Plastic Warhound pricing

[CL_Mission]

In this video from a few days ago (wow over a week actually) Chapter Master Valrak reported on rumours he'd heard about a plastic Warhound Titan being on it's way for 40k/30k. In his video Mr. Valrak asks his audience how much they think it might be, how much they would be prepared to pay and I wondered how this board would answer those same questions.

So how much do you think a Plastic Warhound Titan would cost? How much would you want to pay? How much would you be willing to pay?

Currently a Warhound Titan with arm would set you back £566.50 from Games Workshop. Recently when units make the jump from ForgeWorld Resin to plastic they've had a drop in price but how far could it go this time, is there a consistent percentage they drop by?

I also imagine the Warhound might come in a similar set up to Saturnine Dreadnoughts where one set of arms comes with the body but other weapon options are sold separately owing to their size.

 

Bonus question: If GW are going to be making kits of this scale in plastic what's one thing from Forgeworld you'd like to see make the jump to plastic?

[DemonGSides]

It's gotta be more than whatever the current biggest Imperial Knight in Plastic is, and that's what, a Cerastus?  That thing retails for $215 USD, so I would imagine a Warhound Titan would be pushing almost $300+.  I don't really see the audience but maybe there's more people clamoring for these than I would expect.
 

 

[Karhedron]

Take the price of the biggest Knight and double it. If GW offer a plastic Warhound for around £200, that would be an auto-buy for me. £300+ would be a pass. In between and we are somewhere in the murky realms of "maybe".

[Dr. Clock]

 

From Minicompare - like coloured lines are same length. 

 

From what I can tell, a warhound is more than twice the size (volume) of a Cerastus. It might not be hugely taller but each leg is as wide as a Knight's torso...

 

I'd be very much surprised if you could get away with twice the plastic as a big Knight - it looks closer to 3 times to me. 

 

It'd be cool if it happens, but Knights are already just barely achievable as a project for me (only ever painted one Questoris). I don't really want to paint something 3 times as big as that... 

 

I'm guessing 300 GBP.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Evil Eye]

I would imagine around the £300 mark. Theoretically, being made of fewer but larger parts would drive the cost down with plastic but this is GW we're talking about.

 

A plastic Warhound would be pretty cool, though I imagine we'd never get the Lucius Pattern, sadly.

[The Lost Son]

I could see it being sold at a lower mark up under the idea of getting people to impulse buy over the practicalities, id love a war hound or 2 in theory though when I'd build, paint and store the thing(s) is what has always stopped me before we even consider forge world pricing. Removing the price point makes it easier for people to justify a big modelling project, if it remains at only a slight saving Vs the original resin then it's a far smaller market and probably a waste of rnd, mold and casting time unless they make them to order. Also how much of a draw would it be to see a titan in a Warhammer shop that's got to be some great marketing.

[Craig]

Don't forget to factor in the storage and transport costs which will be factored in to the retail price. It's not just about how much the extra plastic for the sprue costs.

[NTaW]

Given my apprehension toward resin kits, I would welcome a plastic option. Regardless of the cost I would consider it a more reliable product. Adding one to my Knight collection would at least be a possibility if it was a plastic kit, though I'd still have to weigh it against getting to use the thing in games. After years of rule changes I have my quota of display-only models filled I think.

 

To answer the question of cost, it would have to be $500 CAD or less for me to truly consider it as a purchase.

[Tawnis]

The pricing of around $500.00 CAD to be within the realm of possibility for most people here sounds right to me as well. It would probably also get a little bit of an upscale to be more noticeably larger than the Cerastus. 

 

That being said for me, I've never been the biggest fan of the Warhound Titans personally, their look has never really jived with me. Now, if the released a plastic Reaver Titan, that I would be all over. Not sure how long I'd have to save up for it, but I'd make it happen eventually. 

[Redcomet]

I would guess around the 350£ mark.

 

 The box will be similar in size to the large Gundam Perfect Grades. And the newest one 300-400£. But will contain more plastic. 
 

And GW plastic tends to be more expensive.

[Karhedron]

3 minutes ago, Redcomet said:

And GW plastic tends to be more expensive.

 

Partially because it tends to be thicker since GW models need to withstand the rigours of gaming while Gundam tend to be display pieces.

[Evil Eye]

23 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Partially because it tends to be thicker since GW models need to withstand the rigours of gaming while Gundam tend to be display pieces.

As a slight counter to this, Gunpla also have actual functional articulation engineering to consider. Though I will say comparing Bandai and GW is a bit unfair if only because Bandai have basically mastered plastic moulding engineering, to the point they've managed to make fully articulated robot hands that are moulded fully assembled on the sprue- you clip the gates away and you have a poseable hand. Seriously, those guys are wizards. Also, plastic itself (as in the material) is worth peanuts; for the cost of a box of Space Marines you could buy enough pellets to mould like 100 boxes.

