what would people think of mini upgrade sprues?

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I'm sure everyones probably seen the new plastic hero "mini kits" for fantasy's storm of magic thang.

A thought occured to me looking at them - what would people think of mini-sprues produced for small upgrade/bitz frames for all the various 40k armies? for example a mini-sprue of scaled armour bitz for Salamanders, or bionics for Iron Hands? This sort of thing would be especially useful used for Chaos Legions like Iron Warriors or Alpha Legion ect, especially since it's unlikely every single one of them will get a BT or SW style kit. You could even do these sort of things for specific Eldar craftworlds or Ork clans.

I think mini-sprues like that would sell better than Fantasys hero kits since it encourages people to buy more than 1 of them and buy enough to fit out a whole army, and imo a better use of these new mini-sprue/clampacks. What do you think? would you buy things like this or do I just have too much time on my hands? :D

[eldargal]

Argh, I've actually heard a rumour quite relevent to this thread but I'm not willing to elaborate until I have some corroboration.:( Not trying to be a tease.


Anyway, I like the idea, like the Knights of the Blazing Sun upgrade kits but in plastic. Though I'm not sure I agree about outselling the SoM character kits. Have you seen the Sorceress painted well (http://www.coolminiornot.com/283683)? Along with Lelith it is the best female character in the GW range and one of the best available anywhere.

[SotonShades]

problem is that GW have all ready done this before for Black Templars and Dark Angels (I don't think the BT ones are availible any more). They didn't sell particularly well, so GW steered away from them. I love the idea personnally, GW just haven't done the bitz I want :P

[Sister Rosette Soulknyt]

And you wonder why little companies spring up like Chapterhouse Studios doing bitz for 40k, and then GW the big bad wolf that can't be bothered to see past there upturned noses that if they actually did the same thing, maybe they would corner the market and not have all these companies doing it to there products.
Personally, i would love the idea and support it.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Fair point, but how many sorceress kits would one person need/buy compared to mini-upgrade frames to outfit an entire army?

[QUOTE=SotonShades;151651]problem is that GW have all ready done this before for Black Templars and Dark Angels (I don't think the BT ones are availible any more). They didn't sell particularly well, so GW steered away from them. I love the idea personnally, GW just haven't done the bitz I want :P

That's actually why I think doing mini-sprues instead would better since it would be cheaper than producing larger/full ones like BT and DA.


And you wonder why little companies spring up like Chapterhouse Studios doing bitz for 40k, and then GW the big bad wolf that can't be bothered to see past there upturned noses that if they actually did the same thing, maybe they would corner the market and not have all these companies doing it to there products.
Personally, i would love the idea and support it.

Agreed completely.

Shame GW went with Finecast really, why they didnt do spincasting plastic instead is beyond me - My own caster was able to create a spincasting plastic process all on his own - so how come a huge company like GW can't do that? Plus the results he's had didnt have air-bubbles and barely had mould-lines on them! It's puzzling to say the least why they didnt try and do a process like that instead.

[JxKxR]

My head would explode from all the happiness!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-03vYYAjA

[wittdooley]

And you wonder why little companies spring up like Chapterhouse Studios doing bitz for 40k, and then GW the big bad wolf that can't be bothered to see past there upturned noses that if they actually did the same thing, maybe they would corner the market and not have all these companies doing it to there products.
Personally, i would love the idea and support it.

Too bad a lot of the 3rd party stuff looks like ****e, though. Don't get me wrong; Chapterhouse makes some stuff I like. However, I think a great number of their shoulder pad kits look like garbage, and their Salamnders rhino kit was certainly the same (as well as poorly cast).

[wittdooley]

.

Shame GW went with Finecast really, why they didnt do spincasting plastic instead is beyond me - My own caster was able to create a spincasting plastic process all on his own - so how come a huge company like GW can't do that? Plus the results he's had didnt have air-bubbles and barely had mould-lines on them! It's puzzling to say the least why they didnt try and do a process like that instead.

Because, despite how detailed plastics have become, the resin material allows for a considerable amount more detail. Look at any boutique resin piece, and its apparent how much more well-defined the detail, particularly in the undercuts, is.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Because, despite how detailed plastics have become, the resin material allows for a considerable amount more detail. Look at any boutique resin piece, and its apparent how much more well-defined the detail, particularly in the undercuts, is.

But the spin-casting process gets equal detail to resin. I'll post some examples when I get my next package in the post.

[JxKxR]

Too bad a lot of the 3rd party stuff looks like ****e, though. Don't get me wrong; Chapterhouse makes some stuff I like. However, I think a great number of their shoulder pad kits look like garbage, and their Salamnders rhino kit was certainly the same (as well as poorly cast).

Yeah that's why I don't really care what happens to chapterhouse, plus other reasons but not relevant ones.

[isotope99]

GW have always preferred to put out plastic kits where you can make a whole model off the shelf.

Personally I love the idea (and am very supportive of the new micro plastic kits) but I can see why GW is wary as they'd likely end up as direct only kits. The investment in high quality plastic moulds has been discussed before.

The DA and BT sprues mentioned actually made whole infantry models IIRC (certainly the DA did), although I acknowledge the BT vehicle sprue.

