Guys. Your choices are: Buy it or Don't buy it. You don't have a choice of how something is made. If you really want your voice heard, then again: Buy it or Don't buy it. That's how they hear.
LOL I can picture a TO, hammer in hand, making rounds through the tables and "testing" if the models are legit
Right, but the point is not what CB does currently, but for the future. SioCast doesn't feel like a 5 year plan. They need to be investing now for the future. If CB did HIPS, they could also make models that have a variety of weapon load outs, but of course they'd probably need to group models together. The threat to CB's business model is adding new players to cover losing old players. If they're only making money on the models (rules are free), they need to maintain a profit margin with a good enough volume to make it worth their while. If they get cheaper models, they might get more volume and expand the game. Likewise, if they want to keep the game small & elite, then staying with metal makes sense. Few, expensive. What doesn't make sense to me is Siocast or UniCool, where the material is so-so, but still paying the premium. The hammer thing is just an odd made up thing though. They're not testing metal models to see if they're recasts now, they wouldn't be drilling into a model to see if it's 3d printed or hard plastic. Siocast and HIPS feel different than resin, and Warcrow is already all Siocast. Anyway, I'm fine with metal, but I don't think it's long term going to make it for CB. Relicblade minis are also metal and it's very niche. I'd just like to see Infinity be more available and accepted.
I've been saying this for years, and how the increase in price for entry-level boxes specially was counterproductive to attract new players. CB seems to disagree. It is not made up. In Spain it happened with an official WH40k tournament. The police got involved since it would constitute a crime (the rules did not state you had to prove the models were original by breaking them if requested, and the police was very clear in that should the TO break a model, he would have to keep being the TO from a cell).
Just to nitpick, but it's not the "same mold". It got refreshed in 2009 or thereabouts, when they did the Fire Prism+Wave Serpent kits. Another nitpick: CB absolutely has the same business model as GW. They absolutely, 100% embrace the whole concept of the "hobby trumpet". There's a reason why they had pushed themselves so heavily on social media. I mean, we've seen them effectively ditch Code One(their supposed "starter product"!) to instead just keep "refreshing" the same rules time and time again, while throwing out "THE RULES ARE FREE!" (but the lore isn't, and we'll ban/suspend you for posting photos of it in the open) and telling us that this time they got it right! While CB might not have you fielding hundreds of models at a single time, are we really going to pretend that there isn't an element of Pokemonitis with Infinity? It's only a threat to their business model if they choose to let it be, TBH. I've been extremely impressed by the 3D prints for Warmachine.
Siocast is absolutely, 100% not a long term plan. It feels like CB got hoodwinked into working with a company that had a proprietary material & process and won't accept it.
Well, they bought a second siocast machine recently and released a new full game in that material, so...
Like I said: Feels like they got suckered into working with a company that has a proprietary material & system. I guess I should have clarified that to me, Siocast does not feel like a good long term plan. It's hippy-dippy trash, billing itself as "environmentally friendly" and "affordable".
I'm not sure they renewed all the sprues, just the turret ones, since there would be little reason to remake a chassis that wouldn't change (the kit is composed of several sprues, so...). Anyways, the new sprue would have been running for 16 years...CB has resculpted some units more than five times in less XD. CodeOne rules were ditched (there was few users... and the company dropped the rules and forgot about them, so from the start there were differences, and then they changed core concepts like the order expenditure sequence in N4...), but the range has been repackaged as Essentials, so... The game is too gear+skills heavy in single models to be played in large numbers. Besides, GW just uses most of the models in a squad as extra wounds. As for the pokemonitis... a 3D-printer can really, really saturate that feeling. At least for me :S
I didn't say they refreshed the sculpt. They refreshed the mold for the Falcon. So what? CodeOne was billed as a simplified, introductory rules set. And then it just kind of...got forgotten about. We literally used what term for the "basic" models in Links? In overall lists? "Cheerleaders"... Of course it can, but y'know...CB could have been adding extra arms for YEARS.
