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I was wondering what some of you think is the reason behind GW's dated character models. Some of these models are pushing 20 year old sculpts. Now this isnt about characters being in plastic kits. Most of these do not move well enough to merit the investment. I would think, however, considering the size of GW and their sales volume, that they sell at least well enough to merit updating the sculpts more often.

Heres a few observation I have from other companies that use similar methods. The method used for the GW character (and other metal or finecast troops they sell) is spin-casting resin/pewter. The cost of a new sculpt is much lower than plastic, generally 1000 on up depending on the complexity of the figure and what the sculptor charges. Iron wind metals makes pewter figures for battletech and historical systems as does Reaper and they use a similar method. These companies are much smaller than GW and still manage to pump out dozens of new designs a year. The developer of Dystopian wars recently spoke on D6g about miniature manufacturing. They also spin cast resin and metal. They use CAD programs to create their designs and and he spoke of their design to street roll out time to take anywhere from 48 hours to a few weeks. They are a fast growing company and have many new releases a month. I also think some of the problems with finecast were attributed to the fact that they are using molds designs for metals so it would make sense to update the sculpts.

So whats with GW? Are their methods archaic and take infinitely longer than others? Do these projects get stuck in some bureaucratic swamp internally? Is it because GW feels it has to redo an entire line or not do it at all?

keisukekun wrote:Iron wind metals makes pewter figures for battletech and historical systems as does Reaper and they use a similar method. These companies are much smaller than GW and still manage to pump out dozens of new designs a year.

These companies are 'pumping out' a couple of dozen single pose metals/resins a year. GW manage to release a couple dozen products each year which range from multipart plastic units to large multipart plastic individual kits to single pose resins. You just don't realize GW release so much because it's not all for your chosen army or game system, it's across a couple dozen armies across 3 game systems.

Basically, GW do release a gak ton every year, you just don't notice a lot of it because it doesn't pertain to you.

keisukekun wrote:The developer of Dystopian wars recently spoke on D6g about miniature manufacturing. They also spin cast resin and metal. They use CAD programs to create their designs and and he spoke of their design to street roll out time to take anywhere from 48 hours to a few weeks. They are a fast growing company and have many new releases a month.

Different release methods. GW likes the bubble approach, where a book is accompanied by the majority of the releases. They also do the majority of their stuff in plastic, which takes significantly longer than spin casting (since a mold needs to be tooled). They also need to make a lot more for their initial production push since they have their own stores to stock, then online sales, then distributors for FLGS's and other online stores, and quite simply, sell more models.

Comparing the release schedules of a small company or garage operation to a worldwide multimillion pound company isn't even apples to oranges it's so different. GW releases go through more stages of concept to design to production, they have scheduled release windows and finance and legal departments that decides a lot of releases as well (like the Tervigon kit).

Still, GW does release an absolute gak load every year. Most people just ignore 90% of it as it isn't for their army.

Not really saying GW doesn't release enough, They do release a "gak" ton. Yes their multi-part plastic kits are much more complex but their character/other finecast models are basically the same as competitors, single pose stuff sometimes with some bits for the troops selections. Considering how much easier, and how much less it costs to update compared to the large plastic kits they put out it seems strange we don't see some of these updated more often. I think what it boils down to is the release schedules which they feel need to focus on one thing rather than say have one month out of the year where they update 20 old character models across several armies.

keisukekun wrote: Iron wind metals makes pewter figures for battletech and historical systems as does Reaper and they use a similar method. These companies are much smaller than GW and still manage to pump out dozens of new designs a year.

To be fair almost all of iron wind metals releases are recycled from decades ago.


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keisukekun wrote:Not really saying GW doesn't release enough, They do release a "gak" ton. Yes their multi-part plastic kits are much more complex but their character/other finecast models are basically the same as competitors, single pose stuff sometimes with some bits for the troops selections. Considering how much easier, and how much less it costs to update compared to the large plastic kits they put out it seems strange we don't see some of these updated more often. I think what it boils down to is the release schedules which they feel need to focus on one thing rather than say have one month out of the year where they update 20 old character models across several armies.

I think you are a little off the mark here. GW releases what they think people can afford to buy. so for instance they didn't upgrade Ragnar Blackmane because he wouldn't sell but because they felt it wouldn't add to the overall amount of sales but instead canabalize other sales. They are simply trying to maximize profit and reduce their costs. Most likely they look at every wave decide how much they can sell to an average person and then try and release only as much as they need to in order to hit that sweet spot.

Brettz seems on target. From my logic if they do not anticipate people going bonkers over a model, why would you kick out tons of new models? I look at some of the olders models Abaddon, Ragnar, Eldrad. Those models have been around since I was a youngling 15 years ago. If I was looking for ones of those models, I'd go grab it off Ebay for $5 in metal and strip the paint. GW probably has some of that in the back of their heads. Is it worth re-releasing a model in a new script when they have tons of metal ones left over? Not really.

Its more financial rewarding to them to focus on the units who will definitely see the usage and purchase then focusing on individual models such has HQ choices.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised at all if those models are still selling relatively well. There are some really nice old sculpts out there still, of which the ones you have mentioned are examples.

I wish gw would update models to account for scale creep. Most especially the terminator armoured characters spring to mind, that tiny space wolves guy and abbadon principal among them.

Whilst Loki's answer is, I suspect, the correct one, I do share a measure of the OP's disappointment at Citadel's having chosen not to update the likes of Ragnar, Ulrik, Dante etc.

Special characters who are overshadowed both in terms of detail and dynamism, and - thanks to decades of scale creep - quite literally in height, by their elite troops do appear more than a little underwhelming.

The solution for players, of course, is to leave those Finecast characters on the shelves, visit Bits and Kits (or wherever), and kitbash them from plastics.

when they moved from metal to failcost they missed a massive opertunity to update the (sometimes terrible) old characters, some like Ezekial really hold up to the test of time and others like Abbadon, Kharn (cmon the pic of him in the dex is soooo much cooler that the mini) Ahirman and some of the teribad Eldar ones (some of the Phoenix lords, Avatar) really need an update

To be fair it seems gw is getting a bit better. With the necron and dark elder release they updated the characters while in the past they had a habit of updating the troops but skipping the characters.

One reason I mention iron wind metals is because over at the battle tech forums we run a fan financing where we fund new sculpts that they don't have funds for or are unsure whether they will sell enough. Generally you would need to sell several hundred to thousand of a sculpt to make up the cost of desighn/production and I would think that even the bad selling models would easily sell that many given the size of gw