Why is there no plastic Space Marine super heavy?

[DesuVult]

I feel like there was plans for an Overlord but it seems like it has been dropped from planning as it doesn't seem to be showing up in novels much anymore and primaris are just using thunderhawks.

[Urauloth]

We haven't been given an exact size, but a Thunderhawk carries 30 warriors in power armour and an Overlord can carry 80 in mixed armour types. I feel like that's approaching Manta levels of "you don't actually put this on the gaming table" as far as a potential miniature goes.

[DesuVult]

58 minutes ago, Urauloth said:

We haven't been given an exact size, but a Thunderhawk carries 30 warriors in power armour and an Overlord can carry 80 in mixed armour types. I feel like that's approaching Manta levels of "you don't actually put this on the gaming table" as far as a potential miniature goes.

You dare insult the noble Sokar?  I will assemble it one of these days.

[Burni]

Great point about the potential size, forgot about that description. Maybe we’ll need some sort of ‘underlord’…?

 

I’ll see myself out…

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

Well we’ve gotten plastic sisters of battle, plastic squats, so a plastic thunder hawk is surely next.  

[Matcap86]

"Spawn more overlords!" Wait wrong game/setting. 

[Redcomet]

53 minutes ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

Well we’ve gotten plastic sisters of battle, plastic squats, so a plastic thunder hawk is surely next.  

Every SM player would want one and every CSM player too. Yes it would be a big expense to make one for Gw, but I can’t see it not being a mega success.

Edited December 12, 2022 by Redcomet

[WARMASTER_]

2 hours ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

Well we’ve gotten plastic sisters of battle, plastic squats, so a plastic thunder hawk is surely next.  

More likely to see the Stormeagle/Fireraptor next I’d say, It’s a very popular Heresy kit that double for 40K and it’s a double Kit that people would buy multiples of 

[Noserenda]

I suspect the Overlord ran afoul of forgeworld winding down 40k releases. 

 

I could see a Thunderhawk selling well, but it would need a hell of a lot of sprues, possibly using the cheaper terrain ones for a lot of the hull?

[Stitch5000]

I've never really understood the burgeoning desire to have plastic thunderhawks etc... They really don't make the game any better for being there and instead become large, awkward to manage obstacles. 

Even in plastic a Thunderhawk is going to cost up to ~£400. I'd personally much rather start a new army that was actually portable and useable.

In my mind that's probably why they have never been done for SM... They just won't add much. Other forces probably have space for them, because they are supposed to NEED them to combat the spezz murns. 

[Redcomet]

1 minute ago, Stitch5000 said:

I've never really understood the burgeoning desire to have plastic thunderhawks etc... They really don't make the game any better for being there and instead become large, awkward to manage obstacles. 

Even in plastic a Thunderhawk is going to cost up to ~£400. I'd personally much rather start a new army that was actually portable and useable.

In my mind that's probably why they have never been done for SM... They just won't add much. Other forces probably have space for them, because they are supposed to NEED them to combat the spezz murns. 

It looks great on display.

 

Is a very fun hobby project.

 

Adds a cool item to a collection.

 

Works as terrain or scenario objectives 

 

Can be used as diorama or Army on Parades.

40 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

I suspect the Overlord ran afoul of forgeworld winding down 40k releases. 

 

I could see a Thunderhawk selling well, but it would need a hell of a lot of sprues, possibly using the cheaper terrain ones for a lot of the hull?

Bandai makes Gundam kits with 30+ sprues in them so it can be done

[Robbienw]

Plastic fellblade please!

[Stitch5000]

54 minutes ago, Redcomet said:

It looks great on display.

 

Is a very fun hobby project.

 

Adds a cool item to a collection.

 

Works as terrain or scenario objectives 

 

Can be used as diorama or Army on Parades.

Don't worry, me posting probably isn't going to be the swing vote over it getting made or not.

Your above points don;t really seem to align with GW's modus operandi of recent times though... I just can't see if being high on the release chart and it's going to be a hard sell, based on it not really being "meta critical". 

