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I look at the HH line and everything fits together nicely.

I look at the 40k line and my brain has flashbacks to that horrible Drafting and AutoCAD class I took in high school.

When did GW decide to hire Bandai Perfect Grade Gundam engineers to design the 40k sprues?

Since your question is "when" I'm pretty sure it's exactly the 8th edition 40K starter Set DG vs SM.
For all the flaws of 7th edition rules writing and company policy it was also the peak of 40K miniature Design (yes, I will ignore Centurions and Dread Knights).

Even current Kill Team sets are usually just elaborate 3D Puzzles, but at least they have some options and bits.

If memory serves, the parting and sprue layout is done using computer support, to maximise sprue space used, whilst avoiding miscast chances.

There are also different degrees in how bad these sets are.
For example, I think it's the Ork Kommandos where the bits for every boy are spread between the 3 sprues. So you have, say, the flamer boy that's parts 30 to 50, but his bits can be found anywhere.
A more user friendly way is to have numbers running up close together on the sprue, but used by different miniatures. Can be annoying, but at least you know by the number where to search for the part.
Even more straightforward it is to have numbers running up and all parts for a model close together.

And then you have kits that are easy to put together but that bad they should be sold for 10€ because they lack any options and are just 1 sprue for 10 miniatures. But even GW realized the new Boyz kit is too terrible so they kept the awesome 3rd edition boyz kit on sale...

Ultimately they're working against the limits of HIPs to make larger models with more dynamic posing to compete with what can be done in resin. It's a lot of intersecting 2D planes to create 3-dimensional effects from flat surfaces.

While I definitely have nostalgia for the old kits, I can also see where they don't hold up against the modern competition.

With plastic casting you can't have any overhangs or such. The mould has to press together, make the part and separate with nothing snagging nor catching. Because the machine will be running FAST and the mould is made of solid metal. There's no give.

So more dynamic poses and more complex details means parting the model. Also if you look at a lot of the parting there's a lot of detail gone into them. Many parts are either invisible once the model is assembled or if there are visible join lines they are often quite easily accessed with hobby tools to clean off. Ergo these aren't just parted at random there's a lot of thought and testing clearly on both the best parting for efficent sprue and casting; but also final assembly quality.


This comes at a cost and the cost is the complexity of the models. Furthermore GW are clearly trying to avoid super-tiny details. If you try some of the old Airfix or I believe even more modern Wyrd models in plastic you'll find loads of super super tiny detail parts that GW tends to avoid.

Once again this is trying to make kits that are both dynamic and accessible

The cost is complexity. Used to be most GW kits could be built by eye without any need to look at the instructions - today you've almost got too because each model is unique and you can't even eye-ball guess the parts sometimes as they are similar to other parts.

It does depend on what kind of complexity you're referring to though. A lot of the old kits were simpler as a baseline, but any details they had were extra bits that had to be cleaned and added separately. I suppose that's not really complicated, but it sure takes a lot of work.

Previous posters have detailed it well. I think there is also an anti recast component to some decisions (basic arms that end up being 2 to three thin spiraling pieces) for example.

 Eldarain wrote:
Previous posters have detailed it well. I think there is also an anti recast component to some decisions (basic arms that end up being 2 to three thin spiraling pieces) for example.

Honestly I don't think so - any recaster can cast anything GW makes because GW already did the work making a proper sprue in the first place.
Meanwhile anyone copying or making alternative parts; well if you can't make the arm fit because its complicated you just make a whole new model.

It's mostly to harm recasters/third party bits as it's a lot harder to use, say, custom torsos (like legit alt torsos, not recasted) when half the torso is on one piece and the other half is a different piece. So basically GW just being pieces of gak as usual.

And some just boggle the mind like why some arms are all one piece, and then inexplicably one will have a finger as a separate piece.

The modern kits are very hit and miss. Some are stupidly complicated, with multiple pieces for every arm, leg and head, often in strange combinations. They'll only go together in specific configurations and sometimes you feel like you're spending more time looking for the bits on the sprue than you are gluing the models together.

Then there are some very new kits, like the Emperor's Children battleline units. The bodies only go together in a specific way but everything else is fully interchangeable. The backpacks, arms, weapons, backpacks and heads all go with whichever model you want, which leads to some really diverse looks from what is essentially just 5 different bodies.

I don't really understand why one new set can be so different to another new set. I also think modern GW kits have gone a bit too far along the route of producing dynamic models and too far from making them easy to build, which is important if you need 20+ of a given model for your army. I also find the more dynamic poses often look much more out of place on the tabletop because that one guy leaping over a rock really stands out a lot when you see 5 identical copies of him. Older kits may have been more simplistic and much less dynamic but I found they often led to greater variety on the tabletop.