"GW phoning in the sculpting?" Topic

"The Space Marine Model Scandal Just Got Worse"

Discourse Minis on YouTube: link

As long as people keep paying – GW will continue

I can't believe anyone watches that YouTube channel she literally craps on GW for Views. I'm no GW fanboy but there are a bunch of YouTube channels and websites that's main way to get views is just to rubbish GW no matter what. Start with a misleading title throw some shade (as my teenagers would say) and hope for lots of hits.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike things GW does but if they upset you that much move on to something else. I never get the people who play GW games, spend their hard earned money with GW and then spend all their time being upset and annoyed about it as if someone is forcing them to involved with GW.

All true, Prince Rupert.

Don't like it, don't buy it.

How is that any different to costs of power or gas or water? Food, telephone, so on.

I guess it's not as much a need, but when Mantic are throwing away figures for 1.50 au, GW is doing its customers wrong.

After reading about them flooding the world with GorkaMorka, anything is possible. Also interesting that it was thrown together from essentially random bits in 8 weeks. I do wonder if there is a buried mound of them in England somewhere. Or in the channel. That wouldn't surprise me either.

Got half way through. Apart from one obvious question, it seemed ok so far. Valid logical points. Especially the one about funny feet posed on rocks, that one seems topical to me.

A vote of apathy here. Anything current from GW would be out of scale with my old stuff, and no one's forcing the kids to buy from them. Plenty of good sculpts and rules out there.

While I agree with most of the sentiment here, it is an unfortunate truth that at the majority of game stores, one can easily do a pick up game of any GW type. This lends itself to being one of the most popular, and an issue in moving on to other systems/games. I have a massive collection of GW models, so it's harder for people like me to just give up the investment and time spent dropping GW altogether and jumping systems/ companies. Just something to point out.

One of her points is that she believes that now that sculpts are digital, sculptors are cloning bits from previous models to make new ones – a lot of repetition.

She also points out 'new' models which aren't much different from the previous models, but the price has doubled.

We know and sympathize, Moonbeast, but we can't fix it for you. So long as the people in your situation continue to pay, it doesn't matter how much they (or we) complain.

Suggestions:
1) Accept substitutes in those pick up games. Plenty of cheap imitation GW fantasy & SF figures around.
2) Start small. But a non-GW game with simple rules, maybe using your existing terrain. Provide both sides.
3) Talk with your friends. GW can't compel you to keep changing rules and army lists every few years if you agree not to.

Good luck. And remember people buy armies for what GW is charging for figures.

Oh goodness, not that person. She is literally angry for hits – I made the mistake of watching some earlier video rants and there's nothing gw can do that isn't worse than before or likely to kill the game system or blah blah blah.

It's a living I suppose.

"One of her points is that she believes that now that sculpts are digital, sculptors are cloning bits from previous models to make new ones – a lot of repetition."

LOL! She wasn't around in the 80's when they'd cast up a partial sculpt and then add a few details to make variations (mostly for Warhammer.)
Nothing new to see here, folks, move along… ;-)

Good point Z.

Though it happened in 40k a lot too. Even marines, using the same bodies then putting BA, DA, SW, LOTD, so on bits on.

However.

That is how figures were (still should be, depending on who you ask), plastics at the time were almost all duplicates.

These days they seem to try to make every figure different. No duication on sprues, for the most part. A squad of 10 will usually have 10 unique figures.

This video shows a change in that trend.

The question is why?

Perhaps they realise it costs more money. Perhaps they find people don't care.

Also remember, this is times of 40k, LOTR (which I think is on the way out) and…AOS.

All skirmish Style units.

Now TOW is coming with rank and file blocks. Individual models don't need to be unique as much.

Perhaps the return of fantasy in itself suggests a change in direction for GW as a whole.

PS After selling a bazillion lots of 3 man marine sprues (5 sprues a lot), I can assure that people do not care about having duplicates. Though I'm sure conversion was occuring, which is fine.

She wasn't around in the 80's when they'd cast up a partial sculpt and then add a few details to make variations

And this did not end in the 80's – just take a look at the original metal Necromunda models released in 1995-96 and you will see a number of figures based partially on other existing ones.

The same might have still happened with the Dogs of War range released a couple of years later, though I would need to delve a bit into my archives for that.

Personally, I am a fan of GW's business model. I like a lot of their stuff and by obsolescing older stuff, it shows up cheap on the secondary market.

