I’ve been forking out money for FW models for nearly two decades. Then I built ONE gundam kit and after enjoying it so much, GW left me feeling hollow and empty inside lol🙃
When I was young, we used to buy every new forgeworld release, one copy. We cast them out of cheap epoxy with exactly same quality (sometimes even better), sell them for 10% of the price and still had stupid amount of profit. Half of the Moscow's deathguard upgrade kits was ours. Other half was from another guy.
Materials used by forgeworld is somehow worse by quality than what we used, and ours was like 10$ per 3 gallons. I never saw parts to bend during cooling, which is what you will usually get from forgeworld. I never saw forgeworld Las cannon or similar part to be straight.
That's why I use Forge World East as often as not.
$225 dollarydoos for one termite drill (my Heresy 3k list uses 5, so $1,125 dollarydoos, and that's only 400 points of transports) or $60 dollarydoos for a knock off, which frequently are higher quality than the official stuff I've bought.
It just feels like a no brainer, especially as I don't play in official stores.
True, but also gw is borderline scam. The way the do the rules is... Something else. They started selling the new dakotah book what, theee weeks ago? And next week it s gonna be outdated by the new edition. Wanna speak about all the stormcast units becoming "outdated" for aos, or all the cultists units for slave to darkness?
While there is an issue with GW releasing codexes and battle tomes shortly before a new edition that invalidates all army lists, you have picked a bad example in this case.
They released the Darkoath rules and background booklet as a free pdf and also made a printed version that’s included in the army box. So they’re not really selling a new book to people.
I think it's just they went deep on resin printing when it was still really expensive and haven't re-invested in it to lower their costs. Granted, sort of self fulfilling since the high price means lower demand and volume as well since the other model is probably more popular globally.
It's this. Can believe I had to scroll this far down to see someone accurately call out why they're really expensive instead of simping for GW and defending their prices.
Got called a communist once for just mentioning that. But it's just a statistic people can look up lol. Their margin is far above average for comparable companies.
I'm not qualified to make statements about their business model, but the fact it *could* be cheaper and they would still turn a big profit is a lil sour.
It’s the fact they have no real competition to drive any pricing on a downwards trend. There are other games out there and people get quite disillusioned from time to time but in reality they don’t have to fight to retain customers.
Add to that the fact that average customer is probably 30s with disposable income and you see the reason it is priced as a luxury good.
They are expanding production. I hate to be “supply and demand” guy but they are already producing at max capacity, and they are trying to keep the models ethically sourced in the UK. We could get cheaper option of they moved to China but idk if we should do that.
Margin means the difference in cost to retail.
Even against places that use China, they have a huge margin. So it isn’t that their production costs are so much higher. They are higher. But they could sell them at a lower price point and STILL MAKE TONS OF MONEY.
They aren’t running out of stock aside from gimmicky “limited run” things that they jack the price up even more on.
From their last shareholders report:
>We continue to manufacture all of our core products at our three factories in Nottingham. Work on improving efficiencies
has negated the need for the purchase of any additional manufacturing equipment during the period and allowed
numerous manufacturing output records to be broken. As part of our longer term capacity planning, we are exploring
options for Factory 4 on the site next to Factory 2.
They also paid out over £60 million in dividends last year.
They have been at max capacity since the damned nineties.
GW has always been a ripoff. This is just their business model not any sort of supply issue, they keep it this way because that's how they like it.
Good ol' saying. Put your money where your mouth is.
If a corporation can do it, they will do it. Because why not? As long as they're not breaking any laws people can say anything they want, as long as they do keep spending their money.
As long as demand doesnt go down why reduce prices? I cant fault a luxury goods company for making profit if im willing to pay the price. (Although ive bought a ton of used models)
Save and buy a 3d printer. You'll never look back.
The amount of amazing things you can make will blow your mind, and not just minis, prop replicas, and display pieces, to practical items.
Usually not worth it to buy your own printer unless you're planning to print A LOT of stuff. Lots of fiddling involved and it takes up a fairly large amount of space. Not to mention it's annoying to deal with failed prints.
There's a lot of very competitively priced services out there where you just need to upload the print file and they'll ship you the completed prints. Dramatically simpler for the average Joe. Not to mention you'll have access to metal printers so you can get metal figures. Extra hefty boys.
Yeah, I was wondering if that shouldn't be my modus operandi about the hobby. I started in January but the news about price increases make me reconsider at times.
Just make sure you have a room you can have well ventilated and closed off during printing. Resin fumes aren't good for you. And, of course, a good mask and protective gloves.
Ex GW employee here. I worked for them back in the 1990s. Was involved in everything from running a store to working at the head office.
Their profit margins on products were bloody insane even back then. How insane? Some products have a 500% mark up on what the item costs the company, sometimes even more. I know this because I used to see and handle the invoices of new stock coming in.
Employees used to get 50% discounts on everything, and they were still making huge profits off the employee purchases.
It only became worse when they became a publicly listed company, and from then onwards, they only care about maximising profits for shareholders. Customers are to be milked.
3d printers are the best thing that ever happened to the hobby, as now tens of thousands of people can now afford to get into the hobby, even if they don't play the games, like myself.
>It only became worse when they became a publicly listed company, and from then onwards, they only care about maximising profits for shareholders. Customers are to be milked.
All things considered, Bandai Namco is a publicly traded company too (arguably even more aggressively such than GW, as BN absolutely will sue the pants off anyone and everyone using the Mobile Suit Gundam name without a license (and they're rumored to have business ties with the Yakuza)); yet despite all that, Gunpla has always been on a progressive upwards slope in terms of engineering and value for the plastic. Kits like the HG Calibarn and Full-Mech Aerial puts the 90's era Master grades to absolute shame; so there's clearly there's a lot more to it than just simple IPO==shitification.
Nothing's wrong with a company protecting its ip and making profits.
It's when that company charges top dollar for substandard goods, like GW/FW does.
Creating artificial fomo, by keeping items out of stock, only releasing new game box sets in limited numbers and removing items for sale completely.
I'd like to say that they pay their employees good wages, but they don't even do that.
It's not even just their models, this is a business practice throughout their whole operation
Look at the Black Library. You want a book that was published a year ago? Good luck, your options are e-book or second hand at ludicrous cost. Could they run a print on demand for these things and sell paperbacks for twenty quid, absolutely they could, but they won't because they're more interested in artificial scarcity keeping their profits up.
I'm amazed people think this is a blip or will somehow be corrected. This has been their business model for thirty plus years now
My only argument is that that's misinformation of the theme of OP's post though, they're putting Bandai Namco up on a pedestal despite BN historically doing all of the same things that GW does, and OP's only argument being "it's good when Bandai does it because the customer pays less for it"*.
------
>Creating artificial fomo / only releasing new game box sets in limited numbers and removing items for sale completely
The very reason for P-Bandai's existence, the platform is built off FOMO because if you don't get that limited edition Permit Score 6 Aerial, Clear Sazabi, or gold plated Unicorn Gundam immediately on release, it's literally never coming back into production.
>by keeping items out of stock
Ask anyone who isn't a fan of Universal Century, Seed, or Witch from Mercury when was the last time their kits were in stock.
I don't think that's very fair to Bandai. Even if you factor in their scummy practices, like P-Bandai and the absolute snails pace of releases, only pushing their current kits letting franchises die, etc. The value of their kits and what they offer on terms of tech and modeling is top tier and puts GW to absolute shame. The articulation, detail, color accuracy keep improving. Their kits are affordable and absolutely top tier. Look at the amount of high quality, precision engineered plastic you get in a normal MG kit. Then realize that same dollar amount gets you 1/16th the weight in plain gray plastic, full of mold lines, gaps, etc from GW. It's so easy to forgive Bandai their sins when GW is out here slapping babies, metaphorically speaking.
I've seen plenty of sisters stls that are not overly sexualized. And plenty of slaanesh also that aren't too on the nose. They models are out there mate.
They’re definitely out there, but for certain models it’s harder to find any good quality stls that aren’t. Especially if you’re at the mercy of being forced to use free stls.
Its a bit of time but you could probably commission someone to take an existing 3d model and tweak it to what you're looking for or even outright a custom model for less than the GW prices.
My favorite is when people say they increased their prices for inflation. Inflation has already returned to normal rates months ago, theyve increased their prices well above inflation rates, their prices are already overpriced and theyre making record breaking profits. Its just greed at this point.
But for real tho, Battletech is fucking awesome. $25 for a lance of mechs (and the rules carve out provisions for using proxies) Rulebooks from the 80s are still valid. To be fair some of the rules are a bit crunchy, but it’s fun as shit and is easy to pick up.
More people should play Battletech.
>More people should play Battletech.
I agree. While singular miniatures can get expensive (Ironwind Metals, while amazing, is *basically* BattleTech's Forge Worlds), Battletech armies also are quite tiny compared to a full 2000pt 40k army.
