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 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Really? I've got something like 200 metal Imperial Guard, and another 300 metal Eldar. 100 is nothing.

You are clearly the exception to the rule. For most people metal models are a huge negative and dealing with 100+ of them is a strong reason to avoid an army even if they otherwise like it. Add on the lack of rules support and it should be obvious why even players who would be interested in a plastic SoB army stay far away from the current version.

Also, Sisters are basically mono-pose minis with backpacks. Easy-peasy to assemble, and Dakka's Gallery shows that cleanup is entirely optional.

IOW, "SoB are easy if you just accept having mold lines everywhere on your very expensive army". Do you honestly think this is a compelling defense?

Can't say I've had too much trouble cleaning up mould lines on metals. I'm no great painter, my gallery is evidence that I favour speed over quality (well, on anything that isn't destined for my display cabinet) but I still clean off mould lines, fill gaps, etc and I never noticed a massive overhead on metals vs plastics in that regard.

Also if you're the sort of person who cares that much about how your models look I don't see how metal is a huge difference in how you handle them. If you care about how they look you aren't throwing them loosely in to a box regardless of what they're made from.

The SOB are ancient old so I guess the casting is inferior to new age metal minis. If I compare the Infinity models to GW plastic stuff. I spent prolly
the same time cleaning both materials, maybe a bit more on Infinity but that's cause they have the tiniest details and I have to be careful not to
file the definition on them.

Also the mold lines are so shallow that I'm having a hard time spotting them, GW minis have bigger mold lines.
You really don't need to pin them cause of the square slots in their joints, just a bit of scoring will do the job perfectly.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Yes, unpopular based on actual sales. Yes, GW can sell things to both of the Sisters players still out there, but nobody else is buying them.

So, exactly like Dark Eldars pre reboot, then.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Can't say I've had too much trouble cleaning up mould lines on metals. I'm no great painter, my gallery is evidence that I favour speed over quality (well, on anything that isn't destined for my display cabinet) but I still clean off mould lines, fill gaps, etc and I never noticed a massive overhead on metals vs plastics in that regard.

Honestly, I can't see how you could say this unless you really don't spend much time on either. Even a well-cast metal miniature is going to have at least as much material to remove on mold lines, except it's metal instead of plastic/resin so you have to file it off and very carefully avoid damaging the rest of the model instead of quickly scraping it off with a knife blade. And god help you if you get a metal miniature with mold slip, which requires a lot of repair work and rarely (never?) happens on plastic kits. IMO metal is almost as bad as finecast in how much of a pain it is to deal with, and I won't touch either.

Also if you're the sort of person who cares that much about how your models look I don't see how metal is a huge difference in how you handle them. If you care about how they look you aren't throwing them loosely in to a box regardless of what they're made from.

Even if you're careful with metal models you still get a lot more edge chipping. Just touching the model can rub off paint from the edges, and then there's stray dice, bumping a model accidentally, etc. And if you do remove paint it leaves a bright silver spot that is impossible to miss, instead of a bit of gray that often blends in with the remaining paint. Plastic and resin models are much less vulnerable to that kind of damage.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Really? I've got something like 200 metal Imperial Guard, and another 300 metal Eldar. 100 is nothing.

Also, Sisters are basically mono-pose minis with backpacks. Easy-peasy to assemble, and Dakka's Gallery shows that cleanup is entirely optional.

Apples to oranges. Metal eldar have mold lines mostly in easy to file places without tons of extra detail. I had tons of them back in the lead era of the early-mid-90's when they came 5 to a blister. Easy mode. Metal Kasrkin (going by your photo gallery) were worse, but nowhere near Sisters level of annoying - mold lines down the middle of ornate pauldrons and bob hair cuts? Forgettaboutit!

As to clean up being optional, those people are monsters and should feel bad.

As to the ludicrous prices.. these new gold marines. I figure they must be at least coated in gold leaf or something.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/This-weeks-Legio-Custodes-Pre-Orders-2018-1

4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50
I'll say it again. 4 small plastic toy soldiers for the price of a brand new top range PS4 title.
And we wonder why there's less kids coming into the hobby.

I realise the WKs will jump on this saying how detailed they are, or how many options they have, or how big they really are, or how we can choose not to buy, or how they can afford them, or the hours they'll take to paint making it value. But really... 4 small plastic toy soldiers for £52.50...

It's funny because yesterday I bought on Amazon 4 1:144 Gundam models (which are just a bit smaller than Imperial Knights, each) for about 30 cents less than the box of three big custodes cost.

That's a full "army" for MSSk.

I see Gimgamgoo's 4 soldiers.. and I raise him... just the captain-general.

£22.50 for 1 28mm figure. No thanks.

