Jan 2024 GW Half-Yearly (Financial) Report: decent for investors, better for customers

[Scribe]

So, we are now fully and openly in the 'we have a production issue' stage?

[Verevolf]

On the raw production of plastic models. Now I’m not an expert on extruded plastic production, ask me about fourdrinier machines. But can’t gw get third parties to produce the models as a stop gap?

[Focslain]

28 minutes ago, Verevolf said:

On the raw production of plastic models. Now I’m not an expert on extruded plastic production, ask me about fourdrinier machines. But can’t gw get third parties to produce the models as a stop gap?

Think this runs into the quality control issue that keeps them wanting to do as much as possible in house. Not to mention transport of the molds.

[RWJP]

5 hours ago, Verevolf said:

On the raw production of plastic models. Now I’m not an expert on extruded plastic production, ask me about fourdrinier machines. But can’t gw get third parties to produce the models as a stop gap?

Technically speaking any company with compatible injection moulding machines could make minis for GW. 

But doing so would require moulds being shipped out to those companies, and I would imagine GW is not at all keen on that. The risk of stuff being lost/stolen/damaged goes up immensely.

As Frater @Focslain mentions there's also quality control to consider. GW knows what they're doing after making minis for decades. A company that has previously specialised in injection moulding completely different products won't, and as such there's a reasonable chance that minis produced in a different factory by a different company wouldn't meet the same quality standards as those made by GW. 

[Orion]

1 hour ago, RWJP said:

But doing so would require moulds being shipped out to those companies, and I would imagine GW is not at all keen on that. The risk of stuff being lost/stolen/damaged goes up immensely.

 

Is that where the plastic Chinese Knight and Redemptor came from?

Chinese factories moonlighting?

 

I can see why GW would not be keen on that.

I just think they shouldn't leave the UK in general.

 

[N1SB]

On 1/12/2024 at 2:58 AM, Scribe said:

So, we are now fully and openly in the 'we have a production issue' stage?

 

I absolutely agree with you, and I remember the conversation, Brother Scribe:

 

• Someone asked the right question, paraphrasing here, at some point production bottleneck will affect GW's business performance
• And paraphrasing what iirc you and others said, look behind us, Brother, it already has

 

I thought that was the best answer, but our Brother's question remains relevant...when was that point?  And I do think it was HH 2.0.

 

 

Of course, it's not just production, it's knowing what to produce

 

Others already mentioned it and it just got me thinking, and Brother Red Comet (Char Aznable himself from the Gundam series, and just for a bit of fun in Hong Kong we call him "Masa", because his alias was Edward Mass and that's the name used in the local dub) said something: SKU bloat.

 

Stock Keeping Unit proliferation.  Each type of unit is a different product or Stock Keeping Unit, or...a Redemptor Dread isn't a Brutalis.

 

So why do I bring up Redemptors vs. Brutalis?  Just a thing that happened before Christmas.  A mom was buying a present for her son, he plays 40k, she already DID her research, she's a very understanding parent, but it was kinda this personal epiphany moment of the issue with SKU bloat.

 

The Warhammer Store Manager was busy ringing up a sale, so she turns to me, tells me her son plays Space Marines.

 

That's already very helpful, so I ask her what colour her son paints them, she tells me, "Blue."  She KNEW it matters.

 

So I say to myself, "Oh, Ultramarines," and she says, "No...a little bit lighter than that."  And you know what she means, ultramarine is actually the name of a dark blue colour.  Being an experienced salesperson, of course I did NOT correct her, because her answer told me everything I needed to know.

 

I took her to the Primaris aisle, all the box art are Ultramarines ("no, a little bit lighter") and she recognises them, "Oh yes, like these," that pleases her, in her mind my stock went up as a trusted advisor, we're making progress.  I'm gazing intently, pointing to the shelf at the Primaris Dreadnoughts.

 

As with most people here in Hong Kong, English is the 2nd language, and she's like, "Oh, Dreadnought, not Dread Not!"  She then continues, "I've heard my son mention this, I thought it was a phrase," like she thought a "dread not" unit meant like "overpowered," so you never have to worry about it.