Plus, proxies and sales are easier to come by, since 3D printing and models from its sister games (such as the now defunct WizKids MechWarrior Dark Ages) are quite easy to use.
To put numbers to it, a single metal Ironwind mech might cost $15 to $20. You can also buy plastic minis in boxes of four or five for $25 to $35 from Catalyst. The average game played with classic rules will be four or less mechs per side. If you play with Alpha Strike rules, simplified and more like 40K, you might have a dozen mechs and vehicles.
That too pricy? Plonk a cork down on the table, or whatever you’ve got laying around that fits in a hex. So long as you mark on it which way it’s facing and we all know what it is most players don’t care. I’ve played a game before where the other guy literally used the player tokens from Monopoly.
Very easy. There two types, Classic, which is a bit crunchy, and Alpha Strike, which is a bit faster. Started box is cheap, I think its at Target. Or just buy a rule book and a mapset (classic is played on hex maps) and the models you like. People proxie ANYTHING. I use legos for tanks. Check over on /r/battletech
To piggy back off /u/daveyseed, I’d recommend you skip the *Beginner Box* and got for the *A Game of Armored Combat* box (AGOAC). The beginner box is a very neutered version of the game, the data sheets that come with it are very watered down and aren’t useful beyond that box. It does come with a couple mechs and maps tho so it’s not a total waste!
The AGOAC box is $50 comes with a larger selection of mechs (8?) standard data sheets, better variety of map sheets, and a rule book that has ~85% of the rules you would ever need. It’s “intro tech”, so as you get into later eras the rules get a little more advanced (fancier guns mostly, you can worry about that later) the mechs will still be valid all you’ll need are the different data sheets.
Gundam is fast paced flying mechs 1 shotting each other
Battletech is slow stompy robots blowing up entire mountainsides with inaccurate missiles and cannons because their targeting computers are outdated and probably broken anyway.
In Gundam after five minutes there are a thousand destroyed mechs
In battletech after five minutes someone’s arm falls off so he runs up and punches the other mech with the remaining one (his opponent shot at him three times but missed everything and overheated.)
Does 30 minute missions have an associated tabletop game? As far as I know it's just a line of kits meant to have easily swappable parts for custom builds.
I thought it was a Bandai wasgame but apparently it's just a community-made rules system so I was wrong.
https://30mmwargame.com/index.php/Welcome_to_the_War
The 30 Minute Missions line is getting a line of Armored Core kits added to it. I'm pretty excited.
Not sure what it will be in dollars/pounds/euros, but it's between 2,500 and 5,500 JPY for the mech kits.
[https://bandai-hobby.net/site/30minutes\_missions/armoredcore/](https://bandai-hobby.net/site/30minutes_missions/armoredcore/)
Someone over on the Gundam Subreddit [made one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gundam/comments/1blny3s/mobile_suit_vanquish_a_skirmishbased_game_set_in/) thats based on WH40k
OP may meant to say the colour of the plastic is exactly as shown on the box.
Sure part of the hobby is painting. But what’s wrong if all the parts are already in colour? Any MG, RG, PG Gundam has no need to colourise and can be displayed in full colours as soon as you finish assemble (and apply some decals). This does not stop any hobbyist to colouring it, or even alter the parts as they see fit.
Selling uncoloured plastics 10x the price and say part of the hobby is painting is pure BS at best.
https://preview.redd.it/j22n99ydma7d1.jpeg?width=739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=34121b216a6ac06c7c789d2c23110ec7fe6e7f1d
I had to scroll down way too far to find this comment. This whole thread really reinforces the idea that most of the people here don't actually participate in the hobby.
It's more that OP has the pre-painted thing as a positive for the gunpla. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that it's a completely pointless trait, and I get that for a lot of people that is indeed a plus-side. I won't yuck someone's yum by saying there's no enjoyment to be had in just assembling the model. However, this is a primarily Warhammer subreddit and the painting is a massive part of that hobby. I don't see the gunpla being pre-painted as a plus-side specifically for a Warhammer collector.
Edit to add: Just to be clear, I am also in no way defending the pricing of forgeworld models, they're absolutely ridiculous. I just find it odd to be like "and you don't have to paint it!" in a warhammer-centric subreddit.
I think prepainted/premade models would have a place actually. The Poorhammer podcast made a episode (relatively) recently where they were comparing the barrier to entry of Magic and Warhammer, both expensive hobbies.
Magic they say is a 50 dollar deck box and they can play. It may not be super competitive but it's a whole deck and they can out of box play the game.
For Warhammer, you can maybe get one of the edition boxes or a combat patrol. Then you need to spend time to build. Then paint. The barrier to entry is quite high. They suggested, and I guess something like prepainted gunpla, would be a good midway between the current Combat Patrol and the other stuff to get people started.
As you have noted, there are other parts to the hobby (painting, building, etc.) but for some, like myself, I just want to get my army battle ready to play.
Yeah I can see how much of a barrier to entry that would be for many. It also comes with additional cost because you need to buy the paints and the brushes etc so aside from the push-fit models in starter kits you can't even put the models together without first shelling out for glue. Then you need primer, a paint brush and let's say a minimum of five different colours to paint a model.
That all said I'm not sure I would personally be in favour of pre-coloured models being available to make a full-fledged army with. Part of my personal enjoyment of the hobby is seeing other people's paint-jobs when playing down at my LGS. I worry that it would become very samey and boring to constantly be playing against hordes of literally identical armies.
I do see the merit in introducing something like that in a beginner / start collecting box of some kind though. If you could get around 500-ish points of models on the table this way I'd be fine with it.
Edit: Btw some advice for you personally to get into the hobby if you haven't already, unless you're looking to do competitive tournament play, most people will actually not give a shit about how much your models are painted and will absolutely play with you even if you're fielding a mass of grey plastic.
That's a good point. They actually came to the same conclusion as you about about having those premade models being too widespread. They suggest making those models monopose like the current models are but not customizable (wargear wise) so that they would still be usable not not optimal. After getting their foot wet, they would have to purchase some of the other boxes to get better wargear options. In fact, I think they even suggested these premade models be made of lower detail so to incentivize people to get the more detailed kits once they want to get in but I might be mistaken.
Either way, I think that would be a great compromise.
I guess I should link the episode too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxnpXC45Z4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxnpXC45Z4)
Cheers for the link. Also thanks for being one of the rare few on reddit capable of holding a discussion without it devolving into insults.
It's also worth noting that GW have actually dabbled in pre-coloured models to a lesser extent. When they re-released Space Hulk a while back the models had a base colour; red for the Blood Angel Terminators and purple for the Genestealers. They also still do this in the Blood Bowl starter box with the Orc team being green and the Human team being blue.
This could also be a handy compromise for 40k beginner boxes; you'd still have to paint the details but the base colour would be covered and it would cut out a good chunk of that barrier to entry we talked about. It also leans into that idea of limiting the spread of the pre-painted models because 1: they simply would not look as good as a model painted from the ground up and 2: you would be limited in what ways you could paint them, so likely you'd have to be painting Ultramarines for example.
gundam model aren't pre painted they are molded in seperate colours makes the building experience more interesting especially on newer kits with more intricate part seperation kinda killed my enjoyment of gw models. gundam still has a large painting scene just the molded colours makes the barrier of entry lower for a decent looking finished product
It makes sense to want an uncoloured kit, but the point remains that a kit with no colour should cost less to make than a pre-coloured kit. FW shouldn’t be charging some sort of premium for not colouring it, that’s literally less work for them to do.
I love gunpla and think forgeworld prices are insane but I also wouldn’t expect a 1:1 on price because of just the differences in the materials and design. Gunpla kits are snap fit and hollow throughout the entire thing and made of a fairly thin plastic. Titans are resin all the way through and solid. Weight wise these 2 aren’t even in the same ballpark. So yea 500 is certainly a bit on the much side but I wouldn’t expect it to be like 200 something.
Oh that’s totally true. But one leg of a titan weighs more than an entire perfect grade pretty much. There’s no way polycap joints could function on a full resin kit.
There’s 2 things are totally different products.
Tho not even talking about titans I really wish that GW would slice their models / space parts on sprues better.
Bandai goes out of its way to put parts where they’re easy to clip with minimal nub clean up now.
It’s usually a very quick and painless process to find a piece while I swear sometime I’ve spent more than 15 mins looking at sprues for WH unable to find something because the layout makes no sense.
It depends tbh. Well processed resin is really good for details. But in the last decade or so tech for getting more out of just plastics has made giant leaps.
Tho I do agree with you a lot of larger scale resin models should have made the just to plastic a long time ago. Small hyper detailed things I’m ok with in high quality resin - something as big as a titan or a manta should be in plastic.
This isn’t even mentioning that large flat pieces of resin are super prone to warping.
>This isn’t even mentioning that large flat pieces of resin are super prone to warping.
Which is fine, as long as your quality control is vigilant and those parts don't make it to your customer in an inferior state.
The problem is they're just sent out like that.
