Interesting detail by CP on TOS

Right. The OP (who wrote a great review of BL2 and is clearly a fan of FFG) was in no way attacking their business practices or trying to present himself as an authority. The topic came up (as it routinely seems to do about FFG, for some reason) and he scratched out some figures, openly speculating about what might go into the price point of the Lieutenant packs.

Also, Msample, some of the creatures may be recycled from Runewars, but the figs themselves are not as the scale is different. Obscenes, for example, are not two-part models in Runewars, but they are in Battlelore.

Space Ghost wrote: I assume that resin has become so dominant because, as Pete stated, for 20% less you can make about 6 more minis (give or take). Unless I am misunderstanding the argument.

No, you nailed it. Resin, pound for pound, is 20% cheaper or so and can produce 6 TIMES more miniatures. 3.81 in^3 versus 26 in^3.

That 6 more miniatures was a typo. 6x more miniatures.

That's a big fucking difference. Funny, but the miniatures sure as fuck aren't 6x less expensive. Dicks. Just wait until I analyze the PVC market to see how much Reaper makes per mini. Motherfuckers!

Schweig! wrote: I remember fairly well the discussion on F:AT when a FFG game cost a hundred bucks for the first time.

I see a cartoon here somewhere.

SuperflyTNT wrote: That 6 more miniatures was a typo. 6x more miniatures.

Um, yeah that makes the resin case a wee bit easier to fathom:)

SuperflyTNT wrote: That 6 more miniatures was a typo. 6x more miniatures.

That's a big fucking difference. Funny, but the miniatures sure as fuck aren't 6x less expensive. Dicks.

Exactly. Which is why, despite having had multiple armies, fleets, gangs, whathaveyou for every minis game GW ever made, I no longer play their games. Sorry. I'm not going to throw down $150 for the latest, seemingly necessary big creature or vehicle. No mas. I'd rather buy three separate boardgames for that (well, really I wouldn't, since I have more than I can play now.)

some throughts on PVC

this is from a Martin Wallace KS email for Moonga Invaders a few months back;

" had to change production company for the game due to a massive rise in the quote for casting the pieces. The new company has the figures and is working out the best way to cast them. The problem is that some of the pieces are too large and complex to cast in standard PP, which leaves only PVC as a possibility. I'm not happy about this as PVC has a bad environmental reputation. Therefore, I trying to work out with the sculptor whether it would be possible to 3d scan the figures, alter them digitally, then print them in a form that can be cast from without having to use PVC."

I know little on plastics. I did notice that smaller companies (Spartan games for example) seem to love resin, and i also knew that GW had gone to considerable effort to eliminate metal from their line up. Any way, whats the deal with PVC?

Also on the topic of pricing. Whilst some one moaning about a price can be very ignorant, they are legitimate in saying from the consumer side this is what they expect to pay for a given product. It might be unrealistic, but i guess sales will tell ffg that. Christians comments on pricing seem to suggest he thinks price is less relevant if the product is top bar, meaning he sees FFG very much as a luxury top of the range company rather than by the numbers game churner. I guess consumers will have to accept that FFG is interest in selling Ferraris rather than Skodas.

It's a fine line, right? I agree, totally legit to say that a product is priced too high for you, or that a lot of people are shut out of the market, etc.

It's just the elaborate discussions of budgetary issues in an industry one knows nothing about, the "it SHOULDN'T be priced that high for these supposedly objective reasons," that get me.

i agree. Theres a difference between saying 'this is more than what i will pay for this product' and saying ' these prices are unjust and exploitative'.

If you are going to say the latter, you really need a well researched bullet proof case.

That's the real question at the heart of this. What are you willing to pay for?

I'm in a thread discussing the Mission Red Planet reprint and everyone is talking about how crappy the quality was on the original. I like my original. I'd rather have a straight reprint of that than have an MSRP of $80 on a blinged up granite-countertop version. It's a once a year play for me.

FFG is producing plush versions at plush prices. I wouldn't call them Ferrari but I'd sure look at them as Honda Odyssey. When it comes right down to it it doesn't matter how much it costs to produce, it matters how much people will be willing to pay. Each release is a risk at loss -- you take your shot, set your price, and hope the product is a success. Asking too much breeds ill will and kills sales, but no one is eager to leave money sitting on the table.

S.

PVC isn't truly horrible, it's the softeners that are truly horrible. The biggest problem with PVCs are that they degrade into small particles that are not the best thing in the world for health. The worst part is that PVCs get into the water, head to sea, get eaten by fish by simply swimming through it, and it kills/mutates them, or better yet, they get caught with this shit in them and then we eat them, getting into us.

With regard to plastic v. metal, I never buy plastic if I can help it. I was fully committed to the Reaper stuff and I've found that while they're less of a pain to paint because they don't require priming, in theory, I basecoat my models with colored primer anyhow so at the end of the day, it didn't save me shit.

Yes, they're inexpensive, but they also lack some of the fine details that metal and even resin have, which isn't a big deal to me because I'm not that great a painter to begin with, but they also are a bitch to strip versus dunking a metal model in Simple Green (which I have about 100 doing right now) and having the paint turn to a slurry.

They also have no value, really. I can take my metal models and send them to a recycler (read: my shop) and get paid for the tin content whereas plastic models that don't have any demand because they're not CMGs are essentially valueless. I know that it's not a good economic model because the models are so expensive and you can only get maybe 5$ a pound in metal return value, but still, there's value there. Call me a adept of Adam Smith if you will.

Also, there's something to be said about the heft of metal models. They don't knock over as easily and don't require weighting the bases to stop that from happening, generally.

For me, I'm a metal guy. If plastics come in games I buy, so be it, but as a general rule, with the exception of games like Strange Aeons where I'm supporting the game and the designers, I'll only buy metal.