Everyone else has a GW thread...!

[Leon]

I've been in the GW in Boro a couple of times, but you can barely get a foot in the door before the guy's on top of you, giving it the "What can I help you with?".  Puts me off going in, as it's almost intimidating in a way.  I don't even get chance to look at the product before I'm being pushed for a sale.

anyway Leon, have you never been tempted to 'go plastic' even for the tanks?

Nah, far too pricey.  It's circa £50k to get the tooling done for one of these boxsets that have swamped the market, and then you've got sculpting costs on top of that.  We'd never make that kind of money back unless 10mm really took off.  I've got a lot of admiration for guy's like Will at Plastic Soldier though, essentially taking on FoW.

I have looked at getting the World Tank Museum stuff in, but my Japanese ain't great!

I Kid you not

I wondered where they came from, there were a couple of them in GW T-shirts.  Is there a store near the show?

[Derek H]

I'm a big fan of the Finecast stuff.  It means all my son and his friends will be able to assemble their own models while I get on with other stuff. 

Many of the GW  multipart metals arejust too difficult for inexperienced modellers to get to stay together so I have been spending quite a lot of time recently gluing and pinning GW stuff for fourteen year old Warhammer players. 

The resin stuff may be full of air bubbles but it sticks together very easily with superglue.

[Nosher]

Many of the GW  multipart metals arejust too difficult for inexperienced modellers to get to stay together so I have been spending quite a lot of time recently gluing and pinning GW stuff for fourteen year old Warhammer players. 

Steep learning curve for them then

It's one of the problems 'young uns' have nowadays, if its too hard the first time they try it - they give up Putting together a model takes skill, but it also takes patience and time. Something else sadly lacking in learning life-skills. Immediate gratification.

[goat major]

to be fair some of the GW sculpts really do present quite a challenge. Sculpting needs to be a combination of art and engineering and sometimes they forget the latter. My son bought some Eldar Swooping Hawks - very attractive figures but with huge metal wings attached by the smallest tab - so small that it really can't be drilled or pinned effectively.

Plus i dread to think of the results if i left my 10 year old son entirely alone iin a room with a lead figure, a drill and a tube of super glue!

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Plus i dread to think of the results if i left my 10 year old son entirely alone iin a room with a lead figure, a drill and a tube of super glue!

Trip to casualty ?

Worst figures I ever tried to assemble were minifigs wyverns, close run second Lancashire Games 15mm Chariots, third Orc Gagannts?

Resin is a pain.

IanS

[Trencher]

Plus i dread to think of the results if i left my 10 year old son entirely alone iin a room with a lead figure, a drill and a tube of super glue!

Have faith - but only when you've showed him before! 


I'm saying that as a father of a son who's 10 year old, too.   

[Derek H]

Young modellers  need to be able to build up their skills, starting with models that are reasonably simple to put together and building up to the more difficult ones.  . 

But Warhammer players need certain figures to make their army competitive so they go out and buy it.  Then they put it together and it falls apart five minutes later. 

[Maenoferren]

I wondered where they came from, there were a couple of them in GW T-shirts.  Is there a store near the show?

they had a little table at the far end of the room, there is A GW shop down near the central station

[Leon]

they had a little table at the far end of the room, there is A GW shop down near the central station

Ah right.  I completely missed their table though.

[Annatar]

My attitude towards GW is nowadays ambivalent ...

There is a bit 'of Schadenfreude' in view of the "finecast-discussion", because of the boast, the price increase and the "we-are-the-hobby attidude". (Latter sometimes reminds me of of religious community ...).

You certainly have to acknowledge the quality of their products and the presence level they managed to achieve for tabletop wargaming.

Contrawise you have to bear in mind the aggressive company policy and you have to see amount of money you have to invest. What i don't like is the making use of the "keep them hungry effect", which is quite perfidious towards youngsters. GW likes to present itself as company of enthusiasts and geeks but acts like selling hamburgers.

I agree with Luddite that GW hasn't produced anything new the days. They still draw breath from the 80's and early 90's. The miniatures miss something originial/playful/kittenish/freakful/new/unique. They rework the old armies over and over and over again ... Interesting topics (Araby, Cathay, Chaos Dwarves...) are left untouched. Instead of inventing/producing something new by themselves, which was once their strength, they buy a license for LotR.

So i watch the way GW goes with somehow nostalgic feelings...

[Maenoferren]

Their table was about the size of the one your cash register was on it had a painting table on it and half a dozen figures in various stages of being painted, and from what I remember a couple of the grass mats.

[sixsideddice]

GW.... Meh!!!!  No interest, beyond mild agitation and disdain for their sales ethic.

Can`t fault the quality of their wares or their packaging; but lost interest in the childishness of their world creations long ago. I love childishness, I`m Peter Pan remember...  but I don`t  like childish things dressed up and posing as: sleek, dark, 18 plus, and `grown up` but which are really just mindless propaganda tools to get young people to spend more and more and more and more and more and more money in a mindless “I’m  a Sheep BAAAA!” syndrome.

I like the resin casting...  but hmmmm  I can remember when GW`s sales pitch used to be “the heavier the mini the better, look, just like our range... pooh pooh to plastics” I guess it’s just another GW U-turn. They should go into politics.

Six  

[Steve J]

I simply can't understand the move to resin figures. One of my friends at work has extensive experience of both white metal and resin casting and he is equally perplexed by their change. So sum up:

- Resin is brittle in comparison to white metal.
- Resin deteriorates over time due to the effects of UV.
- Resin aggressively attacks the mould surface, meaning more moulds required. A guide is 15-20 shots before the mould is no good.
- Resin requires either a very good vacuum chamber, but realistically a pressure chamber to compress any bubbles to get clean shots out.
- Given the level of detail on GW models, resin is really not ideal for them.
- You get a relatively high level of wastage with each resin shot compared to white metal.

- White metal does not deteriorate over time.
- White metal is flexible.
- You can get over a 1,000 shots out of a mould.
- Any wastage per shot can be melted down and reused.

I hope this explains why we cannot understand their decision.

[Leon]

- Resin aggressively attacks the mould surface, meaning more moulds required. A guide is 15-20 shots before the mould is no good.

- Given the level of detail on GW models, resin is really not ideal for them.
- You get a relatively high level of wastage with each resin shot compared to white metal.

- You can get over a 1,000 shots out of a mould.
- Any wastage per shot can be melted down and reused.

These were the main things that surprised me.  We've got items like the A7V, which eats moulds like they're going out of fashion.  We're lucky to get 10 casts out of that one, before it starts to rip apart.  God knows how GW are going to get around that?

And the wastage is another good point.  Miscast metal?  Chuck it back in the pot, no bother.  But with resin, it's all waste.  You can grind it down to a powder, and put it back into your resin mix, but that's a) time consuming, b) affects the quality of the next batch.

[Squirrel]

GW like to follow fashion, and if you peek in on the collectors/painters forums, resin is 'in' because they seem to think you can get finer detail ..... maybe they are right, I don't know.

They probably think the higher price, and shorter runs make the figs even more collectable

Cheers,

Kev