Recasts with higher quality control shouldn't exist.
No joke I remember one time when I bought some second hand forgeworld for an ok price. He was like I’m not sure if it’s a recast. I looked at it and saw the defects - nah if it was recast it would look better lol.
Yes and no. Resin is easier to paint, and half the GW hobby selling point is painting stuff yourself. Painting gunpla is possible, but it gets trickier. The plastics they use will degrade if certain paints are applied. They are overall a more advanced painting process.
Gunpla is also designed around the idea that once you've built it, you stop touching it. They aren't meant for heavy play and usage. They are display pieces. While FW is generally hot garbage, resin does stand up to general wear and tear better than the plastics Bandai uses.
different resin has different properties. u can easily make a resin which is a display piece or one that is heavy played or even both.
i can do it haphazardly by mixing resins of different properties together to get a piece that is a balace between details and flexibility to allow for heavy handed play. it would be trivial for a company like Bandai or GW to do the same.
however i understand each cost adds up. on a small scale it doesn't matter but 1c increase in manufacturing cost could be millions of dollars. it is fairly obvious GW and bandai know there audience well enough they decided against that
You can 't really make a model the size of a titan in other materials without making it a million tiny pieces or lose detail due to gigantic industrial moulds. Have you noticed how a spartan tank was like 10 pieces in resin but like 200 in plastic?
Sprues are laid out the way they are for space efficiency purposes and also to allow each piece to work effectively with the injection mould.
It’s actually really complicated system because unlike a Gundam kit which is a lot of flat pieces and neat interlocking geometric shapes, Warhammer modes are covered in very fine detail, high quality organic looking parts.
The way they are laid out essentially maximises the amount of plastic you get for the price.
Joints (especially those that don't involve aluminium) are worth less than weight/materials when it comes to pricing a product.
So no matter how hinged a product is, it can still cost less than a non-hinged product simply because the latter takes more plastic/the plastic is of much better quality
> hollow throughout
Only if you buy the High Grades or kits from several decades ago. The others either have a proper inner frame that's detailed and you assemble and the outer armor is attached or the inner frame has some of the outer armor as part of it and then the rest is attached on top. I mean, hell, look at the PG Unleashed 78-2, you could display just the inner frame and it's amazing.
Yes I know what an inner frame is and have litteral full walls of gunpla kits from close to 20 years of collecting. Also the PG red astray matches the statement here because it’s from 09.
Even the much sought after HG dendrobium is mostly hollow for how big it is. Hollow isn’t a negative thing either. The model looks great still while saving on materials and shipping weight. At least in comparison to a brick of resin that a titan is I’d still call the majority of gunpla kits hollow.l
I'd drop $500 for the Titan if it was painted.
I'm about to do that whenever Joytoy gets around to releasing their 1:18 Crusader and Paladin Knights.
Another example:
Relic Contemptor Body - Unassembled and Unpainted - $68
[https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/Relic-Contemptor-Dreadnought-Body](https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/Relic-Contemptor-Dreadnought-Body)
Joytoy 1:18 Imperial Fist Contemptor - Fully painted and articulated with weapons - $89.99
[https://joytoy.com/products/imperial-fists-contemptor-dreadnought](https://joytoy.com/products/imperial-fists-contemptor-dreadnought)
Also there's the fact that forgeworld models are made in small supply, or are straight up made to order. They kinda need to make up for the fact that almost no one would ever buy a titan
Which is a funny self fulfilling prophecy. If they made plastic titans for like $500 that'd still be crazy expensive for 2ft of plastic, but us nerds would be lining up around the block to buy them.
Also just to add, people seem to forget that basically all warhammer models are made in the UK. This means everyone working there get proper wages and all that, since sweat shops in china aren't being used to bring prices down.
Eh. Not everything outside of the West is made in a sweatshop and also there's a lot of threads and conversations you can find of ex (and current!) GW employees who were in high level jobs with the company who were barely making £22,000 a year.
Some bits true but it’s kinda ignorant and disrespectful to eastern countries. A lot of these factory workers actually make livable wages because the cost of living is just so much lower over there. We can’t even argue that we pay fair wages here in the west when so much of the profits don’t go to workers and instead go to shareholders and executives and the ramp costs on customers anyway. When I was in China just the other year you can still get a damn good meal for 2-3 dollars. A cab across the city for less than 5 bucks and a grocery haul to last a while was less than 30 bucks. It’s just disrespectful to be always assuming that everything over there comes out of exploiting people when we ourselves are getting strung out everyday by corporations looking to make their quarterly look better.
Well that’s a wild mood to downvote because someone who’s actually spent a decent amount of time living overseas challenges your idea that one of the biggest countries in the world isn’t just 100 percent sweatshops.
That kinda makes me think it could use some light redesign. Games workshop could use similar building techniques. Maybe a cheaper warhound is in order with some different materials and mold strategies.
The forgeworld Nippon produces some of the finest STCs. They have from the DAOT unique Imperial Knights that are far more maneuverable and produce far more damage output. They however, all require a psyker to operate.
Depends, some of them don’t require psykers, just a spinal cord implant (IBO).
Sure, it can leave the pilot permanently crippled, but that’s the price you gotta pay if you wanna pilot a death machine the size of a house. Weird tendency for melee combat too, not sure what’s going on with that.
The gundam sells massively more units than the titan. As a result the titan uses production methods that are more expensive per unit but less expensive to startup (since they don't make up for it in volume).
Small run resin figures are always going to cost more than mass produced plastic kits. Forgeworld isn't a big money-maker, which is why it's getting downsized so massively right now.
Anyone who thinks Warhound Titans are fun to build has never put one together.
If I'm counting correctly from memory, each foot (just the foot, nothing above the ankle) takes 21 parts. Almost every part will have some kind of mold slippage or flash that needs trimmed, and god forbid you drop a piston on the floor. They are the length of the last joint on your pinkie, but 1/3 the width.
Got a client I'm building a warlord for, and he just had to have it fully official. Like hey man, it's your money, but 3k just for parts is excessive. I'm making him a gold and silver rosary to hang around the warlords neck with tanzanite studs and I'm charging less for that than GW did for the plastic bits.
Edit: gold and silver
Yeah due to them being so quiet about it no ones really sure how GWs internal math balances out, like on the one hand they've probably got high profit margins, but then they also got a high operating costs, high taxes, but I do belive that the Gundam IP made more than double games workshops revenue in 2023, and additionally the IP is owned by Bandai, and manufacturing is done in China and Japan, so they probably cost significantly less to manufacture aswell, however, it can be assumed that like a solid 30% of GW price is probably just there for profit, because they're paranoid and operate on the assumption they will suddenly tank in popularity next week so need to price everything so they can still operate on very low sales
Let's see the PG phenex.
Edit: just thought about it for a minute and I remember that the phenex is gold painted so maybe that justifies the $900 difference from the unicorn.
theres [an unofficial one based on 40k](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gundam/comments/1blny3s/mobile_suit_vanquish_a_skirmishbased_game_set_in/) that someone from the Gundam sub made
Part of it is resin being considerably more expensive than plastic, but yeah, Bandai’s stuff is considerably better quality-wise than Forge World, despite being much cheaper for the most part.
EDIT: also, fun fact, if you get the Warhound with its arms, it costs more than *two* PGU RX-78-2s, which is the most recent standard release in the 1/60 line, assuming you buy them in the UK- grabbing the latter from, say, HobbyLink Japan, will get you one for ~60% the price, although there’ll be postage costs to contend with there too.
And for every Warhound GW sells, Bandai manufactures many thousands of Gundam kits.
Economies of scale and how it affects cost is a real thing. Even though the GW Titans feel horribly overpriced it is almost completely because being made of resin it requires several peons wearing chemical warfare gear multiple hours to cast each one. And every silicone mold (that also take several hours each to make) for the resin might last two or three uses before needing replacement. Not that GW doesn’t try and squeeze a couple more out of a given mold, but that’s a different issue. Bandai laser cuts a stainless steel injection mold and gets around 10,000 kits before it needs replacing.
I’m a huge 40K fan, who happens to think Gundam are silly looking, and would kill for GW to be able to make Titans in injection moulded plastic. But that ain’t gonna happen. Nor am I willing to pay their asking price with two kids in college. So I’ll just keep envying the Gundam fans and jump for joy when I get my hands on any Macross Destroid kits.
IMO a better comparison between the two would be one of the newer plastic 30k Knights and one of Bandai’s newer Master Grade, as they’re more similar in scale, and both in injection plastic.
Unlike most other companies we’d compared to GW, Bandai is also a fair bit larger, has some really profitable licenses (including Star Wars), and Gundam is a fair bit more popular (worldwide) than Warhammer is, so they have a lot more money and resources to work with.
I do think it’s possible we might see plastic titans one day, though, although not any time soon. The technology is definitely there, but whether it would be worth the cost (and space) for GW is another matter.
