Vostroyan Firstborn Made-To-Order (16/05 - 25/05)

[Robbienw]

15 hours ago, SalamandersBro said:

Great for a Militia force in heresy.

 

Ironic considering the origin of the regiment 

[Chaplain Raeven]

Bought a few the last time around because of the steep price, but regretted not getting more of them afterwards. Might consider adding some more.

Shame the casualties aren't included. I've used the last ones for casting to fill up the bases scenic bases.

[brother_b]

I love The Old World and purchased some of the made to order Empire troops on made to order.

 

That was about 165ish days ago. I just checked and they said could go up to 6 months.

 

Thats tempered my excitement a little. I do love these though.

[DemonGSides]

30 minutes ago, brother_b said:

I love The Old World and purchased some of the made to order Empire troops on made to order.

 

That was about 165ish days ago. I just checked and they said could go up to 6 months.

 

Thats tempered my excitement a little. I do love these though.

 

Don't email them about it; you'll get a snarky reply that they've got the full time given to fulfill your purchase.  Then magically your package will be sent the following day. 

 

Normally have great responses with GW customer service but getting my WH+ subscription model really rubbed me the wrong way. 

Edited May 7 by DemonGSides

[Evil Eye]

I love the Vostroyans, probably some of my favourite Guard regiments. Everything about them is so delightfully, quintessentially 40K. Also the drum-fed heavy bolter, mwah!

[Felix Antipodes]

5 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

I love the Vostroyans, probably some of my favourite Guard regiments. Everything about them is so delightfully, quintessentially 40K. Also the drum-fed heavy bolter, mwah!

 

A favourite of mine as well and I love these models still, but I won’t be ordering them.  If we go by previous MTO they will be hideously expensive, especially in these troubled times.  I will save my cash for when/if they get the plastic upgrade they deserve.  For those who do purchase, lets hope the die are still serviceable and crisp.

[Joe]

7 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

I will save my cash for when/if they get the plastic upgrade they deserve.

 

To be fair, the monkey's paw here is that enough people don't purchase a product and the company reads that as disinterest / lack of popularity, and we never wind up with Vostroyan's in plastic.

[redmapa]

4 minutes ago, Joe said:

 

To be fair, the monkey's paw here is that enough people don't purchase a product and the company reads that as disinterest / lack of popularity, and we never wind up with Vostroyan's in plastic.

 

I still remember when people thought Krieg in plastic would never happen, now they are the face of the Imperial Guard. Nothing is impossible and GW will soon run out of regiments to update, eventually they will get to Vostroyans even if it's a single box.

 

I give them 5 years for them to update Vostroyans, they'll do Catachan and Steel Legion before getting to the Firstborn.

 

 

 

[Joe]

That's a bit of a false equivalency; sales aside (as that's ultimately the driving factor here), Krieg had proven to be very popular across the broader multi-media front (be it in books, fan animations, etc). 

 

However, had the Forge World range not sold well enough they never would've received a plastic range.

 

[Robbienw]

GW has a lot of cool regiments, both the historical metal ranges and ones that are currently lore only.  I think pretty much any guard regiment would sell well if made in plastic tbh.

[gideon stargreave]

As a gentleman of a certain age, personally I’d rather they made metals a mainline part of the range rather than updating to plastic, at least for things like this. I mean, I used to be able to buy individual metal miniatures/ pieces from mail order. Yes, modern plastic kits are often better posed/ proportioned etc, but not always, and detailed metal kits like this are a dream to paint 

[Blissful Brushes]

I think the problem with guard is that they are so different in flavour that you can’t just repaint them like with most marine chapters. If GW want to sell 10 different guard regiments that won’t sell in the way that Wolves/BA etc do they gotta decide whether it’s even worth the mould/storage and all the other bits that go along with a new product

[calgar101]

What is the time frame between these announcements and a date? 

[Irongert]

1 hour ago, calgar101 said:

What is the time frame between these announcements and a date? 

Usually one or two weeks, not very long in any case. 

[Orion]

23 hours ago, Joe said:

That's a bit of a false equivalency; sales aside (as that's ultimately the driving factor here), Krieg had proven to be very popular across the broader multi-media front (be it in books, fan animations, etc). 

