As Grenzer in box is OK, I kind of dislike Kempeitai in every box. From old player perspective - in starter I had one, I probably bought second, because its beauty. I bought 300 pts box, so I got 3rd... and in new SWC keisotsu box I got 4th. Instead MSR keisotsu, who was removed from game, yaaay;P As new player, I got 1 kempeitai in big box, 2nd in keisotsu box and 6 keisotsu in total. I dont really need more than 1 kempeitai;P but I will gladly have more keisotsus.
I don't think the Deva and Dakinis were shown together initially, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Sometimes renders get left out because they are not complete at the time. MSR Keisotsu got removed and a Kempeitai with Shock Marksman Rifle got put in. There was no other SWC model for the Keisotsu to have added so it was a great spot for the Kempeitai to get added in. The Grenzer however is not in a great spot to be added in. We actually have enough unreleased profiles for the Securitate(Feuerbach, MSR, Combi Rifle+Repeater, and in a pinch to fill out a box a Paramedic sculpt) to fill out a whole second box. Grenzers have enough profiles available to them to fill a box as well. CR+LFT has 3 different iterations('Plain', FO+Sensor, and Biometric Visor) by itself, Boarding Shotgun, Missile Launcher, and Spitfire. Heck, even the Hollow Men box didn't cover all the bases. They missed out on the Tinbots profiles, one of which is a Hacker(which likely will see a blister meaning SKU blooooooooooooat).
Just nitpicking real quick, but you can buy the rulebook by itself for $40. That was a thing a lot of us who split the Kill Team boxes for scenery did--one guy paid a bit more and got the scenery, book, and cards while the other paid less and got the models, tokens, and cards for their faction but bought the rulebook and datacards solo. The cards that come in the core box are the generic ones sold by GW as "Kill Team Datacards"($15 for them and a set of blank roster cards--which you can photocopy out of the back of the KT book instead) while the tokens and roster cards in that big box were specific to the Mechanicus and Genestealer Cultist factions. If the KT lists you've built require anything that is in one of the KT faction boxes? Getting one of those eliminates the need for the $130 box simply for tokens. (Hope you don't think I'm picking on you--just that I'm in the midst of a Kill Team campaign myself, so I've been hearing these complaints in person from a few people...and then they promptly get eviscerated by everyone involved in the campaign :s)
Honestly, one box with several gear options would do wonders for reducing bloat (though the prices would go up a tad)
@kanluwen Fair enough. I only game in a group of like 6 people anymore, so one or two of us had to buy the box just for terrain. and actually, we've been ripping on the guy who only bought a book instead of a second box to have more terrain and tokens. Again, we're a small group. Plus I figure it'd be cool for every player to have one unique table, just for their faction. I dunno, I could see having both the Kempeitai with Chain of Command (whether shottie or combi) and the MSV2+MMR Kempeitai. Spitfire Kempeitai seems more to let people still use their Raiden Spitfire model than a serious option. But I actually have the old two Kempeitai, plus a converted model with a Spitfire (I converted that long before the Raiden were released, because I figured limited camo was like a hoodie that you'd throw off to make your attack). Then I bought the JSA Army Pack (which is only ~225pts, BTW), which gave me the new-scale shotgun Kempeitai. I haven't bought the Keisotsu SWC box yet. Don't really need to, since I have all 6 of the original Keisotsu (3x combi, combi+LGL, HMG, ML), plus a bunch more converted (hacker, sniper, medic, FO, etc). Plus, I think that the Kempeitai MMR was a horribly missed opportunity for CB, they could have put Saito into the faction where the rest of the Ghost in the Shell expys are!
Honestly, even at MSRP? The terrain itself pays for the box. It crunches out to around $130 for just the plastic terrain stuff you get. That said... The Army Packs are...interesting. We've only gotten them for USARF and JSA at this point, but both aren't 300pts despite what people tried to argue initially. USARF comes out to maybe 150ish.
For Haqqislam: Ghulam and Halqa are essentially the same, I see no reason to have seperate models. They are already split in two boxes (SWC, and Starter) Support Box is good Hakim is good Daylami is good +Ragik could be a 4 model box (Hacker, Rifle, Shotgun, Spitfire) +Tarik Mansuri, 1 blister, two arms +Fiday 1 Blister, 2 Fiday (Shotgun, and universal) +Jannissaries Put the HMG into the three man box, have a seperate model in the QK Starter +Al'Hawwa, 1x Blister with Sniper and Shotgun models, hacker is in QK starter +Al'Fasid 1 box, 2 models. +Azra'il 1 box 2 models Ayyar is good +Asawira 3-4 model box, 1x Shotgun, 1x Rifle, 1x Spitfire +Hunzakut 2 model blister Kum Riders and Kum Characters are all good Odalisques are good Hafza are good Barid is good Muyibs are good Lasiq's are good +Sekban put a rifle sekban in the QK, have the SWC box +Zhayedan SWC box +Khawariji SWC box Kaplans may need to remain one blister and one box...
