Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Im kind of sick of games-workshop charging us 40.00 usd for a character that has 0 gear options, I guess you can convert, but Im not very good at painting muchless converting

Don’t blame GW. If people buy it, they’ll make more like it.

I think both types of kits have their place. For some reason I can’t throw a non empty sprue from away but then I don’t seem to use the spare bits. Some times it’s nice to to have no extra.

Third party bits and kits are a good option if you do not game at a GW store or plan to play tournaments that demand GW only models.

For me even a small option in a kit makes a big difference to whether I'll buy it - an alternate head, a different weapon, even just a slightly different pose like the new ghazgkull. Having that choice helps make me feel like a model is 'mine'.

And this is just one reason why I convert my own characters rather than buying them from GW.

 vipoid wrote:
And this is just one reason why I convert my own characters rather than buying them from GW.

I'm sorta bewildered why anyone would buy the regular characters. FW offers a TON of Power Weapon packs and bitz if you don't want to go the 3rd party route too.

Just be glad it's war gear that's not legal. Custodes had an entire HQ combo that was illegal until recently. Valerian and Aleya were created in a non-playable ruleset. You had to field them together, as a pair, and they had a keyword that made it impossible to put them in any detachment. Yeah, GW rep at my local store said the BL characters are made by a completely different team, essentially with zero GW oversight. So if they even get the names right on the box GW is happy.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
And this is just one reason why I convert my own characters rather than buying them from GW.

I'm sorta bewildered why anyone would buy the regular characters. FW offers a TON of Power Weapon packs and bitz if you don't want to go the 3rd party route too.

Well I like the sculpts for the Genestealer Cult characters just as they are. There's only the Sanctus that has weapon options (sniper rifle or knife). I also think the new CSM Dark Apostle and Sorcerer blow the doors off the Finecast ones and fit in better with my generic-ish Black Legion army than 3rd party. When it comes to Primaris, most of my character models were part of boxed sets. The Apothecary was one that I felt very compelled to get as I almost never field an army without a combat medic if available. Even if they aren't very good. Other than standing on a marine, I like the apothecary sculpt too.

As to Forge World, those weapon packs are just as expensive as a character model at retail it appears. I don't know if there's shipping costs involved, and I actively don't want to support my local GW stores. Plus, there is the very small hassle of getting a 40mm bases which tend not to be over packed like 32mm or 25mm are/were. Plus, I don't like dealing with resin, particularly for thin parts. All that easily cost time and money than me putting an extra half-hour or less of overtime at work to have extra money for the regular clamp pack/small box. As someone that doesn't really like kitbashing, I'll pay for the convenience of it.

I do tend to avoid full retail for my character/HQ models. Although, sometimes they are a cheapish, low hobby time (being only one model oppose to ten) way to support my FLGS. I was pretty lucky with a number of my GSC that when I decided to make and army eBay was a dumping ground for a bunch of them. I do craft my own characters from time-to-time particularly the more generic Primaris Lts. Funny enough, I have very few IoM bits (but tons of Chaos) and often it is just much simpler to get the character model than try and trade bits with other players. I never did get enough chainswords for my Reiver kitbash. I had to de-Chaos some CSM ones. Of course, less than 3 months later Assault Intercessors (and changes to Asartes chainswords but not combat knives happened).

***

I don't really mind lack options in general. I don't think it would have helped much with any of the GSC characters since even Sanctus I would go sniper rifle every time with only having one maybe even with two of them. For Primaris, it is sorta annoying how peicemeal their Capt/Lts ar, but it is obvious that the model is sculpted with the options and the rules then have to unlock them.

The only Primaris unit I want new weapon options to appear is the Reivers. I already kitbashed chainswords (when it didn't matter) and future proofed the Sgt with a knife readied to be modded so I can give him a power weapon if the rules ever change. Doubt it will happen, but I ready if it does. I suppose I could run my chainsword Reivers as count-as Assault Intercessors. Be neat if I want to preserve an all Phobos armor look to the army list.

These days, it seems GW wants 40K characters strictly as mono-builds.

Customizing characters with wargear and kitbashing was a big draw that pulled me into 40K back in 2nd Edition.

 KidCthulhu wrote:
These days, it seems GW wants 40K characters strictly as mono-builds.

