Epic Mark II Rhino Blister

 

Today we are looking at the modern Mk II Rhino blister for Epic.   This blister comes with 6 rhinos when complete which provides the rhinos for 2 tactical formations or 3 devastator formations.   Space Marines get Rhinos as part of their cost so you need about 1 of these packs per 1000 points in your core forces.

GW One Man Store Managers weren't already Salaried?

So Apoc 40K has some rumors about changes in the GW retail empire.  The first one was that GW was moving all the store managers to salaried.  I find it shocking that they were not already salaried.  Seems like a bone head initial state to be in where you have to pay someone overtime who is trying to keep a whole store open by themselves.  It is not like GW positions are really benefit heavy so overtime to your manager beyond a few hours a week would quickly be more than a lower cost part time employee to help out.  Plus it frees them of the sticky legal point of essentially having a set up which was impossible to run in a 40 hour week but require you to only report 40 hours since they will not provide any overtime authorization.

Rock, Paper, Space Marines

Everyone has done their research on the new marine codex and it seems to be that GW has continued down the path of Rock, Paper, Scissors in list options.  Space Marines have all the options to deal with any enemy list.  They can deal with flyer spam, monsterous creature spam, mech spam, or model spam.  Can the handle them at the same time in the dream all comers list?  Probably not, I am not expecting them to be auto win but it still seems like they are pretty meh.  They got flyers, anti air missiles, and anti air tanks to kill flyers but they made the missiles so expensive and the anti air tanks very specific making flyers the only really general choice to deal with enemy air outside weapon emplacements.  Bringing enough anti air to deal with 5 flyers pretty much cripples the rest of the force.  The new grav weapons will probably put the hurt on monsterous creatures and maybe some vehicles but they made them either only available on the new ugly model or obviously really good on bikes.  They are actually useless on the daemon MC armies which is a big issue for people to remember.

What's going on at Forgeworld?

Anybody else notice the increased rate of forgeworld releases?  I think I got 4 emails this week instead of just one on Friday.  Is this a result of a change at top trying to increase the product rate or just the front end of Games Day UK?

Star Wars X-Wing Game Millennium Falcon

I picked up the Millennium Falcon for the X-wing Miniatures Game.  This ships is generally readily available as most players are not trying to field squadrons of them compared to some of the smaller starfighters.  It is listed at 30 dollars so twice as expensive as the starfighters but it seems a better value as it seems more than twice as big.  GW wants 30 dollars for the new plastic space marine captain so this is far better value.

Would Games Workshop Bring Back Epic?

Last week Faeit 212 had a rumor that GW might be thinking about bringing back specialist games and Epic was specifically named.  This got me thinking, I would love GW to support the specialist games full force with great plastic models to go with new terrain and push to bring in new players.  Fancy new box sets with updated rules, sponsored events, big displays and the whole thing but given that they just shutdown the production of the metal products early this year so they could consolidate production facilities I am not sure why the change of direction.  They clearly were surprised by the sales volume they got when it got out that the metal production was over and what they had on hand was what they could sell.  Tons of stuff vanished in a few days and people who missed the rumors could not get what they wanted.  Maybe that reminded them that these games do have loyal fans.

Even if they think they want to bring the games back what support do I really expect that we did not have during the lean recent years.  Looking at Epic, the rules in the book/download are solid and the community has been working on tuning the lists to make the game better.  Looking at the models, certain armies were out of production but the Eldar and Space Marine armies metal components looked like the modern forces and are pretty reasonable sculpts.  The space marine infantry could get more character but if GW redoes the products what are they going to charge for them.  Epic blisters where essentially highway robbery at 20+ dollars when they went out of production but GW has shown that 30 dollars for a single plastic space marine character is a future price point reference.   So an update would essential mean another price increase and that was one of the complaints that components did not seem well priced for the amount of miniatures you got.  They had essentially totally stop updating the minis about 5 years ago other than maybe 1 or 2 Blood Bowl Star Players at all which was certainly a mistake.  Some new sculpts or units for each game every year would have been very low investment but would have probably supported sales all across the lines better than nothing.  Also moving everything to direct gave retailers no reason to try to stock the games.  They could get together special orders but they had to do a ton of work for limited return there.  Launching a new army or box set now with the rest of the stuff still out of production will not bring in new players and just continue to sell to the ever decreasing group of players.  Relaunching Epic as Epic Armageddon with really only 3 armies was pretty weak in the past and might have hurt sales there.
 
