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Here: https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-US/searchResults?N=634912263+3077008151&Nr=AND(sku.siteId%3AUS_fw%2Cproduct.locale%3Aen_US_fw)&Nrs=collection()%2Frecord[product.startDate+%3C%3D+1562444220000+and+product.endDate+%3E%3D+1562444220000]&view=all

I'm just irritated that I check these last chances to buy pages basically every day, only to find incredible things have already sold out forever within hours of going 'last chance to buy', leaving me no chance to have gotten my hands on them despite how vigilant I am about it.

Can someone at least shed some light on this? Why they do it this way? These products are made for years on end, temporarily going out of stock and then constantly getting remade, always able to fulfill all orders. Why in the world do they suddenly put them up for 'last chance to buy' and then *not* guarantee our orders for like, a week? Or at the very least, a day? They did much the same thing for Sanguinius just the other month: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/04/15/apr-15-the-angel-returns-this-thursday/ So why not for all Last Chances to Buy?

Yeah, it's a pain the the ass. I check the last chance link every few days and everything still seems to be sold out.

I was going to pick up the Macrocarid a few months back but opted for the thanatar thinking the latter was about to be discontinued (it vanished from the site for a bit). Trying to budget around forgeworlds vanishing lines is making me feel like I should stay away from the 30k stuff entirely and cut my losses...

I know it's a slightly dickish answer...but they don't care. The product is going out of stock. They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior. When they put it up and clean out the rest, they don't care who is buying them or how. Just cleaning out the closet.

 Elbows wrote:
They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior.

Would have been a good time to put the last chance to buy tag on them. Rather than their current strategy which seems to be waiting until there is literally one left.

 Elbows wrote:
I know it's a slightly dickish answer...but they don't care. The product is going out of stock. They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior. When they put it up and clean out the rest, they don't care who is buying them or how. Just cleaning out the closet.

I think the problem is that they are clearing out the closet without warning in addition to not adding new product to said closet. Forgeworld has less 40k products now then it did over a decade ago. They have shifted almost entirely to supporting the 30k Horus Heresy line while continuing to gut 40k products year after year. Which is great if you play 30k, but for those of us who would like to see new xenos products, terrain, imperial guard releases etc we are no longer Forgeworld's target demographic apparently. I'm not happy about it, but its a fact.

 Commissar Benny wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I know it's a slightly dickish answer...but they don't care. The product is going out of stock. They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior. When they put it up and clean out the rest, they don't care who is buying them or how. Just cleaning out the closet.

I think the problem is that they are clearing out the closet without warning in addition to not adding new product to said closet. Forgeworld has less 40k products now then it did over a decade ago. They have shifted almost entirely to supporting the 30k Horus Heresy line while continuing to gut 40k products year after year. Which is great if you play 30k, but for those of us who would like to see new xenos products, terrain, imperial guard releases etc we are no longer Forgeworld's target demographic apparently. I'm not happy about it, but its a fact.

even then they have been removing 30k models/bits as well.

Forgeworld is in a limbo and it appears that the current approach is to allow FW to slowly die. I wouldn't be surprised if in the end the only thing they had selling would be Titans, if that. Basically FW is moving away from its old model of providing special models to only working on explicit specialist games sanctioned by GW.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Commissar Benny wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I know it's a slightly dickish answer...but they don't care. The product is going out of stock. They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior. When they put it up and clean out the rest, they don't care who is buying them or how. Just cleaning out the closet.

I think the problem is that they are clearing out the closet without warning in addition to not adding new product to said closet. Forgeworld has less 40k products now then it did over a decade ago. They have shifted almost entirely to supporting the 30k Horus Heresy line while continuing to gut 40k products year after year. Which is great if you play 30k, but for those of us who would like to see new xenos products, terrain, imperial guard releases etc we are no longer Forgeworld's target demographic apparently. I'm not happy about it, but its a fact.

even then they have been removing 30k models/bits as well.

Forgeworld is in a limbo and it appears that the current approach is to allow FW to slowly die. I wouldn't be surprised if in the end the only thing they had selling would be Titans, if that. Basically FW is moving away from its old model of providing special models to only working on explicit specialist games sanctioned by GW.

