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How would you feel if Games Workshop began selling bits?

Why do they not, seems like they could making a killing doing that.

They used to. It was great. Then they stopped and it sucked.

They probably stopped because they figured its better to force people to buy an entire kit for one part than just spending 2 bux with the mail order service. Though with Facebook and eBay and bits selling services I wonder if thats the case anymore.

 Togusa wrote:
Why do they not, seems like they could making a killing doing that.

Because of how sprues are cut - you end up selling one or two things and are left sitting on the rest. It worked when they were metal but not with plastic.

I've bought loads of bits in the past years, but only to match the bitz I already had. This way I got tons of full models for cheaper than buying new kits. I'm not sure if selling bitz would give significant profits to GW, even those sites that used to sell bitz have either stopped their business or reduced it dramatically.

The new monopose kits are a hard counter for the bitz business, so is 3D printing.

I think it would be a logistical nightmare for them, and probably take more manpower and warehouse space then revenue generated.

Sure, they can get the bits for next to nothing. But they would still need to take the time on the machines, have half clipped spures laying around, and need to have people pick and pack the orders. Plus QA to make sure the right parts were sent etc. There is going to be a LOT of overhead.

And the way GW prices, if you want more than a bit or two, you should probably just buy the full kit.

 Sim-Life wrote:
They used to. It was great. Then they stopped and it sucked.

They probably stopped because they figured its better to force people to buy an entire kit for one part than just spending 2 bux with the mail order service. Though with Facebook and eBay and bits selling services I wonder if thats the case anymore.

There's also the costs associated with having to manage so many different parts.

If I remember correctly, when they cut the bits service, GW reduced their number of SKUs from about 6000 to 600.

Keeping an on-demand inventory of every bit you make is expensive, time-consuming and space-consuming (plus I imagine has large tax ramifications). GW stopping the bitz service sucked for us, but it made total sense.

Plus now it wouldn't work, as everything is so monopose/jigsaw puzzle-y that there's no point to bits except on older style kits.

I think you can tell from visiting other bit/sprue shops. Almost everything is available in droves for cheap, just the few bits everyone needs are super expensive and sold out.

Unless you can specifically produce those sought after bits, it's probably not a viable business model. Plus it undermines their efforts in preventing you building more models than intended from a box, as many times you are just lacking two or three bits to get an extra model out of a box or to build both options from a multi-build set.

GW isnt going to sell bits because GW is moving away from the Bits-Box style of their kits. They are making kits only mono and duo pose basically from now on in order to try and shortsightedly cut down on 3rd party and 3d printing...which ironically just makes both more appealing once you've got your squad built and your two options are:

1 - a squad that looks nearly or mostly identical

2 - a squad that is differently posed entirely....and also cheaper.

beast_gts wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Why do they not, seems like they could making a killing doing that.

Because of how sprues are cut - you end up selling one or two things and are left sitting on the rest. It worked when they were metal but not with plastic.

This is the only answer that matters imo

We can speculate on whether or not they would still do it otherwise. Probably not, but who knows. But the fact most kits are on large plastic sprues just makes it completely impractical to sell individual bits.

 Blackie wrote:

The new monopose kits are a hard counter for the bitz business, so is 3D printing.

You children & your obsession with mono-pose....
Once you figure out that a hobby knife has more uses than trimming bits off sprue your options will expand far beyond anything gw will ever offer.

You want to know the difference between most mono-pose of today vs yesteryear?
Plastic is a he'll of a lot easier to mod than metal.

As others have said only a very limited amount of bits are sought after, leaving the rest of the sprue as fodder and its incredibly labour and space intensive for the returns it gives compared to selling boxes.

From a business perspective it simply doesn't make sense for GW to offer a bits service.

ccs wrote:
Once you figure out that a hobby knife has more uses than trimming bits off sprue your options will expand far beyond anything gw will ever offer.

That's like saying that GW minis aren't made of grey plastic because you can paint them.

ccs wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

The new monopose kits are a hard counter for the bitz business, so is 3D printing.

You children & your obsession with mono-pose....
Once you figure out that a hobby knife has more uses than trimming bits off sprue your options will expand far beyond anything gw will ever offer.

You want to know the difference between most mono-pose of today vs yesteryear?
Plastic is a he'll of a lot easier to mod than metal.

