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The implication in old White Dwarf magazines was that unless stated otherwise battle reports really were fought out using the studio miniatures painted up by the 'Eavy Metal team, even before photographic staging for the magazine. I'm referencing early-mid 90s here, I don't know about later. This is the era of weighty metal, with all that handling and the potential for mishaps like dropping/knocking over etc. there must have been chips and breakages.

Does anyone know if this really was the case? Did things regularly get sent back to the 'Eavy Metal for repairs? Any anecdotes?

Well chips and bumps and drops happen to any gamer. Even though the Evy Metal stuff will be varnished for added protection, they will still take the odd bit of damage. So I'm sure models got touched up and replaced all the time - depending on the army's purpose and if it was going to be marketed any more.

I'm sure staff also use a lot of their own armies in the marketing videos too if their armies are up to standard. So not every force will be Evy-metal and often as not they like to use staff armies because it shows variety and creativity in the game in the magazine.




Also note that a lot of the studio models for photos are painted in parts and not often fully built. You can sometimes see the bits of bluetack holding weapons and arms on if you look really carefully. There was an amusing event a few years back where one set of the Eldar Wriathguard models with guns was built, painted, photographed and pictures sent to the printer and put out into the market for sale. ALL without the weapons on the models!

I always enjoyed the Tales of 4 Gamer articles, especially the talk about painting their minis.

Way back in the mists of time, when Adeptus Titanicus was fairly new, Tony Cottrell and Guy Carpenter both built Rogue Trader scale Scout Titans.

They were made from Palitoy (Kenner) ATST walkers and Zoid bits.

Guy's almost didn't feature in White Dwarf.

This is because it was accidentally dropped down the stairs on the way to be being photographed...

 Overread wrote:
Well chips and bumps and drops happen to any gamer. Even though the Evy Metal stuff will be varnished for added protection, they will still take the odd bit of damage. So I'm sure models got touched up and replaced all the time - depending on the army's purpose and if it was going to be marketed any more.

I'm sure staff also use a lot of their own armies in the marketing videos too if their armies are up to standard. So not every force will be Evy-metal and often as not they like to use staff armies because it shows variety and creativity in the game in the magazine.




Also note that a lot of the studio models for photos are painted in parts and not often fully built. You can sometimes see the bits of bluetack holding weapons and arms on if you look really carefully. There was an amusing event a few years back where one set of the Eldar Wriathguard models with guns was built, painted, photographed and pictures sent to the printer and put out into the market for sale. ALL without the weapons on the models!

Didn't the cover photo for the revamped Leman Russ box feature an upside down Heavy Bolter.

There was also a drooping arm on a Space Wolf biker where there was a blu tac failure on the shoulder joint. The hand was still gripping the handlebar but the shoulder pad was level with the hip.

It was well established in the old WD, that they played a number of warm up games until they got essentially the result they desired. I don't know if that meant different deployments, tweaked lists, etc. But they weren't shy about it mentioning it.

If you look on the GW site at the Terminator armoured Chaplain in 360* mode, you can see that his iron halo has busted off at some point. There's a bare patch of resin where it was glued.

Then while not handling damage, if you look at the storm raven page at the blood angels version, you can see that they've put one of the rear land gear feet on backwards. There is also a picture somewhere, (in a codex maybe?), of a leman russ that has an upside down heavy bolter.

This guy was on the website for the 360 of the Glaivewrath Stalkers...

This Valkyrie image always cracks me up. Look at the rear central tail.

Oh that's a subtle one it took me a moment to spot it! Then again knowing the Imperium it might be the way its meant to be

One I know is from Forgeworld. Around the release of the Amphelion book, they would co-release every model for 40k with an Epic scale version. This all stopped after a batch of Tyranid sculpts for Epic were subjected to some sort of new resin moulding material which completely destroyed the masters. The Heirodules and a few others were lost completely. Only the Harridan survived and they shelved the Space Marines they had ready

On the 360 of the Wight Lord plastic model, there is a huge chunk of paint missing off of the right side of the sword's blade and crossguard.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Deathrattle-Wight-King-2018

 Grimtuff wrote:
[spoiler]This Valkyrie image always cracks me up. Look at the rear central tail.