Customizing characters with wargear and kitbashing was a big draw that pulled me into 40K back in 2nd Edition.

Counter argument: Sisters of battle Canoness.

Sumilidon wrote:
Don’t blame GW. If people buy it, they’ll make more like it.

We absolutely can blame GW. They took Chapterhouse to court and everybody lost as a result because GW don’t understand IP law and think they own more than they did.

3rd party sellers still exist, and GW won’t make anything that is not in the codex. They are the market leader- this is a problem they made themselves and the only person that loses out is the customer.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
And this is just one reason why I convert my own characters rather than buying them from GW.

I'm sorta bewildered why anyone would buy the regular characters. FW offers a TON of Power Weapon packs and bitz if you don't want to go the 3rd party route too.

Yeah. I mean I do have some characters - but only from the conquest series or a start collecting box. I don't want to pay 25€ for a single infantry sized model. 10-15€ are okay.
I also don't understand why GW is not using the possibilites of plastic on most of their character models. There is the canonness and the Dark Angels guy and probably some other new characters I'm not familiar with, but other than those the Chaos Terminator lord/ sorceror is still the best character kit GW has ever produced.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
There is the canonness and the Dark Angels guy and probably some other new characters I'm not familiar with, but other than those the Chaos Terminator lord/ sorceror is still the best character kit GW has ever produced.

Hear, hear.

Metal was monopose. Switching to plastic was supposed to give us massive customizability.

If you've seen the recent Plague Marine sprues, each model has 2 build options: close combat or ranged. If you want to swap the default weapons it comes with, that's a conversion.

I really miss the sense that you are building your own characters. It feels like we've regressed.

 vipoid wrote:
And this is just one reason why I convert my own characters rather than buying them from GW.

yeah sometimes I is bogus. I get why a chaplain model costs more or a librarian, or even a cpt with a cloak. But then there are some Lt for primaris with just a bolter and no melee weapons, or the new SoB hero. Voldus is just a terminator with thunder hammer, Draigo at least has a rare stormshield. Not sure about other factions, but I have feeling it ain't different for them either.

I don't mind the monopose to a point. I love kitbashing and as long as they leave *Some* options available on the majority of units, I'm ok with that.

My main thing is more of a wishlist item. I want some kind of a primaris Captain or Lieutenant with a jump pack option. Gravis or not, I don't care (Though I prefer not-gravis if I'm being honest, a-la the new Shrike). We'll see. So long as firstborn don't go the way of the Dodo bird, we'll still have plenty of room to mash plastic together in fun and interesting ways.

Just my .02. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

I feel like if they are going to charge that much for character models there should atleast be some options for different wargear included

I started with mono-pose metal. Converting mono-pose metal is a [censored]. Multi-part posable plastic kits are nice, but mono-pose plastic is still vastly easier to convert than metal and posable kits have a tendency to sacrifice how dynamic the end result can be.

There are trade-offs is what I'm getting at.

I like the plastic kits, mono-pose might not allow as much customization, but will look better individually than a fully modular one. And plastic is so easy to customize.

For my Primaris Space Wolves, I just convert all my characters and units. Surprising how much a head swap can make a big difference. For my Harlequins, the models are just so nice, I don't want to convert them.

This is also pretty much the model for AOS, each character is what it is out of the box. Makes army building really easy, when you don't need to worry about wargear.

Price wise - yea, it has taken a big hike, no one can deny that.


Model wise - I grew up having to convert metal models to create the options.
With the endless plastic kits and vast sources of 3rd party parts, eBay, bits sites etc, people are spoilt these days for choice.

The flip side is that there are a lot of options that change with editions and updates.
A simple coded update could render a chunk of a kit redundant if it came with all options.
Other kits would take a price hike if they had to contain 2-3 more sprues of just options for a models build.


This stands out even more so for 30k
A simple commander would need a box of its own just for options.
That is also ignoring its “movement” options.
A commander can have bikes, jetbikes, jump packs etc.


There’s a fine line between having a good amount of choices and having more choices than you can reasonably fit in a set.

 Red__Thirst wrote:
I don't mind the monopose to a point. I love kitbashing and as long as they leave *Some* options available on the majority of units, I'm ok with that.

