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Ian Sturrock wrote:Sure, but there's a difference between "necessary" and "useful". Most of us are in the hobby for the long haul. If GW even did occasional brief promotional price drops or deals -- buy three sets, get the cheapest one free, say -- we'd feel grateful, we'd like 'em a bit more, we'd buy a stack of stuff then, we'd still buy the occasional impulse purchase at other times of year, and they'd make loads of dosh...

That's the fine tuning part, and it's hard to get right.

Most GW customers aren't in the hobby for the long haul, though.

So, do you think there's any chance of them moving the Forgeworld stuff over to the same manufacturing process in order to increase quality and turn around times?

Also, would you see this move over to resin as an attempt to increase the uptake of Forgeworld models in the wider market as people would get used to working with resin and feel less put off by it all? It's been noted recently that some of the FW vehicles are actually pretty reasonably priced compared to the plastic kits, for example the Warp Hunter.

On a separate, but related note. As has been noted earlier in the thread, there havn't been any plastic character packs for a while and Forgeworld/GW have been releasing lots of upgrade packs for space marine chapters/characters. What do you think the likelihood is of this being the reason for them holding off on them? If they are looking to replace the metals with something else then a generic character pack or two per race with resin upgrades for unique parts or special characters kind of makes sense.


The breakdown of the Dark Eldar Archon seems to imply some form of modularity being planned for, at least in some ranges... the Grey knight characters not so much though.

Kroothawk wrote:I predict a public statement like this:
"Due to metal prices going through the roof, GW decided to change from metal to the much cheaper resin. To celebrate this, prices go up 10%."

I espect something along those lines also... They will blame metal prices today... say resin is cheaper in the long run and then charge as much or more than metals.

My concerns are not the material or price tag but the quality of the models... even if metal is the material i like to paint the most and not every mini should be converted or modified, some miniatures should be sculpted in a way that your only desire is to paint them and dont change a thing... well thats why my GW stuff tends to be fully converted and other ranges Im totally satisfied to just paint. So yes to me its a quality issue, if they keep the same current quality then current prices are to much.

From a collector prespective this is a serious downgrade... also plastics resins do not strip well of paint so second hand painting on models will be a bit harder to accomplish...

The dreamer in me says this is a great chance to change methods and increase quality.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looked at new resin thing from FW



The soft details on the front hill and barrels are a bit of a let down, everything looks like its melting.

Here is my question - what will happen to the Specialist games? Will they be made into resin, or just discontinued?

If they are discontinued, the only place to find them would be on ebay, so prices would sky rocket.... If they are moved to resin, however, they'd be easier to convert, no doubt making all of the players happy.

GW better make the right decision here...

...what are these "specialist games" of which you speak? GW doesn't sell anything but 40k, Fantasy, and Lord of the Rings! They've never sold anything else, and never will!

Sidstyler wrote:...what are these "specialist games" of which you speak? GW doesn't sell anything but 40k, Fantasy, and Lord of the Rings! They've never sold anything else, and never will!

You mean if I try to order a blood bowl team they'll just take my money and send me space marines? :(

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat490011a&prodId=prod1100042

Whilst this news continues to alarm me, I have to say that nothing in the Citadel range has ever been 'Timmy-Twelve-Year-Old-Proof', 'Epileptic-Thirty-Year-Old-Proof' or anything remotely similar. Building the kits properly takes some degree of skill. These skills can theoretically be learned by anyone and those skills can be developed to any potential level of mastery.

It might be worth telling people in the real-world wargaming community exactly who Harry is when posting news like this. I know, but to anyone else 'confirmed by Harry' probably just sounds silly.

I for one will believe this only when I see it.

Is it possible this resin is some kind of intermediary step toward plastics? Doesnt seem very likely, but.....I'm grasping at straws here.

