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August releases:

-Operation Crimson Stone battle pack
-Dragon Lady event exclusive-- probably this mini

-Dire Foes mission pack Gamma-Xanadu Rush.

Looks like the GenCon deal.

 Shadow Walker wrote:
I would love to see the Defiance in retail with plastic minis so the wider audience can enjoy it and lear about the Infinity universe etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
May releases - 360 view
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXFkpW4tD-M

You aren't allowed to say the "P" word around hardcore infinity fans, it gets them all worked up. If I learned anything from my time on the Corvus Belli forums they like their metal and saying otherwise is sacrilege.

Something like TAG raid seems perfect for sticking at a Barnes and Noble, game store, or normal retailers if it was in colored plastics. I am thinking something sold like Blitzbowl or Combat Arena, which work as a pick up board game even by strangers.

I would love to see the Defiance minis in retail at all. Or at least their Fat Yuan Yuan.

I have no problems with plastic, gimme plastic starters, but I don't think it'd be actually viable investment sadly. I'd rather CB doesn't Wyrd itself in the process...

"Best white metal miniatures on the market" is one of their biggest value propositions, so I wouldn't bet on them making the transition to plastics anytime soon.

Aristeia! has plastic pieces, and the Megalodron in Defiance is plastic. I'd venture to guess that CB will keep the Infinity minis in metal, but will use plastics more in new offerings, especially if they continue moving into boardgame territory. I don't seem them *wyrding* themselves. The few Wyrd plastics I have were a nightmare to assemble. Too many delicate pieces in a medium-- plastic -- that is a very poor choice for delicate pieces.

We should be getting a Crimson Stone reveal week next month, and probably some sort of teaser for it in the next studio update. Corregidor v. Kosmoflot, IIRC, are the factions.

Like I said, I think we won't see plastics because...none of what they do is probably moving in quantities enough to justify it. How many Zanshis will you need after all.

It'd make sense if Tag Raid was self-contained product with 6 plastic tags and sprue of weapon ends to customize them (interchangeable drills, laser cutters etc), but not the main game.

As for "wyrding" i mostly meant completely demolishing their release schedule by going into plastic and having things out of stock for months or years...

In the long run sticking with metal will stunt the game growth as a lot of people hate it vs like it (I've come to dislike it over the years and early N3 models are part of the reason) but I don't think they've hit that point of popularity yet.

That being said they should move to resin for their TAGs and possibly HI as metal just is not that good of a material for those. Warmahordes is a good one to look at their identity use to be everything in metal even when it didn't make sense. Now they're mostly resin and have some of the best gaming resin out there and it's really benefited their designs.

 Red Harvest wrote:
Aristeia! has plastic pieces, and the Megalodron in Defiance is plastic.

What models in Aristeia is plastic?

 Vain wrote:

 Red Harvest wrote:
Aristeia! has plastic pieces, and the Megalodron in Defiance is plastic.

What models in Aristeia is plastic?

Everything in the original core box IIRC unless you paid extra for the LE collector's edition. I think the expansions are metal though.

 warboss wrote:

Everything in the original core box IIRC unless you paid extra for the LE collector's edition. I think the expansions are metal though.

100% correct. I had entirely forgotten about that model of production.
Totally my bad, I have only really focused on the metal 're-skins'.

The expansions are all plastic for Aristeia too. It’s only the skins which are metal.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
In the long run sticking with metal will stunt the game growth as a lot of people hate it vs like it (I've come to dislike it over the years and early N3 models are part of the reason) but I don't think they've hit that point of popularity yet.

That being said they should move to resin for their TAGs and possibly HI as metal just is not that good of a material for those. Warmahordes is a good one to look at their identity use to be everything in metal even when it didn't make sense. Now they're mostly resin and have some of the best gaming resin out there and it's really benefited their designs.

I'd argue the somewhat complex rules already limit the popularity and we again hit the wall of cost- switching most things to plastic would be horrendously costly and pretty much force CB to cut their product ranges in half if not more- rn they have a lot of "duplicate" units that vary very slightly in each army, if you go plastic, it will never be cost-effective to make them all.

I would welcome resin tags though, assuming CB can get the same quality of casting. Resin has it's own learning curve when it comes to that (and how long it took PP to figure their resin skills out).

Cronch wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
In the long run sticking with metal will stunt the game growth as a lot of people hate it vs like it (I've come to dislike it over the years and early N3 models are part of the reason) but I don't think they've hit that point of popularity yet.

That being said they should move to resin for their TAGs and possibly HI as metal just is not that good of a material for those. Warmahordes is a good one to look at their identity use to be everything in metal even when it didn't make sense. Now they're mostly resin and have some of the best gaming resin out there and it's really benefited their designs.

I'd argue the somewhat complex rules already limit the popularity and we again hit the wall of cost- switching most things to plastic would be horrendously costly and pretty much force CB to cut their product ranges in half if not more- rn they have a lot of "duplicate" units that vary very slightly in each army, if you go plastic, it will never be cost-effective to make them all.

