The High Cost of Characters

[techsoldaten]

My Sons of Horus army has not had any major additions since adding Horus, Abbadon and Garro several years back. Recently received the Saturnine boxed set, was considering adding characters.
 

Maloghurst the Twisted, the Warmaster's Equerry $61

'Little' Horus Aximand – Captain of the 5th Company $61
Vheren Ashurhaddon – Master of the True Sons - $61
Tybalt Marr – Captain of the 18th Company - $61
Sons of Horus Legion Command - $61
Legion Champion and Master of the Signal $56
Sons of Horus - Legion Cataphractii Praetor $55

That's $416 dollars total for 8 models. It cost more than the Betrayal at Calth and Burning of Propsero boxed sets I originally paid for, which had like 80 models total. 

Maybe I'm just an old man shouting about the high prices, but this seems excessive.
 

Edited January 6 by techsoldaten

[Pacific81]

Completely agree, the prices of the FW resins are excessive. Especially as you have to buy them direct and so can't benefit from FLGS discount.

 

Its compounded by 3.0 generally requiring a larger 'hero' count. I've taken to making lower level characters (Optae, Centurions etc) from the Command kit, supplemented by 3rd party bits, which is a much cheaper way of doing it. However, this doesn't help with the named characters.

[techsoldaten]

Malgohurst and maybe Little Horus I could see paying for because they are iconic characters. The rest I would rather convert myself from existing characters. I could also do them up in Blender and print them in resin. There's probably bits floating around that would let me do conversions at a tenth of the cost.

I don't usually get sticker shock looking at anything GW, but this really hit me the wrong way. That's a huge gate keeping people out of the hobby.

 

[MDops]

Bruh, I wish they were 60ish in my local currency. I had a quick look at 'little' horus in $NZD and im looking at 100 for him and probably getting up close to a grand for the ones your after.

 

One of the downsides of being in the middle of nowhere. Transport costs and a being a small market sucks

[Pacific81]

@MDops just out of interest is that across the board for wargaming, or just GW? For example, if you bought the new Warlord Konflikt 47 starter which is made down the road in Lenton, £95 RRP.

Or the Mantic 4th edition Kings of War Claws in the Sand starter (again a little further down the road) £100 rrp. Do those have a similar markup?

[Grotsmasha]

Are you playing in Tournaments, or GW stores? If not, perhaps 3rd party alternates, might be a viable alternative?

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

I play SoH too,and I only have Abaddon from FW. And just because I found a really good offer for one. I have also a Loken(3rd party),a Vheren Ashurhaddon and a Tybalt Marr(Both conversions).

As others said, only if you go to official tournaments or to play in a GW stores you need to have official miniatures. Otherwise, 3rd parties or 3D printers are sometimes even better than FW. I always thought that FW stuff it's terrible overpriced for being GW stuff. And honestly, GW material is very expensive. The quality and the design are great, but not worth still the prices they ask for them.

 

It  doesn't seem excessive. IT'S excessive.

 

Anyway,at playing and rules level I think in 3rd edition you aren't losing a great punch if you don't have and use them. If you like the characters and the design of the miniatures,of course,it's a totally different matter. Just save money for them.

[techsoldaten]

AUS and NZ - it does seem like everything costs twice as much in these places. 

After careful consideration, decided this is a no win situation. Even eBay auctions for the models cost as much / more than buying direct from GW (new and used.)

Going the Blender route. I've done MkII / MkIV / Mk VI / Terminator proxies in the past and already have armatures for posing them. It will take some work to create suitable stand-ins, but I'm not paying that kind of money for single models on principle. 

Regarding GW stores and tournaments - I avoid tournaments and have never had any issue with proxies at any of the local GW stores (there are 4 near where I live.) HH seems to mostly be played at hobby shops if at all. 

[Valkyrion]

In my idealised reforging of the past, each legion would have a Primarch, named hero, terminator and standard praetor, specialised upgrade kit (e.g bionics for iron hands, fancy jump pack for blood angels, etc), power armoured unit, terminator unit, 'unique' unit (e.g gal vorbak, fancy land speeder, the iron warriors terminators - basically something you couldn't easily make yourself out of the upgrade options), then the doors, pads and heads. 

All of this has been done, so it's not asking to remake the world, but its been done in a skewed fashion where only 2 legions have upgrades, some legions have 5 characters, some don't have their hero, some have 2 primarchs, some don't even have their primarch's ride.  Give us our legion land raider doors back, GW!

 

 

[Pacific81]

5 hours ago, Grotsmasha said:

Are you playing in Tournaments, or GW stores? If not, perhaps 3rd party alternates, might be a viable alternative?