 

She continues, "This must be a very powerful TOY."  I'm still smiling externally, but I'm secretly screaming internally.

 

By this time, the Warhammer Store Manager (great guy) rushes over, I explain she's buying a gift for her son.

 

(I'm using a pseudonym to hide the identity of the player, he's a minor, personal identifiable info, etc.)

 

Here's how good a guy and sales guy he is, "Oh, you must be Little Timmy's mother.  He plays Ultramarines."  She's still going, "No, it's a little bit lighter than ultramarine, but yes," and of course he did NOT correct her, but regardless of the product she was so sold on the 2 of us.

 

I know Little Timmy.  He's one of those young kids who you can tell is already smarter than many players, he already knows the game is based on objectives rather than killing stuff, and I'm thinking aloud like, "He's very objective-based, tactical," I can see her just inflate from praise for her son.

 

The Warhammer Store Manager and I exchange glances, "Redemptor Dreadnought."  One of the top Marine units, flexible, ranged so he could cap an Objective and still do damage.  I'm going through the Dreadnought boxes looking for a Redemptor, but I realised the Warhammer Store Manager paused.

 

Here's why: he had like 6 Brutalis Dreadnoughts in inventory and not a single Redemptor, and he knew it.

 

This mom was looking at 2 grown men, whom she judged as experts, panicking over not just a "toy", but the right arms for it.

 

 

The Redemptor-Brutalis Theorem of Economics

 

To the mom in this story, the Redemptor and Brutalis is the same "toy", but you all know the significance of that little difference.

(Above, I had a thing about how Brother Red Comet's namesake is called Char in most countries and Masa here, but sometimes a name is not just a name, a rose is not a rose, a Redemptor is not a Brutalis.  And this indeed relates to my point.)

 

Economics has different theories for SKU proliferation and search costs.  SKU proliferation is too many product types, it's part of supply chain mgmt.  Search costs is matchmaking buyers and sellers, like an economy has lots of jobs that need filling and lots of job seekers, but they're just not matching up.

 

It's the search cost component that is an extra dimension of difficulty for GW's production issues, and I don't want to lose sight of that.  

 

But afaik there's not a mainstream theory of how the 2 are directly connected, but clearly they are.  Ergo, Redemptor-Brutalis Theorem.

 

Economics will talk about the heterogeneity of products or whatever, but afaik they don't do a good job talking about HOW MUCH it matters, just that it exists yes or no, or how it affects related purchases.  Not having enough Demios Pattern Rhinos can be a showstopper for an entire HH 2.0 army project.

 

Now think of not just individual players, but a whole player meta in any area.  Only when a few people actually play HH 2.0 will the rest jump in.  Economics tend to treat individual consumers macroscopically, like lots of customers doing their own thing, without thinking how they affect one another.

(My problem with the field of economics is it's like half an Ultramarine: they do all Theoretical and no Practical, but you need both.)

 

GW's product groups are competing to get 40k or Legiones Imperialis or AoS or Old World time on their limited pool of magical mini machines.  I hope they got some kid who's an Excel Jockey watching Auspex Tactics or Goonhammer all day, using their recommendations in their forecast models.

 

GW probably uses Metawatch as a forecasting tool.  If not, I certainly hope they start.  They gotta collect that data anyway.

 

And YES, GW is clearly working on this.  The jargon they use is inventory and ERP systems, but I see it regularly, and I know THEY know.  And I love to complain about not getting the stuff I want for ready money as much as anyone, and I do understand the difficulty.  It's an extra dimension of difficulty.

 

But...when I see 2 whole new product lines sell out in under half an hour recently, we're also clearly way past that point.

 

Btw, the Warhammer Store Manager managed to get Little Timmy's mom the Redemptor Dreadnought...and thus Christmas was saved.

Edited January 13 by N1SB

[Scribe]

On 1/13/2024 at 6:21 AM, N1SB said:

This mom was looking at 2 grown men, whom she judged as experts, panicking over not just a "toy", but the right arms for it.