I have had a few bits from forgeworld, wish "resin dust is VERY aggressive and cancerogen" had been mentioned to me before i started filing them down to fit. Not that I snort it or anything, plus forgeworld resin stuff is usually warped slightly and feels very crumbly. If they change to FW type resin i will be shocked as its ****.

grizgrin wrote:Is it possible this resin is some kind of intermediary step toward plastics? Doesnt seem very likely, but.....I'm grasping at straws here.

That's very doubtful, as the moulding process is completely different. Metal/Resin are quite similar though.

Yeah, I know but who the hell knows why they would take a direction toward a friggin THIRD manufacture proces?? This is just....weird.

Harry is the most trusted rumour source on Warseer (with Hastings coming directly after that). He told us 2.5 years in advance of Space Hulk, he was bashed on Warseer for telling about a new plastic High Elf chariot drawn by lions (which eventually turned out true). After that and after some displeasure by his GW sources he decided to rather confirm or deny rumours by others, mostly in a funny cryptic way, and not comment on things too much in advance, say not beyond the next release in 40k or Warhamer Fantasy. But he still knows things a lot in advance. I trust him 100%.

Concerning resin to plastic: Has nothing to do with each other, as GW uses the old rubber moulds of the metal models for resin casting, basically the same process (needs better quality control though). Plastic models need those expensive steel moulds and a different casting process.

BTW I don't think that resin models are easier to convert than metal, quite the contrary. Not because of the health problems but the brittleness of resin.

I will watch this with interest. If it leads to price increases, I'll shrug and ignore.

Depends on type of resin... but the plastic/resins are a lot less brittle and behave In a way more silimar to plastics... easier to drill and pin and also cut... File its harder since, as I said before the smoothness and shine is lost. Gluing is the same like metals.
This is assuming its not the same kind resin that FW uses, because if they go for FW resins then man its going to be a critical hit on quality.

grizgrin wrote:Yeah, I know but who the hell knows why they would take a direction toward a friggin THIRD manufacture proces?? This is just....weird.

From everything that's being said it doesn't seem like they're going to have a "third manufacture process".

They're still going to retain just two, with metal being dumped.

I prefer white metal over anything else, any day of the week.

Kroothawk wrote:Harry is the most trusted rumour source on Warseer (with Hastings coming directly after that). He told us 2.5 years in advance of Space Hulk, he was bashed on Warseer for telling about a new plastic High Elf chariot drawn by lions (which eventually turned out true). After that and after some displeasure by his GW sources he decided to rather confirm or deny rumours by others, mostly in a funny cryptic way, and not comment on things too much in advance, say not beyond the next release in 40k or Warhamer Fantasy. But he still knows things a lot in advance. I trust him 100%.

Concerning resin to plastic: Has nothing to do with each other, as GW uses the old rubber moulds of the metal models for resin casting, basically the same process (needs better quality control though). Plastic models need those expensive steel moulds and a different casting process.

BTW I don't think that resin models are easier to convert than metal, quite the contrary. Not because of the health problems but the brittleness of resin.

Agree with that last sentence, in particular. It's much harder to work with than plastic, for sure. At least metal stays in one piece while you dig a saw into it

White metal can suck it. I'll take resin/plastic any day of the week.

Do you need to be a little bit more careful when working with it? Yeah.
But I don't think that really is relevant because most people would be careful working with their own stuff anyways.

Wait!! So those damn regular tactical sapce marines cost only 2 bucks for GW to produce? What fu****g thing GW businesmans are smoking? That would really hurt so much to sell 10 mans for 10 bucks? I doubt that would not repay in sheer amount of sellings...

Oh man, i see a grim, dark future for GW if they keep that policies... Mantic is coming with plastic sci-fi very soon, and their quality is always increasing...

About the resin thing: seens bad... but i dont buy metal pieces anyway, they are overpriced and hard to convert. I hope that reduce the cost...

GW has shop overhead, regular employees on payroll, Studio staff, and a great many things that people like Mantic or even a bigwig like Privateer Press don't.

