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Posted By Cpl_Saint on 02/08/2007 4:53 AM

Mauleed, yours fail to take into account Salamanders players.

Why would a Salamanders player take a multi-melta instead of a meltagun?  To make it easier to not blow up tanks?

Posted By Mahu on 02/08/2007 7:12 AM
But is a strict value of what you get in the box set, you can't leave heavy weapons that are "useless" out.

Why not?  Suppose I sell turds for $10 per lb.  I also sell cookies for $1 each.  But now I stop selling them separately and only sell cookie-turd combo box sets (2 lbs of turds and 5 cookies) for $20 each.  That's a savings of $5 (20% off)!  What a deal!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this box set isn't a (relatively) good deal IF you need 2 lascannons, 2 heavy bolters, and a missile launcher - just that your argument is dumb.  What's the difference between paying $X for something completely useless and losing $X?

Of course I fully expected this box set to include just 1 lascannon, 1 heavy bolter, 1 plasma cannon, and 1 multi-melta for $50, so this is certainly a pleasant surprise.  And they didn't even try any shenanigans with the arms to make it impossible to combine the extra heavy weapons with the tac squad box - I'm impressed.  Maybe they've finally decided that, though it might be fun, constantly searching for new and innovative ways to treat their customers like crap is not good business?

Posted By Polonius on 02/08/2007 9:57 PM
Why on earth anybody would need two plasma cannons is beyond me, but they'll make great conversion fodder (a topic that seems to have gone unmentioned.)

 

Unmentioned. Are you sure?

Posted By yakface on 02/08/2007 10:23 PM

You're complaining about having to glue barrels together? I'm sorry but IMO that seems pretty trite. Yes, they could have included them as a single piece without a hollow barrel, but why not do them this way so we don't *have* to drill them out (plastic moulding requires separate pieces if you want an interior hollow area)? I think its a whole lot easier to glue to pieces together than it is to drill out a barrel.

It's become pretty clear that you're so jaded with GW at this point they'd have to send a Thai hooker over to your house along with the new box set for you to be impressed by it.

(High GW price aside) I personally think this is a fantastic new release for Marine players.

 

Excuse me? Yes, I am complaining about having to glue barrels together: it creates a seams that look like crap, are a pain the arse to sand so the barrels look round, and add yet another peice that has to have GW's excessive flash and mold lines cleaned off. It's unnecessary, poorly designed and, in my opinion, utter crap. The metal ones, for all their flaws, will still be easier to clean, pin and assemble than these, and cheaper! (to get what you want, at least).

And yeah, I'm so jaded I'd need a Thai hooker to be impressed. Please get over yourself Yak, tossing out insults is rather unbecoming of you.
 

That split barrel would have to cause the most difficult seam in the world to file to become more difficult to work with than the old metal devastators. If you prefer to work with the metal, that's fine, but I'm guessing the vast majority of gamers are going to have an easier time working with the plastic than with the old metals, which had to be pinned, puttied, and still looked cock-eyed or tipped over half the time. Clearly, if you have a preference, you have a preference and that's fine.

To Orlanth: I wasn't sure, and if it was mentioned than my bad. Of course, "but you can do crazy conversions to your Speed Freak army" shoudln't be the major selling point to a new kit, it's not a factor you can ignore. Look at the new IG heavy weapon boxes: people use those heavy weapons for tons of stuff these days. Bitz, even intiially useless ones, have a positive value to the hobby in general, even if not to every buyer of the kit.

It seems that reaction to the box set has split neatly into two lines:
1) While I'm not wild about the price, the box set seems to have a good enough mix of content and sculpt quality to make it a useful kit for space marine players.

2) Those who dread losing the flexibility of buying single heavy weapons, and not being roped into buying what they see as an unneccassary $45 kit.

I was in the second camp, but I came around when I actually saw the kit (which exceeded my admittedly low expections.) I recognize your guys point though, and I think it's valid; however I think it's going to be easier to work around than we think. A quick search on ebay will usually pull up all kinds of OOP blisters, I don't thinke marine Lascannons are going to disappear.

I think that is a poor example, and an over reaction opinion.

The value of the object is usually the components of it. What you are essentially argueing is that a 6-pack has an unfair price because you only need 4 cans of beer. Sure, if you really needed 4 cans of beer, you are better off with a system that allows you to purchase Beer individually. But that doesn't affect the value and relative worth of the Six pack.