My main thing is more of a wishlist item. I want some kind of a primaris Captain or Lieutenant with a jump pack option. Gravis or not, I don't care (Though I prefer not-gravis if I'm being honest, a-la the new Shrike). We'll see. So long as firstborn don't go the way of the Dodo bird, we'll still have plenty of room to mash plastic together in fun and interesting ways.

Just my .02. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

I suspect this is a problem GW doesn't think they need to solve. If you really want jump-pack infantry but you also want a fully Primaris collection it's not like they don't sell Jump Packs as an independent item. Slap Jump Packs on Assault Intercessors and use the Vanguard Veterans rules, nobody is going to call you on it.

In that same vein nothing is stopping you from using an Incursor or Intercessor (or Shrike) as the basis for a Jump Captain and using warlord traits/relics to make up the difference in the rules, I seriously doubt anyone worth playing against would object.

I get where you're coming from and I want that stuff too, but from a 'health of the game' perspective there's a lot of other things that should be higher on GW's priority list.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
And this is just one reason why I convert my own characters rather than buying them from GW.

I'm sorta bewildered why anyone would buy the regular characters. FW offers a TON of Power Weapon packs and bitz if you don't want to go the 3rd party route too.

Because I don't play a force that FW supports like that?
Because I like the model GW sells?

It would be great if you could buy individual components (or even sprues in the case of bigger kits) like you could buy metal components direct from GW back in the olden days.

The Newman 794957 11017614 wrote:
I suspect this is a problem GW doesn't think they need to solve. If you really want jump-pack infantry but you also want a fully Primaris collection it's not like they don't sell Jump Packs as an independent item. Slap Jump Packs on Assault Intercessors and use the Vanguard Veterans rules, nobody is going to call you on it.

In that same vein nothing is stopping you from using an Incursor or Intercessor (or Shrike) as the basis for a Jump Captain and using warlord traits/relics to make up the difference in the rules, I seriously doubt anyone worth playing against would object.

I get where you're coming from and I want that stuff too, but from a 'health of the game' perspective there's a lot of other things that should be higher on GW's priority list.

Well it does kind of a make you pay twice, you can't buy those things outside of GW stores and on their site the Jump packs, are practicaly always in the "out of stock" setting. And buying something like a whole intercessor box, just to give a thunder hammer to your captin, then buying a box jump packs and then buying a box of something else that has stormshields in them, hit the budget kind of a hard comparing to buying a 35$ model, which already is kind of a expensive. And it only get worse when you need 2 or 3 of such dudes or conversions.

The Newman wrote:


I suspect this is a problem GW doesn't think they need to solve. If you really want jump-pack infantry but you also want a fully Primaris collection it's not like they don't sell Jump Packs as an independent item. Slap Jump Packs on Assault Intercessors and use the Vanguard Veterans rules, nobody is going to call you on it.

In that same vein nothing is stopping you from using an Incursor or Intercessor (or Shrike) as the basis for a Jump Captain and using warlord traits/relics to make up the difference in the rules, I seriously doubt anyone worth playing against would object.

I get where you're coming from and I want that stuff too, but from a 'health of the game' perspective there's a lot of other things that should be higher on GW's priority list.

I couldn't agree more with it being very (very, very) low priority. I want to see army lists that still have multiple units/choices using fine cast models addressed first of course.

I have a firstborn option if I want jump pack characters, and am perfectly content with them for sure. It's an eventual wish list, 'when they get to it' thing as I said.

Also, I'm not opposed to sticking jump packs on primaris models, and if someone wanted to do that, more power to them. I personally don't like the way firstborn jump packs look on primaris models myself, but to each their own of course. I'd play against them regardless.

Just clarifying there.

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

 Red__Thirst wrote:

The Newman wrote:


I suspect this is a problem GW doesn't think they need to solve. If you really want jump-pack infantry but you also want a fully Primaris collection it's not like they don't sell Jump Packs as an independent item. Slap Jump Packs on Assault Intercessors and use the Vanguard Veterans rules, nobody is going to call you on it.

In that same vein nothing is stopping you from using an Incursor or Intercessor (or Shrike) as the basis for a Jump Captain and using warlord traits/relics to make up the difference in the rules, I seriously doubt anyone worth playing against would object.