It could be worse. They could be AirPods.

Gimgamgoo wrote:As to the ludicrous prices.. these new gold marines. I figure they must be at least coated in gold leaf or something.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/This-weeks-Legio-Custodes-Pre-Orders-2018-1

4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50
I'll say it again. 4 small plastic toy soldiers for the price of a brand new top range PS4 title.
And we wonder why there's less kids coming into the hobby.

I realise the WKs will jump on this saying how detailed they are, or how many options they have, or how big they really are, or how we can choose not to buy, or how they can afford them, or the hours they'll take to paint making it value. But really... 4 small plastic toy soldiers for £52.50...

stroller wrote:I see Gimgamgoo's 4 soldiers.. and I raise him... just the captain-general.

£22.50 for 1 28mm figure. No thanks.

So the same price as any Primaris special character and a box of Aggressors/Inceptors? And they've been around for what 8 months? The Allarus Custodians are cheaper than the Deathshroud Bodyguard and the Captain-General is cheaper than Typhus

Which is sort of like saying knob cancer is slightly less embarrassing than arse cancer...

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Can't say I've had too much trouble cleaning up mould lines on metals. I'm no great painter, my gallery is evidence that I favour speed over quality (well, on anything that isn't destined for my display cabinet) but I still clean off mould lines, fill gaps, etc and I never noticed a massive overhead on metals vs plastics in that regard.

Honestly, I can't see how you could say this unless you really don't spend much time on either. Even a well-cast metal miniature is going to have at least as much material to remove on mold lines, except it's metal instead of plastic/resin so you have to file it off and very carefully avoid damaging the rest of the model instead of quickly scraping it off with a knife blade. And god help you if you get a metal miniature with mold slip, which requires a lot of repair work and rarely (never?) happens on plastic kits. IMO metal is almost as bad as finecast in how much of a pain it is to deal with, and I won't touch either.

Actually as we speak I'm painting a squadron of 4 metal He111's after just having finished squadrons of 12, 6 and 6 Bf109's, Spitfires and Hurricanes respectively.***

Most mould lines you can clean up with a knife, any gates you trim off with clippers, flappy bits with the sharp side of the knife and 4 out of 5 lines can be scraped away with the blunt side the same way you do with plastic. Occasionally you get a line where the knife starts to chatter in which case you do need to pull out a file, but in all of the 32 metal models I've cleaned recently that only happened, ummm, twice I think.

Really it hasn't taken me terribly long to prep them. You do have to learn what isn't going to show under primer because the nature of metal it'll look worse when it's bare metal than it will after you prime it. So my tactic is clean them up as well as I think is necessary (read: not a perfect mirror finish or anything stupid like that) then prime them, if I can still see the flaws I work those areas a bit more and prime them again.

That is literally the exact same process I go through on ANY model I actually care about, clean, prime, inspect, continue cleaning and reprime if necessary. In those same aforementioned 32 metal models I only found myself repriming two of them because I didn't clean a couple of lines fully.

You're the guy that argues the superiority of resin to plastic even though you have to saw off gates and unwarp damned near every part. I don't see the difference between metal and plastic as any worse than the difference between resin and plastic. Buying FW models indeed I've had more issues with FW resin than GW's metals back when they still made them.


***I will note that the metal planes I have are particularly badly cast with pitting, insane draft angles and some areas that obviously just didn't cast right, but GW metals I never had those sorts of problems. The worse I can say about GW metals is I've had 2 models where the mould slipped, an Epic Thunderhawk from the 90's and a SW Iron Priest also from the 90's.

Also if you're the sort of person who cares that much about how your models look I don't see how metal is a huge difference in how you handle them. If you care about how they look you aren't throwing them loosely in to a box regardless of what they're made from.

Even if you're careful with metal models you still get a lot more edge chipping. Just touching the model can rub off paint from the edges, and then there's stray dice, bumping a model accidentally, etc. And if you do remove paint it leaves a bright silver spot that is impossible to miss, instead of a bit of gray that often blends in with the remaining paint. Plastic and resin models are much less vulnerable to that kind of damage.

If you wash a metal model and use a metal primer they're amazingly resistant to paint damage. Still not so much that I'd throw them loosely in a box together, but I've recently accidentally dropped some of my metal models on a varnished wooden floor and was surprised that no damage was done. In recent memory the only damage I did was when I dropped a metal Night Goblin Boss off my desk and landed straight in to a glass I had sitting on the floor, it had a chip from the initial impact but the bouncing around in the glass didn't manage to knock anything else off.

Of course 99% of the time I just make sure my models aren't hitting stuff, plastic models can get damaged too and greasy fingers are a nightmare for any model.