Admittedly if they wholly re-purposed themselves to like, Necromunda, I'd be thrilled lol. But yeah, at least give us a chance to buy their incredible things I've always wanted and bided my time for. Or some sort of other heads up, in a Warhammer Community Article.

I just hope Elbows' answer that they don't care is THAT true! After all, GW does the same thing on their site...

To play devil's advocate, maybe mould broke and they can't/won't make new one, so the existing stock is all what is left and that's it.

Also, I heard someone point out that at FW scale, mould wouldn't be just a few bits, it would be dozens of them to save prduction time swapping the moulds, so the random nature of LCTB might be said big mould breaking or wearing out, taking all what was in it offline...

I don't know, but all I know is that it's incredibly effective way of getting someone to turn to a recaster "just for this one reason", and once that seal has been broken, realising they could afford a whole lot more hobbying if they go back...

Just announcing the stock to be dwindling, or on the "no re-up" shortlist would surely go miles towards not pushing customers away to other alternatives, but hell if I know, most of forgeworlds business decisions seem pretty poor to me. Often not even in their own benefit, bad decision for themselves too, just out of what purely seems to be laziness

 Commissar Benny wrote:

I think the problem is that they are clearing out the closet without warning

What kind of warning do you want?
They post LCTB. THAT'S the warning.

I suspect that most "Last Chance to Buy" models aren't ones that have damaged molds. I think most of those would be the 'temporarily out of stock' ones.

But I also think that virtually all of the "Last Chancers" are things that haven't been selling particularly well. If something was selling really well, I believe that Forgeworld would repair the mold and continue to sell it if the mold became damaged. I really believe that the things that have been relegated to LCTB have been slow movers for quite some time.

Now, there are two caveats for my charitable suspicions:

1). I'm not sure how much it could possibly cost to keep molds in production. I mean, you don't have to keep a supply of the models on hand, but relegate slow-selling models to a 'cast-to-order' section. Hell, jack up the price on them to whatever you need to justify casting them on demand. Unless the molds are just nuked, there is some price where it will still be worth casting. If it's not worth casting the Battle Fortress unless someone shells out $2000 for it, fine! It's not out of production, technically.

2). I'm sure that Forgeworld knows what is selling well and what is moving slowly. But I'm not sure they know whether something is moving slowly because no one wants it, or because people have a limited hobby budget and are rationing it out across model lines and game systems. I think it would be hugely helpful for FW to have three tiers of model availability. Add something like "limited stock' to the mix. Things that are 'limited' aren't actually running out, but are basically next in line for "Last Chance". Have 'limited stock' items for say, six months, before going to "Last Chance''. That way, FW can see if people actually want some slow-moving product, or if the demand for it is actually dried up. If FW marks something as 'limited' and it turns out to start selling like hotcakes, then they can just drop the limited marker and make some sweet cash on the product. Then, Last Chance is actually "Hey, we have four of this dohickey left!"

 Irbis wrote:
To play devil's advocate, maybe mould broke and they can't/won't make new one, so the existing stock is all what is left and that's it.

Also, I heard someone point out that at FW scale, mould wouldn't be just a few bits, it would be dozens of them to save prduction time swapping the moulds, so the random nature of LCTB might be said big mould breaking or wearing out, taking all what was in it offline...

The problem here is that the LCTB is very focused. These are all the standard rhino 30k doors and I doubt that the mould breaking and the stock running out would be so synchronized.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

But I also think that virtually all of the "Last Chancers" are things that haven't been selling particularly well. If something was selling really well, I believe that Forgeworld would repair the mold and continue to sell it if the mold became damaged. I really believe that the things that have been relegated to LCTB have been slow movers for quite some time.

In this case i also think that they want to focus on selling the Deimos Rhino with Deimos faction doors more. The line they are stopping was probably competing against their own product.

Da Butcha wrote:
I suspect that most "Last Chance to Buy" models aren't ones that have damaged molds. I think most of those would be the 'temporarily out of stock' ones.

But I also think that virtually all of the "Last Chancers" are things that haven't been selling particularly well. If something was selling really well, I believe that Forgeworld would repair the mold and continue to sell it if the mold became damaged. I really believe that the things that have been relegated to LCTB have been slow movers for quite some time.

