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 Pacific wrote:

 Compel wrote:
In second edition, the Imperial Guard plastic kits were actually their stormtroopers, who looked vaguely like WW2 Commandos.

They came in a box of 6 for a fiver.

The second and 4th guy in this picture of my command squad are them.

Actually those guys are Storm Troopers!

Huh. I've got the fat guy with a shotgun in metal, always just figured he was a veteran sergeant. I think that's what his tab says

 insaniak wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Going way off topic here but in your Sig about the Catachans, you mention there's a line of plastic guardsmen before the Catachans. What were those? I've never heard of any before the Catachan kit.

That would be the Rogue Trader-era Guard...

Some of the best models came from that era.the Guard are some of my favs.But i just do not care about the LAs-Rifles.

To expand on Kroothawk's post, I have long advocated that special characters and the like could be moulded on multiple sprues.

If you can put six standard infantry models on a single frame, it must be possible to put say four special character models in a single frame, and cut them out for individual packing.

 Necroshea wrote:

 Pacific wrote:

 Compel wrote:
In second edition, the Imperial Guard plastic kits were actually their stormtroopers, who looked vaguely like WW2 Commandos.

They came in a box of 6 for a fiver.

The second and 4th guy in this picture of my command squad are them.

Actually those guys are Storm Troopers!

Huh. I've got the fat guy with a shotgun in metal, always just figured he was a veteran sergeant. I think that's what his tab says

He was a Cadian Lieutenant if I remember right from my 2nd Edition days.

 Necroshea wrote:

 Pacific wrote:

 Compel wrote:
In second edition, the Imperial Guard plastic kits were actually their stormtroopers, who looked vaguely like WW2 Commandos.

They came in a box of 6 for a fiver.

The second and 4th guy in this picture of my command squad are them.

Actually those guys are Storm Troopers!

Huh. I've got the fat guy with a shotgun in metal, always just figured he was a veteran sergeant. I think that's what his tab says

He is not a Storm Trooper.

He's a metal Cadian Officer.

Metal all the way!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To expand on Kroothawk's post, I have long advocated that special characters and the like could be moulded on multiple sprues.

If you can put six standard infantry models on a single frame, it must be possible to put say four special character models in a single frame, and cut them out for individual packing.

But...but...that would make sense! And be cost effective!
GW these days never seems to care about that kind of thing.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To expand on Kroothawk's post, I have long advocated that special characters and the like could be moulded on multiple sprues.

If you can put six standard infantry models on a single frame, it must be possible to put say four special character models in a single frame, and cut them out for individual packing.

But...but...that would make sense! And be cost effective!
GW these days never seems to care about that kind of thing.

The problem with this idea is that if one or two characters are very popular, they will end up with excess thousands of the less popular figs.
It would require very careful balancing to get figures that sell in similar numbers all on the same sprue.

timd wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To expand on Kroothawk's post, I have long advocated that special characters and the like could be moulded on multiple sprues.

If you can put six standard infantry models on a single frame, it must be possible to put say four special character models in a single frame, and cut them out for individual packing.

But...but...that would make sense! And be cost effective!
GW these days never seems to care about that kind of thing.

The problem with this idea is that if one or two characters are very popular, they will end up with excess thousands of the less popular figs.
It would require very careful balancing to get figures that sell in similar numbers all on the same sprue.

It's interesting to note that this is a situation we're seeing with "Infinity" in regards to certain model loadouts/poses/genders in the boxed sets.

timd wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To expand on Kroothawk's post, I have long advocated that special characters and the like could be moulded on multiple sprues.

If you can put six standard infantry models on a single frame, it must be possible to put say four special character models in a single frame, and cut them out for individual packing.

But...but...that would make sense! And be cost effective!
GW these days never seems to care about that kind of thing.

The problem with this idea is that if one or two characters are very popular, they will end up with excess thousands of the less popular figs.
It would require very careful balancing to get figures that sell in similar numbers all on the same sprue.

It is cheaper to throw away spare plastic figures than to buy and recycle metal.

They could put multiple copies of the most popular characters into the same or separate sprues. For example you could make two frames containing 11 Marneus Calgars and one Space Pope between them.

GW would need to analyse their EPOS data to get the balance as close as possible.

And if they had product that sat too long, they could just recycle the plastic.

Now if they were smart, they'd take non selling stock and ebay it to recoup some of the cost, or lower the retail price for the kit in order to move it faster.

One of the things I love about working for a small company is that the owner is always interested in ways to save or earn more money. Sadly, the more people who are employed between you and the top guy the harder it gets for those ideas not to be trampled to death by yes men.

 angel of ecstasy wrote:
Metal all the way!

Death to all but metal!!

timd wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To expand on Kroothawk's post, I have long advocated that special characters and the like could be moulded on multiple sprues.

If you can put six standard infantry models on a single frame, it must be possible to put say four special character models in a single frame, and cut them out for individual packing.

But...but...that would make sense! And be cost effective!
GW these days never seems to care about that kind of thing.