 

On 1/13/2024 at 6:21 AM, N1SB said:

Btw, the Warhammer Store Manager managed to get Little Timmy's mom the Redemptor Dreadnought...and thus Christmas was saved.

 

I was nodding sagely, hoping for this conclusion.

 

 

On 1/13/2024 at 6:21 AM, N1SB said:

Not having enough Demios Pattern Rhinos can be a showstopper for an entire HH 2.0 army project.

 

Now think of not just individual players, but a whole player meta in any area.  Only when a few people actually play HH 2.0 will the rest jump in.  Economics tend to treat individual consumers macroscopically, like lots of customers doing their own thing, without thinking how they affect one another.

 

Oh and this bit.

 

If you are reading GW...this matters a lot.

[N1SB]

11 hours ago, Verevolf said:

On the raw production of plastic models. Now I’m not an expert on extruded plastic production, ask me about fourdrinier machines. But can’t gw get third parties to produce the models as a stop gap?

 

And now I will talk about Gundam some more, BUT it's directly related to Warhammer, for realsies!

 

So I'm hanging out at the Warhammer Store again, guy and his girlfriend in the store, not only do I not recognise them but I can tell from their body language they're completely new to Warhammer, it's not like they played Total War:hammer or anything.  Guy's politely asking if he could touch an AoS mini, so respectful.

 

I'm not selling, out of instinct I found the best way to sell is to not sell, just share, and I shared my take, "These fantasy minis are so life-like now."

 

Guy's like, "Oh, yeah...yeah.  It's this plastic.  How is it so strong?"  The Chinese word he used was "tough", but like a muscle.  It was weird.

 

But here's what he meant.  He does Gundam model kits; we're in Asia, we're practically handed a Gundam sprue with a milk bottle in our infancy.  And the plastic Bandai (a GW licensing partner, see, 40k-related) uses is totally different.  I never thought about it before  GW plastic, by comparison, is indeed muscular!

 

It's one of them under-the-hood things.  Not all plastic is the same, there are different grades, like really nice beef, like Wagyu.

 

To make the best use of high quality plastic, you design both the products and customise your mould injection machines accordingly!

 

Like you, I'm no expert, so I asked my friend Timperial Guard, who is.  He's the best painter I personally know, and worked in plastic manufacturing.

 

We just finished talking PCs, our own Desktop gaming rigs, so he said, "(in practice) Plastic mould injection machines are just like your PC."

 

Being dumb, of course I pushed back, "How can GW's plastic mould injection machine POSSIBLY be just like my PC, this custom high-performance machine assembled to my specific specifications for my work and play needs, that I clean installed for optimal efficiency, at the lowest cost possib...OOOOOH."

 

Timperial Guard, now the Head Teacher at a fancy private school using the Socratic Method of teaching on me, replied, "Exactly."

 

I don't trust anyone but me to fix my PC, to even clean it out (as I should do soon).  I'm not even afraid of them spying or even the quality of their work, they're just not in-sync with its Machine Spirit as I am.  They just don't know their way around.  So all the above issues are correct, but it's simple things like maintenance.

 

But financially, you are absolutely right, it's what I thought too, companies actually "divest" their outsourcing to different factories, that's the trend right now.  Finance gets the glory, but Operations wins the game.  Operationally, it probably makes more sense for GW to expand in Nottingham.

[RWJP]

8 hours ago, Orion said:

Is that where the plastic Chinese Knight and Redemptor came from?

Chinese factories moonlighting?

 

I can see why GW would not be keen on that.

I just think they shouldn't leave the UK in general.

I'd not seen those pictures before! 

Judging by the fact that the sprue layout is different for the knockoff model, I would guess that this is not a case of them getting hold of actual moulds, but more a case of them getting the parts, and "reverse engineering" them by effectively using them as masters to create their own moulds.

And as a Brit, I agree entirely, having a successful company like GW actually still be based in the UK is a fantastic thing in my eyes. A homegrown success story that is still here is a good thing for the UK.