Now, there are two caveats for my charitable suspicions:

1). I'm not sure how much it could possibly cost to keep molds in production. I mean, you don't have to keep a supply of the models on hand, but relegate slow-selling models to a 'cast-to-order' section. Hell, jack up the price on them to whatever you need to justify casting them on demand. Unless the molds are just nuked, there is some price where it will still be worth casting. If it's not worth casting the Battle Fortress unless someone shells out $2000 for it, fine! It's not out of production, technically.

2). I'm sure that Forgeworld knows what is selling well and what is moving slowly. But I'm not sure they know whether something is moving slowly because no one wants it, or because people have a limited hobby budget and are rationing it out across model lines and game systems. I think it would be hugely helpful for FW to have three tiers of model availability. Add something like "limited stock' to the mix. Things that are 'limited' aren't actually running out, but are basically next in line for "Last Chance". Have 'limited stock' items for say, six months, before going to "Last Chance''. That way, FW can see if people actually want some slow-moving product, or if the demand for it is actually dried up. If FW marks something as 'limited' and it turns out to start selling like hotcakes, then they can just drop the limited marker and make some sweet cash on the product. Then, Last Chance is actually "Hey, we have four of this dohickey left!"

They could just put it last chance to buy when stocks low. Or they move it to the last time making the mold. If something is just not selling enough, they should probably know by that point. If it suddenly fly of the shelves, they can consider if its worth putting into production again at a lower price in the future.
Who knows how efficient they are run as well, Could be just set for a computer to say. 100 left, and someone moves it to LCTB whether its a door or a tank.

Da Butcha wrote:
I suspect that most "Last Chance to Buy" models aren't ones that have damaged molds. I think most of those would be the 'temporarily out of stock' ones.

But I also think that virtually all of the "Last Chancers" are things that haven't been selling particularly well. If something was selling really well, I believe that Forgeworld would repair the mold and continue to sell it if the mold became damaged. I really believe that the things that have been relegated to LCTB have been slow movers for quite some time.

Now, there are two caveats for my charitable suspicions:

1). I'm not sure how much it could possibly cost to keep molds in production. I mean, you don't have to keep a supply of the models on hand, but relegate slow-selling models to a 'cast-to-order' section. Hell, jack up the price on them to whatever you need to justify casting them on demand. Unless the molds are just nuked, there is some price where it will still be worth casting. If it's not worth casting the Battle Fortress unless someone shells out $2000 for it, fine! It's not out of production, technically.

2). I'm sure that Forgeworld knows what is selling well and what is moving slowly. But I'm not sure they know whether something is moving slowly because no one wants it, or because people have a limited hobby budget and are rationing it out across model lines and game systems. I think it would be hugely helpful for FW to have three tiers of model availability. Add something like "limited stock' to the mix. Things that are 'limited' aren't actually running out, but are basically next in line for "Last Chance". Have 'limited stock' items for say, six months, before going to "Last Chance''. That way, FW can see if people actually want some slow-moving product, or if the demand for it is actually dried up. If FW marks something as 'limited' and it turns out to start selling like hotcakes, then they can just drop the limited marker and make some sweet cash on the product. Then, Last Chance is actually "Hey, we have four of this dohickey left!"

Just so everyone knows, I did get an email from Forgeworld at one point that did indeed explain that an item in question simply wasn't selling well, and that's why it went Last Chance to Buy. So that is the reason.

And I entirely agree with this guy! At least some sort of variation of it. I message forgeworld on the matter on Facebook and they said they would pass along the suggestion, so who knows - super crazy longshot

They don't want to make the items on last chance to buy, just what they have in stock ideally.

If they list it too early and leave it too long they will have to take more orders which they do not want to do.

Basically with FW buy what you want now and dont look back.

At this point I'd treat anything that FW is making outside the specialist games as items on borrowed time. It seems more and more each day GW wants to reduce it's over all inventory and purge more and more of it's older lines.

tbh. even if FW discounted everything besides Titans one day, you could still buy whole FW range out there...so..

Besides 30k, they barely produce anything for 40k any more. When I was kid, I remember elysians, dkk...in all these years, they haven't made single new 'regiment' for example.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
At this point I'd treat anything that FW is making outside the specialist games as items on borrowed time. It seems more and more each day GW wants to reduce it's over all inventory and purge more and more of it's older lines.

The irony is that even specialist games releases less than a year old IIRC are last chance to buy already.