The problem with this idea is that if one or two characters are very popular, they will end up with excess thousands of the less popular figs.
It would require very careful balancing to get figures that sell in similar numbers all on the same sprue.

This is actually how they're doing the plastic Fantasy characters. There's 4 single frames to a sprue, no cutting apart needed. As already mentioned, once the mold is cut, it's very, very cheap to make models, so it's actually cheaper to make the 4 and throw away excess models people aren't buying than it is to recycle metal (or, I assume, resin - can that be recycled?). As long as a couple of the characters on the mold sell well, they'll make a profit on the mold. And apparently it'sworking for Fantasy - they're very popular, and there's more in the works (IIRC Harry said the original lineup was 28 characters, which we haven't gone through yet).

That said, it works in Fantasy because people can buy multiples, or they're characters everyone will get. Everyone wants wizards, so things like the VC Necromancer, DE Sorceress, etc will sell in droves. Some characters can be taken 4-5 times easily in an army, such as the VC Banshee and Wraith. With 40k, you need to remember that most armies are limited to 2 characters, and even there, there's clear choices for what's better (though this is GW's fault too). So not only will they not sell as many for 40k, since people can't take as many characters, some won't sell well anyway. However, there's scope to sell multiples for people that want, say, 3 Librarians with different loadouts.

For special characters, I really just can't see it happening until they're the very last models in a range. Not everyone wants a special character, and people that do will only buy them once. They're just not a cost effective unit to do in plastic unless there's literally nothing left to move to plastic and they just want to get rid of their old spin casting machines.

 Aerethan wrote:
And if they had product that sat too long, they could just recycle the plastic.

Now if they were smart, they'd take non selling stock and ebay it to recoup some of the cost, or lower the retail price for the kit in order to move it faster.

One of the things I love about working for a small company is that the owner is always interested in ways to save or earn more money. Sadly, the more people who are employed between you and the top guy the harder it gets for those ideas not to be trampled to death by yes men.

Better for a large company to write it down as dead stock.

Lowering retail price doesn't mean less popular minis will sell.

I am certain that GW would like to pull back from finecast. It is more economical to produce plastics, than resin. When they are able to charge as much for plastics as they do for finecast, they will go all plastic.

There is the old argument that there is not enough sales volume of special characters to justify the production of a plastic mold. I do not believe that this is the case for GW. A small company like On the Lamb Games may not have the sales volume to make plastic practical, but GW does, even for its special characters. GW even helps the process along, by requiring the characters to unlock units. Thus they will sell certain units and characters in a particular ratio.

Yeah, he's a metal Cadian Lieutenant... I didn't actually say the whole squad was storm troopers. The 2nd and 4th are plastic stormies. The 1st and 5th are the metal stormtrooper heavy weapons team. I use them for my Company Command Squad, Colonel PH Atee and his guards.

I won't drag the thread off topic more, but the majority of my Imperial Guard army is old models. I'm actually painting up a commissar armed with Power Axe and Hand Flamer right now!

Note that not all Fantasy armies have gotten plastic characters recently - the Tomb Kings are a recent army, with all finecast characters and war machines. Sad kingies!

 Charles Rampant wrote:
Note that not all Fantasy armies have gotten plastic characters recently - the Tomb Kings are a recent army, with all finecast characters and war machines. Sad kingies!

The rumor is that every army has at least one coming though. Dark Elves got one and they aren't recent, nor are Beastmen.

 Aerethan wrote:

 Charles Rampant wrote:
Note that not all Fantasy armies have gotten plastic characters recently - the Tomb Kings are a recent army, with all finecast characters and war machines. Sad kingies!

The rumor is that every army has at least one coming though. Dark Elves got one and they aren't recent, nor are Beastmen.

The Sorceress was part of a multi-pronged release where they had a ton of plastic mages coming out for the armies which didn't have the option readily available.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:

 Charles Rampant wrote:
Note that not all Fantasy armies have gotten plastic characters recently - the Tomb Kings are a recent army, with all finecast characters and war machines. Sad kingies!

The rumor is that every army has at least one coming though. Dark Elves got one and they aren't recent, nor are Beastmen.

The Sorceress was part of a multi-pronged release where they had a ton of plastic mages coming out for the armies which didn't have the option readily available.

And not every army had one made for that release. The point is that the plastics are clearly not released according to the army release schedule. Lizardmen got a Scar Veteran, Chaos got a Nurgle Warrior. Those had nothing to do with any supplement book.

And DE very much already had a sorceress model or two, as did beastmen(granted they were insanely old).

If I had my way, every single character option would be in plastic, at least for WFB. SC's aren't taken as often in WFB so I'm not all that concerned with them. If GW managed to figure out resin for those models of the same quality that other companies manage then that would be fine since they'd be lower sellers.

Generic characters and troops shouldn't be in resin if the quality and price is staying where it is now. I don't mind fixing up 1 SC that had some bubbles, but when your entire unit of 25 models need it done, AND they cost more than before, it gets to the point where I'll just look for an alternative model, either from GW or elsewhere.

