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For those who want to paint it themselves? And outright customer choice.

Dudeface wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Now wondering if they’ll also offer unpainted versions of this and any subsequent terrain kits. Customer choice, after all, is usually a good thing.

If its the same price what would be the point?

Why would it be the same price? Obviously applying this paint cost GW something, and that surely will be reflected in the price. I am rather perplexed by people being happy to pay even more for GW's already very expensive terrain.

Guys, I may or may not work for GW, but consider this...

When GW started making their own terrain It was relatively cost effective for what it was. Now GW terrain is competing with cheap 3d prints and MDF terrain. GW stuff is just way too expensive for what it is.

Now if it comes pre painted there is a gimmick of not having to also put in the man hours to paint it as well. So I can see somewhat of a potential market for it. But given the way GW prices things I see this as still not being worth it.

It's not like painting terrain is hard or particularly time consuming. Spray paint and dry brushing can get it 90% done easily enough.

Given the way GW treats its stock with every other product, I'd go in assuming they won't make enough of this prepainted terrain for everyone who wants it to get it, let alone bother making unpainted versions of it.

 Crimson wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Now wondering if they’ll also offer unpainted versions of this and any subsequent terrain kits. Customer choice, after all, is usually a good thing.

If its the same price what would be the point?

Why would it be the same price? Obviously applying this paint cost GW something, and that surely will be reflected in the price. I am rather perplexed by people being happy to pay even more for GW's already very expensive terrain.

It might be the deal they have with the manufacturer (assuming in china) means that the paint layer isn't much if any of an added cost based on order size. If that's simply what that factory does, they may simply.have a flat price regardless.

Even if it costs more, the value for most people is time. If I can have easily assembled painted terrain that saved me say 5 hours of effort for even say £50 extra, that's cheap enough to be worth my time back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 frankelee wrote:
Given the way GW treats its stock with every other product, I'd go in assuming they won't make enough of this prepainted terrain for everyone who wants it to get it, let alone bother making unpainted versions of it.

I'm seeing plenty of people all.over the Internet saying they'll only buy it unpainted.

Dudeface wrote:

It might be the deal they have with the manufacturer (assuming in china) means that the paint layer isn't much if any of an added cost based on order size. If that's simply what that factory does, they may simply.have a flat price regardless.

That seems extremely unlikely to me.

Even if it costs more, the value for most people is time. If I can have easily assembled painted terrain that saved me say 5 hours of effort for even say £50 extra, that's cheap enough to be worth my time back.

I'm seeing plenty of people all.over the Internet saying they'll only buy it unpainted.

The thing is that if one actually likes building and painting stuff, what you say makes no sense. What we are paying for is products that give us hours of enjoyment as we build and paint them. Paying extra to remove most of that hobby time would be crazy. It is like if you paid double for a movie ticket to instead of watching the film, to be shown a ten minute summary of it to "save time."

 Crimson wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


The thing is that if one actually likes building and painting stuff, what you say makes no sense. What we are paying for is products that give us hours of enjoyment as we build and paint them. Paying extra to remove most of that hobby time would be crazy. It is like if you paid double for a movie ticket to instead of watching the film, to be shown a ten minute summary of it to "save time."

The marginal production cost difference is probably less than a cent per sprue.

That doesn't mean GW won't charge more for the product, but it won't be because it's some huge additional production cost.

Even if the cost to GW is the same they'll absolutely raise the price anyway. There might be a bundle deal or two to get buzz going but the unit price for everything Warhammer is only going one way.

I'll bet that pre-painted terrain is going to be very over-priced, even the non-painted terrain is expensive compared to the options from 3d printing. It's new and interesting choice anyways, but I'm going for custom terrain printed, and I like more dynamic terrain, rather than regular corner ruins.

@Crimson: I have seen folks express their desire for pre-painted minis.Not everyone likes build and paint part of the game.

 Souleater wrote:
@Crimson: I have seen folks express their desire for pre-painted minis.Not everyone likes build and paint part of the game.

Choosing paint jobs and having my armies not look like I want them to look is why I build, but don't paint my models.

I don't need any extra anxiety in my life. I'd love to have some generic painted troops that were prepainted so I could just play the game.

(There's a reason why my Stone Stormcast look the way they do. It was a high anxiety warband that took me so long to paint that people stopped playing WarCry in the interim.)

Dudeface wrote:

I'm seeing plenty of people all.over the Internet saying they'll only buy it unpainted.

Are they saying they would buy if it was unpainted? Or just they definitely won't buy it if it's not?
Because I definitely won't buy this. I might buy it if it was unpainted. But I almost certainly won't buy it regardless, it's not particularly amazing terrain, there's nothing there I can't get somewhere else, it's hugely generic.
If it were a really cool centerpiece that was otherwise unavailable then I might be interested. But it's not. The only interesting thing here is the pre-paint.