The most recent example of a plastic upgrade sprue I can think of is the Ork battlewagon deathrolla but I have no idea how well that sold (possibly better after they clarified it in the FAQ)?

On a related note, I understand that the new WD has some finecast Khorne/tzeentch banner releases in this mould (haha...oh dear :(). So maybe they are a test bed for this sort of idea.

[magickbk]

These have existed in various forms for many years. The Crimson Fists upgrade packs, especially, came with 5 shoulder pads, 5 backpacks, and 3 heads, in pewter, all with Fists symbols. Also, many kits are technically an upgrade sprue with an original kit, it is just impossible to get the upgrade sprue now that GW doesn't do the bitz service.

I'm sure we'll see more of this stuff and not less. The only thing that concerns me is style creep. The look of the new Storm of Magic models all follows a single pattern, and doesn't follow the style of their respective armies. I fear that one day we end up with odd looking Space Marine captains and so on if they don't get the sculptors to follow a standard style template.

[Wildeybeast]

Forgeworld already do this on a limited scale for a number of the loyalist chapters, though I suspect this is the way it will stay. Whilst there will be a number of people who really want some Nights Lords bitz, that number will fairly small. For the main studio to spend time doing this isn't really cost effective, whereas Forgeworld can do it. Though every now and then they sneak outsomething cool for the collectors range, so who knows? But I wouldn't expect to see plastic uprgade sprues for all the main marine chapters/guard regiments/ork tribes any time soon.

[fuzzbuket]

that would be really cool, the only food for though is:

most armies could be a 'base model' and upgrade sprues

example
SM
tactical box
: heavy weapon kit, jump pack kit, command kit, vetran kit.

rhino:
razorback turret (pack of 2) , siege upgrade, missle upgrade, preadetor upgrade.

LR:
LR upgrade sprue

bike:
attack sidecar kit

dread:
venetated upgrade.

see if halved the marine model range (oh and throw in a chaos kit or 2 and you have got 2 armies for the price of one!)
and with most other armies:
crons: wraith tails, immortal guns/shoulders/ destroyer base
eldar: base guardians: then shinpads/shoulders/helmets/ weapons to upgrade to a aspect.
orks: weapons swaps.
tau: tricky?
daemons: not happening
ect,ect
-fuzz

[turiya64]

that would be really cool, the only food for though is:

most armies could be a 'base model' and upgrade sprues

example
SM
tactical box
: heavy weapon kit, jump pack kit, command kit, vetran kit.

rhino:
razorback turret (pack of 2) , siege upgrade, missle upgrade, preadetor upgrade.

LR:
LR upgrade sprue

bike:
attack sidecar kit

dread:
venetated upgrade.

see if halved the marine model range (oh and throw in a chaos kit or 2 and you have got 2 armies for the price of one!)
and with most other armies:
crons: wraith tails, immortal guns/shoulders/ destroyer base
eldar: base guardians: then shinpads/shoulders/helmets/ weapons to upgrade to a aspect.
orks: weapons swaps.
tau: tricky?
daemons: not happening
ect,ect
-fuzz
Yesterday 04:23 PM

this is actually a really great idea they could save a ton of shelf space in their new tiny stores they keep insisting on opening. also they could potentially sell people like me allot more boxes. I have a ton of guys for my imperial fists army but I all wise want to try other options out like say assault squads but 66$ is a bit much for a unit I know will see allot of shelf time and little play time BUT if I could buy a nice say 25-30 dollar box that just gave me 10 jump packs and assault arms I would just magnetize my current guys so I don't have to paint as much and I get to try something else out.
it already works on me with some of their offers. I have never paid for a rhino from GW even though I can field 4 or5 of them instead I paid a small sum more and bought a whirl wind or a pred or a vindicator. just so I would have the option to run one or the other and let's face it for 15$ more it's worth it to have the option in the long run.
+ if they put out a upgrade pack for my army i would feel like i had to get it to make them look right. hell i allready do that with the fist shoulder pads

[MajorWesJanson]

I discussed using the mini sprues for things like shoulder pad sets with Jes Goodwin in Chicago. Generally a negative, as sales of conversion bits like that would not be enough to justify cutting even the small sprue. So mainly full models.

The mini sprues were meant for Fantasy, but Jes would like to use them for 40K too, and do mini-models (multipart or semi-multipart) rather than just mono-pose. Not his call though. I mentioned things for 40K like a librarian or chaplain, and he got rather excited about a chaplain with at least a head option. There's no 40K mini sprues in the works right now from the sounds of it. I'd bet they are waiting to see how well the current ones sell.

[wittdooley]

You'd think a librarian/chaplian would make perfect sense. They already have the really great wizard sets for fantasy, and the Chaos lord for 40k. As it is now, if you want to make your own Libby, you've gotta get a bit creative!

[Anggul]

They need to turn most of the forgeworld upgrade kits into plastic, most of them don't need to be resin, it just seems like they're only resin so that they can put up the price... which isn't a very good reason.

[Psychosplodge]

The value : cost ratio would probably be crap

[L192837465]

If I'm not mistaken, didn't they have these for2nd/ 3rd edition? I remember buying sprues with CC weapons and pistols on it for my Chaos marines in the early 90s.

[Psychosplodge]

That was just the standard sprue, but you could buy them separately in them days...