Well no. If a kit is monopose it will likely have no option to customize it outside what you already have from the box. Kitbashing is also starting to fade away (and maybe it already did) since the no model no rule attitude that the modern rules have.

And 3D printed resin bitz are typically much easier to get than modded bits of plastic.

I'm personally not afraid of using my hobby knife, I recently equipped two goliath with a big shoota (count as heavy stubber) and a marine heavy bolter but this kind of customization is becoming rarer and rarer. I also scratch build any ork vehicle so I value bitz, not only ork ones, but for other armies a box full of bitzes is completely useless.

Kitbashing is not "fading away". There are regular features in WD showing how to convert models, "Hang out and Hobby" regularly platforms converted models and there are loads of WarCom articles on converting and kitbashing.

GW's own game doesn't support kitbashing. Don't pretend otherwise.

Yes Gert, but for the fun of it, not because there's a necessity.

I've kitbashed my kommandos, flash gitz, banner nob, painboy, big mek with SAG, big mek with KFF, wolf lord on thunderwolf, ulric the slayer and lukas the trickster among others. But mostly because I didn't like the original sculpts. If I liked them I would have probably bought them.

Other stuff such as painboy on bike, warboss in megarmour with powerklaw, archon with blaster, or rune priest on bike don't exist anymore outside legends so there's no point in kitbashing those models. The vast majority of the player base doesn't kitbash models that have official kits. And what doesn't have official kits typically doesn't have rules now.

Lol how is kitbashing for fun worse than being forced to kitbash because no model is produced?
The lengths you lot will go to be mad all the time is just sad.

Not worse, simply not needed anymore. Most of those who kitbashed before did it out of necessity not out of fun.

With the modern kits there's little reason to kitbash stuff, outside the pure fun of doing it. Hence why it's fading away.

I haven't kitbashed a model in years, don't know anyone else who has either, sure there are websites and youtube vids showing how to do it but it's certainly less common than it used to be. Hence bits sellers are also less common.

One other thing to note is that GW stopped selling wholesale to any store that sells broken down kits/bits. So all those bits stores have to buy retail priced products to split down (or lie to GW and then be risking losing all trade with them if they get caught).

So that's one reason a lot of bits stores now are only worth buying from if you want one or two parts more or less. There's still a few affordable bits or bits where the plastic cost isn't much more than resin or cast models.



But yeah in the old days GW used to make a catalogue showing all the parts of every model for sale. But as their customerbase grew and shifted to include more and more international customers and as their SKU grew and their production shifted from metal to plastics they've shifted policies. Heck the overseas have enough trouble keeping some kits in stock; having to have overseas warehouses of bits would be a huge undertaking. Or overseas would have long wait times as each bits order would have to be custom made; shipped in bulk batches and then posted out.


It's a shame to have lost the service, but at the same time the 3rd party market has exploded for bits.

 Blackie wrote:
Not worse, simply not needed anymore. Most of those who kitbashed before did it out of necessity not out of fun.

With the modern kits there's little reason to kitbash stuff, outside the pure fun of doing it. Hence why it's fading away.

Eh, some of us do it for fun. Maybe it's less popular, but I don't see it going away.

There's a difference between kitbashing and conversions. The problem with kitbashing today is kits are so expensive. It's like paying double for each model, you don't get that many bits in the end.

That's why anvil industry exists.

Deadnight wrote:
That's why anvil industry exists.

Anvil Industries... and resin molds. Occasionally 3D printing.

 Huron black heart wrote:
I haven't kitbashed a model in years, don't know anyone else who has either, sure there are websites and youtube vids showing how to do it but it's certainly less common than it used to be. Hence bits sellers are also less common.

I kit-bashed a bunch of plague marines to make them look more varied so not every special weapon dude and champion looks the same. I turned some of the felthius' cohort into more deathshroud using bits from Mortarion and the deathshroud box. I kit-bashed extra special weapons for the other cohort models so I can field blightlords in any configuration.
I improved my squighog boyz with various flyboy heads and bits from the squigosaur boss because I don't like how beastsnaggas are screaming all the time. I also mixed the squigs among themselves because having six identical squigshogs looks odd.
I gave one of the nobz on smasha squig a more awesome big choppa, a different head and some extra gear for his squig from other kits.
I kit-bashed a whole unit of kommandoz using left-overs from the killteam box.
All that with just green stuff, super glue, a knife and zero modeling skills whatsoever.

Kit-bashing has left the GAME, not the HOBBY.