Epic used to be a good match for Forgeworld as the volume was lower than GW likes and the resin gives excellent details for the small parts except for the gun barrels where metal seems better.  But forgeworld dropped their Epic production since they have limited capacity and 40K stuff has such a larger target audience.  GW could bring back the lines in finecast but that has always been just a stop gap measure as everything moves to plastic so I doubt they would or should spend their effort there.

Does GW want to try to really push a specialist game?  Put it into their stores and compete with itself for its own players.  The specialist games have been marketed currently as break games or change of pace games.  You want them to be available but not to take away sales from the mass produced plastic stuff where most of the cost is just getting the product to the store.  Blood Bowl NAF has like 20000 registered members.  You get half of them to buy a 100 dollar new set it yields you 1M dollars.  That is real money to most people but for GW that is like the losses in the Australia retail arm alone a few years ago before aggressive cost cutting.   Blood Bowl is the most popular of the specialist games which still has large events with 50+ players in multiple countries but also has direct miniature competition in this area since GW cannot own fantasy creatures playing american style football (Dragon Magazine had a game in it years before Blood Bowl).  Epic is also a different scale game so misses the synergy that appeared for something like space hulk where 40K players could use the models or even Blood Bowl were people buy warhammer and 40K sets to convert into Blood Bowl teams.

GW does need more games but they need more introduction skirmish games in 28 mm to bring people into their universes without such huge initial outlays.  They have gotten into the cycle of trying to sell more and more expensive stuff to fewer and fewer players.   They need to break that cycle.  Mordenheim and something like Kill-Team updated to modern skirmish standards would offer far more synergy with their main lines.  Using cards as well as minis and cross platform terrain could build great games plus good sales that keep players modeling and playing in your universe.   Given the future of 3D printing the IP is what is important so getting it into more players hands and keeping them interested in where the money will be in 10 years.

The rumored mystery box seemed to go along these lines but I am guessing GW will go big with the box and it will be in the 100+ dollar price point which is not where you want this to be.  Something closer to 75 dollars even with less contents than the 30 minis in Space Hulk would be a good target.  Maybe 2 factions with 6-8 minis each and a large and small terrain piece plus the cards.  Then you can sell faction cards which match up with existing mainline minis and unique special characters with cards.  With easy to update digital rules, you can add new factions or terrain pieces that can keep the game fresh without a huge investment.  The game should also not be a one off.  They should preview the next two waves of releases for it to let players know that they are investing in something with a path forward.   Kickstarter has shown how companies have a completed game and then are really kickstarting the expansions in the funding drive.  Something like that is moving into the future.  Bringing back Epic or Blood Bowl is just going to the past and trying to sell to your existing or former players.

Welcome Faeit 212 Readers

So Natfka was nice enough to add me to his blog roll and list my blog as a new member in a post.  So a nice thank you to him for that.  If you are coming here for the first time you will find that I am a long time GW game player currently in recovery from 40K and fighting being drawn back in by the new Space Marine Codex.  I started with GW games with Blood Bowl, Dark Future, and Space Marine (Epic Mark 1)  in the late 80's and picked up 40K in about 05.  I am probably foremost a collector of things and you can find pages highlighting my Blood Bowl and Epic Collections in the right column.  I also have a series of posts studying the probabilities in the Space Hulk Board game there.  You will also find a many posts on Legos and recent the new Reaper Bones models as I slowly go through my kickstarter rewards from that.

