Modularity vs cost

[TheArtilleryman]

On 2/16/2025 at 3:12 PM, Timberley said:

One company that does modular kits well is Anvil Industry here in the UK.  Their 'Regiments' range is fantastic for creating 'your dudes' (assuming you're running IG or similar).  Admittedly, they lack some of the dynamic posing of the GW models, but that's easy to get around (far easier than would be true of GW's IG models).

Even just buying a bunch of their heads and sticking them on Cadians makes a phenomenal difference. Boom, instant bespoke regiment.

[Arikel]

As a bit of a counterpoint to the “look how easy it is to convert the new models, just a bit of cutting here, a bit there, arm from this guy, legs from that guy etc” I do get that. It’s not all that much harder and takes a bit more practice and skill, and the extra effort can be more rewarding. However, I want to bring up one thing I haven’t seen expressed really that is the potential cost of conversion.

 

With the old system, kitbashing was easy but more importantly for this angle, it was relatively safe. Yes poses may have been relatively limited etc, but you could use arms from 2 different kits, legs from another, head from a fourth and body from a 5th kit and make a unique character armed the way you wanted without any cutting necessarily required. A few kits bashed together would pretty much always get you as many marines as legs in the kits allowed(I always found legs to be the limiting factor) with useable parts to spare in your bits box for the next kit you got.
 

Meanwhile today, converting a monopose character with parts from other similarly designed kits has an element of risk that it may not have had before. Not only am I potentially ruining a figure I just spent 40+ canadian pesos on, I am possibly cutting up needed parts for that 5 man squad I dropped 60+ dollars on, which I didn’t check before I started cutting and can now only make 4 of, hope I can find parts to make  a 5th guy somewhere in my bits box. If I do mess up the conversion, I could end up with no character and a useless squad, squandering my very limited hobby budget completely. Considering that acquiring the needed skills for the conversions in the first place will likely ended up with a few pieces being ruined this can add up. 
 

Now gw has limited this somewhat by either fixing completely or limiting squad/character loadouts, so you don’t have to kitbash anymore, whereas it was somewhat expected before with the marine range through 5th to 7th ed.  
 

If you do want to make your stuff unique, it’s not only harder and takes more skill, it can make the hobby even more expensive than it already is even after you get comfortable with chopping up ridiculously expensive little folks. This can make it more intimidating to start with, for folks with small budgets.

 

So yeah, previously I could buy a captain kit, a 5 man kit and and a tac squad and make 16 figures. Now, there is a larger than I am comfortable with chance that If i don’t build em as shown On the box, I will not get 16 figures, and if I really mess up, end up with not enough dudes to fill the squads and no character to lead them.  
 

For me, I have enough stuff that I’ll likely pass on before I get through my backlog, but it’s still a concern I have when buying the new kits and very likely would put me off the game if I were starting out, instead of 20 years plus and only half done my 3rd company and assorted hangers on (sunk costs and all that, I may still have a pile of shame when I die but if I haven’t completed my company I swear I’ll be back to haunt whoever inherits my collection :p )

 

Anywho, just some thoughts from the peanut gallery. I don’t have a coke habit because I don’t have the money for it, and the changes to the way kits are made now make the already getting beyond reasonable plastic habit just that little bit more expensive, and that’s why I don’t like the change personally.

[roryokane]

On 4/23/2025 at 4:32 AM, Arikel said:

As a bit of a counterpoint to the “look how easy it is to convert the new models, just a bit of cutting here, a bit there, arm from this guy, legs from that guy etc” I do get that. It’s not all that much harder and takes a bit more practice and skill, and the extra effort can be more rewarding. However, I want to bring up one thing I haven’t seen expressed really that is the potential cost of conversion.

 

With the old system, kitbashing was easy but more importantly for this angle, it was relatively safe. Yes poses may have been relatively limited etc, but you could use arms from 2 different kits, legs from another, head from a fourth and body from a 5th kit and make a unique character armed the way you wanted without any cutting necessarily required. A few kits bashed together would pretty much always get you as many marines as legs in the kits allowed(I always found legs to be the limiting factor) with useable parts to spare in your bits box for the next kit you got.
 