Edited December 12, 2022 by Stitch5000

[Ahzek451]

The hawk is so iconic. For the reasons Redcomet already mentioned, I think a lot of folk would get one. It would be similar to those interested in a warhound titan, but cheaper and something for the poster boy armies + chaos. Heck, I own 3 and a sokar and if they made a plastic kit I would still end up getting one. 

Unfortunately I can see rule-wise being a clunky mess to manage for GW. For a period. IF they did release one, it would likely come with a way to play in basic games, and perhaps become more appealing and usable than the current Imperial Armour rules (because new, space marine, shiny and plastic), but eventually find its way back into mostly being used in large non-tournament games or APOC. 

 

Perhaps a release on the next version of APOC(if there is one).

Edited December 12, 2022 by Ahzek451

[Noserenda]

5 hours ago, Redcomet said:

 

Bandai makes Gundam kits with 30+ sprues in them so it can be done

 

Oh yeah bandai has lots of cool toys, I'm only mentioning it because sprue count was shared by someone in the know as the major obstacle to bigger plastic kits a few years back :)

 

Worth mentioning that rules are essentially never a big reason for a kit to release or not, they are always bottom of the pyramid with these things.

[Marshal Reinhard]

Quote

 

8 hours ago, Noserenda said:

I suspect the Overlord ran afoul of forgeworld winding down 40k releases. 

A steep price paid for the advent of the horus heresy game, the obliteration of most of FW's 40k support.

Edited December 12, 2022 by Marshal Reinhard

[jimbo1701]

Plastic thunderhawk and warhound. If only. I mean they kind of have but wrong scale. 

[MegaVolt87]

Since the release of the stormbird, the thunder hawk lost a lot of it's appeal to me. Would rather have a plastic stormbird instead. 

[WARMASTER_]

31 minutes ago, jimbo1701 said:

Plastic thunderhawk and warhound. If only. I mean they kind of have but wrong scale. 

I might coupla twists on the old scale dials and bada bing you know! 
 

In all seriousness though they literally have the CAD as when making them bigger they only have to change a few bits here and there so it should only be a matter of time…

[DesuVult]

9 hours ago, Stitch5000 said:

I've never really understood the burgeoning desire to have plastic thunderhawks etc... They really don't make the game any better for being there and instead become large, awkward to manage obstacles. 

Even in plastic a Thunderhawk is going to cost up to ~£400. I'd personally much rather start a new army that was actually portable and useable.

In my mind that's probably why they have never been done for SM... They just won't add much. Other forces probably have space for them, because they are supposed to NEED them to combat the spezz murns. 

Aesthetic. 

[Evil Eye]

I feel like having a plastic Thunderhawk would be cool from a hobby perspective but I really hope they don't try and make them a meta staple. I'm not against super-heavies having rules (Knights and Baneblades are cool if used sparingly and not in every single game) but there's a certain cutoff point where a model goes from "cool centrepiece boss unit" to "awkward lump that either breaks the game or is completely useless on the table". Thunderhawks, cool though they are, cross over that line for me even if they aren't Manta-tier ridiculous and should be reserved for Apocalypse (or whatever it becomes in the next edition).

 

In terms of an actual hobby project though a plastic Thunderhawk would be cool. That said (and maybe this is a subject that deserves its own thread) I feel like it would benefit from being a FW "mixed media" kit- the hull and structural elements that need to be precisely shaped but less detail-heavy, are plastic whilst more intricate parts are resin. Kinda like how a lot of scale models use resin (even if only as upgrade kits) for super-detailed parts where plastic would be impractical, such as engines and the like. I actually think this would be a good way for FW to keep a niche in the hobby; their sculpts are great and their finely-detailed parts are wonderful, but their vehicles especially tended to be horrible to actually put together.  A "superdetailing" kit for the plastic Spartan would be pretty cool, and much more fun than trying to assemble the old OOP resin one!

 

As a TLDR to that, I'd like a plastic Thunderhawk but I'm not sure about it being an actual playable unit. It being a flier doesn't help either; an equivalently sized tank would be more manageable at least by virtue of not being precariously balanced on a flying stand!

[9x19 Parabellum]

I'm totally with Evil Eye on this.

 

Big "centerpiece" models, be they flyers, super heavies, or primarchs, are always, in my opinion, problematic....or at least highly likely to be problematic.

