Tantalus & Reaper to be removed from FW site for remastering

In short I had several issues with the Tantalus & Reaper kits I had ordered, to keep the story short, all of the fuss resulted in the FW team telling me the kits will be removed from their site, to be fully remastered as the kits have several problems at the moment. (I got a refund for my models, the casting was really bad)

It will take a couple of months, but kits will come back again don't worry. I strongly suggest you don't order any at the moment, they will be gone from the site soon, they simply can't cast decent kits at the moment.

The casting team got to examine recent casts and they all came to a clear conclusion that the kits have to be fully remasted. The current kits were a mix of both remastered parts and some oldcasting, creating a nasty mess of a kit.


It's both good and bad news. The kits will disappear for some time, but they will come back better hopefully. The remastered versions of the Nightwing & Phoenix bomber are excellent for example, I had seen the older versions, the current versions are excellent, hopefully the new Tantalus 1 reaper kits will be better too. Those who wanted a Tantalus for X-mas will have to wait.


The issues I had weren't only my bad luck, I had ordered several of both, thus clearly it wasn't only one bad kit. I talked to several other recent Tantalus & Reaper buyers, they also had problems with their kits. There was some bad casting, major holes, broken parts, bend parts like nothing you've seen before and some black stuff on the resin, very nasty stuff.


___________________________________________________________________________

*update*

Both kits the Tantalus and the Reaper went out of stock on the Fforgeworld site, it's official and confirmed in other words.

I am fearful.

This could lead one of two ways.
THe team may look at them and get in the spirit, and be inspired to make more DE stuff (and find a way to do it well without problems), or they may decide the existing problems are too much and drop their DE line entirely.

I... guess two dots make a line.

There was confirmation yesterday that Forge World will be putting together a Specialist Games Studio and bringing back the specialist games. Somewhere in the Warseer discussion it was stated that the new Epic and Battlefleet Gothic would be set during the Heresy.

I'm incredibly excited about this - my chances of getting someone to play Blood Bowl or Necromunda with me will go up - but I continue to be concerned about Forge World forgetting that there are Xenos players too. (The Heresy is great and all, but I'd really like to see some stories that involve my space guys.)

Was looking forward to get the Tantalus for Christmas :/

I kitbashed my Reapers some time ago, but a Tantalus (or two) is still high on my wish list. We have always heard, right from the beginning, that the Tantalus kit is very difficult to put together, so anything that could improve that is more than welcome.

Plastic would be even better, but hey ......

Squidmaster wrote:

I am fearful.

This could lead one of two ways.
THe team may look at them and get in the spirit, and be inspired to make more DE stuff (and find a way to do it well without problems), or they may decide the existing problems are too much and drop their DE line entirely.

No, the kits are just being re-mastered, that only means the molds have to be redone correctly, if neccessary some changes may have to be made on the model parts. (changes on the way it assembles, not the design)

The sell quite well, DE have very few kits, they won't disappear, besides I was confirmed they were being redone and not dropped (I asked him just in case)

About 7 people that I know directly bought one in the last month and that's only the people I know, that's a lot of money you know, too much for FW to not see the cashflow.

Gobsmakked wrote:

I kitbashed my Reapers some time ago, but a Tantalus (or two) is still high on my wish list. We have always heard, right from the beginning, that the Tantalus kit is very difficult to put together, so anything that could improve that is more than welcome.

Plastic would be even better, but hey ......

I know, they looked quite good too, but I don't need to resort to scratch building. My policy on the matter is very simple: Scratch build only as a last resort, if I can buy it, I'd rather just pay for it. It's only £ 20, the other £22 are for the raider kit you get together with the resin parts.

Scratch building the parts would take a couple of days, not to mention the materials needed, which also cost some money. For £20 I'd rather just buy directly.

Buying instead of scratch building saves you a lot of time. Time is money, that saying couldn't be more true, I'll gladly pay for spending less time on a model.


___________________________________________________________________________

*update*

Both kits the Tantalus and the Reaper went out of stock on the Fforgeworld site, it's official and confirmed in other words.

heres my response from forgeworld : I was hoping for 1 or 2 just before xmas looks like i will be waiting


Hi

I saw the tantulus and reaper are out of stock, I've heard a rumour the moulds are to be redone. Do you have a rough estimate of time to when they will be re available if at all

Many thanks

Paul


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Forgeworld <forgeworld@gwplc.com>

To
Paul



Today at 12:22 PM



Hi Paul,


You have heard correct the
Tantalus and reaper are under mould work at the moment, we have been having a few issue when casting these kits up which lead to us removing them from sale temporarily .

At the moment with the studios release schedule and current work load we are able to give out a time frame as the reworks can be pushed back and forth as projects move around continuously .

The best thing to do is look at our webstore and click on the "email me" button that will automatically send you an email once they are back and live on the webstore again.

Thanks again and speak soon


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If there is anything further we can do to assist you, or if you have any queries about the information we have requested or provided, please telephone us.


Regards,
Forge World

Interesting.


Curiosity got the better of me so I tried asking about it as well. I got:

"With regards to the Tantalus and the Reaper vehicle for Dark Eldar, both of these kits are currently unavailable as we are carrying out some re-mastering work. Periodically master models need some work so we can continue to produce moulds, this means we have to take the products of sale for a short time to replace and repair the master models and then produce new moulds. The amount of time this takes depends on many factors including the level of detail in the model and the level of work the designers and mould makers already have scheduled. Unfortunately this means we can not give an accurate estimate of how long they will be unavailable for."

Guys, I talked to Fw for a couple of weeks, this news wasn't coming out of my bum, it was from FW.

I'm one of the main reasons why they decided to re-master these kits.

Additional info I didn't see here above:

It will be in a couple of months, not years or year. it takes them about 6 months top, now it can be faster or other stuff can get in the way, but it won't stretch into a year. Also, clearly don't wait for X mas to order such models, do it when they're in stock, especially freshly in stock, the fresher, the better casts you'll get. Be glad you didn't get the current molds, I still got to clean and assemble 2 tantalus & 2 Reapers, even though the kits were free due to the refund, the cleaning work is still off the charts, the casts are horrible.

I'll order some more when the kits are re-mastered, I expect way easier kits to assemble.

Back up for order on the website now

So there's no way to change the rule? I know its my false hope but....

Anyway Tantalus is always in my bucket list regardless of its stats & potential performances.

Just picked up another tantalus, it's a lot better but still will require a lot of work