You know, what's really hilarious is that the Halqa mechanized troops were the ones with backpacks, while original Ghulam didn't have packs! Usually, it's the other way around, leg infantry has huge packs while mechanized lets their transport do the heavy lifting.
Military Orders ────────────────────────────────────────────────── 5 5 JOAN OF ARC Lieutenant Spitfire, Nanopulser / Pistol, AP CCW. (1 | 51) KNIGHT OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE Combi Rifle, D.E.P. / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 51) KNIGHT OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE Combi Rifle, D.E.P. / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 51) KNIGHT OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE Spitfire / Pistol, DA CCW. (2 | 56) KNIGHT OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE Spitfire / Pistol, DA CCW. (2 | 56) BASHI BAZOUK Submachine Gun, Chain-colt / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 12) BASHI BAZOUK Submachine Gun, Chain-colt / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 12) TECH-BEE (Remote Assistant Level 1, Specialist Operative) Flash Pulse / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 5) WARCOR (Aerocam) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3) WARCOR (Aerocam) Flash Pulse / Stun Pistol, Knife. (0 | 3) 6 SWC | 300 Points Open in Infinity Army I make that 19 Joans of Arc in a legal (SoF) list, so clearly we need more, lots more!
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! You go take shower now! You dirty! At least if I murder the Tech Bee you don't complete any more missions. The trick is getting anyone back there.
There’s no reason the prices should go up. Once you break like $5 or so, retail, for a single 30mm model the material cost isn’t really an issue anymore. Infinity minis are pricey enough that we really SHOULD be getting extra bits.
Just saying, but you can actually make a functional list of 19 Sun Tze or Saladins. Clearly 2019 needs to be Year of the Saladin.
Well, you do have a point on material costs, but I mean, there's still lead in CB minis and the price of lead leads to stuff like this... Though that said, have any members of the team been to Bedfordshire lately?
I cast minis professionally. We always figure $16/pound for pewter because that’s generally above the market price, so it accounts for a ‘shipped to’ price, plus wastage, market fluctuations, etc. It also means it’s $1/oz, so material costs are easy to calculate. Most human size 30mm minis weigh about half an ounce, or 50 cents of raw materials, inflated up. Then there’s labor, which is more expensive than materials, and that’s what will increase the COGS on a product with options. But if you figure it takes about 2 minutes of hands on time per model, at $15/hour that’s 50 cents. This is why you can sell a model with the same number of parts and metal as a typical Infinity miniature for $5 and still make a tidy profit. Increase that price to $8-$10, and an extra 25 cents of COGS is a pretty small percentage. But you’ve also got to keep in mind that these changes would reduce SKUs, which reduces hands on time, and simplifies production. So at the end of the day, labor costs would probably go -down-, not up. It would also reduce development costs, and production costs because it would reduce the number of molds you’d need to have. Instead of a customer buying two different Grenzer miniatures, your customer buys one Grenzer pack that can make two models with modular options. All of that gets produced at the same time, likely from the same mold.
Have YOU been to Bedfordshire lately? But yeah, nice to see the economics of adding bits makes sense for producer and consumer, maybe it'll happen some day.
CB uses one mold per part (or group of similar sized ones, as demostrated by some things coming with same sprue), there are pics of that. So miniatures split into similar things, so to speak.
I’m not sure what you are describing here. If you’re talking about parts attached to a common gate, that doesn’t tell you how the entire mold is laid out. Typically, you’d see molds laid out by SKU. Not always. It depends on a lot of factors, such as if a particular piece has a comparatively higher miscast rate, what your workflow is like, etc. etc. When you set up a mold to cast several units of a single SKU it makes sorting easier. It also lets you produce more of a product that is selling well without being forced to produce units of a product that you don’t need. But breaking molds down into the different ‘sprues’ you see in a blister is overkill. Smaller pieces tend to benefit from the use of a ‘break’ to slow down the molten metal when they are in a mold with larger pieces, like a torso. Using a common gate achieves this while at the same time making sorting easier by grouping small, hard to identify pieces on a common ‘sprue’ that you can just pull out of the mold and drop into a bin.
CB's moulds are typically for 2-3 components (although that would be counting a pair of sprued arms as one component), and those components will be similar sizes. I assume you're working on a much lower volume of casting work, where the logistics of checking and binning components work differently.
Absolutely, yes, which is why I said it might not make sense to CB. All in all though, setting aside whether CB wants to include profile options with models, my guess is that doing so would not impact the COGS very much.
