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 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
I'll share some things from my time that won't get me in trouble;
Aly Morrison is the nicest guy there. John Blanche got a bit annoyed at me when I didn't recognize him and tried to sell him a ticket to warhammer fest. Next time you buy a plastic kit, count the number of round protrusions on the frame, times by £1000. That's about the cost of tooling that mold. The landraider mold cost nearly £250,000 to tool.

Holy smokes. That's insane! I had no idea a Land Raider mold cost that much O.O

No wonder they keep making stuff to fit the Rhino chassis hahahaha! I suppose, this is also why so few other companies make plastic scifi vehicle kits. Now, if only they would let people who can't physically go to the UK buy a command tank set, they'd recover some of those tooling costs

It doesn't cost that much, not even close.

DreamForge Games raised $200k USD on KS. Assuming all of it went into the Leviathan, $50k would have been shipping & production, leaving $150k for tooling. The sheer amount of plastic in that kit suggests that a Land Raider would cost less than $50k USD to tool today.



It's an exceptionally good kit with excellent detail and precision, standing head and shoulders over the current $160 USD Imperial Knight.

It can be done much cheaper, models like the space wolf lord and ork warboss from stormclaw set were made using a rubber/plastic mould that costs far less. However, if volume is your game, as it is for gw, and you need a to produce models by the 100,000, then much more durable materials (I.e. etched steel) have to be used.

As I know people who work at Nottingham where GW manufacture their kits.
I can say that since the development of the latest cad systems and CNC milling machines making the plastic injection moulds is much cheaper than it was 15years ago!

The most expensive part of the box of plastic you buy from GW plc just from cost of manufacture point of view.(Including all overheads apart from sales and logistics.)

Is the box the product is packed in!

However, while I am on the subject of plastic manufacture...
Most companies that move to plastic manufacture do so to maximize the profit from volume of scale.
Eg the higher volume of sales from the high volume of production mean you make more money because you can charge less per product.

So for a production method geared to high volume production , GW plc seem to have it completely backwards.
'Overcharging the customer' for plastic product just drops volumes of sales.(As backed up by the financial reports for the last decade.)

So this means that the method of manufacture looses efficiency.
EG if you spend £30K on tooling up for plastic manufacture. and your sales volumes could be met by £2K worth of rubber moulds for metal or resin production.
You have now wasted £28K on tooling and added another interruption to the through put of high volume product ,

Chasing higher margins on lower volume of sales is fine for products that are 'high quality hand made with expensive costs of manufacture.'
Eg a top end luxury car that costs over £100,000 to manufacture each one .

It is ridiculously short sighted for a company '..in the business of selling toy soldiers..'

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


It doesn't cost that much, not even close.

No, actually it did. Maybe we're they to design a land raider now,it would be a lot cheaper, but bear in mind this was done over ten or fifteen years ago...

I've seen that 250k figure put out before. It's legit.

That does seem rather high though. How, in that case, do you explain the multitude of plastic kit producers (Tamiya, Airfix, Italiari, Dragon.. I could go on with dozens more) who are able to release several new kits a year, for presumably a smaller market?

And, I don't know if it makes a difference in the process, but some of those kits have hundreds of pieces being modelling kits, and will contain 4 or 5 sprues in one set.

Genuinely interested to know as I have no idea about the finances involved !

^From the sounds of it, those people are using better tech nowadays to do it cheaper. Or they're working on a smaller scale and can thus use cheaper methods.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
I'll share some things from my time that won't get me in trouble;
Aly Morrison is the nicest guy there. John Blanche got a bit annoyed at me when I didn't recognize him and tried to sell him a ticket to warhammer fest. Next time you buy a plastic kit, count the number of round protrusions on the frame, times by £1000. That's about the cost of tooling that mold. The landraider mold cost nearly £250,000 to tool.