Still pretty upset that the Eldar Corsairs conversion kits are gone :(

SG

did not take me long to find .stl equivilants of a lot of those files for 3d printing. one could go on shapeways to have it soen and sent to them or get into the 3d printing hobby themselves.

I see zone mortalis terrain there which i love btu i found free files which look similar but nor exactly the same and cost ~$2-3 USD per wall to print

 Commissar Benny wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I know it's a slightly dickish answer...but they don't care. The product is going out of stock. They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior. When they put it up and clean out the rest, they don't care who is buying them or how. Just cleaning out the closet.

I think the problem is that they are clearing out the closet without warning in addition to not adding new product to said closet. Forgeworld has less 40k products now then it did over a decade ago. They have shifted almost entirely to supporting the 30k Horus Heresy line while continuing to gut 40k products year after year. Which is great if you play 30k, but for those of us who would like to see new xenos products, terrain, imperial guard releases etc we are no longer Forgeworld's target demographic apparently. I'm not happy about it, but its a fact.

40k simply isn't a priority for them. The main FW studio team was split up to cover the different Specialist Games and I think they're scaling back the FW catalog to accommodate all these new Specialist Game items. We look at this situation as "FW hasn't released anything in a while"... GW looks at this as "FW and Specialist Games are pretty much one thing now"... Blood Bowl, Titanicus, Necromunda all that product has take the warehouse space of FW's discontinued products.

I'm just disappointed I missed out on the ZM doors.

 aka_mythos wrote:

 Commissar Benny wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I know it's a slightly dickish answer...but they don't care. The product is going out of stock. They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior. When they put it up and clean out the rest, they don't care who is buying them or how. Just cleaning out the closet.

I think the problem is that they are clearing out the closet without warning in addition to not adding new product to said closet. Forgeworld has less 40k products now then it did over a decade ago. They have shifted almost entirely to supporting the 30k Horus Heresy line while continuing to gut 40k products year after year. Which is great if you play 30k, but for those of us who would like to see new xenos products, terrain, imperial guard releases etc we are no longer Forgeworld's target demographic apparently. I'm not happy about it, but its a fact.

40k simply isn't a priority for them. The main FW studio team was split up to cover the different Specialist Games and I think they're scaling back the FW catalog to accommodate all these new Specialist Game items. We look at this situation as "FW hasn't released anything in a while"... GW looks at this as "FW and Specialist Games are pretty much one thing now"... Blood Bowl, Titanicus, Necromunda all that product has take the warehouse space of FW's discontinued products.

I'm just disappointed I missed out on the ZM doors.

dissapointment breeds opportunity

workign on these on my ender 3 ($180 3d printer) they are coming out good so far. I am on walls though and have not done the doors yet, but the stls seem legit.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2609112

these are the walls i am workign on

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2609090

 G00fySmiley wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:

 Commissar Benny wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I know it's a slightly dickish answer...but they don't care. The product is going out of stock. They obviously stopped storing/stocking/producing them a while prior. When they put it up and clean out the rest, they don't care who is buying them or how. Just cleaning out the closet.

I think the problem is that they are clearing out the closet without warning in addition to not adding new product to said closet. Forgeworld has less 40k products now then it did over a decade ago. They have shifted almost entirely to supporting the 30k Horus Heresy line while continuing to gut 40k products year after year. Which is great if you play 30k, but for those of us who would like to see new xenos products, terrain, imperial guard releases etc we are no longer Forgeworld's target demographic apparently. I'm not happy about it, but its a fact.

40k simply isn't a priority for them. The main FW studio team was split up to cover the different Specialist Games and I think they're scaling back the FW catalog to accommodate all these new Specialist Game items. We look at this situation as "FW hasn't released anything in a while"... GW looks at this as "FW and Specialist Games are pretty much one thing now"... Blood Bowl, Titanicus, Necromunda all that product has take the warehouse space of FW's discontinued products.

I'm just disappointed I missed out on the ZM doors.

dissapointment breeds opportunity

workign on these on my ender 3 ($180 3d printer) they are coming out good so far. I am on walls though and have not done the doors yet, but the stls seem legit.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2609112

these are the walls i am workign on

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2609090

Those look fantastic, wow! But I really am hesitant to buy things like that due to GW copyright stuffs etc... Isn't it generally more acceptable to offer things like that for free, and then have a Patreon up for yourself or something for those that support your work, to get around such things?

