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What are they going to do with all of the metal minis now?
Nobody is going to pay the two arms a leg and your firstborn child prices for them now that Plastic sisters have been announced, even if they are a year off.

Unless the plastic sisters thing is a really early April fools day joke.

Just curious.

 Madoch1 wrote:
What are they going to do with all of the metal minis now?
Nobody is going to pay the two arms a leg and your firstborn child prices for them now that Plastic sisters have been announced, even if they are a year off.

Unless the plastic sisters thing is a really early April fools day joke.

Just curious.

Probably just sell through. chances are they dont have much stock anyway and were waiting for them to get lower to drop this news.

Depending on the new models they may keep some available assuming the new ones are similar to the old. The special weapons ones would be a prime candidate like the Cadian plasma guys you can still get. Most I imagine will be retired however if the new range is extensive enough.

What they do with all models that have been replaced in plastic - discontinue production and slowly phase out the product.

The correct answer is,

'I'm going to buy all of them.'

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
The correct answer is,

'I'm going to buy all of them.'

I'll race you. I still need a few Retribs and Inferno Pistol Seraphim.

There are a lot of people who are "finishing" Sisters of Battle forces, or need X number of models to finish out squads. There are also plenty of people who don't trust GW to come up with a matching or similar aesthetic.

The good thing about metal minis from the production standpoint is they can always be resmelted back into ingots for sale back on the metal markets.

They've done this before (and with the price jump since they were a mostly metals company, they offset some of the costs of upgrading to mostly plastics).

They may keep moulds for the special weapons until they tool up for plastics (or transition them to *spits* finecrap)

I'll buy some Seraphim, just cuz they're the only metal models I like. Even tho I hate metal minis.

Even if the Emperor Wills that they get the job done in 2019, that could still be up to 21 months away. Normally, about to be replaced models and books go unavailable a few months before the new release. If they keep up with idea of telling us what is coming through the process, they will let us know when that cut off is.

A lot of players are still hoping to complete their metal armies or are living with the very real issue of scale creep making the old models look tiny next to the new ones. Depending on the direction GW takes them, we could be looking at an entirely new aesthetic as well. Lots of reasons to buy them right up until the line gets pulled to make way for the new ones.

 BBAP wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
The correct answer is,

'I'm going to buy all of them.'

I'll race you. I still need a few Retribs and Inferno Pistol Seraphim.

You have competition. I meet more Rets and SB Doms.

Now I know who keeps bloody well outbidding me...

I suspect they keep very little actual stock. It's web order only in unmarked boxes and not unknown to be unavailable week to week.
Easy enough to run off a couple more whenever they need to top up on specific models, not as if they are using the equipment for anything else aside from the made to order lines.

The made to order lines for fantasy suggest that GW keeps a lot of old moulds around even when a line is discontinued. Of course there are limits and they have, in the past, destroyed whole blocks of moulds (its not just storage but also if they are never using them again its metal moulds which can at least be melted down and sold for metal value).

So they might well keep them around; but otherwise chances are they will just trickle out production as needed until the plastics come out and then cease all metal production on anything thta has a plastic variation.


Many gamers do like legacy models and will still collect them. Some even go up in value (rare) eg the old metal succubus. So if there are some iconic or popular metal versions people might well grab them before they are gone for good (metals on ebay tend to keep their value and even go up somewhat; metal being durable, good to paint strip)

phillv85 wrote:
Depending on the new models they may keep some available assuming the new ones are similar to the old. The special weapons ones would be a prime candidate like the Cadian plasma guys you can still get. Most I imagine will be retired however if the new range is extensive enough.

The cadians are a thing because the IG box does not include plasma or melta guns.

If the new SoB box includes all of the specials (which is certainly the trend) then I would expect the metals to get discontinued. Especially since the new plastics will almost certainly not still well with the old metals.

Either they'll melt them down or sell them as legacy miniatures now and then to cash in on nostalgia and hipsters.