In terms of 40K stuff and miniatures, I just did a post highlighting my top 5 kitbashed marines in honor of the new codex which is a good place to start.

Thanks for coming by and why not take a second to leave a comment on some post if you check it out.  I do not even have those funky are you a human tests to slow you down.

Expanding Blog Roll

Since I have become active again at posting, I have decided to update my blogroll.  I have added several new blogs who long ago were nice enough to have me in theirs.  So take a look there on the left.  I bet you will find something cool out there.  I also resigned up for the Bell of Lost Souls Alliance.  I was a member back in 09 but at some point got drop during a reorganization.  BoLS Alliance does bring a some new traffic so if you are coming from there and this is your first time here, you can check out several of my major posts or series over on the right.  We have Blood Bowl Collection Index, Epic Collection Index, Lots of Lego's in the popular posts as they have a much broader search audience than miniature gaming, everything you ever wanted to know about mathematics in Space Hulk, and traditional 40K topics there as well.

If you want to do a blog roll exchange with me just send me an email.
eriochrome on hotmail with the standard corporate ending.  

Lego Lord of the Rings Uruk-Hai Army

Today we are taking a look at the Lego Lord of the Rings set, Uruk-Hai Army.  This is a small 30 dollar set that came out in 2012 if I remember correctly.  It is really more of a battle pack with minifigures for use with the larger Helm's Deep castle set but I do not have that set so I look at it as a stand alone.  You get 6 minifigures, 1 horse, 1 siege ballista, and one small wall segement to add to the Helm's Deep Wall.

Lets start with a look at the 4 Uruk-Hai minifigures. The torso's, legs, and heads are all the same.  The head is two sided as seen on the middle two guys, one side baring the white hand.  You get enough accessories to make each one look marginally different.

Next we have the riders of Rohan. You get Eomer. nephew of Theodin, and a generic warrior with 1 of the new horses that have the joint in the back legs allowing for the rearing pose seeen in the background. Eomer has a printed shield, printed helm, and customer printed body and looks excellent.  The generic rider has printing on the front and back of the torso.

The heads are also two sided in the standard one side with teeth showing one side without.

The small wall section has some light green to make it seem old and some of the brick edge blocks to add a little more character.  Nothing really to get excited about.  As a stand alone piece it will not survive and will probably be broken down for bricks for standard play or to expand other LOTR/Hobbit sets.

Back side shows stairs and a small catapult for the defenders.

The attackers get a pretty nice looking siege ballista which is push fire.  The wood pattern on the lower part is printed not a sticker which is a nice addition.

Front side has another printed piece and embellishments to make it look like you could just ram a defensive line with it and cause damage.

This set is pricey as all the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are but it does give you Uruk-Hai to be villians.  I have the whole fellowship but had very few villians before so it is a good addition for that if you can find it at about 20 dollars as it ends it production run. I am not sure if the LOTR/Hobbit sets lived up to Lego's expectations as they have already brought back the generic Castle line giving them 2 medival/fantasy series.  I would really like to see a Brick built Balrog set.  That would be really great.

Reaper Bones Kaladrax

Today we look at the Reaper Bones Kaladrax model.  This is Sons of Twilights 400th post over almost 5 years in existence so we are looking at something big.  Kaladrax was one of the really great deals in the Bones Kickstarter where they had it as a 10 dollar upgrade and now it is priced at 75 dollars while some other 10 dollar upgrades are only 15 now.  I actually got an upgrade that is cheaper at retail which is a bit annoying.  Another upgrade like this was the Cthulhu which I did not get and in hindsight totally should have.  Kaladrax came in a retail box unlike most of the stuff which came in sealed plastic bags.  Once I got it out of the box I could not get it back in so it is packed pretty tight which is really not a great idea as the bones material is prone to warping.