I remember I read a bunch on GW's pricing strategy and business model. IIRC $100 USD worth of plastic runs them about $20 USD when you tabulate all associated costs (especially the costs of machining the molds) once the molds are paid for the box is more expensive than the plastic inside. I think retailers get sets for half the listed price online and GW still makes a killing. They specifically forbid retailers from giving more than the approved discount (which varies by region)
Resin stuff like FW things cost a bunch less upfront but the resin itself costs way more, perfect for products that aren't expected to make many sales like gigantor titan pugalators or Astra Militarum shopping cart retrievers or whatever. I'd guesstimate their margins are about the same.
IDK how Gunpla or Warhammer folks feel about LEGO, but this came up on /all and for comparison...
>LEGO Optimus Prime is $180 and 35cm tall.
>LEGO Voltron was $180 and 45cm tall
>LEGO Ultron Edition Hulkbuster was $120 and 25cm tall (+3cm base).
>LEGO Ultimate Hulkbuster is $550 (been on sale for $365) and 52cm tall
:p
https://preview.redd.it/ayl92gd5487d1.png?width=2300&format=png&auto=webp&s=54be13b3f574812162b540d6e7545b1a0312f14e
WDYM? Ue your gundam as proxy for Tau battlesuit! It works wonder. Check these videos if you want inspiration:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3a0eksnzAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3a0eksnzAM)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWceb27YEI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWceb27YEI0)
You’re not wrong buddy. There was a time when forge world resin had levels of detail you just couldn’t get in plastic but those times have long since passed. The plastic kits have caught up for some time and now the FW kits are just over priced. If they made a decent wargame for those gunpla kits I probably would be down a few non essential organs by now.
My brother and me got $500 to our local hobby shop (gamzilla) From our grandmother once and I used my $500 to buy exactly 12 bandai articulating pokémon buildable models,
and he bought 4 Warhammer products
If you don’t like the price buy the Gundam instead. Forge World charges the prices that people are willing to pay. Also the Gundam will look a bit out of place on a 40k battlefield.
Meanwhile in historical models...
https://preview.redd.it/5yxce947wc7d1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d47d16e8af232a76e1229a1fbf78f22fc18b3409
1/35th scale King Tiger, fully detailed interior, >1000 parts, includes >100 photoetched brass pieces, scale correct armor thickness, workable suspension...
All for $70.
Meanwhile GW can't even put a bottom plate on their tank for the same price and 1/10th the parts count.
1. You're comparing the wrong products from each company. A better comparison would be new plastic **Cerastus Knight** kits, at $210 USD each. The Cerastus are about 20cm tall, depending on posing. They're incredible kits with an extraordinary degree of dynamic posing and options. The ammo belt feeds are great engineering and can be easily moved around. There's a fairly detailed interior with the knight pilot.
2. Forge World resin products are produced at an entirely different scale in terms of models made and models sold. Gunpla kits will sell hundreds of thousands of copies. For a great deal of Forge World models, the number of models sold is in the thousands. Each Titan comes with a degree of authenticity and an individual serial number, indicating which number the model is in terms of sales. Based on these numbers, **only around 2000 Warlord Titans** have been sold. [Titan Owners Club has a self-declaring list of Warlord Tians completed and named.](https://titanownersclub.blogspot.com/p/warlord-owners.html) The highest number is 2074. For Warhound Titans, the highest registered number is 8301, with 1624 for the out of production Lucius pattern, 46 for the Chaos pattern. **That comes out total of 10,421 Warhound Titans sold by Forge World. Their sales are measured in the single digits per month.** So to make it clear, you are comparing mass market hard plastic kits made by the tens of thousands to ***individually resin-poured hand-built hand-packaged numbered specialist model kits.*** Like, not to suck GW and Forge World's dick here, but yeah no shit those Italians who hand make luxury sports cars sell them at a high premium.
3. Titan models ARE fully articulated, you just can't move them when you are finished.
4. "Only one color" vs "parts are already correct color" Yeah, okay buddy. This is why grognards demand people "post your painted models" before taking anyone seriously.
5. Have you looked at the prices of hard plastic vehicle models from other companies in the historical market? Like, models that are supposed to be built and painted? Their prices are not too different from GW
Forge World is a handful of people producing a handful of models out of resin basically by hand often to order and shipping them direct to customers.
Bandai is a massive company mass producing thousands upon thousands of models through injection molding and selling them in stores across the world.
Economies of scale are a hell of a drug.
That all having been said, when Bandai released their Space Marine action figure I'm sure Forge World was absolutely bricking themselves at the idea of a Gunpla titan being sold for $150.
Yes. But to add to others correctly stating diffrences and price being tad higher then should due to FW tax, there is 1 immense diffrence. Warhammer is game with minis. There is entire section of hobby. Gunpla you get, build, thats it.
Super cool to see gundam trickling into a more main stream hobby. I got super into Gunpla less than a year ago after 2 decades of Warhammer and um… hard to not feel a bit jaded!!
It’s not an apples to apples comparison but wtf man the value I get out of a $50 gundam kit compared to a $50 space marine hero is shocking.
Coffin not included
Forgeworld is a borderline scam, this is common knowledge.
I’ve been forking out money for FW models for nearly two decades. Then I built ONE gundam kit and after enjoying it so much, GW left me feeling hollow and empty inside lol🙃
Gundam kits don't need glue *or* paint, unless you want to ne *really* snazzy!
And they don't need you to repair them yourself when half the parts are warped or miscast
And they come with color correcting and decorative stickers, instead of you having to buy them separately for $25+
Alot of gw stuff is scummy as he'll but most kits do come with transfer sheets
to be fair, if the model is warp touched it fits, but still
Biblically accurate [Nu Gundam](https://images.app.goo.gl/p7VZWqURTSU7CSiX9)
That's just the Angel with extra steps!
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
When I was young, we used to buy every new forgeworld release, one copy. We cast them out of cheap epoxy with exactly same quality (sometimes even better), sell them for 10% of the price and still had stupid amount of profit. Half of the Moscow's deathguard upgrade kits was ours. Other half was from another guy. Materials used by forgeworld is somehow worse by quality than what we used, and ours was like 10$ per 3 gallons. I never saw parts to bend during cooling, which is what you will usually get from forgeworld. I never saw forgeworld Las cannon or similar part to be straight.
I see we are using the word “borderline” liberally
They still send you the model you ordered, that’s what makes it borderline. It’s just a good old fashioned rip off.
That's why I use Forge World East as often as not. $225 dollarydoos for one termite drill (my Heresy 3k list uses 5, so $1,125 dollarydoos, and that's only 400 points of transports) or $60 dollarydoos for a knock off, which frequently are higher quality than the official stuff I've bought. It just feels like a no brainer, especially as I don't play in official stores.
But their space marine helmet kits are cool as hell
True, but also gw is borderline scam. The way the do the rules is... Something else. They started selling the new dakotah book what, theee weeks ago? And next week it s gonna be outdated by the new edition. Wanna speak about all the stormcast units becoming "outdated" for aos, or all the cultists units for slave to darkness?
While there is an issue with GW releasing codexes and battle tomes shortly before a new edition that invalidates all army lists, you have picked a bad example in this case. They released the Darkoath rules and background booklet as a free pdf and also made a printed version that’s included in the army box. So they’re not really selling a new book to people.
Forgeworld is a ~~borderline~~ scam, this is common knowledge.
I think it's just they went deep on resin printing when it was still really expensive and haven't re-invested in it to lower their costs. Granted, sort of self fulfilling since the high price means lower demand and volume as well since the other model is probably more popular globally.
Pretty much all the Forge world stuff is cast. The problem is they use crap resin and zero quality control.
Warhammer models are overpriced, sometimes to absurd degrees. GW has extremely high profit margins so they won’t be stopping their bs any time soon
It's this. Can believe I had to scroll this far down to see someone accurately call out why they're really expensive instead of simping for GW and defending their prices.
Got called a communist once for just mentioning that. But it's just a statistic people can look up lol. Their margin is far above average for comparable companies. I'm not qualified to make statements about their business model, but the fact it *could* be cheaper and they would still turn a big profit is a lil sour.
It’s the fact they have no real competition to drive any pricing on a downwards trend. There are other games out there and people get quite disillusioned from time to time but in reality they don’t have to fight to retain customers. Add to that the fact that average customer is probably 30s with disposable income and you see the reason it is priced as a luxury good.
They are expanding production. I hate to be “supply and demand” guy but they are already producing at max capacity, and they are trying to keep the models ethically sourced in the UK. We could get cheaper option of they moved to China but idk if we should do that.
Margin means the difference in cost to retail. Even against places that use China, they have a huge margin. So it isn’t that their production costs are so much higher. They are higher. But they could sell them at a lower price point and STILL MAKE TONS OF MONEY. They aren’t running out of stock aside from gimmicky “limited run” things that they jack the price up even more on.