[Kastor Krieg]

15 hours ago, Focslain said:

Think this runs into the quality control issue that keeps them wanting to do as much as possible in house. Not to mention transport of the molds.

Their best bet would be getting them literally across the street to Warlord Games.

[Firedrake Cordova]

Part of me wonders if they could/would re-partner with Renedra, as they used to make their moulds for them before they moved it in-house. Having said that, I would imagine that they had their hands full doing the casting for Perry Miniatures, etc. I would imagine GW would rather have everything in-house so they have control over availability, etc, which they wouldn't have with a third-party (i.e. the risk of someone else buying all their production time).

 

Ultimately, as a customer it's frustrating not being able to get something you want, but it's also "not the end of the world" (personally, I wish they'd slow their releases down for a bit so they can re-stock so people can get the models they want).

[Nephaston]

18 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

*snip*

 

So what I get from, admittedly, skimming this is a good chunk of GWs problems could be solved by smarter sprue design like they kind of already do in heresy, where it's base kits that have muliple purpose assemblies unlike 40k and AoS where every unit has its own kit.

 

I made this example before but loyalist marines could just be: phobos bolter squad, tacticus bolter squad, gravis bolter squad, alt weapons/equipment sprue, small vehicle, big vehicle, tank sprue for said vehicles, dreadnought with multiple options, terminators with options, scouts with options, speeder kit, bike kit, one character kit per armour with all the options to build any type of character (or squad type kit that either has one of every character type in the same armour type, or a squad type kit that has the same character type but one of every armour style). Now if this seems like a lot it really isn't, as taking every kit into account this comes down to multiple kits per each item listed here. Tacticus alone has 9 kits on it's own, including ETB, 12 when including retired ETB ones. That could be 8 to 11 shelf or design spaces one could use for other armies/kits/items.

[Noserenda]

Would you want to pay (at best) 3 or 4 times the current cost for some dozen options in one box kit though? And really as a modeller I see substantial benefits to having lots of different bodies even if they are wearing the same armour, the heresy pose clone armies are pretty off-putting honestly.

 

Warlord don't cast in house afaik, they use Renedra too :D Really with outsourcing I think it's definitely something they've examined, you don't outsource to China without at least looking at local options after all, can their machines even handle gw sprues these days? (I'm building a whole load of Renedra sprues right now and they are significantly less dense than modern gw ones) genuine question I know very little about the technicalities :D

[Nephaston]

24 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Would you want to pay (at best) 3 or 4 times the current cost for some dozen options in one box kit though? And really as a modeller I see substantial benefits to having lots of different bodies even if they are wearing the same armour, the heresy pose clone armies are pretty off-putting honestly.

 

Yes. I would take that trade any day.

Sure, preferably it would be at 10 models per bunch instead of 30ks 5, and then at 5 standing/striding poses and 5 running poses, but that is already plenty as, imo, most of the actual flavour of posing is in the arms rather than the legs.

Take you regular bolter marine in a standing pose, legs would be one of five poses, sure, but when you get to the arms you have 2-handed arm configs (barrel up, barrel down, aiming down sights, horizontal firing, reloading) and 1-handed arm configs (pointing with finger, pointing with pistol, holding knife, signaling to hold, holding pistol ready with strapped gun, checking wrist screen right, for the right handed options. Cradling weapon, signaling open handed, checking arm screen left, for the left arm). As you may or may not notice those are the options of the current Intercessors kit (2 sprues) and already work out to 115 combinations (if my math is correct) and once we add running poses this should (if I mathed correctly) go up to 230 combinations.

