In one game? How about in one model? The horror, I hope CB won't mix metal and plastic in one kit ever
Depends on what parts are what material. GW's crime was making their kits top-heavy. From the knights that had the balance all wrong and kept sliding off to the Fireprism that had a chonky gun twice the weight of the tank rubbing against the top canopy. Do it right and make the upper extremities out of plastic and the miniature's core and supports out of heavier stuff and I think it'll work a lot better, provided the actual molds properly take material shrinkage in mind so that you don't end up with the same issues as on CB's all-metal Tai Sheng.
Hello guys! Thank you all for your questions & feedback not only here, but on our social media too. We're, and we'll still collecting it to make the most complete Studio Update video related to this new material :) Hope you have a great weekend, take care and behave in a civil manner please!
@Koni is there a long term plan to re-release the big models already in production (all TAGs, especially Maghariba Guard, S6, S5, S4 troopers) as polyamide models?
He answered that earlier. As of now no plans to re-release figures in this. Only new stuff going forward. I think that if it goes over well, the possibility goes higher.
My guess is not only do the molds need to be updated to the new material, the modeling needs to be updated as well to take into account the material property differences such as cooling shrink rates. So it’s not just a switch of materials and a re-release. Makes sense to roll out with new releases.
We know from the photos in the announcement that while the moulds are made of similar material, they're a different shape (square instead of circular) and the layout of parts is closer to a resin or plastic sprue than a metal "star" of castings. Definitely doesn't look like you could use the same mould with both techniques.
Exactly that game ! Still have a chest full of minis for it untouched hehe :) But yeah, this was an example of how not to do it. As for the mix of metal and plastic together, it used to get done on one of the other 'major' companies, mixing plastic main line troops with metal accessories for the command squads. It's ok, alters the weight if you're using plastic minis which is annoying, plastic accessories for weapons is a better choice with metal bodies (but that's if you don't like customising).
One word: Vehicles. They're referenced in the rules but none actually exist. Quality plastics open up the possibility for more S8 stuff, and possibly even small armored vehicles or VTOL models. Montesa on a quadcopter hoverbike, and it's light enough to be supported by a clear flight stand? Yes please. A generation of S8+ heavy TAGs? Okay, sure, hit me with that and watch me drop my wallet like it's on fire. Yes, you'd need to do something like bumping up games to 400 points to comfortably accommodate that, but we're already almost there anyway—I think @Triumph wrote something about his experience with it being very positive in N4.
I don't necessarily disagree with what you've said in a general sense and I think this is a direction that the game could reasonably branch into provided things didn't get *much* bigger than S8. Scaling upwards of that could well cause some major issues with compatibility of terrain size and would be problematic for people who need to update terrain collections to accommodate it (personally I would need to fix 3 tables worth of terrain). With that said I am not advocating for an effect similar to the introduction of Colossals to Warmachine, where Privateer Press released a line of units that dwarfed previous models and were more expensive than even most expensive units in the game. These Colossals (the good ones anyway) cost about twice as much as the next biggest models and scaled in power to reflect that. In Infinity if we were to say add the equivalent of main battle tank in this fashion we'd be adding something that made an Avatar look small and cost about 200 points. I have not really thought over the full implications of designing units like this and I could well be wrong, but my gut feeling is it wouldn't be a net positive even if you were bumping the points up a significant amount. If we were to add a wide roster of vehicles and the like I think it would be best that they stayed comparative in cost and ability to units already in the game. When Colossals waded into the Warmachine metagame they added a new gear check to the game, whether or not your army was capable of destroying one in a single round. Ultimately it was not a good thing for game balance in the long run as it dumped an explosive amount of fuel onto an arms race that was already escalating out of control. Just to be completely clear one of the positive effects my local group has found bumping the points up to 400 is that it places more combat effective units on the table. One of the major issues we've had with N4 is lists have been very brittle because they've been very reliant