Here are the box contents.  Head, 4 Legs, torso, 2 wings, 2 hip bones, 3 tail pieces. 

Here we have the model just push assembled.  Not glued, cleaned or straightened.  The space marine sergeant is provided for scale purpose.  You can see the model is very large.  It is actually larger than they intended it to be.  Apparently there was a conversion error between the sculpt and mold production that lead this model to be upscaled.

Another shot of the front.  Still big.

Here is a close up of one side of the base.  The base itself would make a line of sight blocking terrain piece in a game like 40k.

Close up of the head.  The plastic in the head is very soft to allow it to come out of the mold.  All the edges are pretty smooth.  Most of the Dragons in the Bones series have 2 part heads for easier molds removal allowing for a stiffer plastic which translates into more detail in the end product.

Here we can see that the claw is about the same size as the marine so this model is the scale where the dragon holds the human in its hand.  Not a ton of dragon type models available at this size at any price point.

Here is the backside. You can see the hip bones holding the rear legs in place.  

The back leg is pretty high off of the ground or base.  Not sure if this is just a warping problem or how it is designed to appear.  The inner part of the torso is calcified flesh.

Here is the tail tip.  Spikes ready to crush any foes.  This piece is also very soft plastic with no real detail level.  No sharp points or clear features just sort of a mass of blunt spikes.  I would say that my 7 year old could have sculpted it.  This is again a mold issue where the plastic has to be very soft to get out of the mold combined with accidental upscaling.

Now how would I rate this model.  At 10 dollars in the kickstarter, it is outstanding model that most people probably should have plunked down for even if the details over the whole model are weak due to a combination of material/production and accidental upscaling of the master.  I would say at 40 dollars it would also be a good buy but they have it priced at 75 dollars at retail or their webstore.  At that price the question is really what do you use this for.  It is so big that it is not going to travel well or be really useful on the table top.  As a display piece the weak details sort of hurt the presentation.  Bones is not the material for competition or center piece painting.  I have seen some pretty nice Bones paint jobs so they can look good but if you are going to put in the time for a model this big you would want the basic model to have a little more to show.  Even the pro painted one on the box does not look really great since the painter does not have that much to work with.  It will look great from across the room but once you get close this model does not hold up.  While it is better than the painted plastic dragons you can buy at stores like Michaels it is not like a Forgeworld resin model but at this size those are like 300 dollars.

Reaper Kickstarter Finally Coming to a Close

I got an email yesterday that Reaper is processing my request for my missing pathfinder dragon pieces (missing one arm and upper half of head) and replacement models for 1 paladin with flaming sword missing shield and forearm and 1 lizardman model whose arms were glued on with like a 2 mm gap.  So they are really finally getting done close to 13 months after the kickstarter closed and payment made.  That is a pretty long time to wait to get what you paid for.  I have not seen any of the models at retail yet but I honestly do not get into a gaming store more than once every couple of months.  It will be interesting to see if these models have any legs at the retail level where they are usually still a good deal or everyone who wants them either has them or will pick them up on the secondary market.  I remember Sandwyrm posting on Back40K on how one of his local stores has a selection of Dreadball stuff on sale since everyone who was interested had a good amount of stuff from the kickstarter.  Kickstarter project seem to encourage people to just get a ton of stuff but does seem to make the products more 1 off as opposed to something you can grow a community around.  If your friends got all this stuff at a great discount and now think you should shell out at a much more expensive price to join the fun you might be less inclined and think it is sort of unfair.  Sort of reminds me of the very beginning of Magic where the they dropped a selection of grades that were in the original black bordered and first wide release that were pretty good from the next set.  So if you were playing against people who had been playing a while you were doubly disadvantaged as not only were they likely to have more cards than you but had cards you could not even get in a retail pack anymore.  Similar things happened with the first expansions where their just were not enough packs to go around.  I think I got like 2 packs of Arabian Nights but one had a City in a Bottle in it so I always had that in my decks at that time.