I get where you're coming from and I want that stuff too, but from a 'health of the game' perspective there's a lot of other things that should be higher on GW's priority list.

I couldn't agree more with it being very (very, very) low priority. I want to see army lists that still have multiple units/choices using fine cast models addressed first of course.

I have a firstborn option if I want jump pack characters, and am perfectly content with them for sure. It's an eventual wish list, 'when they get to it' thing as I said.

Also, I'm not opposed to sticking jump packs on primaris models, and if someone wanted to do that, more power to them. I personally don't like the way firstborn jump packs look on primaris models myself, but to each their own of course. I'd play against them regardless.

Just clarifying there.

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

Looking at some of the conversion work other people have posted around the internet I can see your point. I had a mental image of it from comparing models side-by-side that didn't quite match how First-born jump packs actually look on Assault Intercessors. The size is off in a way that isn't obvious until they're actually attached.

bat702 wrote:
Im kind of sick of games-workshop charging us 40.00 usd for a character that has 0 gear options, I guess you can convert, but Im not very good at painting muchless converting

Yep, same here, only I'm in the UK so I pay about £20-£37.50 (currently $27ish to $50ish) depending on the model.

It's not as if there's any rhyme or reason or consistency, specific named characters like Abaddon I get not having options, because they are what they are in the rules and fluff, but some of the Primaris Lieutenants and other examples have no options in the kit, despite their rules allowing options, whilst named characters like Lazarus do have optional parts but don't have any options in their rules! Lazarus doesn't even come with the bolt pistol he's supposed to have in the rules but he comes with 2 extra heads, a power fist and a boltgun?!

Like others have said, I enjoyed kit bashing and converting back in the day (late RT and 2nd edition was when I started also), but GW seem to be shying away from that now as though it's too much bother or intentionally sculpting models that make it more difficult than it should be to take off or swap parts.

I was looking at kitbashing for a couple of characters recently, and all of the models or parts I was going to use required me to rebuild parts using greenstuff because of the way GW moulded them to the original model!

A lot of GW models today you can't do a simple swap of parts without destroying other parts that you want to keep pristine.

It's even worse if it's not a Spez Mareeen or if it's from AoS!

I gave up on the conversion ideas I had because for a tabletop piece, i.e. I'm not aiming for a Golden Daemon/Slayer Sword, it's just not worth the hassle or the extra expense of 3rd party parts.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
There is the canonness and the Dark Angels guy and probably some other new characters I'm not familiar with, but other than those the Chaos Terminator lord/ sorceror is still the best character kit GW has ever produced.

Hear, hear.

Metal was monopose. Switching to plastic was supposed to give us massive customizability.

Nope. The move to plastic was to get out of the volatility of the tin market and lower costs (to manufacturers)
It can be more customizable, but that wasn't the goal of the switch.

 Horla wrote:
It would be great if you could buy individual components (or even sprues in the case of bigger kits) like you could buy metal components direct from GW back in the olden days.

Not at all practical. You'd still have to make the whole sprue for 'in demand' bits, and you'd be paying for staff doing nothing but cutting and sorting (and then picking and packing as orders came in). The bits that people aren't buying becomes a backlog of trash that they'd have to deal with.

There is no way to make it cost effective. Its a lot of work hours at low return and a lot of waste (and take up a lot of space), when they'd much rather sell full kits and move the whole product.

And then GW does goofy stuff like making an Avatar of Khaine sculpt for AoS that Aeldari players might want but only sell it as part of the Cauldron of Blood kit. The logic of not cutting a separate mold for that so it could also be sold as an individual kit is utterly baffling.

Rob Lee wrote:
It's not as if there's any rhyme or reason or consistency, specific named characters like Abaddon I get not having options, because they are what they are in the rules and fluff, but some of the Primaris Lieutenants and other examples have no options in the kit, despite their rules allowing options, whilst named characters like Lazarus do have optional parts but don't have any options in their rules! Lazarus doesn't even come with the bolt pistol he's supposed to have in the rules but he comes with 2 extra heads, a power fist and a boltgun?!

You really missed the memo on this kit. The Bolt Pistol is holstered on his right hip while the Power Fist and Boltgun are for generic Dark Angels Primaris Masters you can make from the same kit.