WRT the sculpting point, of course each marine should have uniquely styled and formed armour … that's what they word "uniform" means, right?

Exactly, try to sell individualism to the Naps crowd.

GB. They all did.

Its how you make figures of any material and make them profitable. I've even sculpted and was asked to.do modifications rather than complete resculpts. It saves money on unnecessary sculpting.

All the GW metal ranges did it. Right to the end, I believe.

Even inquisitor ended up doing it.

Off the top of my head, from mid 90s basically everything. Maybe if you go back far enough, early 80s??? They may have been unique??? Even 8th skaven plastics reused bodies. I noticed modern (blah) necromunda has 6 Escher with 3 duplicate bodies and copy paste animals, as one example.

There is nothing wrong with it. Every model in an army doesn't have to be 100% unique.

If it is and it fails to sell, its money wasted. It also slown down the design phase, holding up manufacturing, costing more money.

It also makes it quick and cheap to add support to a lack luster game that wouldn't be worth having entirely new sculpts.

If handled well it can also let you use a good designers name while having a not as well known designer do the alterations/over sculpting. Making it cheaper perhaps also.

Also they are already reusing guns and equipment. Which basically describes a GW space marine.

Nothing could be worse than the click together, pivotable at the waist space marines. Which were basically toys, they must have been hell to paint and would have needed a lot of filler to get rid of the gaps between torso and legs and between arms and torso

I'm not a fan of the channel TBH, but I do see some grains of truth in it. The upward creep of prices towards the fine detail skirmish games of the likes of Infinity is true, and I don't thing GW minis share that level of detail. Regardless of which, Infinity and its brethren are skirmish games, so the high prices are offset by low model counts. Not so with GW main lines of AoS and 40K.

In defence of the repeated poses, will say, as someone who has briefed hundreds of models for The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms, that after a while your imagination begins to get pose fatigue and you will inevitably start repeating poses. Plus, the demands of designing for manufacturing in plastic mean that some poses that might be fine for 3d printed minis are not practical for plastic (or resin, in my case).

I suspect a lot of the modern pose duplication is due to the boxes having duplicate sprues in them to save money. So it may have 10 figures, but its 5 on a sprue x2.

It shows there are limits to what even GW are prepared to do. And that sales may not be what they once were or were perceived to be. Though I think this has been the case for a long time. I'm not sure they have been able to do 100% variation in unit box, if they ever really have?

Its not necessarily the poses at issue here, its the sculpts. You can have very different legs in the same pose, for example.

I feel it's the division between wargamers and painters/collectors, or some such groups. Some are fine with duplicate figures, others are not.

Theres a poll idea.

How much duplication are you ok with in a unit?

A Every model a 100% unique sculpt.

B Some reuse of body parts. 25, 50, 75%?

C Some reuse of entire figures. 25, 50, 75%?

D Can all be the same for all I care.

I'm probably B 25%,C 25%.

The biggest problem I have, it's not a deal breaker just a slight annoyance,with the more modern plastic GW kits is the lack of modularity. The older kits you could put together lots of different leg,arm, body and head combos even from different kits because they tended to use the same ways of fixing together.
A lot of the newer stuff like the kill teams one set of legs will only fit one body and one set of arms will only fit one body it makes conversions more difficult and requiring more work than it did before.

Yes.

Its also more frustrating putting them together as you either have to keep all the parts seperate and numbered, or do them one at a time, or you just end up with a jigsaw puzzle.

The reason for this madness is obvious. GW don't want you buying their multi Pat kits and mixing them with all the 3rd parties that have cropped up. Some, such as Victoria, appear to have begun solely for this purpose.

Even I can't blame GW here, as much as it frustrates me and I prefer single or multi part figures from before, but understand where they are coming from.

I'm a converter, so I like duplication of poses. It makes it easier to work the variation … you don't have to learn 20 different fits for arms in a 10 figure unit.

You can do more naturalistic poses with less modular figures. They look nicer individually but lack variety. I suspect the main driver for the change was trying to stay ahead of the competition's quality.

You can do more naturalistic poses with less modular figures.

Humans are actually pretty modular in design. The problem comes in that the attachment points don't lend themselves to static flat planar surfaces very well.

GW figures usually have a high manufacturing quality, less (not so) fine cast.

However the design quality is lacking.

They are after mass production, not beautiful sculpts. Hense plastic over metal and computer engineering over artists.

You end up with the limitations of plastic with the soul of a computer, plus the frustrating complexity they use in the attempt.