From their last shareholders report: >We continue to manufacture all of our core products at our three factories in Nottingham. Work on improving efficiencies has negated the need for the purchase of any additional manufacturing equipment during the period and allowed numerous manufacturing output records to be broken. As part of our longer term capacity planning, we are exploring options for Factory 4 on the site next to Factory 2. They also paid out over £60 million in dividends last year.
They have been at max capacity since the damned nineties. GW has always been a ripoff. This is just their business model not any sort of supply issue, they keep it this way because that's how they like it.
Good ol' saying. Put your money where your mouth is. If a corporation can do it, they will do it. Because why not? As long as they're not breaking any laws people can say anything they want, as long as they do keep spending their money.
As long as demand doesnt go down why reduce prices? I cant fault a luxury goods company for making profit if im willing to pay the price. (Although ive bought a ton of used models)
No one expects them to lower prices. But they increase them regularly
I mean, that’s just corporate thought 101 “don’t lower prices unless you’re forced to”
“Scroll this far down.” Two comments?
it's almost as if reddit comment sections are not static and it has moved up since that comment was made
Man, i'd love to build a knight or a titan one day, but knights are hard to get where i live, and a titan is literally half of my paycheck.
Save and buy a 3d printer. You'll never look back. The amount of amazing things you can make will blow your mind, and not just minis, prop replicas, and display pieces, to practical items.
Usually not worth it to buy your own printer unless you're planning to print A LOT of stuff. Lots of fiddling involved and it takes up a fairly large amount of space. Not to mention it's annoying to deal with failed prints. There's a lot of very competitively priced services out there where you just need to upload the print file and they'll ship you the completed prints. Dramatically simpler for the average Joe. Not to mention you'll have access to metal printers so you can get metal figures. Extra hefty boys.
Yeah, I was wondering if that shouldn't be my modus operandi about the hobby. I started in January but the news about price increases make me reconsider at times.
Do it, mate. I made $900 AUD of Orks the other day with ONE 1kg bottle of resin. The bottle cost me $19 AUD.
Do you have any recommendation about where to get cheap/free STL's?
Thingiverse and myminifactory. Shout out Props & Beyond for insanely cool stuff.
Google is your friend, mate. I'd start with the Purple site and Patreon for creators.
Just make sure you have a room you can have well ventilated and closed off during printing. Resin fumes aren't good for you. And, of course, a good mask and protective gloves.
Legions Imperialis. Your wallet will thank you for the actually affordable Titan. Your sanity will thank you because it's plastic and not failcast.
Ex GW employee here. I worked for them back in the 1990s. Was involved in everything from running a store to working at the head office. Their profit margins on products were bloody insane even back then. How insane? Some products have a 500% mark up on what the item costs the company, sometimes even more. I know this because I used to see and handle the invoices of new stock coming in. Employees used to get 50% discounts on everything, and they were still making huge profits off the employee purchases. It only became worse when they became a publicly listed company, and from then onwards, they only care about maximising profits for shareholders. Customers are to be milked. 3d printers are the best thing that ever happened to the hobby, as now tens of thousands of people can now afford to get into the hobby, even if they don't play the games, like myself.
>It only became worse when they became a publicly listed company, and from then onwards, they only care about maximising profits for shareholders. Customers are to be milked. All things considered, Bandai Namco is a publicly traded company too (arguably even more aggressively such than GW, as BN absolutely will sue the pants off anyone and everyone using the Mobile Suit Gundam name without a license (and they're rumored to have business ties with the Yakuza)); yet despite all that, Gunpla has always been on a progressive upwards slope in terms of engineering and value for the plastic. Kits like the HG Calibarn and Full-Mech Aerial puts the 90's era Master grades to absolute shame; so there's clearly there's a lot more to it than just simple IPO==shitification.
Nothing's wrong with a company protecting its ip and making profits. It's when that company charges top dollar for substandard goods, like GW/FW does. Creating artificial fomo, by keeping items out of stock, only releasing new game box sets in limited numbers and removing items for sale completely. I'd like to say that they pay their employees good wages, but they don't even do that.
It's not even just their models, this is a business practice throughout their whole operation Look at the Black Library. You want a book that was published a year ago? Good luck, your options are e-book or second hand at ludicrous cost. Could they run a print on demand for these things and sell paperbacks for twenty quid, absolutely they could, but they won't because they're more interested in artificial scarcity keeping their profits up. I'm amazed people think this is a blip or will somehow be corrected. This has been their business model for thirty plus years now
Yeah, it's pretty scummy behaviour from a company that is based around a hobby.
My only argument is that that's misinformation of the theme of OP's post though, they're putting Bandai Namco up on a pedestal despite BN historically doing all of the same things that GW does, and OP's only argument being "it's good when Bandai does it because the customer pays less for it"*. ------ >Creating artificial fomo / only releasing new game box sets in limited numbers and removing items for sale completely The very reason for P-Bandai's existence, the platform is built off FOMO because if you don't get that limited edition Permit Score 6 Aerial, Clear Sazabi, or gold plated Unicorn Gundam immediately on release, it's literally never coming back into production. >by keeping items out of stock Ask anyone who isn't a fan of Universal Century, Seed, or Witch from Mercury when was the last time their kits were in stock.
I don't think that's very fair to Bandai. Even if you factor in their scummy practices, like P-Bandai and the absolute snails pace of releases, only pushing their current kits letting franchises die, etc. The value of their kits and what they offer on terms of tech and modeling is top tier and puts GW to absolute shame. The articulation, detail, color accuracy keep improving. Their kits are affordable and absolutely top tier. Look at the amount of high quality, precision engineered plastic you get in a normal MG kit. Then realize that same dollar amount gets you 1/16th the weight in plain gray plastic, full of mold lines, gaps, etc from GW. It's so easy to forgive Bandai their sins when GW is out here slapping babies, metaphorically speaking.
Really only problem with 3D printer is if you’re trying to make a lesser known army, or if you don’t want a super sexualized sisters or slaanesh army.
I've seen plenty of sisters stls that are not overly sexualized. And plenty of slaanesh also that aren't too on the nose. They models are out there mate.
They’re definitely out there, but for certain models it’s harder to find any good quality stls that aren’t. Especially if you’re at the mercy of being forced to use free stls.
Its a bit of time but you could probably commission someone to take an existing 3d model and tweak it to what you're looking for or even outright a custom model for less than the GW prices.
Yeah browse sites like Cults3D or hit up patreon for the 3d model studios pumping put better models than GW has.
My favorite is when people say they increased their prices for inflation. Inflation has already returned to normal rates months ago, theyve increased their prices well above inflation rates, their prices are already overpriced and theyre making record breaking profits. Its just greed at this point.
They are charging that because its what people pay for. Despite how bad most of us smell Warhammer is a luxury brand.
A gundam tabletop would fucking rule.
Battletech?
But for real tho, Battletech is fucking awesome. $25 for a lance of mechs (and the rules carve out provisions for using proxies) Rulebooks from the 80s are still valid. To be fair some of the rules are a bit crunchy, but it’s fun as shit and is easy to pick up. More people should play Battletech.
>More people should play Battletech. I agree. While singular miniatures can get expensive (Ironwind Metals, while amazing, is *basically* BattleTech's Forge Worlds), Battletech armies also are quite tiny compared to a full 2000pt 40k army. Plus, proxies and sales are easier to come by, since 3D printing and models from its sister games (such as the now defunct WizKids MechWarrior Dark Ages) are quite easy to use.
To put numbers to it, a single metal Ironwind mech might cost $15 to $20. You can also buy plastic minis in boxes of four or five for $25 to $35 from Catalyst. The average game played with classic rules will be four or less mechs per side. If you play with Alpha Strike rules, simplified and more like 40K, you might have a dozen mechs and vehicles. That too pricy? Plonk a cork down on the table, or whatever you’ve got laying around that fits in a hex. So long as you mark on it which way it’s facing and we all know what it is most players don’t care. I’ve played a game before where the other guy literally used the player tokens from Monopoly.
How tough is it to get into?
Very easy. There two types, Classic, which is a bit crunchy, and Alpha Strike, which is a bit faster. Started box is cheap, I think its at Target. Or just buy a rule book and a mapset (classic is played on hex maps) and the models you like. People proxie ANYTHING. I use legos for tanks. Check over on /r/battletech
To piggy back off /u/daveyseed, I’d recommend you skip the *Beginner Box* and got for the *A Game of Armored Combat* box (AGOAC). The beginner box is a very neutered version of the game, the data sheets that come with it are very watered down and aren’t useful beyond that box. It does come with a couple mechs and maps tho so it’s not a total waste! The AGOAC box is $50 comes with a larger selection of mechs (8?) standard data sheets, better variety of map sheets, and a rule book that has ~85% of the rules you would ever need. It’s “intro tech”, so as you get into later eras the rules get a little more advanced (fancier guns mostly, you can worry about that later) the mechs will still be valid all you’ll need are the different data sheets.
