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.

 Altruizine wrote:
But they rereleased antediluvian kits for contemporary use in The Old World

Those are plastic and "classic", i.e. nostalgia driven. MDF is neither.

Anyway, in terms of ROI, customer conditioning and brand perception, GW's plastic terrain seems to be an extremely successful product line. In what world would undercutting all that be worth it for a couple thousand sales every year to the ITC?

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Anyway, in terms of ROI, customer conditioning and brand perception, GW's plastic terrain seems to be an extremely successful product line. In what world would undercutting all that be worth it for a couple thousand sales every year to the ITC?

This is GW.

GW.

 Altruizine wrote:
But they rereleased antediluvian kits for contemporary use in The Old World, which is something all of us would've argued was a ridiculous and impossible outcome for the Best Miniature Company if we'd have been queried a few years ago, so it seems like they aren't that rigorous about that label anymore.

Not all of us.

CorwinB wrote:
That would be all of the Finecast Aspects finally migrated to plastic, no? I thought we would have to wait a couple more editions for that, great if it's true!

Isn't it also pretty much the entire list of things they can update before they have to make entirely new things or update old plastic kits like Vypers, Falcons and Dire Avengers? As slow as Eldar have been updated, the range is in a pretty solid place now.

The Falcon and its derivatives sharing the same chassis could probably use an upgrade, and they could also switch the resin Aspects and the Nightwing to plastic, but indeed after that there is not much else to update (I don't see them switching the super-heavies to plastic). Perhaps the Wraithlord could have an updated kit that could build the Wraithseer as well?

Vypers and Falcons are some of the oldest kits still in circulation. Dire Avengers are more modern, but having built some they’re showing their age, so could do with an update including more dynamic poses.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Anyway, in terms of ROI, customer conditioning and brand perception, GW's plastic terrain seems to be an extremely successful product line. In what world would undercutting all that be worth it for a couple thousand sales every year to the ITC?

This is GW.

GW.

More importantly when they speak to/at the playerbase now a days its aimed at the most visible and vocal corner of their realm: the tournament scene. These are, I think, now viewed as one of their key customer demographics, if not in total profit (middle aged mums supposedly), but in relative import to the wider playerbase.

Given that the big tournaments never made an effort to use GW terrain due to practicalities, outside of GW stream tables which they might provide(? I'm unsure of that), they'll see people happily buying and using mdf corners and praising the table layouts etc.

Add to that they're often criticised for not keeping enough terrain in stock/removing new ranges regularly, then packing out tables of terrain to new players or events is very impractical for all parties.

 Altruizine wrote:
Seems like MDF products would have fat margins for reasonably low effort, too.

Quite the contrary, MDF terrain is actually fairly expensive to produce and the margins on it aren't all that great, and there's no real way to leverage economies of scale with it due to various limiting factors in terms of how its produced. The margins on plastic terrain are significantly greater, and if GW truly wanted to dominate the competitive terrain scene they could do so easily with plastic sets sold at more aggressively competitive rates to event organizers.

You need something like 16 pieces of terrain to play a proper game of Warhammer 40K.

Today there is basically no terrain at all availible to buy in their webshop, just a single basic kit and a bunch of faction specific special pieces.

They are basically saying no to a whole lot of money because if you want to play warhammer you are going to need terrain and if you're not building it from scratch yourself you are giving all that money to someone that isn't GW.

From a business perspective this doesn't make any sense to me at all.



EDIT: can't spell

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
Seems like MDF products would have fat margins for reasonably low effort, too.

Quite the contrary, MDF terrain is actually fairly expensive to produce and the margins on it aren't all that great, and there's no real way to leverage economies of scale with it due to various limiting factors in terms of how its produced. The margins on plastic terrain are significantly greater, and if GW truly wanted to dominate the competitive terrain scene they could do so easily with plastic sets sold at more aggressively competitive rates to event organizers.

I mean, that ignores the whole "not produced directly by them" angle.

Maybe event organizers should use more of their own event's funding to provide the terrain, because it sure as heck doesn't seem to go towards actual judges or the like given how every event has drama tied to it.

 Geifer wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
But they rereleased antediluvian kits for contemporary use in The Old World, which is something all of us would've argued was a ridiculous and impossible outcome for the Best Miniature Company if we'd have been queried a few years ago, so it seems like they aren't that rigorous about that label anymore.

Not all of us.

Extremely easy to claim in hindsight, but only the credulous would believe you.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
Seems like MDF products would have fat margins for reasonably low effort, too.