Meanwhile today, converting a monopose character with parts from other similarly designed kits has an element of risk that it may not have had before. Not only am I potentially ruining a figure I just spent 40+ canadian pesos on, I am possibly cutting up needed parts for that 5 man squad I dropped 60+ dollars on, which I didn’t check before I started cutting and can now only make 4 of, hope I can find parts to make  a 5th guy somewhere in my bits box. If I do mess up the conversion, I could end up with no character and a useless squad, squandering my very limited hobby budget completely. Considering that acquiring the needed skills for the conversions in the first place will likely ended up with a few pieces being ruined this can add up. 
 

Now gw has limited this somewhat by either fixing completely or limiting squad/character loadouts, so you don’t have to kitbash anymore, whereas it was somewhat expected before with the marine range through 5th to 7th ed.  
 

If you do want to make your stuff unique, it’s not only harder and takes more skill, it can make the hobby even more expensive than it already is even after you get comfortable with chopping up ridiculously expensive little folks. This can make it more intimidating to start with, for folks with small budgets.

 

So yeah, previously I could buy a captain kit, a 5 man kit and and a tac squad and make 16 figures. Now, there is a larger than I am comfortable with chance that If i don’t build em as shown On the box, I will not get 16 figures, and if I really mess up, end up with not enough dudes to fill the squads and no character to lead them.  
 

For me, I have enough stuff that I’ll likely pass on before I get through my backlog, but it’s still a concern I have when buying the new kits and very likely would put me off the game if I were starting out, instead of 20 years plus and only half done my 3rd company and assorted hangers on (sunk costs and all that, I may still have a pile of shame when I die but if I haven’t completed my company I swear I’ll be back to haunt whoever inherits my collection :p )

 

Anywho, just some thoughts from the peanut gallery. I don’t have a coke habit because I don’t have the money for it, and the changes to the way kits are made now make the already getting beyond reasonable plastic habit just that little bit more expensive, and that’s why I don’t like the change personally.

I think there's something to the idea that owning an extensive bits box is actually harder now, both in absolute monetary terms, but also because the kits have so many fewer bitz to go around (Firstborn Sternguard vs Primaris Sternguard kits being the best example). Those of us who've been in the hobby a WHILE, especially between 2nd and 7th ed, will have just accumulated gargantuan collection of bitz that allow us far more freedom of customisation than someone who is equally well off in real terms joining the hobby now and then plowing on for the equivalent length of time would have. And, as you say - you run the risk of absolutely ruining the monopose model and then need to buy a whole new kit (or whole new model if you can find it on ebay at least) rather than going "Oh no. Fortunately, I have umpteen Mk VI legs, Mk VII Helmets..." and then just rebuilding from scratch because you'll inevitably have the bits lying around.

[gaurdian31]

1 hour ago, roryokane said:

I think there's something to the idea that owning an extensive bits box is actually harder now, both in absolute monetary terms, but also because the kits have so many fewer bitz to go around (Firstborn Sternguard vs Primaris Sternguard kits being the best example). Those of us who've been in the hobby a WHILE, especially between 2nd and 7th ed, will have just accumulated gargantuan collection of bitz that allow us far more freedom of customisation than someone who is equally well off in real terms joining the hobby now and then plowing on for the equivalent length of time would have. And, as you say - you run the risk of absolutely ruining the monopose model and then need to buy a whole new kit (or whole new model if you can find it on ebay at least) rather than going "Oh no. Fortunately, I have umpteen Mk VI legs, Mk VII Helmets..." and then just rebuilding from scratch because you'll inevitably have the bits lying around.

And that's great for Space Marine players, most other factions don't/didn't have that. Specialists and HQs were in metal and monopose for a lot factions for a long time so a lot harder to customize without chopping. At least now things are plastic so a bit easier to chop.

[roryokane]

4 hours ago, gaurdian31 said:

And that's great for Space Marine players, most other factions don't/didn't have that. Specialists and HQs were in metal and monopose for a lot factions for a long time so a lot harder to customize without chopping. At least now things are plastic so a bit easier to chop.

First of all: space marine players make up a plurality if not a majority of the player base. Second: the idea that other factions suffered so now Space Marine players must too is so backwards I don’t really know where to start.