Holy smokes. That's insane! I had no idea a Land Raider mold cost that much O.O

No wonder they keep making stuff to fit the Rhino chassis hahahaha! I suppose, this is also why so few other companies make plastic scifi vehicle kits. Now, if only they would let people who can't physically go to the UK buy a command tank set, they'd recover some of those tooling costs

It doesn't cost that much, not even close.

DreamForge Games raised $200k USD on KS. Assuming all of it went into the Leviathan, $50k would have been shipping & production, leaving $150k for tooling. The sheer amount of plastic in that kit suggests that a Land Raider would cost less than $50k USD to tool today.



It's an exceptionally good kit with excellent detail and precision, standing head and shoulders over the current $160 USD Imperial Knight.

It is actually cheaper to make the molds now than it was then - part of why Dreamforge is able to make such wonderful kits.

Mind you, GW isn't passing that savings down the line, just increasing the profit margin.

The material used for the molds can also affect the price - by a large amount.

That said... you are dead right that Dreamforge's Leviathans beat GW's Knights hands down.

I am just waiting for a good rules set to use them in.

The Auld Grump

 Pacific wrote:
That does seem rather high though. How, in that case, do you explain the multitude of plastic kit producers (Tamiya, Airfix, Italiari, Dragon.. I could go on with dozens more) who are able to release several new kits a year, for presumably a smaller market?

And, I don't know if it makes a difference in the process, but some of those kits have hundreds of pieces being modelling kits, and will contain 4 or 5 sprues in one set.

Genuinely interested to know as I have no idea about the finances involved !

You got it reversed GW is the smaller market

 Pacific wrote:
That does seem rather high though. How, in that case, do you explain the multitude of plastic kit producers (Tamiya, Airfix, Italiari, Dragon.. I could go on with dozens more) who are able to release several new kits a year, for presumably a smaller market?

Tamiya kits are actually ludicrously expensive to produce. If you go to a local hobby shop that carries Tamiya, look at their price tag. The cheap sets are usually around $45. Part of this is due to Tamiya having the expense of paying licensing fees and royalties to whatever airplane, car, tank, etc. manufacturer the model represents. There is a theory among the guys at the hobby shop I buy my historic scale model stuff from (I typically only build Tamiya, as it happens, lol) is that these fees are the main reason why we're not seeing very many newer vehicles in their GP or Sports Car racing lines (IMO, their best model kids are of Le Mans race cars and rally cars, but the rally cars are the only ones that really get to anywhere around 2010 at a "normal" price point).


Also, it's been a practice in the past, though I don't know if this is the case any more, one brand would build a mold, make some successful runs of model kit with it, and then turn around and sell it to another company. As in, Airfix makes a Spitfire Mk. I, makes 50,000 units, sells them off, and sells that particular mold to, say, Italieri, who will do the same thing. This is why many older hobbyists in that area will kit bash like crazy, because the plastic used in one kit is different than another, so Revell's clear plastic canopy for a fighter may look better on a Dragon chassis, but Italieri really got the wing proportions down correctly so theyll use those wings.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
That does seem rather high though. How, in that case, do you explain the multitude of plastic kit producers (Tamiya, Airfix, Italiari, Dragon.. I could go on with dozens more) who are able to release several new kits a year, for presumably a smaller market?

Tamiya kits are actually ludicrously expensive to produce. If you go to a local hobby shop that carries Tamiya, look at their price tag. The cheap sets are usually around $45. Part of this is due to Tamiya having the expense of paying licensing fees and royalties to whatever airplane, car, tank, etc. manufacturer the model represents. There is a theory among the guys at the hobby shop I buy my historic scale model stuff from (I typically only build Tamiya, as it happens, lol) is that these fees are the main reason why we're not seeing very many newer vehicles in their GP or Sports Car racing lines (IMO, their best model kids are of Le Mans race cars and rally cars, but the rally cars are the only ones that really get to anywhere around 2010 at a "normal" price point).