Quite the contrary, MDF terrain is actually fairly expensive to produce and the margins on it aren't all that great, and there's no real way to leverage economies of scale with it due to various limiting factors in terms of how its produced. The margins on plastic terrain are significantly greater

Why aren't the margins great? What are the limiting factors in terms of how its produced?

chaos0xomega wrote:
if GW truly wanted to dominate the competitive terrain scene they could do so easily with plastic sets sold at more aggressively competitive rates to event organizers.

No, not really.

Plastic terrain can never be as painlessly functional as MDF terrain (unless it forsakes all of the advantageous qualities of plastic terrain in order to ape MDF terrain). Plastic terrain always requires painting and cannot be manufactured with finished surfaces out-of-the-box. Plastic terrain can't pack flat for storage and transport.

GW literally watched their ITC partners launch a tournament terrain line so it wouldn't be out of the question that that started them salivating.

for the terrain itself, the terrain the game needs changes every 3 years and GW does not want to produce that kind of terrain because as soon as it is functional for 40k, it looks bad

for mdf it is simply the time the machine needs to cut that
to produce more you need more machines and space, and most expensive parts of production is time and space

yet coloured plastic terrain that can be packed flat is not something new, and we get painted ones soon as well

Yeah, I just don't see anything that MDF solves for GW that plastic wouldn't.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Yeah, I just don't see anything that MDF solves for GW that plastic wouldn't.

Only thing I can think of is there might be facilities in the UK that could produce MDF?

Okay, not having to worry about the boat going sideways on a tight turn is not nothing, I guess.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Yeah, I just don't see anything that MDF solves for GW that plastic wouldn't.

If they can internalise production or at least source it cheaply in the UK (evidently possible given the number of MDF terrain producers here), then they prevent reliance upon small run Chinese production and/or using their own injection machines for the terrain when they can't keep minis in stock.

As otherwise noted they don't really sell or supply much terrain and it's very obviously right under their noses that the vast bulk of their competition is MDF and they're forced to be around it constantly, so they will absolutely want a slice of that pie.

Terrain boxes probably take too much space to carry. Even MDF becomes very heavy very fast. I would not be surprised if they stick to minis only.

 kodos wrote:
for the terrain itself, the terrain the game needs changes every 3 years and GW does not want to produce that kind of terrain because as soon as it is functional for 40k, it looks bad

for mdf it is simply the time the machine needs to cut that
to produce more you need more machines and space, and most expensive parts of production is time and space

yet coloured plastic terrain that can be packed flat is not something new, and we get painted ones soon as well

Very little of what you wrote makes sense.

Tournaments are already using terrain that "looks bad" instead of using GW plastic terrain. GW MDF would look better than the MDF/foamcore that necessarily fills up a lot of current tournament tables.

To produce more plastic terrain you also need more machines and space, and the most expensive parts of producing plastic terrain are also time and space. You've written some words but not completed an argument about how MDF production would somehow be less appealing than plastic production.

Coloured plastic terrain "looks bad" unless it is painted; the colour of the plastic is irrelevant here. It also feels like you just made up an entire category of product lol. Please share links to the plastic terrain that packs up flat (not merely for the sake of this discussion, but because I might want to buy some). We're not talking about terrain sprues that are semi-flat on their way to the customer -- we're talking about terrain that *breaks down* into flat components for storage and transport, in-between use.

Most of the arguments against the potential validity of this rumour are very status quo-based, and remind me of historical arguments in the GW-space that proved out false over long enough spans of time:

15 years ago: "GW would NEVER bring the Primarchs back. The lack of hope and benevolent leaders is an essential quality of the IP. Also, they would NEVER change the aesthetics of Space Marines... Marines are their bread and butter faction!!"

10 years ago: "GW doesn't care about the tournament scene, and they never will. Competitive play is totally irrelevant to them as a company."

5 years ago: "There's no way GW would release a new game and pad out the rosters with old models. They have limited, precious production time and it would be absurd for them to run old moulds instead of new product. Besides, the old moulds are probably in disrepair or destroyed!"

Now: "GW only makes premium plastic terrain. Why would they want to make worse-looking, simplistic MDF terrain?"

 Altruizine wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
Seems like MDF products would have fat margins for reasonably low effort, too.

Quite the contrary, MDF terrain is actually fairly expensive to produce and the margins on it aren't all that great, and there's no real way to leverage economies of scale with it due to various limiting factors in terms of how its produced. The margins on plastic terrain are significantly greater

Why aren't the margins great? What are the limiting factors in terms of how its produced?