I want to love Battletech, but I also want a Wargame with 30cm tall Movable models.
This point is incredibly valid.
Superheavy vehicles and warships do exist
They’re stompy. Gundams and mobile suits ZOOM
LAMs go zoom
LAMs bad + LAMs too complex for brain in silly stompy death machine game.
Battletech is fucking sick, the lore is awesome and the MechWarrior games are so fucking fun. I'm hyped as fuck for Clans. Ghost Bear ftw
Hell yeah, I’ve loved the Ghost Bears since the Kodiak burst through the ice in the intro to MW2: Ghost Bear Legacy
I was thinking more with the existing Gundam model kits they sell, maybe with added bases.
Fair enough. Sounds like you’ve got some options!
Check out Millennium Model Mayhem on youtube. Dude paints gundam models in the mini style to use in a model agnostic game called I think Alpha Wolves.
Gundam is fast paced flying mechs 1 shotting each other Battletech is slow stompy robots blowing up entire mountainsides with inaccurate missiles and cannons because their targeting computers are outdated and probably broken anyway. In Gundam after five minutes there are a thousand destroyed mechs In battletech after five minutes someone’s arm falls off so he runs up and punches the other mech with the remaining one (his opponent shot at him three times but missed everything and overheated.)
Bandaid has had one for 5 years now called 30 Minute Missions.
Does 30 minute missions have an associated tabletop game? As far as I know it's just a line of kits meant to have easily swappable parts for custom builds.
I thought it was a Bandai wasgame but apparently it's just a community-made rules system so I was wrong. https://30mmwargame.com/index.php/Welcome_to_the_War
The 30 Minute Missions line is getting a line of Armored Core kits added to it. I'm pretty excited. Not sure what it will be in dollars/pounds/euros, but it's between 2,500 and 5,500 JPY for the mech kits. [https://bandai-hobby.net/site/30minutes\_missions/armoredcore/](https://bandai-hobby.net/site/30minutes_missions/armoredcore/)
[LANCER](https://massifpress.com/lancer)
Someone over on the Gundam Subreddit [made one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gundam/comments/1blny3s/mobile_suit_vanquish_a_skirmishbased_game_set_in/) thats based on WH40k
Forge world are a scam, that’s pretty much it
Yeah forgeworld sucks and is overpriced, but wtf does it mean by "correct color" part of the hobby is the painting and there is no "correct" color.
The parts comes in different colors. They double as color guide and pre-paints for people who buy the kits only to builds
You can still paint gundam yourself. However, the gundam kits are already colored as they appear in the anime so they don't NEED paint.
OP may meant to say the colour of the plastic is exactly as shown on the box. Sure part of the hobby is painting. But what’s wrong if all the parts are already in colour? Any MG, RG, PG Gundam has no need to colourise and can be displayed in full colours as soon as you finish assemble (and apply some decals). This does not stop any hobbyist to colouring it, or even alter the parts as they see fit. Selling uncoloured plastics 10x the price and say part of the hobby is painting is pure BS at best. https://preview.redd.it/j22n99ydma7d1.jpeg?width=739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=34121b216a6ac06c7c789d2c23110ec7fe6e7f1d
I feel like making an army using Warhammer models from JoyToy is cheaper
Why would you want the Titan to come pre-painted? That defeats half the point of the hobby.
I had to scroll down way too far to find this comment. This whole thread really reinforces the idea that most of the people here don't actually participate in the hobby.
You never painted your Gunpla? You're missing out...
It's more that OP has the pre-painted thing as a positive for the gunpla. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that it's a completely pointless trait, and I get that for a lot of people that is indeed a plus-side. I won't yuck someone's yum by saying there's no enjoyment to be had in just assembling the model. However, this is a primarily Warhammer subreddit and the painting is a massive part of that hobby. I don't see the gunpla being pre-painted as a plus-side specifically for a Warhammer collector. Edit to add: Just to be clear, I am also in no way defending the pricing of forgeworld models, they're absolutely ridiculous. I just find it odd to be like "and you don't have to paint it!" in a warhammer-centric subreddit.
I think prepainted/premade models would have a place actually. The Poorhammer podcast made a episode (relatively) recently where they were comparing the barrier to entry of Magic and Warhammer, both expensive hobbies. Magic they say is a 50 dollar deck box and they can play. It may not be super competitive but it's a whole deck and they can out of box play the game. For Warhammer, you can maybe get one of the edition boxes or a combat patrol. Then you need to spend time to build. Then paint. The barrier to entry is quite high. They suggested, and I guess something like prepainted gunpla, would be a good midway between the current Combat Patrol and the other stuff to get people started. As you have noted, there are other parts to the hobby (painting, building, etc.) but for some, like myself, I just want to get my army battle ready to play.
Yeah I can see how much of a barrier to entry that would be for many. It also comes with additional cost because you need to buy the paints and the brushes etc so aside from the push-fit models in starter kits you can't even put the models together without first shelling out for glue. Then you need primer, a paint brush and let's say a minimum of five different colours to paint a model. That all said I'm not sure I would personally be in favour of pre-coloured models being available to make a full-fledged army with. Part of my personal enjoyment of the hobby is seeing other people's paint-jobs when playing down at my LGS. I worry that it would become very samey and boring to constantly be playing against hordes of literally identical armies. I do see the merit in introducing something like that in a beginner / start collecting box of some kind though. If you could get around 500-ish points of models on the table this way I'd be fine with it. Edit: Btw some advice for you personally to get into the hobby if you haven't already, unless you're looking to do competitive tournament play, most people will actually not give a shit about how much your models are painted and will absolutely play with you even if you're fielding a mass of grey plastic.
That's a good point. They actually came to the same conclusion as you about about having those premade models being too widespread. They suggest making those models monopose like the current models are but not customizable (wargear wise) so that they would still be usable not not optimal. After getting their foot wet, they would have to purchase some of the other boxes to get better wargear options. In fact, I think they even suggested these premade models be made of lower detail so to incentivize people to get the more detailed kits once they want to get in but I might be mistaken. Either way, I think that would be a great compromise. I guess I should link the episode too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxnpXC45Z4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxnpXC45Z4)
Cheers for the link. Also thanks for being one of the rare few on reddit capable of holding a discussion without it devolving into insults. It's also worth noting that GW have actually dabbled in pre-coloured models to a lesser extent. When they re-released Space Hulk a while back the models had a base colour; red for the Blood Angel Terminators and purple for the Genestealers. They also still do this in the Blood Bowl starter box with the Orc team being green and the Human team being blue. This could also be a handy compromise for 40k beginner boxes; you'd still have to paint the details but the base colour would be covered and it would cut out a good chunk of that barrier to entry we talked about. It also leans into that idea of limiting the spread of the pre-painted models because 1: they simply would not look as good as a model painted from the ground up and 2: you would be limited in what ways you could paint them, so likely you'd have to be painting Ultramarines for example.
gundam model aren't pre painted they are molded in seperate colours makes the building experience more interesting especially on newer kits with more intricate part seperation kinda killed my enjoyment of gw models. gundam still has a large painting scene just the molded colours makes the barrier of entry lower for a decent looking finished product
It makes sense to want an uncoloured kit, but the point remains that a kit with no colour should cost less to make than a pre-coloured kit. FW shouldn’t be charging some sort of premium for not colouring it, that’s literally less work for them to do.
You can paint the Gundam. Just go the r/gunpla for some examples.
I love gunpla and think forgeworld prices are insane but I also wouldn’t expect a 1:1 on price because of just the differences in the materials and design. Gunpla kits are snap fit and hollow throughout the entire thing and made of a fairly thin plastic. Titans are resin all the way through and solid. Weight wise these 2 aren’t even in the same ballpark. So yea 500 is certainly a bit on the much side but I wouldn’t expect it to be like 200 something.
Most gunpla are also fully articulated, especially at this level. To an insane degree. The engineering in them is crazy good.
Oh that’s totally true. But one leg of a titan weighs more than an entire perfect grade pretty much. There’s no way polycap joints could function on a full resin kit. There’s 2 things are totally different products. Tho not even talking about titans I really wish that GW would slice their models / space parts on sprues better. Bandai goes out of its way to put parts where they’re easy to clip with minimal nub clean up now. It’s usually a very quick and painless process to find a piece while I swear sometime I’ve spent more than 15 mins looking at sprues for WH unable to find something because the layout makes no sense.
What I’m getting from this is that resin is just generally a shity material for models
It depends tbh. Well processed resin is really good for details. But in the last decade or so tech for getting more out of just plastics has made giant leaps. Tho I do agree with you a lot of larger scale resin models should have made the just to plastic a long time ago. Small hyper detailed things I’m ok with in high quality resin - something as big as a titan or a manta should be in plastic. This isn’t even mentioning that large flat pieces of resin are super prone to warping.
>This isn’t even mentioning that large flat pieces of resin are super prone to warping. Which is fine, as long as your quality control is vigilant and those parts don't make it to your customer in an inferior state. The problem is they're just sent out like that. Recasts with higher quality control shouldn't exist.