So it appears (reading the first post of this thread) that if you want a certain miniature in metal you'd have to get it pretty soon before it goes out of stock, never to be seen again but only in resin.

And that probably includes direct-only items like Cortaez and Vulkan, etc.

Kanluwen wrote:GW has shop overhead, regular employees on payroll, Studio staff, and a great many things that people like Mantic or even a bigwig like Privateer Press don't.

+1, if you just look at material costs, an Audi is probably 5000 bucks. You have to pay 100's of people to design it though, 100's more to build it, dozens to ship it, then the actual costs of building manufacturing facilities, buying equipment, administrative staff to make all that run together, marketing and branding and sales to get it sold, then stores themselves which have staff, rent costs, equipment, utilities and administrative costs all their own. That is how you end up with 60000. Of course some of that has to be profit, it is a business after all, BUT, it isnt hard to figure out that most of the difference is made up by far by the costs mentioned above, NOT by pure greedy profiteering.

Honestly, I think their stuff is pricey, but I also think that going from simple material costs to final cost and subtracting the difference as profit is sinfully inaccurate and completely misleading.

Yeah, GW actually has a realitivly low retention of actual profits.


most of the actual profit they make goes into expansion(and paying their IP lawyers )

and most of the company's value is not in cash.

GW's margin on cost of goods is 76% on average. In other words, a £22 box of "stuff" breaks down like this:

VAT = £2
Cost of goods = £4.80 (This includes design, manufacturing, and packaging)
Margin = £15.20

Unfortunately there is a huge amount of overheads in terms of retail space, staff, management, and so on. GW are currently only making about 6% "profit" on their whole turnover, and some of this is due to currency exchange fluctuations.

Raw plastic is cheaper than metal, so the margin on plastic kits is higher and the margin on metal is lower, than 76%.

It is certainly in GW's interest to produce cheaper kits if they can.

The problem with polystyrene moulding is that the setup costs are huge, so it is only cost effective if you can manufacture and sell large numbers of the moulding. For example, a Tau player might buy four boxes of Fire Warriors, but they will never buy more than one box of Shadowsun.

Metal and resin moulding is more of a "hand work" process, so it can be cost-effective for small production runs.

The relative cost of resin to metal means that GW might save something like 50p materials cost on every Shadowsun produced if they can make the kit in resin.

I'd be pretty psyched to see resin over metal, but then I do HATE metal, and I'm playing Spartan Games stuff now...

Also would be nice if they made FW stuff more readily available and cheap!

EDIT: And if this leads to more plastics, better still.

Also - @ next post - Completely agree. Seems still pretty April Fools-y.

So, why do i feel that this is still an April fools joke?

Although, I love working with resin compared to metal. sawing metal is a pain.

I wish Draigo was resin right now, cause of a major conversion I am considering doing; now, i think it's easier for me to just resculpt him from scratch in the new pose...

Sanjay

Im calling it today: Resin kits for all new sets and $1 increase on paints(omg again?!) $5 increase on squad boxes $10 price increase on all larger boxes beginning with the release of 6th edition in December. Economy help us all...................

P.S. Im not psychic or associated in any way with any company so I hope Im wrong

Kanluwen wrote:GW has shop overhead, regular employees on payroll, Studio staff, and a great many things that people like Mantic or even a bigwig like Privateer Press don't.

hence why opening shops was the biggest mistake GW ever did.

Stella Cadente wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:GW has shop overhead, regular employees on payroll, Studio staff, and a great many things that people like Mantic or even a bigwig like Privateer Press don't.

hence why opening shops was the biggest mistake GW ever did.

Funny, because it's what's made them a recognizable name to the point where their stuff has even gotten free advertising in movies, television, and literature.

I really hope there's an ace up GW's sleeve somewhere because if it's the same type of resin as Forgeworld's models then this is big drop in quality. I would seriously consider ordering all of the metal models that I need in advance before they go into resin production.