GW Models No Longer Modular

[appiah4]

This is a photo I took in 2016.

The four characters on the right were simple kitbashes I made with readily available GW parts.  This kind of unit customization is near impossible or simply impractical now.  As far as I am concerned none of these characters look significantly worse than any of the monopose Primaris counterparts.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I don't see how anything you've done there couldn't be achieved now?

I've put devastator weapons on intercessor bodies, swapped firstborn melee weapons onto Primaris arms, seen firstborn and sanguinary guard jump packs put on assault intercessor bodies. The heads and shoulders are compatible across both ranges.

I can do everything you've done, and my sergeant wouldn't look like he's broken at the waist.

[appiah4]

Right.  I dare you to kitbash me a running Primaris Chaplain with Blood Angels iconography.  Do it, and then I'll buy your claims.

[lansalt]

Kitbashing primaris with old kits is very easy. Custom torsos/legs are of course more difficult but it can be done using one of the released characters as a base, or just cutting and greenstuffing.

Here's a DC squad I found elsewhere.  A "running Primaris Chaplain with Blood Angels iconography" should not be a problem with the right bits like an assault intercessor body as a base.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

As much as I would love to build a model at great expense for an army I don't collect to win an argument on the internet, I won't.

What I can do, with ease, is provide images of the Tabletop Tactics chaplain from their Flesh Tearers army:

Chaplain: (Running/flying pose, BA/FT iconography.)

But I imagine you're point is that I can't do it with chapter specific legs or bodies, which is right, because they don't exist yet, Special characters and Templars aside.

But in terms of posing, everything is possible, and better.

 

[appiah4]

You do realize that every modular part used on that Chaplain is from oldmarine kits and once they are gone we are all :cussed, right?

[lansalt]

Why do you think all the old marine kits are going to dissapear? Not only they are still in production and sold, if anything GW has shown their willingness to make primaris versions of those like they did with BT. It's just a matter of time.

BTW you could kitbash an assault intercessor body, Indomitus primaris chaplain, and BA upgrades to do what you asked without much trouble.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I disagree entirely, look to the Black Templar range. GW replaced the old Templar specific stuff with far better quality parts and models with more modularity and more variety than we ever had before. Who's to say they won't do the same with other chapters going forwards?

[Schlitzaf]

To be on Adel point:

Pre-Refresh:

Black Templars had 5 Unique Kits + FW Kits. In current production.

Sword Brothern (5 Sculpts)

Characters  (6 Sculpts) (3 named + 3 cenos)

(all Finecast, originally metal. In their original form frustrating to convert because metal).

Upgrade Sprew (which has began to show its age)/Compatible Tactical Chassis from 2008.

 

 

Post-Refresh

8-10 Character Scupts (3 Named, 2.5 Generic, and 3-5 Cenos)

2 Squad Sculpts (Crusader Squad and SwordBros. Which between both kits have easily 30 unique “poses” or what have you).

1 Upgrade Kit (with Decals).

Then FW kits.

Crusader Squad Kit is compatible with any Tacticus/Cessor Chassis. I used it for Hellblaster and even SBro-Crusader Squads. SBros are too. And between my Assault Cessors, Cessors, SBros and Hellblasters, more or less every model is uniqueish. With weapons torso or what have you.

Templar refresh ADDED more poses and customization to the Templar range. And every bit within OG Templar Kits are in the new one. Except for Rhino Doors/Vehicle accessories.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

And, to be fair, we did get some vehicle accessories, which are better than what we had, doors aside.

[Slave to Darkness]

I can see the argument of 'well back in the day we had metal minis with no variation', sure thats a good point, but they moved away from that because of the repetition and they made a big deal about that when they made the old fantasy plastic regiments (I cant remember if it was Skeletons or Chaos Warriors that came first, I just remember the WD article with them patting themselves on the back like they have reinvented the wheel). Now it feels like GW have just gone back 20 years and expecting praise for doing so.

I also see the argument behind 'OG marines had more options to pose, but the poses dont look right', again yes thats true but at least we had the option to make badly posed minis, hell the awkward unnatural poses even came in handy to make custom possessed look a bit more 'weird', and we had full reign of our bits boxes because you knew everything will fit with everything else (except the Templar bodys with running legs, but 3 torsos not fitting isnt a big deal really compared to how many things did fit across the ranges). 

 

Guess its just one of those things were not gonna agree on as a community, and regardless of us all being on the same page or not doesnt matter, what we want to see isnt important to GW, as long as people keep buying stuff they will continue as nothing is wrong. 

[Noserenda]

Calling the modern style "non modular" is just such a patently ridiculous claim it undermines your whole argument folks, we lost one point of modularity and got vastly better poses, they are still cross compatible with their peer kits and a whole buttload of older ones too. Its just... bizarre to me, though again im old enough to have been kitbashing white metal kits in my formative years so this whole thing is still easy mode to me :D 

Its also trivial to just cut the torso off the legs if you absolutely must, just this afternoon i was swapping an older style torso front onto a modern legs/body model.

As to reasons why? Its obvious isnt it? The people who kitbash are still a minority among collectors. Most folks build pretty much straight out of the box with a little bit of head or weapon swapping. This change has made most 40k models significantly better, at the fairly minor cost of making kitbashers lives very slightly harder, honestly scale creep is much more of a problem :D 

[Slave to Darkness]

26 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

honestly scale creep is much more of a problem :D 

Tbh this is more of an issue lol, this and bad rules writing. 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Scale creep is particularly annoying in 30k right now, I want character model options, but compared to the box praetors all of the existing firstborn characters will look tiny.