I don't see it. What's wrong with it?

 Snrub wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
[spoiler]This Valkyrie image always cracks me up. Look at the rear central tail.

I don't see it. What's wrong with it?

The flaps aren't at the rear.

alphaecho wrote:

The flaps aren't at the rear.

Oooh.

There's a lot of this stuff hidden on fw. The doors of the land raider armored proteus, the malcadors missing a track link, and terrible construction on the spartan. Part of me believes it's intentional so you know what you're buying but could also be their commission painters. The guy who painted the blood angels does an awful job assembling tanks. And lets not forget the 3d printing lines left all over stuff.

There was also the 360 view of the plastic Baneblade with chunks of track missing.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Spoiler:

This Valkyrie image always cracks me up. Look at the rear central tail.

To be fair, that is still probably one of the most plausible Imperial vehicles in terms of actually imagining it flying!

I just remember the Finecast Khorne Banners were they painted the flash instead of removing it

I think in part its likely because of how they appear to paint and then build with some parts held on with bluetac so its easy for bits to "fall off" in transport and not get noticed. It might also be that whoever builds it builds it wrong and then doesn't doublecheck and clean up. We've really no idea how the whole studio model system works inside GW, it might even be one of those "intern" jobs.

Plus over the years mistakes do happen, the curious part is that GW doesn't seem to replace many of them/fix them on the store. Which means either they dont' care or more likely they've not noticed and we don't tend to complain about it enough to make it something they need to worry about.

The one with the Terminator Chaplain is actually quite annoying (though also amusing) because the model comes with no instructions so it's not obvious where the scroll cases/halo-thingy piece is supposed to go. The fact the image online doesn't have the halo attached makes it even more difficult to figure out. I left it off mine.

 Overread wrote:
I think in part its likely because of how they appear to paint and then build with some parts held on with bluetac so its easy for bits to "fall off" in transport and not get noticed. It might also be that whoever builds it builds it wrong and then doesn't doublecheck and clean up. We've really no idea how the whole studio model system works inside GW, it might even be one of those "intern" jobs.

The 'Eavy Metal team get the minis to paint before they go into production. This means they get resin casts rather than plastic.

Quite often they have a bag of resin dumped on their desk with no instructions and have to figure out what goes where, lol.

They also paint in sub-assemblies so bits will always inevitably just fall off.....

The mold for the Terrax Assault Drill is 3D printed. You can tell, because they didn't do anything about the 3D print lines, and those are now cast into every model they make. The photo on the store page has that bit weathered to hide it...

StraightSilver wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I think in part its likely because of how they appear to paint and then build with some parts held on with bluetac so its easy for bits to "fall off" in transport and not get noticed. It might also be that whoever builds it builds it wrong and then doesn't doublecheck and clean up. We've really no idea how the whole studio model system works inside GW, it might even be one of those "intern" jobs.

The 'Eavy Metal team get the minis to paint before they go into production. This means they get resin casts rather than plastic.

Quite often they have a bag of resin dumped on their desk with no instructions and have to figure out what goes where, lol.

They also paint in sub-assemblies so bits will always inevitably just fall off.....

Then there was the Planetstrike stratagems issue where the 'Eavy Metal team had lovely resin versions for White Dwarf that bore no relation to the vacuformed plastic lumps that went to retail.

 Overread wrote:
Plus over the years mistakes do happen, the curious part is that GW doesn't seem to replace many of them/fix them on the store. Which means either they dont' care or more likely they've not noticed and we don't tend to complain about it enough to make it something they need to worry about.

The pic I posted above was yanked from the online store in short order after I asked on Facebook if that was what the final model was supposed to look like.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
On the 360 of the Wight Lord plastic model, there is a huge chunk of paint missing off of the right side of the sword's blade and crossguard.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Deathrattle-Wight-King-2018

There's some missing on the other side of the sword as well, so I'd guess the entire blade snapped off and they had to glue it back on.

alphaecho wrote:
Then there was the Planetstrike stratagems issue where the 'Eavy Metal team had lovely resin versions for White Dwarf that bore no relation to the vacuformed plastic lumps that went to retail.