Exxentially, your opinion of what is useful out of the kit should have no bearing to an arguement of what you get from the kit for the price it costs.



If you where assembling your weapons by throwing the relative bits into a bag with the glue and shaking real hard, you may have a point.

Most of the Plastic Kits that are availible, nobody have any problems with situations like this. It takes one second of patience to make sure you glue the pieces together acurately. GW is good at creating matching groves to make alinement easy enough. With the Metal Heavy Weapons, you had to go through a lot of metal to get hollow barrells. Something that most players don't even care about doing.



The way a lot of people have been posting in this thread, I tend to agree with Yakface.

You almost expect Games Workshop to come out with a kit just for your exact needs at half the price with the Thai hooker, you you will still complain about her hair color.

Posted By nyarlathotep667 on 02/09/2007 12:28 AM

Excuse me? Yes, I am complaining about having to glue barrels together: it creates a seams that look like crap, are a pain the arse to sand so the barrels look round, and add yet another peice that has to have GW's excessive flash and mold lines cleaned off. It's unnecessary, poorly designed and, in my opinion, utter crap. The metal ones, for all their flaws, will still be easier to clean, pin and assemble than these, and cheaper! (to get what you want, at least).

Nyarly has a point about split barrels.  I had lots of trouble getting my earthshaker barrel to line up without using gobs of plastic glue and a lot of filing, so god knows what it  would be like on something small and fiddy.

On the other hand, I perfer the plastic bits to the metal ones for gameplay (due to non tipping)and transport concerns.

Plastic kits - even GW's highly touted "advanced process" generally produce an inferior offering compared to metal due to having larger, less fine detail and lack of undercuts.  I was looking at the new "Ranger" plastic LOTR kit and it is clearly inferior in every way to the metal ones (except price - obviously).  While this is no an issue for Marines (or most of the 40k releases), this seems to be a bad trend for Fantasy and LOTR.

-edit- Yak... while you're giving out Thai hookers... can you send one this way? 

We all remember these aren't real, right? Whereas Thai hookers, while uncommon in Washington DC, are a staple of Cantonese cuisine.

Wait, what?

From a modeling perspective, I'm not a fan of split barrels. You get alignment problems very easily, especially if the sprue's been warped (not necessarily from the factory; could be from whatever outrageous fortunes the sprue encounters before being chopped up into lovely dollies). There's a reason that model kit builders often turn to turned/milled white metal gun barrels for their scale tanks; it saves them endless filing, filling and sanding to get something that looks 'meh'. Especially disappointing since the IG HW sprues had solid weapon barrels (for the most part).

Perhaps a minor point, and there are plenty of other greebles to make people happy, but with an army like SMs, where I'm going to have a relatively low model count, I want each of my figs to look good, and I'd rather not spend hours cleaning up unnecessary roughness...

split barrels = bad.
But it just means more time having to file and scrape, the drudgery of which is something I am all to familar with. In GW's defense though, I think they did that so the customer can have predrilled bores in the barrels, a thing customers have been complaing about for years.

A minor thing to drill them out yourself, true, but it does show a little initiative.

All in all, I would have preffered non split barrels.

The best news to me is that the good sprue is seperate from the crap sprue. I dont think I need to say which is which.

That just means making this thing even cheaper to do right by buying that sprue seperatly.

I must admit though that there are some really nifty gubbinz on the crap sprue though. I am in love with the haloed servo skulls. Plus, GW finally made a hopper for the missiles of the missile launcher.

I just wish GW had invested in slide moulding when they updated their plastics-making process. Then this debate would be moot and we'd get hollowed-out barrels in one-piece weapons.

In my experience it's not that hard to sand, and there would be a mold line in the same place that would need sanding anyway if it wasn't a two piece. For example, the Falcons I just finished have a seam all along the top and bottome of the of the Pulse Laser which had to be cleaned up.

I've certainly built kits that were shoddy enough that these sorts of joins would be a major pain, but none of them were GW kits. I've found the fit of GW plastic kits to be pretty universally good.



I dunno... The metal ones are the hardest infantry kits to deal with in GW's line, as far as I've seen. They never fit together right, they invariably require pinning, green stuff, and they're still fragile.



Maybe the problem is that you're using gobs of plastic glue? Use liquid glue, use it sparingly, use clamps if you need to, and everything GW makes will go together smoothly (in my experience). If you can get a little beaded seamline of plastic to form, and you let it dry for a day, it will sand down perfectly smooth with a little hand file.

