"Gripping Beast Unarmoured Plastics" Topic

Any idea when these will hit the shops? I heard on a podcast (Meeples and Miniatures?) that it would be later this year but any firm dates?

Hopefully around the same time as Saga.

At "Salute" I think they said late summer.

I've missed out on this bit of news. Any preview pictures of these figures? The armored Saxons and Vikings I picked up are great.

from my chat with the guys at Gripping Beast at Partizan earlier this year, we are looking at an October/November release.

Thanks Earthquake!

Any news on these?

Maybe something to ask about at Warfare next week.

Leigh

??? Any news on these? A brief mention in WSS 58 but no real info? Holding off buying the armoured guys until i can back them up with hordes of unarmoured.

Bump.
Anything new on this? Any planned release date? Can't see anything on their site.

Will people please stop making nice Dark Age figures. My Englisc army is now almost at 1:1 scale for most battles !!

I think Gripping Beast has really missed the boat on this one. They should have put these high up on their production schedule and released them soon after the release of Saga. Their armoured Vikings are excellent, and I am sure there are many other like me who wanted to build a complete Saga army of GB plastics but have had to look elsewhere for unarmoured warriors. Personally I have used Miniature Design Studios Saxons for mine, and whilst the helmets are not quite right they are nice figures and very cheap (50p each if you buy in bulk). I would bet the sales on these when they are eventually released will be much lower than if they were released a year ago.

The unarmoured dark age infantry are scheduled to be released no later than Salute 2013, possibly slightly earlier. The box will include spearmen, javelinmen and slingers and the proportions of each will work with SAGA warbands as well as for larger armies. Archers are on the agenda for later, possibly as a part sprue.
GB Plastics is a self-funding operation so a new release can only happen when sales of existing boxes generate sufficient income. Yes we would love to have produced these figures earlier, but sadly it wasn't feasible.

Slingers and javelin throwers? I could use some of those for my Viking collection.

Welcome news! Simon

Old Glory do big bags of unarmoured Euro-Hairies, some of their nicest figures IMO – especialy the Arthurian range.

Thanks for the update, MartinDG.

Can't they Kickstarter it, or something? I want them now! :-)

Can't they Kickstarter it, or something? I want them now! :-)

That would not speed up the sculpting or tooling process.

It sounds like they have already got sufficient amounts of cash in the bank (or at least close enough). If they have the sculpts ready, then the next step would involve getting Renedra to tool them into actual moulds. Don't forget that a whole lot of plastic manufacturers also want to have their moulds ready in time for the Salute.

As for the timing, Salute 2013 is only a bit over five months away.

I will believe it when I see greens, 3-ups, and test shots. We have been put on hold on these with "They will be out by ???". I think that the profit margin on these is so much lower than metal, we are going to be put off for a long time. Any competition with their own metal line will be costing them money. So empty promises is all we are going to get. TIG

I have been waiting so long and for these that I have been sort of thinking along the same lines as Tigrifsgt
insofar as I wonder why a company would provide a cheaper alternative to products they already make. I can see the point of putting out a couple of sets to attract buyers to the GB product line. But with the introduction of the unarmoured figures, all Vikings, Saxons (middle and late), and maybe Welsh/Northern British/Later Scots infantry (depending on what you think they looked like and how you paint them)could be covered by the plastics alone at half the price of the metals. I am not a business person, and maybe unaware of genuine reasons for making these figures available, other than offering a cheaper alternative to getting customers to buy from GB. A great idea,made even better by the fact that the plastics IMO are just as good if not better than the recent metal figures produced by this company.The reasons for the delays seem plausible. I have been excited by the prospect of these figures for about 2 years(?) now, so I'm keeping the faith and waiting for Salute….

I think you need to factor in labour and or profit margins.

Once you've made an injection moulding die, the manufacturing process is to all intents and purposes automatic and you can crank out lots of frames in fairly short order, costing pence. Even selling them at half the price of metals, you're probably making significantly more profit per figure than hand cast figures, with the extra labour involved in the process.

There is of course the cost of the die…probably several tens of thousands of pounds. This has, I'm sure, as much to do with the speed of release of new sets as the bottleneck at the die maker.

Regards,
Craig

lol I want them made too but come on chaps, they will be done when they are done. If the beast can't afford atm then they can't, simple as that really. I'm sure we have got other things to worry about than when a company release some figures

:)

I wonder why a company would provide a cheaper alternative to products they already make

1) Customers might buy more of them.
2) Customers might buy them instead of buying cheaper figures from another manufacturer.
3) To do it before somebody else does.

Whew I was about to start a topic on this very question!

Really hope these chaps are coming out