 

However, had the Forge World range not sold well enough they never would've received a plastic range.

 

 

Yeah FW Krieg had more sculpts than Steel Legion and Vostroyan Firstborn combined, and were sold for a long time.

And they became weirdly popular with people not even into warhammer on Tiktok, youtube, reddit etc.

Somewhat annoyingly so.
I'm not "no fun allowed", but I'm not a huge fan of goofy 40k memes/humour. It's just not funny most of the time.

[Evil Eye]

18 hours ago, gideon stargreave said:

As a gentleman of a certain age, personally I’d rather they made metals a mainline part of the range rather than updating to plastic, at least for things like this. I mean, I used to be able to buy individual metal miniatures/ pieces from mail order. Yes, modern plastic kits are often better posed/ proportioned etc, but not always, and detailed metal kits like this are a dream to paint 

Definitely, and being much cheaper to make moulds for than plastic (as you just pour rubber rather than milling out steel blocks) they don't need to sell as well to make a profit. Metal (and resin, they use the same kind of moulds) definitely have a place IMO.

 

I will be honest, I think a good solution to the "how the heck are we supposed to make every regiment in plastic" problem would be to make a few more of the popular/recognizable regiments and then release upgrade kits (plastic, metal, resin or whatever) to convert them into the more niche ones. There's historical precedence too, the Praetorian Guard were actually Mordian sculpts with the heads swapped out and cast again.

[SvenIronhand]

4 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

Definitely, and being much cheaper to make moulds for than plastic (as you just pour rubber rather than milling out steel blocks) they don't need to sell as well to make a profit. Metal (and resin, they use the same kind of moulds) definitely have a place IMO.

 

Pretty sure the materials cost for metal is higher, though.

[Evil Eye]

3 hours ago, SvenIronhand said:

Pretty sure the materials cost for metal is higher, though.

That is true, which IIRC is why Finecast became a thing. Slight caveat, however; you can remelt pewter excess/miscasts, which does increase the efficiency somewhat (a botched casting can be recycled ad infinitum).

 

I will also say I'd be fine with resin making a comeback IF GW tightened up their QC a bit and used a good resin formula. Good quality resin is when used appropriately a perfectly good material, and in some cases I actually prefer it to plastic (I've built a plastic and resin Deredeo body and the resin one was much more quick and fun to build due to being in far fewer parts. The plastic one wasn't remotely bad, for what it's worth, but it was more time consuming and a little fiddly in places compared to the "each poseable section is one piece" resin one. The problem with Finecast, aside from the abysmal quality control, is that it was just a very, very weird and cruddy resin- if memory serves it was what's known as a "restic" similar to that horrible Siocast stuff that was briefly popular.

Point being, materials other than plastic aren't inherently bad, GW (and FW to some degree*) just gave everyone a very bad impression of resin. I do wonder if GW would consider actually using 3D printing for mass production or even production to order of more niche items? Would save on having to make new moulds, and they've certainly got the resources to produce decent in-house printed models, again as long as the resin they used was good. Plus there's a far lower risk of flawed models with printing- assuming the machine is maintained properly and the models are printed and supported well (there's no excuse for them not to be, if I can make decent looking minis in my hobby cave with a consumer model printer!) then every model should come out the same; STLs don't degrade like moulds do and the process is very "regular".

 

 

 