 

Now in how I imagine a sort of one size fits all tacticus kit you'd ideally of course go up to 3 sprues to really have room for all the bits and bobs like alternative helmets, shoulders, potential backpack toppers, some alternative chests, which is perfectly doable with the embossed pectoral design without multiplying the same option for every chest, and extra arms for more than 9 single arm option, like throwing frag grenade, smoke grenade, melee weapons for the sergeant that didn't come in the base kit, auspexes which only came in the etb version or UM upgrades iirc, cyborg arms, perhaps even some idle gesturing arms. Take the warhammer heroes intercessors for example, what exactly do their legs do much different than what we already got from the intercessor/assault intercessor kit? They are standing/striding/running. Sure their legs might be at a slightly different angle, but most people beyond the most obsessive will barely notice. Their main difference lies in their arms like chucking a grenade or reloading (which is an inverse but not mirrored version of the basic intercessor bits, but already a major difference). the other two intercessors are a guy aiming, who will not look much different from any other aiming schmuck beyond his sculpted base, and chainsword guy who is one of those weird mid-step poses that do not look good because, imo, of all possible frames of a running person one could take, only some of the look good. Another example of bad "striding" poses would be jump assault inercessors who look ridiculous, especially when compared to jump assault legionaries in 30k.

 

Now we take this "Tacticus Marine" kit with their basic bolter but glut of modeling options and apply, for example, a weapons upgrade kit which contains the necessary parts for Hellblasters plasma, Desolators (redone) launchers, Infernus' flamers, Sternguard combis, and bladeguard sword and board and thicker shoulders, ignoring all other special/heavy weapons for now because who knows what will or will not come. This results in models that, sure, have the same basic model at the leg an torso level, but exponentially multiply with everything available. Sure, you'd lose the Tabards/abdominal banners but that could arguably be solved by lets call it a "Veteran Tacticus Marine" kit, and you'd still take up less space than the 9(12) kits and their respective molds in storage with a mere 2 and the 1 (maybe 2 at most) weapon upgrades, which is alreay a load off whatever may or may not hamper their production/storage capability.

 

To come back to the redemptor type dreadnought example as well; do we really neeed 4 kits (redemptor, brutalis, ballistus, and invictor) that all share the same basic chassis, and only mildly differ in armour? Instead it could all be one basic chassis (which it already is the multipart ones all follow the same principles) and have the freed up mold/sprue space to consolidate all the options into one extra sprue so you don't have to have 12 sprues (4 time 3, assuming a multipart ballistus) and instead have 4. Hell, that way you'd even be ables to buy one dread and have all the options since all arms and top monts don't have to be glued, belly option could be magnetised since they'd share the same mount, and in case of the invictor you'd be able to keep it as a stealthnought without chopping up another dread like I did for mine. How's that for saving money.

 

Speaking of saving money; it has become quite obvious that GW doesn't operate on the "amount of minis/plastic is proportional to price" system, otherwise some characters should be cheap as chips. Instead they operate on what seems to be expected sales: you won't need that many of a "rifle captain" so you pay a bunch more per plastic, but inversely you'll need a lot of your basic trooper like the Mk6 and Mk3 kit both of which are significantly cheaper than their equivalent in 40k. Hell, Mk3 is especially notable since it's also a bit cheaper than Mk6, though that might be down to the lack of chain bayonets. So arguably it's not even certain that a completely rejigged tacticus marine kit will end up much more expensive (price rises notwithstanding of course, lmao).

 

I know from a modelling perspective this might seem like a loss of options, but, unless you only run one type of infantry with no upgrades, you'd still have a huge ginormous amount of build options that only get amplified by the occasional apllication of cutting and glueing (maybe even an errant 3d bit here and there) way in excess of what every other army has to offer, like the poor horde-ish armies like guard, tau, or even cultist heavy CSM who should boast even more individualism than what is afforded to the golden goose.

 

But that's the crux of it; I don't know which person at GW said it but I recall the quote "we have a customer base that consumes everything we produce" (may or may not be the actual quote as the exact wording isn't 100% in my mind) but we are absolutely voracious in regards to power armour, to the point where I think it might affect production of everything else. Why mold a xenos kit when you could make more marines, why print books when you could instead buy more carton to make marine boxes, why make rules for army X, Y, or, Z if you could instead have more marines, why stock anything but a insane majority of marine kits and molds to the point where even marine production can't keep up with the sheer demand? Now sure, I'm just a filthy consoomer that only comparatively recently started some xenos armies with no actual hard knowledge in plastic production and packaging/storage solutions. But the issues GW has are basically down to demand far outspacing supply and rash and/or sloppy solutions applied to things like storage and online solutions.  And I assume that, while their regular approach in kit design helped incredibly with their growth it might help with their current plights if they re-thought at the design stage and opted for flexibility instead of sheer quantity. Then again, their financials seem fine, and their customers seem to remain loyal despite not actually being able to get what they want when they want (for example limited editions of certain books or out of stock models that should arguably never run out).