Going forward I will have more reviews of the bigger models going forward so stay tuned if you are interested in getting some of these at retail.

Why do the Centurions Seem to Look So Bad?

So I was reading the Blogosphere and ran into a post by expert or even professional modeler Dave Taylor about the Centurion kit.  He made an excellent point I think that the problem with the kit is mainly the way the main weapons are mounted.  He compares it to a novice kitbasher and says it makes the already really bulky model just look ridiculous.  I think he has a very good point.  If you strip off the weapons and maybe the crotch guard you are left with a model similar to Iron Man Warmonger

While this is a bulky looking suit it is not a horrible basic design.  But add the double width and maybe  really long cannons under the arms and it starts to look just bad.

Dave Taylor then models up one with the Grav Cannon on the shoulder and a siege drill replacing the whole forearm and fist off one arm.  It is a significant improvement but has the problem of not being a legal WYSIWYG model for someone who actually would field the unit.  It translate fine for Grav Cannon mounting since that is really just a single cylinder as you can model the amplifier part else where which shoulder mounted give you a look like a Battletech Thunderbolt or the Forge World forces of mars walker sculpt.  I actually thought of using the forge world models directly as grav cannon centurion count-as before seeing Dave's conversion but they are like 50 dollars each so no room to complain about the Centurion kit cost if you do that.

But if you want the TL lasconnan or heavy bolters this is a bigger issue.  I do not think you can bundle them together and put them up there.  True to envision a razorback turret sitting on the shoulder.  Not going to work.  If it was a single lasercannon you could model it holding it like a gun for a very robotech look but two will look bad like that and the double barrel seems to big.

You probably need to look at the forgeworld heresy dreadnoughts for a idea of how to replace the whole forearm and fist with a twin linked heavy weapon as again you really cannot just add a razorback turret on the arm.  It will need to be compacted somehow
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Good luck to anyone going to try to work with this kit.  It might be a fun project to try one one but doing it for 3 or more at the the 78 dollar price tag is to much for me.  Freshcoast 40K has a post where they show the Centurions without the crotch guards which make the models better but the upper legs then need some embellishment added since they look to plain.

Lego Minifigures Series 11

So we were at Target and found the display for Series 11 lego collectable minifigures.  We had seen them in the recent lego club magazine and while I did not really love many of them my wife and daughter both thought we needed a fair number of them.  I actually did not find all the ones we were looking for as they seemed to have a ton of certain ones but zero of others.  I wanted to get the Tiki Warrior and Scarecrow and did not find either in like 60 figures checked.  Here are the first 3 we opened as we are saving the others for behavior bribes.   We have a barbarian, yeti, an drive in waitress.

 The barbarian has printing on the back and arms but the head is only one sided.

The waitress has a neat little tray which she holds on the bottom and pick skates.

The waitress does have a double sided face.  She looks like some gave her a bad tip.

We also have an Santa Elf, Gingerbread man, female scientist, Baravarian Girl, and female robot.

What's Your Number?

So after counting up my marines the other day, I was reminded how many unpainted models I have.  Pretty much all of everything is unpainted, most unprimed.  So I thought I might do a little addition to get an estimate of the pit I am in just in the 28 mm scale (ignore epic right now).  So starting with space marines and their vehicles that is 280 models.  My nids are probably 100.  I have my D&D Chainmail Collection with seven factions and say 15 models each so about 100 more there.  The new reaper bones models which when you add the kickstarter and the other ones I would say 250.  I have the 3 D&D coop games at about 40 models each so another 120.  Then there is the Space Hulk game which was about another 30.  Luckily I never got beyond touching on WFB so all that stuff is sold or for sale so I will not count it.  That leaves Blood Bowl.  My last count was like 46 teams which average like 14 players which comes out to about 640 more models.