 

They either work like they are described in the fluff, in which case the person playing against it is not having a good time, or they don't work like they do in the fluff, in which the controlling player is not having a good time.  Either way it seems someone is disappointed.

 

I don't like playing against Daemon Primarchs and such. Because when they come out, the game is no longer about our 2 armies. Now the whole game is entirely about your Daemon Primarch and whether I can manage to get you to roll  2's on your saves.  Playing against Daemon Primarchs is kind of like the bride's friend wearing a white dress to her wedding...gotta steal the limelight and make it all about her.   I'm not even big on running something like Morvenn Vahl, frankly.

 

Anyway just my 2 cents.

 

[Karhedron]

On 12/12/2022 at 9:13 PM, WARMASTER_ said:

In all seriousness though they literally have the CAD as when making them bigger they only have to change a few bits here and there so it should only be a matter of time…

 

Sadly it is not that simple to rescale plastic kits. I have looked into this for another hobby (model trains) and you basically have to start again from scratch. Pieces that can be represented as surface detail on an Aeronautic model will need to be taken out and modelled as separate pieces. The thickness of the parts will be all wrong at 40K scale. The extra parts will need to be laid out on a sprue. GW would basically need to start from scratch if creating a 40K-scale Thunderhawk.

 

And to be fair, producing the CAD work is only about 10% of the total development costs. Most of the cost of creating a new kit goes into making the plastic molds. GW makes very long-lived molds, good for hundreds of thousands of uses (Eldar and Guard Tanks date from the last century and many Marine vehicle kits are ~20 years old). This means they are machined from very hard steel which is the most expensive kind of mold to produce. They could easily cost £100K per sprue and I imagine a plastic Thunderhawk would need a lot f sprues.

 

Would a plastic Thunderhawk sell? I am sure it would. Would it sell enough to recoup its development costs? Probably. Would it make GW more money than the same investment made into 3-4 other kits that can be sold in multiples? I am not so sure about that. The question is not whether a kit would sell. It is whether the kit will be as profitable as smaller kits that can be sold more time.

[Guest]

On 12/12/2022 at 9:25 AM, matcap86 said:

"Spawn more overlords!" Wait wrong game/setting. 

You require more minerals. :)

 

I want a Thunderhawk so badly.

[WARMASTER_]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

Sadly it is not that simple to rescale plastic kits. I have looked into this for another hobby (model trains) and you basically have to start again from scratch. Pieces that can be represented as surface detail on an Aeronautic model will need to be taken out and modelled as separate pieces. The thickness of the parts will be all wrong at 40K scale. The extra parts will need to be laid out on a sprue. GW would basically need to start from scratch if creating a 40K-scale Thunderhawk.

 

And to be fair, producing the CAD work is only about 10% of the total development costs. Most of the cost of creating a new kit goes into making the plastic molds. GW makes very long-lived molds, good for hundreds of thousands of uses (Eldar and Guard Tanks date from the last century and many Marine vehicle kits are ~20 years old). This means they are machined from very hard steel which is the most expensive kind of mold to produce. They could easily cost £100K per sprue and I imagine a plastic Thunderhawk would need a lot f sprues.

 

Would a plastic Thunderhawk sell? I am sure it would. Would it sell enough to recoup its development costs? Probably. Would it make GW more money than the same investment made into 3-4 other kits that can be sold in multiples? I am not so sure about that. The question is not whether a kit would sell. It is whether the kit will be as profitable as smaller kits that can be sold more time.

You know I was under the same assumption about re scaling kits but in a Vox Cast a GW sculptor straight up talked about a scale increase in a design he did was only about 5% more work, I’ll try and find the link. We’re both forgetting anyway that they already had the 28mm CAD from the Resin Thunderhawk redesign in 2014 was it? 
 

I take your point on the pricing and I agree with most of it but I also think GW have at least somewhat transcended the worry of will it sell enough compared to x now, the customer base is so large I just don’t think it’s as much of a worry, we’re getting plastic Limited edition HQ’s so even in Limited Edition runs they’re recouping costs or they don’t mind having loss leaders

 

We’re even getting kits like say the Zoat and if all they were worried about was would x kits out sell y instead we wouldn’t be getting those kinds of passion projects from GW