[RWJP]

29 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Calling the modern style "non modular" is just such a patently ridiculous claim it undermines your whole argument folks, we lost one point of modularity and got vastly better poses, they are still cross compatible with their peer kits and a whole buttload of older ones too. 

This. There is still plenty of modularity within many modern kits, even with the move to torsos and legs being combined as one piece/pose.

I love the Firstborn kits, but there really wasn't as much you could do with the waist posing as some people imply. The actual range of movement before the poses started to look weird was fairly narrow.

[Bryan Blaire]

Once we start getting true Chapter specific torso + leg variants as well, hopefully we’ll start seeing some additional variety - however, the SW forum has been making Chapter specific torsos for Primaris pretty much since they came out using various methods.

 

It’s not currently hard to get some running Primaris bolt rifle Marines by using Assault Primaris torsos + legs, just like you had to do with standard Marine models.  You can even put bolt rifles or CCWs onto the Bladeguard models (if you really like those silly looking bodies) if you want, and you can swap pauldrons, helmets, and backpacks really easily - Primaris can take old style power plants with some very quick trimming.

 

What we are limited on right now are the Chapter specific loyalist side Primaris stuff (can’t speak specifically to the new Chaos Marine stuff, I haven’t been able to acquire any of that just yet, but I understand that you have some swapping of torsos that can happen within a kit, but likely not as easily done outside of a specific kit).

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

On 6/28/2022 at 12:11 AM, appiah5 said:

Have you ever actually browsed the bitz catalogue of a decent bitz site, like bitsbox.co.uk?  Just run a search for space marine legs.  You will be enlightened.

It's really amazing that people can pretend boxes like Deathwatch Kill Team do not exist just to justify arguments.

 No, in my 22 years in this hobby I have never seen a bits site /s..and did you really just send me to a random electronics bits site to prove your point? 

Such enlightenment 

Spoiler

 

23 hours ago, Bryan Blaire said:

Once we start getting true Chapter specific torso + leg variants as well, hopefully we’ll start seeing some additional variety

Pretty much been my view of the whole thing. The primaris range is still relatively new all things (GW) considered, it will be interesting to see all the options once its had several editions and releases over the decades like the firstborn line did.

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Mechanicus Tech-Support

[Sword Brother Adelard]

32 minutes ago, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

Pretty much been my view of the whole thing. The primaris range is still relatively new all things (GW) considered, it will be interesting to see all the options once its had several editions and releases over the decades like the firstborn line did.

And that's the best bit. We've had less than 5 years of Primaris, and we already have more dynamism, modularity and variety than we did with 15+ years of the old marine kits. That's not to slag those kits off, but just to highlight how good the range is, and other ranges are likely to be.

[Slave to Darkness]

1 hour ago, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

 No, in my 22 years in this hobby I have never seen a bits site..and did you really just send me to a random electronics bits site to prove your point? 

Such enlightenment 

  Hide contents

 

Pretty much been my view of the whole thing. The primaris range is still relatively new all things (GW) considered, it will be interesting to see all the options once its had several editions and releases over the decades like the firstborn line did.

 

 

[Gederas]

18 hours ago, appiah5 said:

This is pure bull:cuss. The GW back catalog is full of squat, straight, walking, running, kneeling legs. From all kinds of armor marks. With all kinds of decorations and chapter markings. The lies people tell to justify GW is astounding.

Are they all from the same kit? No? So kitbashing to add more variety? So.....

13 hours ago, sarabando said:

except you know... the tactical squad...assault marines...bikers.....characters...devastators....vanguard.....sternguard............. most of these kits have been out in some form since 3rd edition. 

So... You mean -GASP- the same thing you can do now with Primaris of the same Mark X armour variants?

 

This thread honestly just comes across as bashing GW because any change is bad

Edited June 28, 2022 by Gederas

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

22 hours ago, Slave to Darkness said:

Snipping the image here as we dont need a repeat of that on the page

Im aware slave, I was being flippant and using the link that was posted in response to my post which took me to an electronic bits site, bits vs bitz hehe

Edited June 29, 2022 by Mechanicus Tech-Support

[Brother Captain Arkley]

Used to care, but I am full in on the Primaris, I love the range (Screw Hellblaster bodies thou).

I feel while some of my Intercessors might look similar I feel I have made enough subtle changes for them to look good.

 

[bigtrouble]

Look at the significant trend in design complexity from the first plastic sprues to now. They have to form a cohesive unit, so kits all look very different from each other, which was not at all the case with 3rd ed plastic kits, where every kit was pretty similar in many ways.

 

The first plastic sprues were all created from hand sculpts, and so to fit together tightly they needed pretty simple flat or curved terminal surfaces that could be easily replicated. Making different legs and such was just a way to give the units more of a natural feel through variation.

 

Now, everything is 3D modeled, which means designers can make really intricate details and "lifelike" poses, but they have to include nubs and holes of odd shapes to encourage the right fit with proper surface area for gluing and so they don't get mixed up. The other thing 3D modeling has done is allow them to increase the sprue density (pieces per sprue), which saves on costs like labor, packaging, shipping.

 

While I do see that the simplicity was nice from the hobbyists perspective, variety is still possible by combining kits and getting good with the hobby tools at hand. Perhaps GW looked at how bits were being used and decided that was losing money for them, but in my mind, I think they are just trying to create the freshest, coolest models they can, and that looks different now than it did 20 years ago.