Reaper and tantalus costs/ rules

I think the focus on the Imperium and Marines is not only annoying, but it is a lyability. Fantasy has a healthy eco-system of many factions where one is not more prominently played than any other. The fantasy range is gettings tons and tons of new models, from which I can tell that they must be doing excellent business.

But in 40k, why make new xenos models when a new model for Space Marines will be bought 8 times as much? Models need a critical mass of buyers before they come profitable (because of how plastic injection molds work).

I don't think such favorism is healthy in the slightest. And I think this whole Primaris thing is a mess that resulted from it. It was the right time to update the models of the Marines (for several reasons)... but wait, why update the models when you can introduce new ones? New models with superior rules are much more likely to be bought and Tournament players will probably prefer marines with smaller bases. Just updating the model would be a huge potential loss in revenue.

And there is only so much sillyness that you can put into a faction until it collapses under its own weight.

The whole narrative of 40k is centered around Spess Mahreens to the point where 40k has become victim to their own propaganda (some designers more than others). It's as if Marines were allowed to write their own rules. At the same time, you don't give any other races the spotlight to counteract this in any way. At least this has changed with Necrons in 9th edition.

amishprn86 wrote:

Well if you knew the history of GW it would be more clear. There are 2 things that are very important

First; For 20yrs GW literally said "we are a model company first rules second" and they wanted to make great looking models for players.

Second; GW main let the core team basically work on what they wanted and had no time lines for anything. It was "Do what you are inspired to do" (Side note this is why there was LARGE amounts of fun rules and designs both in WHFB and 40k. Like Zombie Pirates and Movie marines in supplements). So when someone got a idea they wanted to do, then they worked on that army.
(think of it as your hobby, you get an idea and you work on it, you have no care to force an idea to force to build an army).

3rd that goes with 1 and 2; if a unit or models sold extremely well, the high ups would "suggest" that the next project they work on had something that could have the same sells. They seemed to not care if an army sells well but at least some units.

So in short, it was a bunch of guys that loved the hobby and didn't care about rules b.c thats how they started the company that put models are first, no deadlines, all teams can work on what and when they wanted with no one telling them otherwise.

But this all changed in 6th/7th (8th fantasy) as the old CEO destroyed profits for the investors (letting people stay in a cycle of do what you want and not what players want, and rules don't matter just make what you find fun is not a good way to balance the game and sell mini's). The next in line CEO changed the moto from "We are a models company" to basically We are a hobby company that rules matter too. This was the time Formations came out to prove to the investors that yes rules sell more than cool models (and why we went to 3-4 books per army).

So knowing the the history you can see how it got so bad. They are now force to work on armies, but its still clear other armies have more love than others b.c they literally do love some armies as it was their babies in the past.

There's also the technological change which came over time. Resin models are very affordable to make. The material is cheap and so are the molds. With resin, most of your costs comes from paying the staff.

But unlike resin, you can't just "do what you want" with plastic. Making plastic molds is ridiculously expensive for physical reasons. The plastic itself is still cheap, but introducing a new plastic mini comes with huge upfront costs. I am 100% sure this is the reason why recently introduced armies are very small in scope. With less variety, it is more likely that you get multiples of the few units which they offer. Heck, AoS has lots of multi-unit kits which utilizes the same spures.

albions-angel wrote:

Im sorry, and this will heart a lot of Corsair players as its a little too close to home, but why the hell are genestealers a separate faction? No, seriously. Why? In what world does that make sense. "Cultists" are not a separate chaos faction. They are filler for Chaos armies. So what makes Genestealers special?

See the above, I am pretty sure this is because of logistics.
And they really don't care about good game-design. They are not a video-game company, GW is still a model-company at heart. Gameplay comes second.

But making good gameplay is pretty hard. It requires the right people, lots of testing, polishing and experience and given the amount of armies, units and rules which are out there, it's not possible that a singular person can handle it all. You can have the most capable people working on a project, and it's all undone by some plerbs that really don't know what they are doing.

I know someone that works in plastic molds (they make kitchen stuff) now its stupidly cheap no days compare to 20yrs ago. They used to have to be done by hand but not anymore, after the art/render is done on them it takes 20min to an hour to cut new molds. With a good artist they can have concepts done in a few hours as well. They legit can make a few new models a week if they wanted too. The big thing that will slow them down is producing enough models.

amishprn86 wrote:

I know someone that works in plastic molds (they make kitchen stuff) now its stupidly cheap no days compare to 20yrs ago. They used to have to be done by hand but not anymore, after the art/render is done on them it takes 20min to an hour to cut new molds. With a good artist they can have concepts done in a few hours as well. They legit can make a few new models a week if they wanted too. The big thing that will slow them down is producing enough models.

That's interesting to read, but I'm not convinced that you can compare plastic kitchen utensils with miniature models. There are worlds of quality between simple plastic shapes and complex miniature sprues.

From what I've read GW has halved their molding costs from working entirely in CAD and create their molds via CNC. But this still leaves the magnitude of cost around 10k+ per model (or 100k+ for huge kits).

Its machine parts for inside mechanical items. So its not like a big flap knife or something. Otherwise its not done with molds like you would think.

Some of the parts are just shaped and drilled, but he showed me a couple cool bits that can't be shaped b.c they are too small, (2-5mm in size).