That adds up to about 1500 models just in ~ 28 mm scale.  Oh my god.  I hope my wife does not read this post.  A few are painted but I am guess not more than my estimation errors.  That is a model a day for 5 years.  Maybe I go need to stick to X-Wing since those come painted.  I did recently pick up some brush on primer so I could give it a try as the weather here is never lines up when I have the time or interest to prime.  Just pick a model, prime it one day, then paint the next.

So What is Your Number?

Blood Bowl Cyborc Star Player

I was looking in my incoming links and and found someone reference a post of mine on my 2nd edition Blood Bowl Orcs to try to answer someones question.  This model is actually the one they were looking for but I did not own it when I originally did the post.  Not much good to have such a deep archive of images of Blood Bowl minis if I never go back an update them when I get new ones.  The whole series probably needs a redo.

This guy is a second edition star player who was never named.  He is neither Greaser Geargrinder or Ugroth 'Ripper' Bolgrot.  As far as I know he was never given a name or unique stat card.

In the current game since he has a chainsaw you would use him as Bolgrot.

254 Space Marines

So I was recently commenting somewhat negatively on someones Space Marine Codex post.  Mainly minor disagreements over mainly what he did not like in the codex (not everything is candy coated with chocolate).  No nasty name calling.  Someone else commented about space marines are getting a fair amount of negative commentary from people who no longer really play but still feel vested due to the money and effort they already put into the game and army.  I think he is right.  I would love for 40K to be a fun balanced game where I can write up reasonable lists using any units in a single codex and play with some chance of winning regardless of what the other side rolls up with.  That is why you have points costs instead of just playing will whatever models you can afford to buy (ie Magic/Pokemon).

I wondered how vested I was and went to the garage and unpacked my marines to take an inventory.  The picture above is outdated from several years ago.  I went through all my infantry models and broken them down by armor, equipment, veteran status, and such.  It added up to 254 space marine infantry models made up of 38 scouts, 31 terminators (not including space hulk ones that are forever part of that game not for 40k), 29 jump back marines, and the remainder normal power armor after the 2 servitors are removed.   Probably with a little slack on WYSIWYG I could field at the same time an Infantry Battle Company and a First Company.  I have about 20 unbuilt marines also that have been sitting in the bit box since nothing I can build I really need or am interested in building.  Added in 2 Dreads, 2 Landspeeder, 2 Vindicators, 9 Bikes, 2 Razorbacks, 1 Rhino, 1 Predator (+1 Uncut), 1 Whirlwind, and 1 partially built Crusader.

So you can say I am pretty vested.  I want the codex to draw me back in after the super mecha 5th ed and the totally up you I got to my small nid army when they redid that codex in 5th.  They fixed the mech issue in 6th but then doubled down on the up you with allies and flyers.  So I might pick up a sternguard box to help clear those unbuilt marines  as I do enjoy the modeling with new bits but dropping about 110 for rules to get into the game.  No I am fine.  See you is 3-4 years again.  Maybe your new owners will have you do better then but probably not.

Forge World, Finecast, Plastic, and Games Workshop

There has been a lot of talk recently about the place of Forgeworld products in the current Games Workshop corporate structure.  First someone claims that Forgeworld is not being integrated into the webstore then a few days later we hear that it is and it might even be coming to retail also.  This feeds into a post by Sandwyrm at Back40k about how the new plastic space marine commander is more expensive than a forgeworld terminator captain.  Ofcourse the new plastic commander and librarian is more expensive than every other metal/plastic/finecast characters in the space marine line.  You can get the finecast set of the Masters of the Chapter which are 4 pretty good models for only 5 dollars more.