Its worth point out that most tournaments (at least ones I have played in or seen) don't stipulate 'official GW miniatures only' - at least in the UK, I don't know if it is similar elsewhere. Usually you get a broad 'WYSIWYG' (i.e. your minis have to generally represent their rules and opponent expectation) but thats it, which absolutely doesn't exclude 3rd party or printed bits.

And playing in GW stores, unless you are fortunate enought to live near WHW or a few choice stores arouund the UK, I don't think has been a thing for some years now..

 

Sorry not having a go! I can't remember the last time I saw an army without some sort of 3rd party bits or something printed, certainly in Heresy, so for me its not a consideration these days.

[calgar101]

Price wise, characters are definitely quite high, but if remade in plastic where moulds are more expensive etc, we could possibly see even higher costs? 

[SlickSamos]

Doing unique characters in plastic is a massive risk. 

 

40k it makes sense as it sells so much!  Even if Vulkan He'stan doesn't make his money back in 5 years, he'll be on the shelves for 10+ and people buying him will also be buying Tactical Squad (TM) a unit that pays itself off every month (probably, idk I'm just making it up).

 

The AoS ones which have a second use (some which were either End Times or before), like the big Ork monster thing or the Wood Elf Tree Lord, have a unique character and a non-unique character option which makes sense.  The other ones are a risk but apparently paid off as they then did...

 

Plastic versions of characters in Middle Earth (e.g. Éomer, Théoden, Éowyn etc...) which had good metal/resin ones that already existed, were quite the risk (I've bought some and they are better than the old metal ones).  I'm not sure how well that paid off as...

 

The Old World has only had one new plastic unique character, which was a dragon (Grand Cathay), and for the Horus Heresy there are none...

 

So my bet is that the risk reward isn't worth it for a 'Specialist Design Studio' game.  In addition SDS probably has a percentage of manufacturing utilisation allocated, and they're making the decision to make dragons and fellblades rather then Horus Aximand which I absolutely support!

 

However, the remake of a number of Middle Earth models in plastic should give you hope for some more heroes in plastic down the line, but maybe expect more consoles first!

[MDops]

On 1/7/2026 at 10:11 PM, Pacific81 said:

@MDops just out of interest is that across the board for wargaming, or just GW? For example, if you bought the new Warlord Konflikt 47 starter which is made down the road in Lenton, £95 RRP.

Or the Mantic 4th edition Kings of War Claws in the Sand starter (again a little further down the road) £100 rrp. Do those have a similar markup?

Just in general. Been looking at a sculpt from den of imagination for a forgefiend proxy and while its $40 us im probably looking at close to 80 nz.

The konflikt 47 starter i can see for 150 us so probably up near 250-300

[Khulu]

Everything from FW seems crazy to me nowadays. 124 USD for 5 Ebon Keshig or 1 Kyzagan Speeder? I used to buy from FW about once or twice a year but I just can't justify it anymore. 

[techsoldaten]

I get the economics of it. 40k is going to outsell HH by some double digit multiplier. GW really wants to support the game, but it's niche, therefore there must be higher prices.

Feels like it might benefit them to encourage heavy conversion work to create your own Force Master, Medicae, Tank Commander, etc. Anyone who's not a named character, they might go farther by encouraging a little creativity.

The reason I say this - I have all these HH boxes and more marines than I could use in a single army. There are some characters where I would pay for the official model, but I want to do something else for the others so I'm not spending $1k for HQs.

[Pacific81]

In the 30k v 40k sales volume thing, there was some speculation that the Age of Darkness 2nd ed starter sold so well because it had 40k crossover appeal (certainly you saw lots of those beakie marines appear in 40k armies). That then lead to stores over-ordering 3rd edition: the Saturnine terminators were a good way of 'forcing' Heresy players to get the new edition if they wanted the new toys, but because the minis didn't have the same 40k crossover appeal (and I'm sure there are other factors involved, like the new 3 year life cycle, leaks and reduced army lists which initially angered the Heresy community) - which is why you still have copies of the Saturnine launch boxes still sat on shelves, at reduced prices, 6 months later.

[Xenith]

FW characters are expensive, and priced by the goblin index - i.e., the more of a model you need to buy for your army, the less they can make it cost. Hand crafted single models are the most expensive, as you'll only get one, likely ever, and I agree that FW single character prices are obscene. 

 

Contrast that with standard plastic legionnaires though, which have dropped from about £10 a model to £2-3 a model in the move from resin to plastic.

 

Also to the OP - realistically, you will only have 1-2 of those models in your army, and theres nothing forcing you to buy these models. You're welcome to convert your own...or vote with your wallet and not purchase them at all. 

[Waaagh?]

Yeah named characters especially get a tax. A good example of this is Iron Hands.

 

Shadrak Meduson is £39.50 but the IH Praetor has more parts and an optional head for £29.50.