapping to plastic, also the weight and conversion advantages of plastic are much reduced.

I was looking for quotes for plastic model production for the game I'm working on. Won't mention the company but the quote I got was "$15-20k" the molds for for a 4"x6" sprue, about $1000 per figure "sculpting" charge. After that, 25 cents per sprue to cast them

For metal, one quote I got was like.. $200 for a master mold, $50 for production molds. Then the price of the metal and casting services was extra and varied a lot but overall it wasn't too bad. And the cost of sculpting too.

But overall, metal is hella cheap compared to plastic. Plastic would only be worth doing if you're gonna be selling bazillions, for a company just starting out it's metal .. or resin if you wanna do that but personally I'd rather do metal.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Plastic have a volatile future though, their costs are related to oil prices

I'm not sure that metal isn't just as dependent. Whether shipping raw materials to, or finished product out, they're going to get it when fuel costs go up - and the metal is going to eat significantly more in freight due to the increased weight.

Plastic is only worthwhile if you're selling large volumes. For smaller pieces that either won't sell many, or are specifically designed to sell in small numbers (like, say, Special Characters, where someone only usually buys one), metal is cheaper and more efficient.

Metal's going no where.

White Metal - Pewter - Whatever you want to call it, its all the same alloy. Is one of the few metals where the price very rarely actually rises above the cost of inflation. Its base metal Tin is fairly abundent and not widely used.

If you actually look at current prices and those in the last 5 years, the cost of granulated plastic and non-precious metals have risen at the same rate.

Metal minatures will always be around. Metal is easier to work with, cheaper on a small scale and has the ability to hold more detail.

Thank goodness for it too. I hate assembling metal models.

Catyrpelius wrote:and has the ability to hold more detail.

I keep hearing this last thing, but In my experience hardly find it to be true. I haven't seen any recently released metals that hold up to, say, the space hulk minis.

I'm not sure the reason the minis the OP is talking about have a higher price simply because they are metal, I think it's more to do with the fact they don't have the infrastructure in place that the likes of GW have, nor the huge contracts with material suppliers etc. I don't think your paying a higher price because the miniatures are metal.

As others have said producing i plastic is not an option to most of these small companies as it's so expensive to set up.

Ouze wrote:

Catyrpelius wrote:and has the ability to hold more detail.

I keep hearing this last thing, but In my experience hardly find it to be true. I haven't seen any recently released metals that hold up to, say, the space hulk minis.

With that in mind, plastic technology is starting to catch up to the level of detail you can get from a metal mini, but as Space Hulk so neatly demonstrates, especially with the genestealers, the fact that you can't do undercuts in plastic is always going to be a significant design limitation.

Plastic outperforms metal in detail every time. Comparing these new Zombies from mantic, every finger is seperately moulded and shaped. Metal cannot hold this kind of detail, it's too soft.

metal will stay around for things were you can only use one in your army As well as in skirmish games were your only going to buy a small amount of minis as its cheaper for the small companys and new games to use get metal molds.

It frustrates me that the plastic DP costs $2 less than the metal one did. Stupid. </complaint>

Edit: And Anima has tons of detailed, smaller scale models in metal.

Elmodiddly wrote:Plastic outperforms metal in detail every time.

Except for being able to have detail all around the shapes, due to the inherent 2-D nature of metal molds.

Empire Great Cannon is a good example of a model which is clearly superior to its plastic counterpart. Compare the carriages of the two, and you'll see that the sides of the metal Great Cannon carriage have woodgrain detailing, which is *completely* absent on it's plastic counterpart.

When you can reproduce the metal Great Cannon carriage in plastic with less than a half-dozen pieces, you let me know.

We can go all day long comparing one model with another. Did you consider that they couldn't be arsed to model the wood detail in the plastic cannon carriage?

Plastic does outperform metal. The sculptors may not.