I returned those for a full refund. Only time I've ever returned something to GW.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

alphaecho wrote:
Then there was the Planetstrike stratagems issue where the 'Eavy Metal team had lovely resin versions for White Dwarf that bore no relation to the vacuformed plastic lumps that went to retail.

I returned those for a full refund. Only time I've ever returned something to GW.

I could mutter something about outsourcing to China but items like the Firestorm Redoubt have all been perfectly fine.

Going back to the OP's question...

sniffer_squig wrote:
The implication in old White Dwarf magazines was that unless stated otherwise battle reports really were fought out using the studio miniatures painted up by the 'Eavy Metal team, even before photographic staging for the magazine. I'm referencing early-mid 90s here, I don't know about later. This is the era of weighty metal, with all that handling and the potential for mishaps like dropping/knocking over etc. there must have been chips and breakages.

Does anyone know if this really was the case? Did things regularly get sent back to the 'Eavy Metal for repairs? Any anecdotes?

...I'm sure I've seen references in White Dwarfs from around the #170-#200 mark (the era of 2nd edition 40K) saying the 'Eavy Metal team needed to regularly touch up the Studio models due to wear and tear. On a weekly basis. Can't remember which issue(s) it was in, though.

Some issues included the Polaroid photos they took during the battle to use as references for staging the proper good-looking photos afterward. This tended to happen if they ran more than one report per issue. It does look as if they were using the Studio models for the actual games. (Sanctuary 101, in WD #218, was mostly Polaroided IIRC. It seems oddly appropriate in-universe that the pict-captures from that battle were poor quality...)

The famous 'Heresy!' tank battle (featuring none other than Evil Lord Varlak, aka Andy C wearing sunnies indoors) was basically created by grabbing every IG and SM tank in the Studio cabinets and plonking them on the table.

Incidentally, one of the reasons many of the battle reports back then featured weird or foolish army lists was that the Studio army only included one of every unit--the one they'd painted for advertisements and box covers. So for the Dark Angels there'd be a grand total of one Dreadnought available, one Devastator squad, one Rhino, etc. Sometimes the battle report participants would openly whinge about this.

Around the early #200s of White Dwarf, the team started painting up 'proper armies' for Studio use, like the Biel-Tan Eldar army around the time the old metal/plastic hybrid Fire Prism came out.

Zenithfleet wrote:

Incidentally, one of the reasons many of the battle reports back then featured weird or foolish army lists was that the Studio army only included one of every unit--the one they'd painted for advertisements and box covers. So for the Dark Angels there'd be a grand total of one Dreadnought available, one Devastator squad, one Rhino, etc. Sometimes the battle report participants would openly whinge about this.

Indeed, in the inaugural outing for Dark Eldar all but one unit had to footslog it up the board as only a single Raider was available (and even that one was a prototype mockup, so the final model probably didn't even exist at that point) for the army. Against IG no less.

I remember an issue where someone ran a tyranid army and wanted two Lictors/Hive tyrant and only found one in the collection. But then the second appeared after the game hidden behind others in the cupboard.

Not having access to enough studio figures Meant people used their own armies in older issues of WD, I’m thinking 4/5th Ed fantasy and 2nd 40K, so from around #180-230 or thereabouts, when I was buying regularly.

If you look at some photos of regiments now the same figures are duplicated in the ranks, meaning the studio didn’t paint a whole box for the box art and they used a bit of copy and paste to fill out the picture. Whether they have enough for the battle reports...

When they used to do the big game day displays like the Battle of Big Toof, they asked store staff around the country paint and sent stuff to HQ to make up the numbers. These were all on display in Nottingham for a number of year until broken up. I heard (obviously cannot confirm) that staff were told they couldn’t take freebies from them - everything was destroyed.