I agree on that and think it's smart of them to have started their exploring plastic, even if just PVC, and manufacture overseas with a new spin off game. It allows them to learn the process (including how sculpting is different) without disrupting the main game/income source. If they ever decide they need to move more into plastic it will be less of a disruption for them.

I would welcome resin tags though, assuming CB can get the same quality of casting. Resin has it's own learning curve when it comes to that (and how long it took PP to figure their resin skills out).

Resin does take some effort but larger things like TAGs would be much simpler to learn the material with then humans. Plus resin doesn't get the forums all up in arms as most of them were expecting the Magharba to be resin when the redesign came out.

Stay with metal. No reason really to make them plastics for what are mostly monopose models.

Plastic is a big hurdle, even with some of the tech and machines being cheaper than it was 20 years ago its still a huge risk. You can end up like PP with a less than stella formula that customers don't like much; or you can end up like Wyrd with a decent plastic but a nightmare of parting choices.

The other thing is once you've done it you're committed to it as a small firm because going back is a hard thing.

Ontop of that you need to ramp up marketing for big sales to ensure that your plastic shifts in high volume (which is basically the whole point of going plastic). Which might mean alot of marketing money all before your plastic hits the shelves. Which if you're not going all plastic all at once, might well impact supply of your metal and resin cast models.


It's a challenge and whilst some firms have done well, others have floundered and some sunk going the plastic path.



I think the Infinity team are comfortable where things are now; any expansion would be great ,but its a big lump cost and a big investment. They could do what GW did and save for a long whlie and then do it themselves; or they could take out loans/investors and then if it fails they've still got big repayments.

I suspect the plastics we've seen are just a result of working with companies that manufacture them as part of the rest of their board game products. You've got a company making the boards and cards and special dice and whatever else that also makes PVC board game figures, you might as well use them and get the stuff put in the box then and there.

Other than that, plastics just don't make a lot of sense for Infinity. I don't think the sales even come close to justifying HIPs and PVC would just be a disaster for them. Resin is a maybe, but the number of models that they have that could really use resin effectively doesn't seem terribly worth it either.

Resin is a side step though in that it wouldn't really change their operation in a drastic way. They'd have a new material, but it still requires the same kind of production as metals in that its labour intensive. So the risks are far smaller. Not sure about the gains, but that would depend on resin vs metal prices and also the fluidity of those prices - I know one reason GW wanted out of metal was that the price of it kept changing (often going up too); which at the volumes they cast at, made it very hard to forecast their finances.

They didn't have to go PVC for Aristia!. They easily could have stayed with metal especially for the expansions.

I do think they wanted to learn what is was to produce and work with a plastic factory not because I think they planned on Infinity being plastic anytime soon but Carlos has stated for years they'd be interested in it if they could own the whole process and manufacture locally which is expensive to set up anywhere. Having a boardgame with plastic is a low risk way of gaining some experience for making that decision even if they don't decide to do it for 10-15 years due to their market size (or potentially never).

I disagree with the resin as it's not much more space then metal casting and would allow them do expand their TAG designs in a way that metal wont. Plus the price really wouldn't be much different at the TAG size anyway for the consumer and you wouldn't have models that felt like they were going to fall apart just from moving them.

Also they have to be making resin masters unless they've got a really expensive printer and spending the time to clean it up as I don't see print lines on their models unlike, say, Modiphis's resin (it's very faint, tends to need magnification to see and not noticeable once painted but the lines are there).

On one hand, resin tags would be much easier to construct and less likely to shatter on taking a tumble. On the other, I don't want *larger* tags, ever, and CB models are all undercuts, so it'd wear out rubber mould for resin in record time...and I remember getting worn out mould resin from spartan, it wasn't fun.

Well, hell, they got the Megalodrone produced as a two piece model. That might be leading somewhere...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VQDzhZS3ZY

 Shadow Walker wrote:

Nobody minds if you put videos into posts, y'know.

oh lol, i remember seeing those fantasy figures in their online store...and those like, 10-page black and white booklets of rules that came with the initial starter sets (i think...it's been a while).

For a second I thought CB had finally annoucned a fantasy game. I am disappoint.

It seems there's been a tiny handful of pics leaked (for ants) of the Crimson Thunder 2player pack's nomads.

I'm like the sculpt but I think they hired the 5th edition Space Wolves writer to name that fig. It might still be an improvement over the English language contortionist naming scheme that gives us words like interventor though.

Wolfgang is a lot uglier/older/balder than I was expecting.

I like it.

The Nomad half of the set just upsets me that they rushed out the CJC starter back with Paradiso.

His name is Wolf A. Wolf? That's... even worse than Dragos Dragodovich. Also he's stepping on a wolf head?

The model is OK, but that tabbard looks kind of strange. I dunno.