 Aerethan wrote:
If I had my way, every single character option would be in plastic, at least for WFB. SC's aren't taken as often in WFB so I'm not all that concerned with them. If GW managed to figure out resin for those models of the same quality that other companies manage then that would be fine since they'd be lower sellers.

Generic characters and troops shouldn't be in resin if the quality and price is staying where it is now. I don't mind fixing up 1 SC that had some bubbles, but when your entire unit of 25 models need it done, AND they cost more than before, it gets to the point where I'll just look for an alternative model, either from GW or elsewhere.

Well, to be fair, Fantasy does feel like its headed that direction. Sure, there's still sometimes Finecast generic characters, like the Ogre Firebelly and Tomb Kings characters, but other ranges are getting more plastics. Vampire Counts lords and heroes section is nearly all plastic (the only exception being, ironically, Vampires). Even the mounts are either plastic or not yet available. Some armies are lagging behind a bit, but they aren't going to do the whole Fantasy range at once. However, the single frame plastic characters have been very successful for GW, so I don't doubt they'll continue.

However, Ogres seem like an outlier where it's hard to do a clampack single hero, since, well, they're al mountrous infantry, and huge. IIRC, even the new Firebelly is in a box, not a clampack. OK characters would take 2 frames, which is probably why they haven't done one yet - they wanted to test the waters with more profitable 4 character molds.

I hope they do push to plastic.

Finecrack is horror incarnate.


I know people who have lost thier minds from looking at the eldrich horror that is Finecast. Even the Cthuhlu pees himself in its presence.

 Kanluwen wrote:

timd wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To expand on Kroothawk's post, I have long advocated that special characters and the like could be moulded on multiple sprues.

If you can put six standard infantry models on a single frame, it must be possible to put say four special character models in a single frame, and cut them out for individual packing.

But...but...that would make sense! And be cost effective!
GW these days never seems to care about that kind of thing.

The problem with this idea is that if one or two characters are very popular, they will end up with excess thousands of the less popular figs.
It would require very careful balancing to get figures that sell in similar numbers all on the same sprue.

It's interesting to note that this is a situation we're seeing with "Infinity" in regards to certain model loadouts/poses/genders in the boxed sets.

If its the customer ending up with the extras, not the manufacturer, then the situation is quite different. I'm assuming the GW would be selling these characters individually, not as a complete sprue, in which case its GW that ends up with thousands of unsalable minis.

Customers ending up with less usable figures out of a set has always been an issue in tabletop wargaming, so it would be nothing new.

If its the customer ending up with the extras, not the manufacturer, then the situation is quite different. I'm assuming the GW would be selling these characters individually, not as a complete sprue, in which case its GW that ends up with thousands of unsalable minis.

GW could always write their rules in a way in which units arent' TOTALLY useless.. thus preventing unsellable minis.

People are forgetting that plastic stock that doesn't sell 1. can be recycled and 2. is dirt cheap.

1lb of HIPS runs like $.70. Anyone care to weigh a bare monopose plastic character sprue?

Even if 1 in 4 from a sprue didn't sell, the profit on the other 3 more than makes up for the pennies "lost".

You can't recycle resin. A miscast is unrecoverable loss.

The point is that plastic is an all around better medium from every aspect, especially with the amount of detail we're seeing in them. It is cheaper to make in the long run, it is recyclable, it is higher quality with almost zero man power to produce beyond design.


The reason for the increased cost of finecast is that molds need to be replaced more often per model made, and the number of models a single caster can produce in 1 day is far more limited. A video from ReaperCon showed that with the 3 stations they have for metal casting they see about 70,000 models per day per station. Those numbers will never be possible with resin molds that house a single model at a time and demold much longer than metal.

Plastic requires no one. It is completely automated and can run 24 hours a day. The savings in manpower alone should be reason enough to switch as much as possible to plastic.

Something else to factor in ,if the numbers are big enough, are those people like myself who won't buy anything Finecast and prefer to take their chances doing conversions with old miniatures they have laying about.

Sadly I don't think there is any way to measure the actual number of people who are actively NOT buying finecast. I'd be quite interested in such data.

Material cost per mini is almost irrelevant whether it is plastic or resin. It only factors in over the whole range production ergo finecast over metal.

Finecast will be more labour intensive than other methods and here more expensive over larger runs.

Plastic is more expensive to set up and create molds for and there more expensive for smaller runs.

As for relapses conversion point, people have always done their own conversions I dont imagine that the perceived flaws in finecast will make too much of a dent in this aspect. This is a hobby where most armies you see we unpainted, I don't see those sorts of players being too bothered about what their "game peice" is made of.

 CIsaac wrote:


He was a Cadian Lieutenant if I remember right from my 2nd Edition days.

That would be correct. RT era guard were much different.

 Aerethan wrote:
Sadly I don't think there is any way to measure the actual number of people who are actively NOT buying finecast. I'd be quite interested in such data.

You could do a poll, however you would only gather data on the behaviour of keen players.

The problem all we veterans face is that the majority of sales are made to 12 year old newbies, who buy Finecast because they are perfectly happy with it/don't know any better.