I did have an issue with paint rubbing off on my metal Lizardmen as a kid, but that was because I was stupid and didn't clean them or use a proper primer.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50

Shrug. $75, but for how many hours of entertainment? Considered per hour that compares pretty well to a lot of other things.

I'll say it again. 4 small plastic toy soldiers for the price of a brand new top range PS4 title.
And we wonder why there's less kids coming into the hobby.

Well yeah, if you're looking for zero-effort entertainment (as many kids are) of course you're going to buy the video game. But that isn't a very relevant comparison since it's something so far outside of the GW market. You might as well say that those toy soldiers are really cheap because you can buy two boxes of them for the cost of renting an airplane for an hour and still have some cash left to get dinner on your way home.

Metals all day for me. Given a choice? I'd take metals most of the time, under most circumstances for infantry models. Vehicles, of course I'll take plastic.

Of course I actually like single-piece metal minis, so that's a heavy bias. This picture is six months old, but everything in the army that isn't a new plastic kit is metal (and there are about 30-40 more figures now...again mostly metal)

That's a sweet looking army Elbows!

For infantry I take metal over plastic anytime.

 John Prins wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Really? I've got something like 200 metal Imperial Guard, and another 300 metal Eldar. 100 is nothing.

Also, Sisters are basically mono-pose minis with backpacks. Easy-peasy to assemble, and Dakka's Gallery shows that cleanup is entirely optional.

Apples to oranges. Metal eldar have mold lines mostly in easy to file places without tons of extra detail. I had tons of them back in the lead era of the early-mid-90's when they came 5 to a blister. Easy mode. Metal Kasrkin (going by your photo gallery) were worse, but nowhere near Sisters level of annoying - mold lines down the middle of ornate pauldrons and bob hair cuts? Forgettaboutit!

As to clean up being optional, those people are monsters and should feel bad.

Well, as my sig hints, I've got 50 Sisters of Battle, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with prepping them, either. And I've got another 120-ish Dogs of War that were similarly prepped.

I get that not everybody likes to prep metal, but 1-piece metal infantry, or even 2-piecers with backpacks really aren't that much work, because you don't have to that much gluing compared to multi-part models like the 3E Eldar Guardians and 3E Dark Eldar Warriors. It's different work, but once you've cleaned that Sister, she's basically good to go. Go build a pile of those 9-piece Eldar plastics and report back on whether they're really easier than 2-part Sisters of battle.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I get that not everybody likes to prep metal, but 1-piece metal infantry, or even 2-piecers with backpacks really aren't that much work, because you don't have to that much gluing compared to multi-part models like the 3E Eldar Guardians and 3E Dark Eldar Warriors. It's different work, but once you've cleaned that Sister, she's basically good to go. Go build a pile of those 9-piece Eldar plastics and report back on whether they're really easier than 2-part Sisters of battle.

On the other hand, now you're comparing monopose metal models (which are often awkward in design because of having to be a single piece) to multi-part models with far greater customization potential. One-piece plastic models would be much easier to clean up, if you're willing to settle for all of the disadvantages of having one-piece models.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
[
I get that not everybody likes to prep metal, but 1-piece metal infantry, or even 2-piecers with backpacks really aren't that much work, because you don't have to that much gluing compared to multi-part models like the 3E Eldar Guardians and 3E Dark Eldar Warriors. It's different work, but once you've cleaned that Sister, she's basically good to go. Go build a pile of those 9-piece Eldar plastics and report back on whether they're really easier than 2-part Sisters of battle.

Have done so, and yes, they're easier. Yes, they're nine pieces, but it takes a few seconds to clean each piece. Also built Tau, Kroot, Cadian Shock Troops, various Space Marines and Tyranids. I also did some of the old metal Grey Knights, and they were a tedious slog being 3-piece lead-free pewter and just as ornate as Sisters, so it turned me off the idea of Sisters. I had the old metal Eldar (in lead, no less), and cleaning them was easy by comparison.

If I could rely on GW to give me good castings - I mean actual good castings, not "obvious by minor mold slip and heavy flashing", then maybe I'd consider Sisters, but GW's quality control isn't that good on metals, and never has been.

 John Prins wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
once you've cleaned that Sister, she's basically good to go.

If I could rely on GW to give me good castings - I mean actual good castings, not "obvious by minor mold slip and heavy flashing", then maybe I'd consider Sisters, but GW's quality control isn't that good on metals, and never has been.

Well, you're obviously not going to get sub-hairline alignment like with hard plastics, but GW metals are generally pretty good. Almost always well under 1mm alignment.