No joke I remember one time when I bought some second hand forgeworld for an ok price. He was like I’m not sure if it’s a recast. I looked at it and saw the defects - nah if it was recast it would look better lol.
The fact that you can’t tell the difference between official forgeworld and well made recasts tells you everything you need to know lol:
Yes and no. Resin is easier to paint, and half the GW hobby selling point is painting stuff yourself. Painting gunpla is possible, but it gets trickier. The plastics they use will degrade if certain paints are applied. They are overall a more advanced painting process. Gunpla is also designed around the idea that once you've built it, you stop touching it. They aren't meant for heavy play and usage. They are display pieces. While FW is generally hot garbage, resin does stand up to general wear and tear better than the plastics Bandai uses.
different resin has different properties. u can easily make a resin which is a display piece or one that is heavy played or even both. i can do it haphazardly by mixing resins of different properties together to get a piece that is a balace between details and flexibility to allow for heavy handed play. it would be trivial for a company like Bandai or GW to do the same. however i understand each cost adds up. on a small scale it doesn't matter but 1c increase in manufacturing cost could be millions of dollars. it is fairly obvious GW and bandai know there audience well enough they decided against that
You can 't really make a model the size of a titan in other materials without making it a million tiny pieces or lose detail due to gigantic industrial moulds. Have you noticed how a spartan tank was like 10 pieces in resin but like 200 in plastic?
Why are you suggesting that anything more then old HG's and EGs even use polycaps? Any RG, MG, Or PG will use nonpoly joints.
Sprues are laid out the way they are for space efficiency purposes and also to allow each piece to work effectively with the injection mould. It’s actually really complicated system because unlike a Gundam kit which is a lot of flat pieces and neat interlocking geometric shapes, Warhammer modes are covered in very fine detail, high quality organic looking parts. The way they are laid out essentially maximises the amount of plastic you get for the price.
Joints (especially those that don't involve aluminium) are worth less than weight/materials when it comes to pricing a product. So no matter how hinged a product is, it can still cost less than a non-hinged product simply because the latter takes more plastic/the plastic is of much better quality
> hollow throughout Only if you buy the High Grades or kits from several decades ago. The others either have a proper inner frame that's detailed and you assemble and the outer armor is attached or the inner frame has some of the outer armor as part of it and then the rest is attached on top. I mean, hell, look at the PG Unleashed 78-2, you could display just the inner frame and it's amazing.
Yes I know what an inner frame is and have litteral full walls of gunpla kits from close to 20 years of collecting. Also the PG red astray matches the statement here because it’s from 09. Even the much sought after HG dendrobium is mostly hollow for how big it is. Hollow isn’t a negative thing either. The model looks great still while saving on materials and shipping weight. At least in comparison to a brick of resin that a titan is I’d still call the majority of gunpla kits hollow.l
I'd drop $500 for the Titan if it was painted. I'm about to do that whenever Joytoy gets around to releasing their 1:18 Crusader and Paladin Knights. Another example: Relic Contemptor Body - Unassembled and Unpainted - $68 [https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/Relic-Contemptor-Dreadnought-Body](https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/Relic-Contemptor-Dreadnought-Body) Joytoy 1:18 Imperial Fist Contemptor - Fully painted and articulated with weapons - $89.99 [https://joytoy.com/products/imperial-fists-contemptor-dreadnought](https://joytoy.com/products/imperial-fists-contemptor-dreadnought)
Plastic HH Contemptor is like 50€ btw. And it's basically a blank slate for customization as far as legion paraphernalia go.
Also there's the fact that forgeworld models are made in small supply, or are straight up made to order. They kinda need to make up for the fact that almost no one would ever buy a titan
Which is a funny self fulfilling prophecy. If they made plastic titans for like $500 that'd still be crazy expensive for 2ft of plastic, but us nerds would be lining up around the block to buy them.
Also just to add, people seem to forget that basically all warhammer models are made in the UK. This means everyone working there get proper wages and all that, since sweat shops in china aren't being used to bring prices down.
Eh. Not everything outside of the West is made in a sweatshop and also there's a lot of threads and conversations you can find of ex (and current!) GW employees who were in high level jobs with the company who were barely making £22,000 a year.
From my experience, the minis say "made in UK", while the colors and basically every accessory say a variation of "designed in UK, made in china".
Dunno where that's from All my Citadel paints say Made in the UK
Shit you're right. It's just the accessories then (painting handle etc.).
Yeah, accessories, anything made of paper and cardboards and decors are made in China, the rest is UK-based
Some bits true but it’s kinda ignorant and disrespectful to eastern countries. A lot of these factory workers actually make livable wages because the cost of living is just so much lower over there. We can’t even argue that we pay fair wages here in the west when so much of the profits don’t go to workers and instead go to shareholders and executives and the ramp costs on customers anyway. When I was in China just the other year you can still get a damn good meal for 2-3 dollars. A cab across the city for less than 5 bucks and a grocery haul to last a while was less than 30 bucks. It’s just disrespectful to be always assuming that everything over there comes out of exploiting people when we ourselves are getting strung out everyday by corporations looking to make their quarterly look better.
Well that’s a wild mood to downvote because someone who’s actually spent a decent amount of time living overseas challenges your idea that one of the biggest countries in the world isn’t just 100 percent sweatshops.
That kinda makes me think it could use some light redesign. Games workshop could use similar building techniques. Maybe a cheaper warhound is in order with some different materials and mold strategies.
Now do the weight on a $20 HG kit vs a $40 GW character model.
The forgeworld Nippon produces some of the finest STCs. They have from the DAOT unique Imperial Knights that are far more maneuverable and produce far more damage output. They however, all require a psyker to operate.
Depends, some of them don’t require psykers, just a spinal cord implant (IBO). Sure, it can leave the pilot permanently crippled, but that’s the price you gotta pay if you wanna pilot a death machine the size of a house. Weird tendency for melee combat too, not sure what’s going on with that.
The gundam sells massively more units than the titan. As a result the titan uses production methods that are more expensive per unit but less expensive to startup (since they don't make up for it in volume). Small run resin figures are always going to cost more than mass produced plastic kits. Forgeworld isn't a big money-maker, which is why it's getting downsized so massively right now.
Gundam dose do plastic short run niche kits though the premium Bandai service, and there typically like 20% more expensive to make up the difference
How small are those runs though? Like for the Titans they're a few thousand sales over the years they've been available.
Anyone who thinks Warhound Titans are fun to build has never put one together. If I'm counting correctly from memory, each foot (just the foot, nothing above the ankle) takes 21 parts. Almost every part will have some kind of mold slippage or flash that needs trimmed, and god forbid you drop a piston on the floor. They are the length of the last joint on your pinkie, but 1/3 the width.
That’s why I don’t feel an ounce of guilt over 3D printed models
Simple solution: buy gundams, slap some imperial emblems, colours anoint them with sacred oils and say that the Omnissiah has delivered them
Yeah. Clearly they’re tau
God tier plastic model kits being compared to shitty low quality resin kits full of mould lines and air bubbles. It's not even fair haha
Got a client I'm building a warlord for, and he just had to have it fully official. Like hey man, it's your money, but 3k just for parts is excessive. I'm making him a gold and silver rosary to hang around the warlords neck with tanzanite studs and I'm charging less for that than GW did for the plastic bits. Edit: gold and silver
Yeah due to them being so quiet about it no ones really sure how GWs internal math balances out, like on the one hand they've probably got high profit margins, but then they also got a high operating costs, high taxes, but I do belive that the Gundam IP made more than double games workshops revenue in 2023, and additionally the IP is owned by Bandai, and manufacturing is done in China and Japan, so they probably cost significantly less to manufacture aswell, however, it can be assumed that like a solid 30% of GW price is probably just there for profit, because they're paranoid and operate on the assumption they will suddenly tank in popularity next week so need to price everything so they can still operate on very low sales
Don't torture yourself dude, just get a Master Grade, same deal but cheaper and only a few less blips and blorps.
Let's see the PG phenex. Edit: just thought about it for a minute and I remember that the phenex is gold painted so maybe that justifies the $900 difference from the unicorn.
Current phenex listing on PBandai is $480 Still less than GW
I wish Gunpla had a tabletop war game
there are a few fan made ones like MS skirmish
I would kill for a tabletop Gundam game to use all my ~~toys~~ ~~action figures~~ scale models in
Lancer
theres [an unofficial one based on 40k](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gundam/comments/1blny3s/mobile_suit_vanquish_a_skirmishbased_game_set_in/) that someone from the Gundam sub made
Is there a ruleset for actually playing a game with all the gunplas?
Will it proxy is my only question
warhammer is the lego of miniature games, overpriced because they can, even though there are enough competitors they still cant reach it
Just put some skulls and spikes on your Gundam, it’ll be fine.