*I feel like FW was a victim of "Game Freak syndrome" where a very small company inherits a massively successful, profitable IP and isn't given the resources to produce work that is up to expectations. Game Freak, creators of Pokemon, was a tiny little studio in the 90s on the brink of closing, and it was the runaway success of everyone's favourite critter catcher- now the MOST PROFITABLE FRANCHISE ON EARTH- that propelled them into the stratosphere. However they never really expanded the actual studio all that much, and still make their games on a fairly low budget pretty much as a bunch of "professional amateurs", which is one of the reasons why when the series got put onto the Switch- a more powerful flagship system instead of a budget-option handheld- quality took a bit of a dive. They weren't used to having the expectations of having to develop a system-selling game for higher-end hardware, and it kinda showed. Forge World was similar, in that it started as a subsidy of Citadel back when Citadel was itself much smaller, made of sculptors with particular specialisms (mostly tanks and monsters) who basically did models as passion projects that GW proper couldn't justify putting into the main product line. This was one reason FW was so varied and experimental, as given the far lower running costs they could pretty much go wild and do what they wanted and GW would still profit, hence why we got things like the Tyranid masters being sculpted from wax (similarly to how toys used to be sculpted actually!). Of course as GW got bigger and more successful they wanted more stuff out of FW, but because "enthusiasts in Warhammer HQ's garage with some resin and rubber" was incredibly low-cost for GW, they never actually invested in the subdivision, hence the quality didn't improve much. When FW was new this was kind of expected, small-run resin casts were often a bit...yeaaaaah... but as time went on, the overall standard of resin miniature QC increased...except for FW. They definitely did improve towards the end, but between GW ramping them down and also a lot of their stuff (boxy vehicles etc) just not being ideal to be cast in resin, they were doomed. A real shame and totally avoidable had GW allocated more resources to improving QC.

[jimbo1701]

On 5/8/2026 at 1:09 PM, redmapa said:

 

I still remember when people thought Krieg in plastic would never happen, now they are the face of the Imperial Guard. Nothing is impossible and GW will soon run out of regiments to update, eventually they will get to Vostroyans even if it's a single box.

 

I give them 5 years for them to update Vostroyans, they'll do Catachan and Steel Legion before getting to the Firstborn.

 

 

 

I agree. I also wonder if the Valrak rumour of Cain / jurgen (presumably BL release) might spark interest for Valhallans as a KT release? 

[BadgersinHills]

On 5/9/2026 at 2:11 AM, gideon stargreave said:

As a gentleman of a certain age, personally I’d rather they made metals a mainline part of the range rather than updating to plastic, at least for things like this. I mean, I used to be able to buy individual metal miniatures/ pieces from mail order. Yes, modern plastic kits are often better posed/ proportioned etc, but not always, and detailed metal kits like this are a dream to paint 

 

Completely agree. These days I can't be bothered to assemble a whole load of intricate plastic miniatures and a metal mini in a few parts is welcome. They have a nice chunkiness as well. 

[Lord Marshal]

Go up for order next week.

 

Quote

All of these sets are available on a made-to-order basis until 8am BST on 25 May 2026, and will be shipped within 180 days of ordering.

 

Quote

• Command Squad

• Commander with chainsword

• Commander with power fist

• Commander with power sword

• Vostroyan squad

• Guardsman with flamer

• Guardsman with grenade launcher

• Guardsman with plasma guns

• Guardsmen with sniper rifles

• Heavy bolter team

• Lascannon team

• Mortar team

• Vostroyan platoon

 

 

Edited May 10 by Lord Marshal

[de Selby]

They keep saying you can use these as cadian squads but they also keep saying the command squad is 4 guys. Which is it?

 

I have 40 vostroyans I guess I could paint a few more up depending on price.

[Tastyfish]

55 minutes ago, de Selby said:

They keep saying you can use these as cadian squads but they also keep saying the command squad is 4 guys. Which is it?

 

I have 40 vostroyans I guess I could paint a few more up depending on price.

They're just missing the sergeant aren't they, of which you choose your guy from the set of three 'commanders'.

Edited May 10 by Tastyfish

[Casual Heresy]

14 hours ago, Lord Marshal said:

Go up for order next week.

 

 

 

 

Damn it I'd hoped for more time before these went up. Need to haul out what I have and work out what I'd need to rejig the existing squads into modern versions. I am thinking I'll start using mine as Death Korps rather than Cadians as WarComm keep suggesting. 

 

But of course my hobby butterfly brain is getting ideas. The flamer model with a new, longer barrel, some guitar string piping, and an external tank would be a good start for a heavy flamer heavy weapons team...

[de Selby]

17 hours ago, Tastyfish said:

They're just missing the sergeant aren't they, of which you choose your guy from the set of three 'commanders'.

I definitely think they should point out to people that the command squad and the platoon set aren't legal without an extra guy. It's not like you can just order another guy in a few months when they arrive.