EDIT: Oh nm...it looks like they are free indeed XD I don't think I've ever quite seen a 'tipping' system like that!

Ice_can wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
At this point I'd treat anything that FW is making outside the specialist games as items on borrowed time. It seems more and more each day GW wants to reduce it's over all inventory and purge more and more of it's older lines.

The irony is that even specialist games releases less than a year old IIRC are last chance to buy already.

If stuff doesn’t sell, it gets binned. Simple business. Sucks if you wanted them but it makes sense.

 Netsurfer733 wrote:

Can someone at least shed some light on this? Why they do it this way? These products are made for years on end, temporarily going out of stock and then constantly getting remade, always able to fulfill all orders. Why in the world do they suddenly put them up for 'last chance to buy' and then *not* guarantee our orders for like, a week? Or at the very least, a day?

Probably because resin miniatures are made with rubber molds and the 'last chance to buy' comes up when a mold is wearing out and the models aren't selling enough to justify remastering a new mold. But those 'last chance' models are going to be coming off of that end-of-working-life flexible mold, and if something tears, gives out, or otherwise makes it so they can no longer get any sort of passable model out of it, well, that's it. The whole reason the models ended up on last chance was because they weren't going to make a new mold for them.

It'd be nice if the way they handled model lines had them announcing the discontinuation when that final mold was new, but I'd guess it's easier to make that call at the end of a mold's life, rather than the start.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
At this point I'd treat anything that FW is making outside the specialist games as items on borrowed time. It seems more and more each day GW wants to reduce it's over all inventory and purge more and more of it's older lines.

The irony is that even specialist games releases less than a year old IIRC are last chance to buy already.

If stuff doesn’t sell, it gets binned. Simple business. Sucks if you wanted them but it makes sense.

Ok I get that part of business but surely this is more fundamental in that they should have made sure their was sufficient demand before committing to breaking up FW by most accounts a very profitable part of the business into smaller pieces that seems to have to an outsider a shaky business case.

I just had to post this because I really think it furthers this discussion.

Also it's really vindicating

But what do YOU all think this means? Does it rule any of our theories out?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/10/04/sisters-of-battle-last-chance-to-buygw-homepage-post-4/

Serious fingers crossed that they'll continue this practice for all LCTB's to come!

 Netsurfer733 wrote:
I just had to post this because I really think it furthers this discussion.

Also it's really vindicating

But what do YOU all think this means? Does it rule any of our theories out?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/10/04/sisters-of-battle-last-chance-to-buygw-homepage-post-4/

Serious fingers crossed that they'll continue this practice for all LCTB's to come!

Honestly for models where the reason for removal isn't a joint effect of a model being removed and the mould breaking before the date (thus basically making it pointless to invest in a new mould) this should be how GW does all their removals. It should have been how they handled the recent removal of models from AoS - pre-announce, give the list out and give a date and keep casting up until that date. Instead with the last AoS block they only said that "some" would be going and only released the list on the last day of casting and basically just cleared their stock. It gave people less than a day to get hold of models with no prior warning of what specifically was going. Considering that mercenary models like the dwarf cannon and newer plastics like many of the high elf stuff, were removed it was an impossible list to predict.
Of course before that Greenskins got removed without any notification; just woke up one day and they were gone.

Sisters of Battle we all knew was going to be replaced a year ago; plus now they've given a formal date for the removal of the models and will keep casting until that date. That's how it should be. Give customers a heads up and at least a fighting chance to make final purchases.




Also on the FW side its worrying that the greater demons are all missing except in the Horus Heresy pages; otherwise they are gone from 40K and AoS. A mistake when updating the listings of a subtle snub to the FW models now that GW has plastic versions of a similar size (its also somewhat interesting that the AoS rules generally have the exalted FW versions a bit worse than their regular GW counterparts)

I was not aware of that in regards to the Forgeworld site's greater demons...is that new, that they aren't available? I've eyed them for a super long time too....

I've heard a lot stuff goes lctb because of how they make their molds. Supposedly there are parts from lots of different miniatures packed as efficiently as possible into a single large mold, so when they decide to stop selling one of them other things get cut with it. A heads up email would be nice but I guess I should be thankful if they even let me filter it on the site, didn't get get any notice when the krieg centaur vanished a few weeks ago.