I like to build and hate painting. Ever since the 10 VP rule forces people to paint models, I've been slapping three colors on every model and immediately lose all motivation to ever touch the model again after.

Both my armies look like gak right now and I've lost all motivation to do anything about it. In the little free time I have, I need to smear more models with paint as fast as I can, because otherwise I get penalized in the parts of the hobby I actually enjoy.

No matter how horrible, mould-liney and grainy GWs attempt at pre-painted models will be, I promise they will be a 100% upgrade over every single models I have ruined with paint over the last four years.


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Dudeface wrote:
I'm seeing plenty of people all.over the Internet saying they'll only buy it unpainted.

* all over your internet bubble

Welcome to the modern internet.

Crimson wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

It might be the deal they have with the manufacturer (assuming in china) means that the paint layer isn't much if any of an added cost based on order size. If that's simply what that factory does, they may simply.have a flat price regardless.

That seems extremely unlikely to me.

Even if it costs more, the value for most people is time. If I can have easily assembled painted terrain that saved me say 5 hours of effort for even say £50 extra, that's cheap enough to be worth my time back.

I'm seeing plenty of people all.over the Internet saying they'll only buy it unpainted.

The thing is that if one actually likes building and painting stuff, what you say makes no sense. What we are paying for is products that give us hours of enjoyment as we build and paint them. Paying extra to remove most of that hobby time would be crazy. It is like if you paid double for a movie ticket to instead of watching the film, to be shown a ten minute summary of it to "save time."

Many people aren't fans of the painting element at all, finding it a chore. Some people enjoy painting units or models and not terrain, maybe they just have a massive backlog and are tired of playing with grey terrain.

I've enough unit that at my painting rat will be here in 2 years without buying anything. I do still want to paint on a decent looking board. I have done full tables of terrain in the past, but I can see the appeal of a quick done and dusted job.

Jidmah wrote:I like to build and hate painting. Ever since the 10 VP rule forces people to paint models, I've been slapping three colors on every model and immediately lose all motivation to ever touch the model again after.

Both my armies look like gak right now and I've lost all motivation to do anything about it. In the little free time I have, I need to smear more models with paint as fast as I can, because otherwise I get penalized in the parts of the hobby I actually enjoy.

No matter how horrible, mould-liney and grainy GWs attempt at pre-painted models will be, I promise they will be a 100% upgrade over every single models I have ruined with paint over the last four years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:
I'm seeing plenty of people all.over the Internet saying they'll only buy it unpainted.

* all over your internet bubble

Welcome to the modern internet.

Very true.

I'm sure there are tons of people who won't want to buy this because it's prepainted. It's just extremely unlikely that GW cares now, or will care later.

Their solution will simply be to point you toward their many existing pieces of unpainted terrain. And if this makes GW customers angry, that can only mean it's a day ending in y.

I definitely started with prepaints and as that industry died off shifted to hobby stuff. Prepaint definitely has some appeal but unpainted models currently have dramatically higher quality and I don't think the tech being used for the terrain is ready for individual model details.

"I have to get 3 basic colours slopped on my army for 10 VPs" is not a route to enjoying painting. It's a recipe for hating painting. Painting is meant to be fun. Pre-painted miniatures are a really depressing answer to the problem of "Some folks don't like painting". Call me a gatekeeper but I think even offering optional prepaints is a nail in the coffin for Warhammer. Painting and modelling and hobbying generally are the heart and soul of the whole thing, not the 1% of the time spent actually playing games.

The key is going to be quality control,

With Archon's prismacast there has been a significant minority of stuff shipped out where the colours are just not quite in frame with the plastic underneath making it look very odd/fuzzy (plus some cases of missing colours, presumably down to clogged nozzels on the printer).

It's new tech so teething troubles are to be expected, but hopefully GWs chinese factory will weed out similar problems (and quite possibly sell them on cheap on Temu etc)

I'm not the audience for it (despite not enjoying painting terrain), but plenty of folk will be even though it's more expensive

I don't know loads about UV printing but it seems like you end up with a very thin layer of ink over the plastic - it might be that you can paint straight over the pre-painted elements and an un-painted version isn't necessary.

Hold on, of you dont like it pre painted, whats stopping you from simply re-paint it? Just give it a base coat and dry brush and be done with your uniqe piece

Billicus wrote:
"I have to get 3 basic colours slopped on my army for 10 VPs" is not a route to enjoying painting. It's a recipe for hating painting. Painting is meant to be fun. Pre-painted miniatures are a really depressing answer to the problem of "Some folks don't like painting". Call me a gatekeeper but I think even offering optional prepaints is a nail in the coffin for Warhammer. Painting and modelling and hobbying generally are the heart and soul of the whole thing, not the 1% of the time spent actually playing games.