I think the first thing to note is that the GW plastic kits have become very good provided that the design itself is good.  I was looking at the 2 Dark Angel characters from the Dark Vengeance set that I got as bits and was observing all the fine DA details that need to be removed.  These models have essentially got to the detail level where being in resin or metal is really not going to make a significant improvement.  I was also thinking about how I no longer have a space marine sergeant with 2 lightening claws since I took apart my old metal veteran with that and used the claws on a Shrike model and the model for the Honor Guard banner man.  Now I can get that model in the finecast veteran set or I can build it by combining the new Sternguard and Vanguard models.  The new Sternguard look just a good or better than many of the metal veterans.

So GW has gotten their plastic models up to the level of the metal models and think that is what determines the price.  It is a perfectly valid idea which gets you to 40-50 dollar 5 man units.  Terminators have been 50 dollars forever and the new Sternguard are a better kit with more options.  Ofcourse terminators have been overpriced due to their iconic nature and high in game points cost.  This does not get you to a 30 dollar plastic character though who at most should be at 15-20 dollars since that is the price level of this size characters in resin and metal.

Now the only real difference between metal/resin and plastic is just how many models you are expecting to sell.  Metal/Resin models have low new model costs but high marginal unit costs while the plastic models have high new model cost but essentially negligible marginal unit costs.  What that means in english is that resin models have cheap molds but the resin/mold replacement/labor for producing each model is significant while plastic has high mold/machine cost but actually making the models is literally cents for the next copy.  They spend way more on packing/warehousing/transportation than actually making the sprues.  This was always a decision GW had to make on units for years as they moved into plastic production so I guess they should be pretty good at it now and the new 30 dollar price is a test to see how high they can price such a unit to see if they can really move everything over to plastic since they do have to pay the mold costs back for products that no not sell that many to each player.  With there reduced player base where at most you would ever buy one of those models this might be the level that they think they need for the product to maintain their high margins.  Their choice and I assume it has some logic and numerical data behind it and not just "lets see if these suckers will pay 30 dollars for this".

What does this have to do with Forgeworld?  Well 2 things originally separated forgeworld products from GW. Design and Detail.  Now GW has pretty much got forgeworld detail in their plastic models so that just leaves the unique design.  Couple this to the fact that many of the things forgeworld makes are the same things GW has been significantly pushing the price point up on and things get interesting.  Forgeworld prices have gone up but not at the same rate so what was a 8-10 dollar metal GW mini back when I picked this up again in 2005-2006 is now 30 dollar plastic.  GWs mainstream products have started to catch up on its luxury line in both quality which is actually really cool but also in price which is not so cool.  Now you might ask why Forgeworld is selling more than ever is GW has the same quality, and I think that is design.  Many of Forgeworld models just look awesome but it is not because they are in resin it is because they just have better designs.  They also have more freedom in the designs since they do not need to sell a ton of models to pay for the plastic molds.

Forgeworld in GW is sort of like specialist games was.  You want to use it to capture extra revenue from customers but you do not actually want it competing directly with your plastic kits since plastic kits need volume to maintain their margins.  That is why you see the Heresy Stuff their.  It is a way to get customers to buy a whole additional marine army even if they already have an Apocalypse sized one, but you do not want it to be their first and only marine army.  If GW did it in plastic and placed in its stores it would sell enough to be profitable but it would essentially increase the cost of producing the marine line for every kit but not increase the revenue at the same rate.  GW has been pushing Forgeworld more recently as it is getting write ups in White Dwarf like every month for its new releases (which are generally at high price points as new products) but I am sure they do not want to many new players getting into it until they have filled their closets with plastic.  Moving Forgeworld more into the webstore so you can order it along with other GW kits and get it in no time since it will be locally warehoused might actually be a good move but I would not display the kits in the mainline army parts but in a subcategory area.