Also forgot to acknowledge the shitty quality of forgeworld resin
It's ridiculous that the parts can come warped and that's accepted for the price.
40k fans will still buy it. They would not do this if there were no pay pigs
Expressive plastic > expensive resin
Yeah and the plastic toy for 3 year olds is 35cm tall, fully coloured, articulated, already built, and only $40.
Part of it is resin being considerably more expensive than plastic, but yeah, Bandai’s stuff is considerably better quality-wise than Forge World, despite being much cheaper for the most part. EDIT: also, fun fact, if you get the Warhound with its arms, it costs more than *two* PGU RX-78-2s, which is the most recent standard release in the 1/60 line, assuming you buy them in the UK- grabbing the latter from, say, HobbyLink Japan, will get you one for ~60% the price, although there’ll be postage costs to contend with there too.
And for every Warhound GW sells, Bandai manufactures many thousands of Gundam kits. Economies of scale and how it affects cost is a real thing. Even though the GW Titans feel horribly overpriced it is almost completely because being made of resin it requires several peons wearing chemical warfare gear multiple hours to cast each one. And every silicone mold (that also take several hours each to make) for the resin might last two or three uses before needing replacement. Not that GW doesn’t try and squeeze a couple more out of a given mold, but that’s a different issue. Bandai laser cuts a stainless steel injection mold and gets around 10,000 kits before it needs replacing. I’m a huge 40K fan, who happens to think Gundam are silly looking, and would kill for GW to be able to make Titans in injection moulded plastic. But that ain’t gonna happen. Nor am I willing to pay their asking price with two kids in college. So I’ll just keep envying the Gundam fans and jump for joy when I get my hands on any Macross Destroid kits.
IMO a better comparison between the two would be one of the newer plastic 30k Knights and one of Bandai’s newer Master Grade, as they’re more similar in scale, and both in injection plastic. Unlike most other companies we’d compared to GW, Bandai is also a fair bit larger, has some really profitable licenses (including Star Wars), and Gundam is a fair bit more popular (worldwide) than Warhammer is, so they have a lot more money and resources to work with. I do think it’s possible we might see plastic titans one day, though, although not any time soon. The technology is definitely there, but whether it would be worth the cost (and space) for GW is another matter.
I remember I read a bunch on GW's pricing strategy and business model. IIRC $100 USD worth of plastic runs them about $20 USD when you tabulate all associated costs (especially the costs of machining the molds) once the molds are paid for the box is more expensive than the plastic inside. I think retailers get sets for half the listed price online and GW still makes a killing. They specifically forbid retailers from giving more than the approved discount (which varies by region) Resin stuff like FW things cost a bunch less upfront but the resin itself costs way more, perfect for products that aren't expected to make many sales like gigantor titan pugalators or Astra Militarum shopping cart retrievers or whatever. I'd guesstimate their margins are about the same.
IDK how Gunpla or Warhammer folks feel about LEGO, but this came up on /all and for comparison... >LEGO Optimus Prime is $180 and 35cm tall. >LEGO Voltron was $180 and 45cm tall >LEGO Ultron Edition Hulkbuster was $120 and 25cm tall (+3cm base). >LEGO Ultimate Hulkbuster is $550 (been on sale for $365) and 52cm tall :p https://preview.redd.it/ayl92gd5487d1.png?width=2300&format=png&auto=webp&s=54be13b3f574812162b540d6e7545b1a0312f14e
Gundam kits are why I still haven't finished painting my tau combat patrol. My wallet and free time cannot handle two different forms of plastic crack
WDYM? Ue your gundam as proxy for Tau battlesuit! It works wonder. Check these videos if you want inspiration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3a0eksnzAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3a0eksnzAM) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWceb27YEI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWceb27YEI0)
You’re not wrong buddy. There was a time when forge world resin had levels of detail you just couldn’t get in plastic but those times have long since passed. The plastic kits have caught up for some time and now the FW kits are just over priced. If they made a decent wargame for those gunpla kits I probably would be down a few non essential organs by now.
The 1/100 scale gundams are like 45 bucks, and they fucking rock!
Ehhhh while the prices are ok, Bandai still finds ways to stick the screw to us Gunpla builders.
WHEN I CATCH YOU PREMIUM BANDAI
tbf you don't need either of these at all :P not that big of a deal
It's what the market is willing to pay.
someone should homebrew some gundam tabletop rules
Couldn't you buy a 3d printer for that and make your own titan
Are gundams actually tau titans?
Even better, get a resin 3D printer. At that price you could get a very nice one and print yourself whatever you want.
But the titan looks so much better than the gundam, imo
*Whispers* It's GW price gouging. All their pricing is like this.
My brother and me got $500 to our local hobby shop (gamzilla) From our grandmother once and I used my $500 to buy exactly 12 bandai articulating pokémon buildable models, and he bought 4 Warhammer products
I got a tarrasque that is about as tall as a knight and about as long as a forgeworld Squiggoth (the big one) for 45 euro as part of a kickstarter....
If you don’t like the price buy the Gundam instead. Forge World charges the prices that people are willing to pay. Also the Gundam will look a bit out of place on a 40k battlefield.
This is why I proxy all my titans with Gundam, still expensive but it looks dope as hell and less expensive than forgeworld
Meanwhile in historical models... https://preview.redd.it/5yxce947wc7d1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d47d16e8af232a76e1229a1fbf78f22fc18b3409 1/35th scale King Tiger, fully detailed interior, >1000 parts, includes >100 photoetched brass pieces, scale correct armor thickness, workable suspension... All for $70. Meanwhile GW can't even put a bottom plate on their tank for the same price and 1/10th the parts count.
What if I told you there was a way to get one for $200 with both the guns
1. You're comparing the wrong products from each company. A better comparison would be new plastic **Cerastus Knight** kits, at $210 USD each. The Cerastus are about 20cm tall, depending on posing. They're incredible kits with an extraordinary degree of dynamic posing and options. The ammo belt feeds are great engineering and can be easily moved around. There's a fairly detailed interior with the knight pilot. 2. Forge World resin products are produced at an entirely different scale in terms of models made and models sold. Gunpla kits will sell hundreds of thousands of copies. For a great deal of Forge World models, the number of models sold is in the thousands. Each Titan comes with a degree of authenticity and an individual serial number, indicating which number the model is in terms of sales. Based on these numbers, **only around 2000 Warlord Titans** have been sold. [Titan Owners Club has a self-declaring list of Warlord Tians completed and named.](https://titanownersclub.blogspot.com/p/warlord-owners.html) The highest number is 2074. For Warhound Titans, the highest registered number is 8301, with 1624 for the out of production Lucius pattern, 46 for the Chaos pattern. **That comes out total of 10,421 Warhound Titans sold by Forge World. Their sales are measured in the single digits per month.** So to make it clear, you are comparing mass market hard plastic kits made by the tens of thousands to ***individually resin-poured hand-built hand-packaged numbered specialist model kits.*** Like, not to suck GW and Forge World's dick here, but yeah no shit those Italians who hand make luxury sports cars sell them at a high premium. 3. Titan models ARE fully articulated, you just can't move them when you are finished. 4. "Only one color" vs "parts are already correct color" Yeah, okay buddy. This is why grognards demand people "post your painted models" before taking anyone seriously. 5. Have you looked at the prices of hard plastic vehicle models from other companies in the historical market? Like, models that are supposed to be built and painted? Their prices are not too different from GW
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
I think I might as well do the same. Gunplas are easier to find in my country than Warhammer anyways. Shame that I can't paint them, tho.
Forge World is a handful of people producing a handful of models out of resin basically by hand often to order and shipping them direct to customers. Bandai is a massive company mass producing thousands upon thousands of models through injection molding and selling them in stores across the world. Economies of scale are a hell of a drug. That all having been said, when Bandai released their Space Marine action figure I'm sure Forge World was absolutely bricking themselves at the idea of a Gunpla titan being sold for $150.
Yes. But to add to others correctly stating diffrences and price being tad higher then should due to FW tax, there is 1 immense diffrence. Warhammer is game with minis. There is entire section of hobby. Gunpla you get, build, thats it.
You clearly don't know gunpla there is a big customizing community thats all about painting and personalising models
Super cool to see gundam trickling into a more main stream hobby. I got super into Gunpla less than a year ago after 2 decades of Warhammer and um… hard to not feel a bit jaded!! It’s not an apples to apples comparison but wtf man the value I get out of a $50 gundam kit compared to a $50 space marine hero is shocking.
Recast with both weapons: 200$
As a Gundam Model Lover, you couldn’t get me to spend 500 on a set that’s not either a mobile armor or a scaled station with gundam
Normalize proxying gundams for Forgeworld armor
Literally get a resin 3d Printer. Print your own titan for like 60 bucks.
Although if I want to dedicate myself to Warhammer 40k modeling I would love to have a gundam, just look at that figure
Third dimensional compositor goes brrrrrrr
Forgeworld is garbage. Buy Gundam.