Also, it's been a practice in the past, though I don't know if this is the case any more, one brand would build a mold, make some successful runs of model kit with it, and then turn around and sell it to another company. As in, Airfix makes a Spitfire Mk. I, makes 50,000 units, sells them off, and sells that particular mold to, say, Italieri, who will do the same thing. This is why many older hobbyists in that area will kit bash like crazy, because the plastic used in one kit is different than another, so Revell's clear plastic canopy for a fighter may look better on a Dragon chassis, but Italieri really got the wing proportions down correctly so theyll use those wings.

You beat me to it. I was gonna say, Tamiya kits can be pretty expensive, and frankly, I don't think they have a smaller audience than the wargaming crowd. There are a lot of hobbyists who are into that stuff -- one of my hobby shops sells a pretty decent volume of them.


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 TheAuldGrump wrote:
That said... you are dead right that Dreamforge's Leviathans beat GW's Knights hands down.

I think this is a matter of opinion rather than fact -- I personally prefer the Imperial Knight, though neither model is an ideal aesthetic for me. I don't think it's disputable that the Imperial Knight has more parts and is detailed, but whether that's a plus or not is entirely preference, IMO.

Personally, the more little details a model has, the more I like it. For example, I will prefer a blood angel or space wolves power-armored model over a vanilla space marine model because there's more intricate stuff for me to work on and paint -- as my freehand is not really good enough for me to get excited

It's not about asthetics.
The DF Leviathan has more movable parts, better posability, options is better engineered.

Edit:
Neither hold a candle to Gundam models in terms of posability, construction and especially price.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

DreamForge Games raised $200k USD on KS. Assuming all of it went into the Leviathan, $50k would have been shipping & production, leaving $150k for tooling. The sheer amount of plastic in that kit suggests that a Land Raider would cost less than $50k USD to tool today.

Just because Dreamforge raised 200K on KS you shouldn't assume that it was the actual cost. The 200K fell quite a bit short of covering the costs, WGF wanted a top end kit they could use to promote their production abilities and carried a large portion of those costs, so in effect DF got a deeply discounted rate. Based on the number of frames involved If you want to make a similar kit it'd easily run you in the ballpark of 400-450k to do it and the weapon options. It's less than what it would have run 10-15 years ago but it's still incredibly costly to do models in that size which is why nobody else is doing it. DF's leviathans are combination of timing and being connected with the right people at just the right time, and Mark putting a tremendous effort into doing the CAD work. You aren't going to see another project like that happen anytime soon, so it shouldn't be cited as a perfect example of "what can be done", it was more of a perfect storm event and isn't really an apt yardstick for measuring the industry.

It's an example of what's possible, but also highly unlikely to be repeated by anyone else.

 MWHistorian wrote:
It's not about asthetics.
The DF Leviathan has more movable parts, better posability, options is better engineered.

Edit:
Neither hold a candle to Gundam models in terms of posability, construction and especially price.

Agreed on both counts - though I am not a big fan of the Gundam models, they are amazingly poseable. (Not particularly durable - but then they were not intended for wargaming.)

Mind you, the Gundam models likely see a circulation that dwarfs the knights and the Leviathans together.

The Auld Grump

 Talys wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
Yeah they are expensive to make at that level of detail. Perhaps I should pick up a couple of command tanks and eBay them overseas. I'm sure someone is doing it...

I'm sure more than a couple of people have done that. I remember seeing a set on eBay for some jaw-dropping amount and thinking, "craziness!!"

Well I go down for a gaming day every couple of months and will go regularly over the summer break. I don't mind picking up the occasional set and dropping by the post office on my way home for the price of a pint and a lunch in bugmans, as long as I get asked nicely.

I should just point out that if I ever get anything published by the GW, you've all got to buy it, in hardback. The price won't make you weep because you'll be supporting a fellow Dakker, and whatever I write will most likely be a saga for the ages

Seriously, at fifteen quid, would a newbie sell anything next to Abnett and McNeill?