One interesting thing to think about Forgeworld is that it is actually an internet discounter that GW complains about not supporting the hobby.   It does not have stores with play tables, it does not introduce new hobbyists, it just sells products pretty much out of webstore to existing GW customers.  I am sure GW would not describe them like that but it is a correct comparison.  This is what makes putting Forgeworld into GW stores tricky since Forgeworld high prices are based on a middleman free sales plan but those GW stores will want the product at 40-50% of the list price since they need that discount level to make money selling the kits.  Ofcourse a 40% price increase would put Forgeworld back into a premimum product price point solving the direct competition problem but would probably also price it such that it really would not sell well at stores where they could actually stock the range.  It is not like GW with their trend of decreasing store sizes have much spare space to add a hundred new products.  So I would guess that maybe just new releases or high sellers are going to show up.  Again sort of like how specialist games used to much valuable sales space then went to the webstore for years before being put out to pasture after significant price increases and total range stagnation in new products. 

So I think that GW should probably bring forgeworld into the online portal but should really not move it into the retail setting in anything other than splash releases that come and go but they appear to be real pushing it forward probably in another short term attempt to boast revenue as they keep sliding.  It would help their stores have reasons to go to compared to FLGS selling at a discount.  Lego sells sets at their stores that are hard to find other places so it always seemed odd to me that GW did not have the direct only products onsite also.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few years.

My Top Five Space Marine Models

In honor of the new Space Marine codex release, I decided to go back and look at my favorite Space Marine Models I have built.

First off we have my Terminator Apothecary.  This was from before GW had this as ready made option in the Deathwing terminator box.

Next we have my powerfist and shotgun space marine scout sergeant.  Nothing really fancy just every piece coming together just right to get a cool looking mini.

Here we have my Mk IV Space Marine Honor Guard Model.  This guy has a sheathed power weapon.  You will find that they have added a very similar positioning to the new Sternguard box.

This is my Belial model with dual lightening claws.  Not even sure if this is even an allowed combination now but I still really think the model turned out well.  Also some more pics of his back in this post.

Lastly we have my Bannerman from my Honor Guard unit.  Another very basic build where it is all about the right pieces.  I have a whole write up about building honor guard units here.  I think the new Sternguard box would be a good starting point for the unit now that was not there before we I made up mine.

Update: Honorable Mention from Mik for:

 Shroud of the Dead Honor Guard.  I really like most of my honor guard models so I had a tough time choosing. 

X-Wing: Mirror Matches and Fixed Lists

I remember a couple of years ago, WargamesCon had an idea of using fixed list mirror matches in a 40K event to try to separate the tactical skills (on the table) from the strategic skills (in the list) plus remove the affect of the poor intercodex balance in 40K.  This has some problems in 40K due to the nature of the hobby elements where people take a great deal of pride in their armies.  Hand built and painted minis with meaning to the owner are sort of harder to let go off and not bring.  Plus the cost of a 1500 point army just to build for a specific event is a little high at say 200+ dollars plus hours of labor.

The X-Wing miniatures game does not have either of these issues.  Your standard list range from say 60 to 100 dollars and given the really finite number of ships available both currently and in the universe most players will probably have a significant portion of any list chosen to start.  Now much of the variety in X-Wing appears in all the pilots and cards but since those come with the ships you know people will have a certain set if they can build the force available the event list. Would the event be fun without the list building elements or will it get boring before all the rounds are complete?  Not sure.

There is also a good possibility for fixed list missions.  I remember back when I played Battletech as a kid that some of the books would come with essentially historically missions where it listed the exact mechs, their current conditions, and terrain placement.  Since the mechs and terrain were cardstock it was easy to set these up and play.  In X-Wing some of these types of events can be taken from the movies (Say 4 Ties vs the Falcon or 3 X-Yings with a Tie Advanced and 2 Tie Fighters on their tails) and other can just be generated.  These type of missions will probably be limited by the number of different victory conditions that can be generated for the space combat game.  Using Asymmetric victory conditions also allows for unbalanced lists for these type of missions.  The two new big ships due out next year work with this since neither of those are going to standard 100 point list ships since one is not even really armed.  I am interested in seeing what they have included for mission ideas.

Remember the saying. You go to war with the army you have not the army you want.