Still, I think it was one of the first steel molds they made, I have the White Dwarf with the article in my "storage cabin" (among the first 30-40 WD translated to Spanish). Nevertheless, the second seems to have been used for more than a decade, not to mention the produced models. CB's molds are designed to be cheap and replaceable, and I think they chose Siocast back in the day because, among other things, the molds were made similarly to the metal ones. You can't have the introductory rules deviate from the core rules of the full game, period. C1 listing "multiple medkit rolls" effect opposite to N4 since launch day was anecdotic (since there was no B2 or more medkits in C1 anyways), but after the change to N4 rules not upgrading C1's revealed the real idea behind C1, which was reducing the smaller boxes & blisters and increase the big boxes. The repack was also a good excuse to add new models among repeated ones. Essentials seems to be a new iteration, just with slightly cheaper models due to "amortized designs" (which is not all that sincere, considering there are old sculpts still for sale older than those of Essentials, at a "full" price, like panggulins, Traktor Muls, the Onyx starter, the old Domaru, Corregidor Jaguars...) I will assume you don't know much about Warhammer 40k. What here is a "full range, 5 models for the troop" (for example, Mobile Brigadas) in Wh40k is a single, 10 model box, with enough spare parts to assemble all the profiles, and limitations on the special weapons and a "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) policy that ensure you will buy at least a second box to have all the options mounted (in some situations, several boxes for specific common loadouts, a few years ago I bought my first 3D printer to make extra shields and guns for my Deathwatch Veterans instead of getting 1 shield per 5-man box and having to scavenge the weapon in other, more expensive boxes). Cheerleaders here in Infinity have 2 meanings now: the filler, cheapest, troop whose only purpose is to be there, ARO against a surprise enemy and provide a regular order for the rest of the list, or the more and more common passive troop that is there to bother the enemy and provide the order for the rest of the list (and is more expensive than the first type, but provides some interesting extras). It has been doing so in VERY limited numbers: the old Myrmidon Officer had a Combi rifle and a BSG arm, the Taskmaster had 2 arms (I think in the box), the TAK Spec Ops lady had a lot of arms (in fact I commandeered one to make a conversion with Andromeda, to separate the dog from the girl, since I use a Mukhtar hacker as Andromeda, with the beast at her back), and the Mowang have 4 arms or so. While I agree CB could have reduced the number of bodies and increased the number of arms in boxes, it seems they prefer to charge by mass and volume, so arms are seen as too much of a bother compared with a tinbot, for example. So, 3D to the rescue. Unless CB decides that having extra arms for the Shakush with a different weapon is a no-no and DMCA the cults store (personally I use one of my geckos as a Shakush anyways, so I never needed to buy the parts. The tohaa models, taqeul specially, were kinda of a low blow, however...)
I prefer to not have extra arms. I dont like to have extra bits rolling around. The figure come with the exact pieces necesary to mount. Back in the day, tournament packs always came with some weapon sprues, like the ones included in the old Spec ops, and always ended in the trash because no one use them
Siocast isn't a "back in the day" thing. They started promoting themselves on Youtube in 2021. And yet, GW's done exactly that with their "introductory game modes" of Spearhead and Combat Patrol. Locked "army lists", unit options, etc. This is the problem though. CB doesn't really seem to "get" why they get pushback. lol... This policy hasn't actually been that. But I'm sure you'd know, right? There's a whole slew of units that don't have rules for items modeled on them, provided in their kit, or just outright have things ignored. Not even old kits! Kasrkin don't get an option to outfit their Sergeants with a Hotshot Lasgun despite Kill Team giving the profile option and the instructions literally showing you how to build them! That's a you problem more than anything else. Deathwatch Veterans were billed, from the outside, as compatible with the entire Space Marine range. Shields and bolters/pistols were some of the most common bits out there. Which is literally why 40k players referred to non-special weapons models in a unit as "ablative wounds"... More options, even if you don't use them, is far superior to less options.