 

Oof, anyway, went on a bit of a not-entirely-on-topic tangent there. Wish I had that kind of focus for anything actually beneficial to me. Anyway does anyone know what the timeframe for something like Factory 4 would be? Because I could imagine it being year from completion if they go ahead with it.

[Scribe]

3 hours ago, Noserenda said:

And really as a modeller I see substantial benefits to having lots of different bodies even if they are wearing the same armour, the heresy pose clone armies are pretty off-putting honestly.

 

I really dont see how we are in a better situation than the early 2010's? Separate Torso/Head/Arms/Legs, and build the models how you want. I despise the jigsaw kits.

[Dark Shepherd]

This bottleneck seems a bit of GWs own making namely with 40k (and marine bloat)

 

AoS kits seem to have a lot more duality of loadout or can be a character OR this named character

 

They elected to produce 10s of 000s of bladeguard to go into a box with Lionel Johnson

[Redcomet]

The covid boom probably took them with their pants down, and growth they had predicted to take a decade happened in a year. And GW is notoriously conservative in making large investments, so my guess is they didn’t want to pull the trigger on new capacity, in the case the bubble burst, like the LOTR one did. So now they are in a pickle.

 

Could they rent machine time out of house? Probably if there is some to find. If I was to do that, I would outsource ToW for a start, as they are mostly old moulds

[Orion]

On 1/13/2024 at 8:48 PM, RWJP said:

I'd not seen those pictures before! 

Judging by the fact that the sprue layout is different for the knockoff model, I would guess that this is not a case of them getting hold of actual moulds, but more a case of them getting the parts, and "reverse engineering" them by effectively using them as masters to create their own moulds.

And as a Brit, I agree entirely, having a successful company like GW actually still be based in the UK is a fantastic thing in my eyes. A homegrown success story that is still here is a good thing for the UK.

 

I was thinking it might have just been due to GW cutting new moulds that fit the requirements for the different injection moulding machines.

Like both the texture and the curved radius of the frame corners match GWs own terrain line, which as far as I know is the line that they manufacture in china.

 

 

So my guess is that it actually is a GW mould, it's just one that was specifically built for Chinese manufacturing process in a deal that clearly didn't pan out, and they somehow ended up on the market. A Knight and and a Redemptor both seem like the kind of sets GW would pick. Large and popular.

 

But yeah, I'm an Aussie not a Brit but I still dislike the trend of outsourcing labour for every single thing. GW has shown that you don't have to go that route to be successful. I respect that aspect of the company. 

[Kastor Krieg]

Way back in the day when I got my initial batch of Sisters of Silence from GW (via FLGS), one box was normal, while another was a bit of a "soap" with smoothed and shallow detail, just like these "knock-off" Knights.

There's a high chance that at one point GW was attempting to outsource production but quality or other factors were not to par.

[MegaVolt87]

On 1/14/2024 at 4:54 PM, Scribe said:

 

I really dont see how we are in a better situation than the early 2010's? Separate Torso/Head/Arms/Legs, and build the models how you want. I despise the jigsaw kits.