Sometimes it helps to anchor it with some super glue inside and out of sight. This is more useful inside the hull of vehicles though.

OK, after having seen the pictures of the sprue, and from 20 years of modeling experience, I have to say...

They are  incredible! Put the Bilaterally divided barrel issue to bed gentlemen.

There is a reason to do the bilaterally divided barrel that is clever.  It allows for a hollowed out barrel when divided in two like that, with nothing more than casual assembly, competative modeleres have always drilled the barrels.  Furthermore, the entire length of the las cannon is NOT bilaterally divided!  Making it clever, even a modeler who does a poor job of cleaning the mold lines will be able to have an atractive figure, and they wont even have to drill the ends out.

For the record, drilling the ends out of large bore barrels is harder than lining up bilaterally symetric divided barrels.

It is a very clever well desinged kit sprue!

It even contains all the best heavy weapons on a sprue, superb, and the junk on another, thats really outstanding! Every iterations of new 40k platics shows a new level in innovation and design, look at the density on the tree, lots of content, less blank tree.

Also devastator models were $10, so 5 should be $50, and a player will still get extra material for heavy weapons with this box set at a lower price point.

In summary, all the criticisms hold no water, modelers perspective, price point, or content.  It's amazing and the contrary opinions are empty bellied grumblings.

New Dev Squads are surely on the horizon! Imagine how well this will fit into HQ squads who can take a pair of heavy weapons!  A roll I have long thought under exploited by players in the marine dex, the pair in this box will be ideal! 2 Las, got it, 2 HBolter Got it, those are the best combos, excellent.

I like the split barrels. Yes, it can take work but most model companies do it. I like it better overall.

We still also don't know what GW's final scheme is. You may still be able to get the heavy weapon blisters, but have to order them from the store. We know they are trying to cut down on the space retailers have to use for GW's products, but we don't know what the final look will be. Yet again people getting bent out of shape without knowing all the information. But yes, this is the Internet....

Posted By Phryxis on 02/09/2007 8:04 AM

Maybe the problem is that you're using gobs of plastic glue? Use liquid glue, use it sparingly, use clamps if you need to, and everything GW makes will go together smoothly (in my experience). If you can get a little beaded seamline of plastic to form, and you let it dry for a day, it will sand down perfectly smooth with a little hand file.

The purpose behind "gobs" of plastic glue was to eliminate any gap filling.  Due to warpage of the earthshaker sprue, it was faster to gob up the glue and sand rather than clamp shut, then putty, then sand. 

Mabye I assume too much when I expected every competent modeller to give their model a quick once over with the sanding stick after construction to clean up joins.

Getting back on track - the sprues look pretty good.  And seeing how they go together, there shouldn't be too much effort needed to make them look good.

Posted By Augustus on 02/09/2007 8:43 AM

For the record, drilling the ends out of large bore barrels is harder than lining up bilaterally symetric divided barrels.

For the record, your still going to have to drill it out a bit so that it appears to be a hole, and not a jagged entrance.

But Ii do agree that it is difficult to drill a hole, of any size, to make sure it is centered properly. At the very least, the centering is done for you, so all you have to do is just a minior drilling to clean up and smooth out the hole.

Posted By Hellfury on 02/09/2007 7:02 AM

The best news to me is that the good sprue is seperate from the crap sprue. I dont think I need to say which is which.

That just means making this thing even cheaper to do right by buying that sprue seperatly.

I recall from another thread that GW will no longer let you order the Dreadnought arms sprue (since it would let you make interchangeable arms for your old metal or Forge World Dreads), nor will they let you order the Carnifex body sprue (since it would let you make multiple full Carnies from buying just 1 regular Carnie box).  I wouldn't plan on ordering that plastic Lascannon sprue any time soon.  Or, well, ever.

Good deal? Value? On what bizzaro world is nine dollars per unassembled, unpainted, mass produced, one-inch-tall platic sculpture a bargain? You are looking at a dollar's worth of plastic and cardboard, seeing a $45 dollar price tag. You should not be nodding favourably. You should be insulted. Living with GW's policies and prices so long has numbed you to the reality of the situation- an actual good deal is when you get the figure for less than half of that, and it's packaged in a delicious milk chocolate egg.