Well for one MDF isn't cheap. A building that can be produced for a dollars worth of plastic uses about $2.50-$5 worth of mdf depending on how the kit is designed. Cutting mdf is also time intensive, it will probably take let's say ~15 minutes to cut an mdf building - and they can probably cut ~4-5 such buildings simultaneously by stacking sheets on the cutter if they are using a higher end industrial cutter... or in the same time it took them to produce those 5 building kits they can probably produce around 100 plastic building kits. The plastic process can be entirely automated right through to packaging the kits in boxes, whereas the mdf kit needs to be manually handled and packaged making it additionally labor intensive to handle.

Then there's the logistical burden of acquiring, transporting, and storing very dense heavy mdf sheets and the resulting mdf products which comes at significant additional cost.

And then if you're talking about prepainted mdf terrain kits, it only gets even more expensive as that painting process is also a labor intensive one, and usually involves more complex kit designs that require even more material to produce and thus take correspondingly longer to cut and weigh more for shipping purposes.

 Altruizine wrote:

Plastic terrain can never be as painlessly functional as MDF terrain (unless it forsakes all of the advantageous qualities of plastic terrain in order to ape MDF terrain). Plastic terrain always requires painting and cannot be manufactured with finished surfaces out-of-the-box. Plastic terrain can't pack flat for storage and transport.

https://archon-studio.com/blog/prismacast-a-revelation-in-rpg-terrain-market

We machine paint sprues now

Dudeface wrote:
If they can internalise production or at least source it cheaply in the UK (evidently possible given the number of MDF terrain producers here), then they prevent reliance upon small run Chinese production and/or using their own injection machines for the terrain when they can't keep minis in stock.

I can't imagine them spinning up an MDF cutting facility when that space could be used to place down more plastic injection machines for significantly better ROI. And while outsourcing might be possible, and mostly eliminate the risk of delays, it would still hit the same fundamental problem that dictates the relatively small Chinese runs - warehousing.

Ignoring all that, I just don't buy the idea GW would be willing to produce something that is both inferior to their current designs AND has lower margins.

Only way I can see this vaguely making sense might be in a licensing fashion for tournaments?

But even then it seems a bit off, or that three letter acronym has gone through a few translations and tellings.

New reveals:

Custodes Shield Captain


Ork Big Mek



Accompanying battleforces:


Shield Captain, 5x Custodian Wardens, 6x Allarus Terminators, and 6x Vertus Praetors



new Big Mek, Stompa, 10x Boyz, Trukk, 10x Lootas

Shield captain looks a bit off.

People in the club are going nuts over the plastic Stompa release (meanwhile I am glancing at 15 years of dust on mine)

 Dawnbringer wrote:
Shield captain looks a bit off.

Its clearly a Votann that somehow sneaked into to rank of Shield Captain


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Custodes box is about 36% savings in € at the latest Battleforce prices (175€) which would be in line with the others but the Ork box would be about 48% if its the same price which is quite high.
It could still happen since most of the value is in the ancient kits with only the Boyz and the Big Mek being new and the Boyz aren't that valuable anyway since they are the monopose variant and are also in the CP.
But still I wouldn't be surprised if the Ork box is more expensive

I love that for the picture of the Ork one, they had to put the big lad in a hole to stop the shot looking wonky. 😂

The Custodes guy…if they were going to give them yet another Sheild Captain, they could at least have done the first female Custodes model.

The big meks face has kruleboyz vibes. It’s the pointy chin instead of the usual lantern jaw

that custodes box seems great for anyone trying to get into the faction... but i already have six bikes, so six more just seem like overkill. hope some people new to the army enjoy it

new shield captain is also a miss. the model is fine, but more shield captains aren't something i'm hurting for

however,

that ork box is incredibly funny and i'm glad the rumors turned out to be true. i don't play orks and i probably never will but the stompa amuses me so much so i'm glad they're doing something funny like putting it in a value box

pretty lowkey release overall, but that's what i expected. could've done with an extra upgrade sprue, tho


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Souleater wrote:

The Custodes guy…if they were going to give them yet another Sheild Captain, they could at least have done the first female Custodes model.

that would be pretty fun! i know sisters are there to be the female representation for the army, but they're all lithe and thing, so it would be fun to have some bulkier women to join the big boys

Yeah, I will try to get that BF. I just have a box of Wardens to test schemes on at the moment.

From the two heads for a Big Mek I prefer one with the goggles.