 

Agree. Large kits like the Spartan and it's spin offs are a pain to assemble the main hull because of the extension bolt ons. I would have preferred fewer hull parts in larger plastic tank kits at a higher RRP for an easier assembly. Even the Kratos is far too many parts for the hull assembly. Newer kit assembly is very time consuming for me now due to unessacary sub assembly for larger parts. I assembled my resin Spartan and Typhoon in a fraction of the time, even fixing the FW defects they have vs the new plastics. The cost savings don't justify the time increase in the larger kit assembly for me. My sicarans and the recent x2 arcus were a breze to assemble as FW kits. Same with the old resin dreads which also were simpler to magnitize. I don't feel like I lost out buying the FW deredeo's either before they went to plastic. The re- done jav speeder is a resin and plastic combo, best of both worlds in my eyes. Having that sliced to plastic is going to be an annoying sub assembly mess for little improvement in detail for the hull chassis. Should probably buy some java before they go full plastic. I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to hear my x2 Kratos are in the boxes still since release...

[sairence]

I find this kinda interesting tbh. I found the two new Guard vehicle kits an absolute breeze to build. The Sentinel is fairly small, sure, but the Dorn ia definitely a bigger model and, compared to pretty much amy other Guard tank I've built, super smooth to put together.

[Focslain]

3 hours ago, sairence said:

I find this kinda interesting tbh. I found the two new Guard vehicle kits an absolute breeze to build. The Sentinel is fairly small, sure, but the Dorn ia definitely a bigger model and, compared to pretty much amy other Guard tank I've built, super smooth to put together.

I concur, especially the treads part, much easier then it's older and smaller cousins. 

[Orion]

16 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

 

Agree. Large kits like the Spartan and it's spin offs are a pain to assemble the main hull because of the extension bolt ons. I would have preferred fewer hull parts in larger plastic tank kits at a higher RRP for an easier assembly. Even the Kratos is far too many parts for the hull assembly. Newer kit assembly is very time consuming for me now due to unessacary sub assembly for larger parts. I assembled my resin Spartan and Typhoon in a fraction of the time, even fixing the FW defects they have vs the new plastics. The cost savings don't justify the time increase in the larger kit assembly for me. My sicarans and the recent x2 arcus were a breze to assemble as FW kits. Same with the old resin dreads which also were simpler to magnitize. I don't feel like I lost out buying the FW deredeo's either before they went to plastic. The re- done jav speeder is a resin and plastic combo, best of both worlds in my eyes. Having that sliced to plastic is going to be an annoying sub assembly mess for little improvement in detail for the hull chassis. Should probably buy some java before they go full plastic. I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to hear my x2 Kratos are in the boxes still since release...

 

I'd always prefer more detail to less pieces, or a simpler build. If that's the necessity to keep detail alive then so be it.
However, I don't really get when anyone says the new Heresy kits are "easier to build" now they're in plastic.

 

Especially not the dreadnoughts which are like 5 times the piece count and less posable.

On the up side you get weapon options.

[MegaVolt87]

3 hours ago, Orion said:

 

I'd always prefer more detail to less pieces, or a simpler build. If that's the necessity to keep detail alive then so be it.
However, I don't really get when anyone says the new Heresy kits are "easier to build" now they're in plastic.

 

Especially not the dreadnoughts which are like 5 times the piece count and less posable.

On the up side you get weapon options.

 

Comparing the resin spartan to the plastic one, there is little discernible difference in hull detail to me. The bigger difference is the crisp detail for the plastic lascannon array's, especially the power feeds. The new HH kits feel like the monkey paw curls situation, there are improvements but new problems to compensate. There can be more detail in fewer hull parts, but that would increase the mould dev/ creation costs and RRP which I am fine with for large tanks like LR, kratos. 

[Orion]

39 minutes ago, MegaVolt87 said:

 

Comparing the resin spartan to the plastic one, there is little discernible difference in hull detail to me. The bigger difference is the crisp detail for the plastic lascannon array's, especially the power feeds. The new HH kits feel like the monkey paw curls situation, there are improvements but new problems to compensate. There can be more detail in fewer hull parts, but that would increase the mould dev/ creation costs and RRP which I am fine with for large tanks like LR, kratos. 

 

I just mean to retain the same shapes, not add more detail. 

There is always going to be a limit to the shapes you can create with plastic.

 

I don't want this monstrosity to be the alternative to complex plastic kits for Heresy