Sure, the new devestators kit does compare favourably in value to the old metal set when examined in a certain light. But don't pretend for one second that the new arrangement isn't a horrendous ripoff on par with designer t-shirts, printer cartridges, and disposable four-blade razors.

Why is everyone assuming the price will be $45 US?  There has not been anything out there saying that as far as I can see.  People are just going by the old price and assuming no change.  The one place that actually has a price for the new set, Game Trade #84, has it is listed at $35.

So we are looking at ten dollars less than the old set, more weapons, cooler bits including those nifty servo skulls, and all plastic weapons!  Seems like a winner all around to me.

Posted By Triggerbaby on 02/09/2007 11:26 AM
Good deal? Value? On what bizzaro world is nine dollars per unassembled, unpainted, mass produced, one-inch-tall platic sculpture a bargain? You are looking at a dollar's worth of plastic and cardboard, seeing a $45 dollar price tag. You should not be nodding favourably. You should be insulted. Living with GW's policies and prices so long has numbed you to the reality of the situation- an actual good deal is when you get the figure for less than half of that, and it's packaged in a delicious milk chocolate egg.

Sure, the new devestators kit does compare favourably in value to the old metal set when examined in a certain light. But don't pretend for one second that the new arrangement isn't a horrendous ripoff on par with designer t-shirts, printer cartridges, and disposable four-blade razors.

what?...  milk chocolate!!!  where... and how many little plastic army dudes do I get in a egg for $22.50.

Posted By jdp on 02/09/2007 11:58 AM

Why is everyone assuming the price will be $45 US?  There has not been anything out there saying that as far as I can see.  People are just going by the old price and assuming no change.  The one place that actually has a price for the new set, Game Trade #84, has it is listed at $35.

So we are looking at ten dollars less than the old set, more weapons, cooler bits including those nifty servo skulls, and all plastic weapons!  Seems like a winner all around to me.

http://uk.games-workshop.com/storefront/store.uk?do=Individual&code=99120101053&orignav=9

They're listed as £20.00 GBP on the GW UK preorder page. That currently converts to $39.33 USD, if the price does not undergo some sort of additional regional shift (as they tend to do with GW). I'm not sure where the $45 came from.

Meh... My entry path into GW games was from building scale models, so construction is the least of my concerns. Since GW's models are entirely imaginary, they tend to be easy to build. Real world vehicles have much worse fit problems in my experience.

After building model aircraft, filling the seams on the wing roots with putty, sanding with wet paper for an hour, then having to re-scribe in the panel lines that were sanded off... Well, dealing with GW kits seems very simple to me.

As far as the Earthshaker goes, I wouldn't ever use gobs of plastic cement, it just makes things harder on you in the long run. I'd suggest working on removing the warping, sanding down the pieces so they fit better, testing the fit until it's clean, then gluing with sparing amounts of liquid cement. In fact, I wouldn't use any sort of plastic cement besides the liquid, the thicker gel stuff is worthless, really. You want the join to be tight enough that the liquid will wick in on its own. If you end up with gaps, cyanoacrylate (superglue) is a good filling compound, and dries quickly, I'd recommend it over green stuff for most jobs.



Yeah, but what do you use to strip chocolate?

Posted By Phryxis on 02/09/2007 12:33 PM


Yeah, but what do you use to strip chocolate?

Your tongue.

Posted By yakface on 02/08/2007 10:23 PM

(High GW price aside) I personally think this is a fantastic new release for Marine players.

I have to agree with Yak in full here.  Two lascannons and two heavy bolters on one sprue is pretty exceptional.  Missile Launchers are common enough, and two boxes of devs will gear up a fairly routine marine army pretty effectively.  And in plastic, they're nice and easy to convert (which, as a Chaos player is great, as I loathe the metal havocs).

Posted By Phryxis on 02/09/2007 8:04 AM
Use liquid glue, use it sparingly, use clamps if you need to, and everything GW makes will go together smoothly (in my experience).

Except the current metal/plastic Marine Heavy Bolter model - the hands do not join up. The reason I will be buying a Dev Boxed set is to get two more HB models that don't have any metal in them.

BYE

Right, many of the old Dev models had this problem. I am speaking strictly about their all plastic kits, particularly vehicles.

Posted By Mahu on 02/09/2007 6:31 AM
I think that is a poor example, and an over reaction opinion.