My understanding is that GW will replace (for free) a badly-cast miniature. It's not like GW releases a lot of really badly-made minis, at least, not compared to other metal minis manufacturers, but I wish I'd known that way back when I was actually playing 40k for the few that were really bad.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Well, you're obviously not going to get sub-hairline alignment like with hard plastics, but GW metals are generally pretty good. Almost always well under 1mm alignment.

Clearly spoken by someone who never had to deal with the old Tau stuff. They were bad overall, but the sniper drones were so absolutely terrible that I cut the unit out of my army plans entirely rather than have to deal with that garbage. And replacing defective parts doesn't really help when the whole inventory is trash.

Can anyone remember far enough back to when this thread was discussing GW prices

 Peregrine wrote:
Shrug. $75, but for how many hours of entertainment? Considered per hour that compares pretty well to a lot of other things.

Are they somehow more entertaining that the same amount of money and time spend on, for example, Perry Miniatures plastics sets? Because that kind of money will net you about three plastic boxes there, so... 60-70 minis, I guess? One would think you'd be spending more time being "entertained" with those.

To Foxfyre: "So the same price as any Primaris special character and a box of Aggressors/Inceptors? And they've been around for what 8 months? The Allarus Custodians are cheaper than the Deathshroud Bodyguard and the Captain-General is cheaper than Typhus"

And for the same reason I don't have any of those either.....

 Albertorius wrote:
Are they somehow more entertaining that the same amount of money and time spend on, for example, Perry Miniatures plastics sets? Because that kind of money will net you about three plastic boxes there, so... 60-70 minis, I guess? One would think you'd be spending more time being "entertained" with those.

Does it really matter if I spend $1 per hour or $2 per hour when either miniatures option is still cheap relative to my other hobbies? Whatever miniatures I happen to buy next it's a rounding error in the overall budget compared to the $170/hour I'm spending on tomorrow's airplane rental. I might as well spend a bunch of time worrying about whether I should fly in to the airport with the $10 burger or the one with the $12 BBQ plate.

 Galas wrote:
It could be worse. They could be AirPods.

At least they're not Tide Pods. Those things are going to be expensive after the kids eat them all. The demand will outstrip the supply!

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50

Shrug. $75, but for how many hours of entertainment? Considered per hour that compares pretty well to a lot of other things.

I'll say it again. 4 small plastic toy soldiers for the price of a brand new top range PS4 title.
And we wonder why there's less kids coming into the hobby.

Well yeah, if you're looking for zero-effort entertainment (as many kids are) of course you're going to buy the video game. But that isn't a very relevant comparison since it's something so far outside of the GW market. You might as well say that those toy soldiers are really cheap because you can buy two boxes of them for the cost of renting an airplane for an hour and still have some cash left to get dinner on your way home.

I see you chose to miss the other part of that same post...

Gimgamgoo wrote:
I realise the WKs will jump on this saying how detailed they are, or how many options they have, or how big they really are, or how we can choose not to buy, or how they can afford them, or the hours they'll take to paint making it value. But really... 4 small plastic toy soldiers for £52.50...

Although I have no figures to prove it, but it just seems there's a lot less young blood coming into the hobby than a few decades ago. So, my comparison about spending money on a console title was a little more relevant than your airplane one. Without new blood, all we'll have are an aging and dying out set of gamers with prices continually rising to keep up with the profits required. As many of us got into this hobby buying figures with pocket money, it's getting less and less likely for the kids today.

Ah the old metal models debate again. I feel sometimes like I'm the only person on this forum who doesn't use gak glue or something...?

Metal models do not fall apart just by giving them a funny look.

Unless you're the old (beautiful design) Land Speeder...

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50

Shrug. $75, but for how many hours of entertainment? Considered per hour that compares pretty well to a lot of other things.

Only a mad man considers the monotonous drone of painting an entire army as "entertainment"

Playing a game with that army? Yeah. Painting the first few models in an army? Yeah. Finally finishing said army? Absolutely.

Painting dudes numbered 5 to 500 in an army? Insanity

Wargaming only really classifies as good value if you are really passionate about the bit in between painting the first squad and finally finishing the last squad. I'm sure there's some people who do love every minute of it, but I think most people don't.

My hobby car may have cost me 10 times the price of an army, but I genuinely consider every hour in the driver's seat as entertainment, not so much every hour of painting said army.

The car also holds its value better than the 40k army.

Came back to gw products a while ago with age of Sigmar, plus some black Templar stuff. But damn the prices they set are pretty stupid.
My main gaming is now ww2, mainly bolt action and I don’t think you can beat the price tag for warlord games plastics. A box of 30 dudes for just over 20 quid and vehicles from 15-20.
Set against a box of 10 Cadians for 18 odd quid.

Which frankly those minis are pretty crap. Don’t even get started on the single character prices. Just my view anyway.