The only reason to stop kit-bashing now is because you were just doing it for in-game advantages before.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Not worse, simply not needed anymore. Most of those who kitbashed before did it out of necessity not out of fun.

With the modern kits there's little reason to kitbash stuff, outside the pure fun of doing it. Hence why it's fading away.

Eh, some of us do it for fun. Maybe it's less popular, but I don't see it going away.

There's a difference between kitbashing and conversions. The problem with kitbashing today is kits are so expensive. It's like paying double for each model, you don't get that many bits in the end.

I love kitbashing and converting, don't get me wrong. It's actually one of the main reasons why I started collecting orks 21 years ago.

But yeah, kits are expensive, most of the bitz don't fit models from different kits without some work and most of the options that encourage players to kitbash have simply been removed. No more 4 special weapons (even different ones) on a 5 man squad of drukhari infantries for example. No more maxing out of special melee weapons for wyches as another example, you can only have one of each every 10 models, exactly what the kit allows to build. Etc.. A few options that are available only throught kitbashing still exist, but they've been dramatically reduced over the years.

 Gert wrote:
The lengths you lot will go to be mad all the time is just sad.

The only sad thing is how you resort to comments like that when you can't support your points.

 Huron black heart wrote:
I haven't kitbashed a model in years, don't know anyone else who has either, sure there are websites and youtube vids showing how to do it but it's certainly less common than it used to be. Hence bits sellers are also less common.

 Blackie wrote:
Not worse, simply not needed anymore. Most of those who kitbashed before did it out of necessity not out of fun.

With the modern kits there's little reason to kitbash stuff, outside the pure fun of doing it. Hence why it's fading away.

Yeah, no kitbashing at all.
None here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/802098.page#11276534
Or here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/794584.page
Or here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/802638.page
Or here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/802618.page
Yup no kitbashing whatsoever, nobody doing it anywhere.

BTW, using duplicate weapons from the same kit just so you can min-max is in no way kitbashing. You're not bashing two kits together, you're just using the same kit. If you were to take the Heavy Bolter or Lascannon from the Devastator kit and use it on a Tactical Squad, then that is (a very basic) kitbash. Using multiple Blasters or Shredders all from the Kabalite kit so you can take 4x Special Weapons is not kitbashing.

 Gert wrote:

 Huron black heart wrote:
I haven't kitbashed a model in years, don't know anyone else who has either, sure there are websites and youtube vids showing how to do it but it's certainly less common than it used to be. Hence bits sellers are also less common.

 Blackie wrote:
Not worse, simply not needed anymore. Most of those who kitbashed before did it out of necessity not out of fun.

With the modern kits there's little reason to kitbash stuff, outside the pure fun of doing it. Hence why it's fading away.

Yeah, no kitbashing at all.
None here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/802098.page#11276534
Or here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/794584.page
Or here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/802638.page
Or here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/802618.page
Yup no kitbashing whatsoever, nobody doing it anywhere.

BTW, using duplicate weapons from the same kit just so you can min-max is in no way kitbashing. You're not bashing two kits together, you're just using the same kit. If you were to take the Heavy Bolter or Lascannon from the Devastator kit and use it on a Tactical Squad, then that is (a very basic) kitbash. Using multiple Blasters or Shredders all from the Kabalite kit so you can take 4x Special Weapons is not kitbashing.

No one was saying kitbashing was a thing of the past. Just that it's less common.

Blackie wrote:I've bought loads of bits in the past years, but only to match the bitz I already had. This way I got tons of full models for cheaper than buying new kits. I'm not sure if selling bitz would give significant profits to GW, even those sites that used to sell bitz have either stopped their business or reduced it dramatically.

IIRC GW actively gave C&D notices to any shop that was bits selling back when they quit. there were some stores that chopped up sprues from new kits just to do it. The war store was famous for it.

Gert wrote:Kitbashing is not "fading away". There are regular features in WD showing how to convert models, "Hang out and Hobby" regularly platforms converted models and there are loads of WarCom articles on converting and kitbashing.

H.B.M.C. wrote:GW's own game doesn't support kitbashing. Don't pretend otherwise.

Kit bashing not only used to be a thing it was actively supported by GW, my 3rd ED CA also has the deodorant hover tank kit in it. currently thanks to no kit no model rules they not only actively discourage it, but they also actually prohibit it from what i have seen.