 

A Warhound would be an expensive investment for GW, to be fair, primarily because the external armour panels would require very large sprues (and thus moulds) to produce.

[Karhedron]

29 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

A Warhound would be an expensive investment for GW, to be fair, primarily because the external armour panels would require very large sprues (and thus moulds) to produce.

 

You have hit the nail squarely on the head there. The moulds cost a lot of money. I was looking into getting a custom plastic model tooled about 10 years ago and the cost then was of the order of £100K for a fairly small sprue. A Warhound would be much bigger and I imagine prices have gone up in the last 10 years so I image a Warhound would be closer to £300K.

 

That means if they sold them at £300 each, it would take 1000 sales just to cover the cost of the tooling. Actually it would take a lot more because there are all the production and distribution costs to take into account first. But it does give an indication of how the economics of really large models scale. The costs go up and the numbers of sales go down the bigger they get. I guess that is why GW is still producing new variants of Questoris Knights more than 10 years after the chassis first debuted. It also shows why they can afford to retool Space Marines every 10 years because they know they will sell 10s of thousands of them.

[Evil Eye]

23 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

You have hit the nail squarely on the head there. The moulds cost a lot of money. I was looking into getting a custom plastic model tooled about 10 years ago and the cost then was of the order of £100K for a fairly small sprue. A Warhound would be much bigger and I imagine prices have gone up in the last 10 years so I image a Warhound would be closer to £300K.

 

That means if they sold them at £300 each, it would take 1000 sales just to cover the cost of the tooling. Actually it would take a lot more because there are all the production and distribution costs to take into account first. But it does give an indication of how the economics of really large models scale. The costs go up and the numbers of sales go down the bigger they get. I guess that is why GW is still producing new variants of Questoris Knights more than 10 years after the chassis first debuted. It also shows why they can afford to retool Space Marines every 10 years because they know they will sell 10s of thousands of them.

This is precisely it, and also why GW used to love doing shared chassis vehicles back when their budget for new tooling was lower. The Chimera hull forming the basis for the majority of Guard vehicles both saves money IRL (just have to tool extra bits to attach to an existing hull) and also mirrors how in real military vehicle design, specialist vehicles are often built on existing hulls rather than being completely bespoke. Just look how many variants the CVRT family has!

[Dr. Clock]

33 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

external armour panels

Definitely a consideration... I wonder how many pieces would go into the main carapace! It looks like the shin plates (technically the foot plate I guess but like the big leg plates) could be achievable as single pieces, but each of those looks roughly the size of a Cerastus main carapace. It seems like they usually are able to squeeze just one 'real big piece' on each sprue so it's really hard to assess the number of tools that may be required for a complete build.

 

The thing is big enough though that making parts actually the same left to right could reduce the number of tools required so that the box would contain some repeated sprues. Every repeated frame will equate to tens of thousands in savings on actual cost of production since as you say the plastic itself costs very little. 

 

However, a Spartan is 6 frames, and about the size of the main body of a warhound? Then probably +2 for the head and +2 for the engines and shoulders. Then the guns are tank sized themselves so probably +3 sprues each. Then between hips and legs if you're clever about it maybe... 8 more that are repeated on each side? That leaves us at 24 tools designed and... 32 sprues in a box. If they're extremely clever about it and can double up on a few torso / engine/ shoulder tools then maybe they get away with... 18 unique sprues? Three times the complexity though 4+ times the plastic of a Spartan seems like a good target... and if we consider that the Spartan basically was up to 1/3rd of the original Heresy launch kit, that actually doesn't seem beyond the pale, especially if it ships without any huge books which add so much more weight than sprues in the first place. 

 

Overall the main comparison product really isn't even any 'single model' kit - a warhound kinda is a game launch offering. It makes a tonne more sense in a 30k context than 40k too, so I wouldn't be hugely surprised to see it branded Heresy rather than 40k unless it also comes out alongside a new Apocalypse system for 3000+pt games, which could be fun if handled well.

 

Anyhow - intriguing prospect but not quite sure it's actually a good business idea because the number of people who will actually commit to building and painting one will be lower than the people who will buy a regular launch box of like 50+ figures because you really will need to at least build every single piece of it before using any of it in a game... 

 

Just... weird. 

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[JeffJedi]

How much was the Heresy 3.0 box? I would think it would be more than that. I don't need one really, cool to see but not for me.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Great rumour! 

I have a resin one, and am working on my Reaver whilst I save for a Warlord.

I have one sheet of OOP Atarus transfers and am worried I won't have sufficient for the 'Lord's needs.

 

If this rumour means a re-release of the sheets then I'll sell a kid and buy another Hound... or even two, for a Maniple.

 

Crazy Stobz 

Edited October 27 by Interrogator Stobz
Sp.