The value of the object is usually the components of it. What you are essentially argueing is that a 6-pack has an unfair price because you only need 4 cans of beer. Sure, if you really needed 4 cans of beer, you are better off with a system that allows you to purchase Beer individually. But that doesn't affect the value and relative worth of the Six pack.

Exxentially, your opinion of what is useful out of the kit should have no bearing to an arguement of what you get from the kit for the price it costs.

I'm sorry, but that argument is insanely idiotic.  If 2 lbs of human feces is not worth $20 to me then I don't buy it.  But if I want cookies and the only way to get them is to spend $20 for $5 worth of cookies and 2 lbs of poopoo then what do I do?  I can't get my $5 of cookies unless I agree to spend an extra $15 for 2 lbs of crap that I don't want!

Your logic is flawed because you are comparing the unneccessary packaging of unrelated things (in terms of use, unless you like eating feces, I don't judge) to a customizable kit that acomplishes one thing, giving you plastic heavy weapons.

Whether or not you need every heavy weapon in the box set doesn't make those heavy weapons inherently useless. Like I said before, believe it or not but some people use Multi-meltas and Plasma Cannons. Should GW not include those heavy weapons just because you find them useless? Are you not going to buy a car with built-in powered windows because you just love to hand crank windows so much?

The bottom line is that any massed produced kit of multiples of anything will always fail to meet the exact specific needs of every consumer on the planet. That is why any arguement over what you feel is the worth of something is illogical, for the very fact that it is just based upon your opinion. Your opinion cannot be quantified so has no place in a reasonable arguement.

The real discussion of worth will be determined by overall consumer opinion of the bowed set. To say that the kit doesn't have it's benefits is ludricous. You essentially get more heavy weapons for less, said heavy weapons are easier to handle, and you increase the conversion possibilities in a multiple of line. Not to mention the fact that the quantities that you get of each heavy weapon does make building a Space Marine Army rather easy and still build said army in a competitve way.

Furthermore, nobody has confirmed that the Blisters are going away. The only thing I have seen is Mauleed's bitter first post in this thread (Mauleed is the Joseph McArther of Dakka, apparently), Now I may be proven wrong, but what if Blisters stay the same. Does that magically make this box set better?

Bottom line, you are either going to like the set or not. Nobody is forcing you to by them. If you really need that one Heavy Weapon, even with the loss of blisters, there are still other outlets to get one. The metal will still be availible, at the least, as a classic figure.

No, I'll second Doobie on this - your argument Mahu is inherently flawed.

But I'll fix your example Mahu, but I'll use beer rather than poop like Doobie did:

Say I like a particular type of imported premium beer. I can go to a store and buy this beer whenever I like. The only come as singles, not in cases or 6-packs, but I don't mind. Then, the company that makes the beer decides it is going to make 6-packs of this beer, but only 2 cans in there will be the beer I like. There will be another two of a different variety that I don't drink, and one each of a lower grade beer. At the same time, the company takes all the single cans off shelves, meaning that if I want my premium beer, I have to buy the other four cans to get it.

That's what GW is doing with the plastic heavy weapons. Yeah, plastic HW's is nice, but the trade off is we can never buy a singular item of what we want - we have to buy the other types of beer we don't drink to get it.

BYE

Posted By Mahu on 02/09/2007 8:20 PM
Now I may be proven wrong, but what if Blisters stay the same. Does that magically make this box set better?

Stop being intentionally obtuse Mahu. Of course keeping metal blisters makes this box better. It means that when I've equipped a Marine army by buying two Dev Boxes, and then suddenly realise that I need a 5th Lascannon, I don't have to buy another $50 boxed set to get the single Lascannon.

BYE

And you are still working on the assumption that no single heavy weapon packs will be available at all. We don't know this for sure now. What we have is a heavy weapon box for stores. They are trying to make it so stores don't have to use up as much retail space for product. It may be that we have to order singles from GW. Until we know the whole picture it is wrong to jump to these conclusions and so the argument is flawed on that very basis.

Posted By Toreador on 02/09/2007 8:51 PM
And you are still working on the assumption that no single heavy weapon packs will be available at all. We don't know this for sure now.

Of course we don't. That's why I said, right above your post Toreador, that if the blisters hang around after the box is released, then the argument is moot. The box is useful, but if you want a single Lascannon you don't have to buy the box.

My argument against Mahu's flawed beer example still stands.

BYE