with jamming a bunch of tools into lists to solve gear checks, this lead us to find lists often had a couple of linchpin support units or fighters who if successfully sniped out of an army caused a very quick and brutal collapse that was difficult to fight back from. Not impossible, but often felt very oppressive and like pushing shit uphill with both your arms tied behind your back. It was your opponent's game to lose at that point and barring an extreme unforced error or an insane dice spike you were often just going through the motions. This lead to alot of favouritism and emphasis in playing around alpha strikes, both delivering one and fending one off. Routinely ignoring missions and just crippling your opponent as hard as you could, that's certainly how I played the last local tournament I went to. The mix between keeping the 15 slots and playing 400 points our finding is there has been a massive de-emphasis in targeted alpha strikes. The amount of orders it takes to execute one has stayed roughly the same, getting a little worse due to more combat effective defenses being on the table, but the biggest effect has just been the value the of the strategy has decreased. Going hard to neutralise 2 out of 3 combat effective units has a far greater effect than spending the same amount of orders to only get 2 out of 6 or worse. Your opponent is still in a position where they can counter attack, and they're going to spend less orders to reach your attack pieces that have likely now found themselves over extended beyond their ARO defenses and then still be able to hit more of your things. I have had this very discussion with two different players this week, they were losing more games than they used to and were struggling because they were still playing with a hyper aggressive mind set and it was costing them. Their opponents were absorbing what used to be game deciding hits and then countering much harder in response. To go back to the cautionary note on getting ahead of ourselves and introducing our own version of Colossals to Infinity making a 200 point unit and then trying to compensate by simply adding more points would likely have the opposite effect of this. It would potentially add another gear check of "can you kill this", scale harder in value with orders than other units such as HI and TAGs, and re-emphasise on getting value out of the hyper expensive unit by murdering your opponent's one first before it can act. So food for thought there.
I was definitely thinking about stat blocks closer to a Maggie or Jotum at the top end, but more Structure and weapons on turrets could be noted as something like “Portable Autocannon (+1B, 360 Visor)”. Similar overall rules to TAGs but maybe add Gizmokit (PH=0) to indicate that they’re only repairable when an Engineer is in contact. Given how many people keep asking for Megalodron N4 stats, I think there’s some interest in things between the Avatar and that, but the Megalodron probably ought to be the top of the scale. A small urban IFV is a different prospect for a skirmish game than a full MBT. (An armored truck as an objective room that moves sounds like a fun mission rule, come to think of it.)
In my current experience people don't gizmokit anything more expensive than a REM and even then they prefer to engineer them. I think you have to be careful about making something ARM8-10 and then stacking more STR to simulate it being tougher as you run the risk it might start legitimately just start driving through alot of AROs which poses balance issues. I very am leery of going above the Avatar, it's already at peak levels of very difficult to deal with for certain factions if they haven't geared correctly they are at real risk from getting overrun by it.
Well, "vehicles" were being referenced in the rules since N1 rulebook. As you can see, that did not translated into models (nor profiles). There was a time when I thought there is room in Infinity for small vehicles - trikes, buggies, jeeps. Now I'd say "thanks, but no, thanks". Not to mention that - due to time constraints (and my regular opponent being, well, not the fastest player), I'm sticking to 200pts games. Infinity is still fun at that level :P
N2 was perfectly playable at 200 points. I never tried N3 at that level. I will have to try N4 at 200 points sometime. BITD, Games workshop routinely mixed metal and plastic, usually a metal body and plastic arms, weapons etc. It was not a problem, and allowed for more ease of conversion than all metal would allow. I have no problem if CB added in some plastic bits to the S2 minis, so long as the detail quality is indistinguishable from that of the metal. Anything larger than a TAG would destroy the game, like, As noted, what colossals did to Warmachine. The inclusion of all sorts of giant pieces really fouled WH40k way back in 2nd ed, and continues to this day, as I have heard. Vehicles should always be scenery, and/or potentially part of scenarios, like the objective room or the maglev train.