Have to say I do at least appreciate how having that 10VP for painting discourages the practice of buying the latest netlist, assembling it in a weekend, and deploying grey tide for three months before moving on to the next army. If an ephemeral, inconsequential 10VP threatening to turn a close victory into a technical-loss-on-paper is the extrinsic motivation some players need to engage with the third pillar of the hobby, or to just slow down on chasing the meta, all the better. Pre-painted minis would be another step towards the glorified board game/TCG-with-models that the rules have increasingly felt like, and I worry would make the churn more accepted by the community when it's just money and not time and effort that's being invalidated. Plus considering how much GW has invested into making the hobby more accessible- Contrast, free tutorials, technicals, premade bases, it's never been easier to get good results with minimal effort- they'd be eating into their own bottom line by reducing demand for the hobby stuff that contributes to their profits.

But pre-painted terrain makes a lot of sense. I don't think painting terrain is as fundamental to the hobby as painting your army is, and I've met plenty of players who are willing to put time and effort into Their Dudes but don't get excited about building and painting walls and ruins. Pre-paints are also a big boon to TOs who need to provide a lot of terrain for an event, and for clubs that draw from a collective pool of terrain. If the price is prohibitive, you can always go with any of the myriad companies offering alternate plastic kits, MDF, or STLs if you want to DIY it.

 cerebaton wrote:
I don't know loads about UV printing but it seems like you end up with a very thin layer of ink over the plastic - it might be that you can paint straight over the pre-painted elements and an un-painted version isn't necessary.

You could also do a hybrid approach and just touch-up the elements you care about (e.g. repainting army-specific elements to match your colour scheme) while leaving the rest alone.

 Fayric wrote:
Hold on, of you dont like it pre painted, whats stopping you from simply re-paint it? Just give it a base coat and dry brush and be done with your uniqe piece

Or just buy one of GW's very similar but not painted plastic kits!

I don't think we're at risk of prepainted miniatures (beyond terrain) any time soon, so I'm not going to worry about them yet.

I'm going to be curious to see the quality of this in-person, and then the difference in pricing between this and an unpainted kit will definitely be a relevant factor on whether I pick anything up.

Not ruling it out just yet - I do agree with those who'd like to see an unpainted version of the same kits made available, though.

I am definitely interested. I love building and painting miniatures, but I despise basing and painting terrain.

I have a huge collection of assembled 20th Century Games cardstock terrain from 1999-2001 (The Pegasus Moon Base is a favorite), and all of it is colored.

I have a ton of Prismacast Dungeon terrain for the express purpose of playing Descent 1st edition in style.

And I have a decent quantity of TTCombat Chroma Venetian terrain as Carnivale is just a fun game.

I AM the target audience.

CGL have put pre-painted mechs in a couple of their boxes - 1 model out of 5 or 6. 3rd Star League Strike Team has a pre-painted Lament while the 3rd Star League Battle Group has a pre-painted Savage Wolf.

(I'm struggling to find better photos right now...)

My biggest gripe about that terrain is the price, and the fact that it's just corner ruins and some scatter terrain. There's so much you can do with your terrain; balconies, overhangs, flying buttresses, different levels, stairs and ladders, fences, and so on.

Most of my inspiration comes from artwork, movies and even music. And I like my terrain as much as I like my armies. They can also be center piece of the table.

I'm sure there's customers waiting for the terrain sets, especially TO buying in bulk. But I enjoy painting my minis and terrain, so I don't even consider buying that kit.

 Spreelock wrote:
My biggest gripe about that terrain is the price, and the fact that it's just corner ruins and some scatter terrain. There's so much you can do with your terrain; balconies, overhangs, flying buttresses, different levels, stairs and ladders, fences, and so on.

Most of my inspiration comes from artwork, movies and even music. And I like my terrain as much as I like my armies. They can also be center piece of the table.

I'm sure there's customers waiting for the terrain sets, especially TO buying in bulk. But I enjoy painting my minis and terrain, so I don't even consider buying that kit.

The pylon bits are quite cool.imo but agree that there's a lot of corner nubs and L shapes realistically. But they're that way to match their recommended game layout and terrain.

Pre-painted terrain is a very different beast than Pre-painted miniatures. Given how much GW is invested in the hobby as a whole I doubt we'll be seeing pre-painted miniatures ever.

But like I already said, it just feels like a way to justify buying GW terrain that is already horribly expensive for what it is. I've been buying 3d prints for years now and painting them up with craft paint. Its quick and easy to do but I also understand that some people might not have the patience for it. It's just terrain after all.