Where did all the blisters go GW

[Ghaffasa]

I don\'t understand this one. Most GW plastics require you to cut from sprue, prep and glue together at least 5 pieces. In comparison, the prep time for most metal minis is far less.

At least they don\'t normally fall apart when you after a few minutes of fixing remove your fingers, thinking the glue has dried enough for them to stick together.

Plastic parts are easier to assemble because:

1. plastic glue works faster than super glue
2. metal parts are heavier and therefore the glue needs to be stronger and very dry before the parts stay together.

Of course, you could choose to pin your metal minis, but that involves prepping you don\'t have to worry about when working with plastics.

As for sprues and mould lines, some metal minis come with those as well.

 

[BPI]

I had a whinge in my local GW when the blister stock halved earlier this year. I\'m fortunate to live near a store with large floor, and therefore wall/display, space so it was particularly noticable. The gist of it seems to be that metal figures are expensive to stock (economic climate, raw metal costs, etc). Unsold minis are better recast to mail-order than sat on the shelf.

Part of the problem I have with it is perception. I want GW to be a SHOP that stocks every single product they list (in depth) as well as all of the licensed products (Talisman, WHFRP, novels, Forgeworld, etc) and select gaming peripherals from other companies. GW see theire stores as HOBBY CENTRES where you can do all of the extra hobby bits, order online in store with cash & collect next week, etc. I\'d settle for a balance between the two


I\'m learning to enjoy plastic miniatures as I grow more confident about just glueing different bits together & cutting them up. I think there is a definite improvement in the quality of the plastics though. While the original Skeleton set still stands up fairly well the set which had a sprue each of WHFB troops were horrible, I came across a dwarf in a box the other day & he\'s truly binnable. And while the Space Hulk Genestealers are nice (I may paint some more) the Terminators & hybrids were very weak. The main issue I have with plastics is some of the weird poses available, the squatting Empire State Troops are particularly annoying in that respect. Metal minis for role-playing characters feel far more satisfying on the table though lol

B.

 

[Shadzar]

Blisters allow you to capture a larger market than just army-sized boxes.

D&D minis suffered from people not wanting random minis for use with the RPG, and not many people playing the crappy game.

GW likewise could lose sales from people that don\'t want to play their crappy 5th edition, and just prefer to paint some minis. So by going for all plastic and squad boxes for most things, they will lose the casual buyer to other companies like Reaper, etc that will give those companies a stronger market.

You do not need a captain space marine with 40 extra bits, when odds are anyone having GW stuff already, already has 4000 spare space marine bits to do something with.

They are getting a bit silly, and the newer model for GW is getting a bit silly looking.

The minis are beginning to get too busy with the amount of crap they are putting on them.

I went to check the new Van Carstien model on their website, and that is even worse than before. I wouldn\'t buy some of the new plastic stuff for conversions, because it is just crap. Look at some of the old stuff like Necron Lord with Staff of Light, and you get some nice oddities for conversions, like VC\'s older weapon.

I prefer blisters, as not everyone needs to buy entire GW armies.

Blisters will be back as people will learn to not pay $30 for a plastic kit they could have got for $18 in metal.

Why the new Pin Vises from GW is they are getting rid of metals? You don\'t need to pin plastic minis!

 

[Amazon warrior]

Originally posted by Shadzar
The minis are beginning to get too busy with the amount of crap they are putting on them.

I suppose you could blame Rackham for that if you were feeling uncharitable. There everyone was, stuck with rather plain minis with rather static poses, and then up pops a company that makes original minis that are dynamic (in the main) and crammed with glorious (and in some cases overwhelming) detail. GW sits back and says, \"Huh. So, that\'s what you want, is it?\" and proceeds to shoehorn as much twiddly stuff as it can on new minis. Only GW doesn\'t quite understand what made this (usually) work for R, and so it looks weird and awkward. And in a good example of irony, the really twiddly stuff didn\'t seem to work out well for R in the long run because the increasing complexity of the sculpts scared the pants off anyone who hadn\'t won Euromilitare three years on the trot,* so they stopped selling them and gave us the no-brainer PPPs (and a totally different rules set) instead . Props to GW if they can make the fiddly stuff work for them, tho.



*[size=-2]The poorly translated rules that collapsed under the weight of exceptions, work-arounds and the broken-ness of rules for the most recently released models probably didn\'t help much either. I found that a game wasn\'t so much a battle between opposing factions as a test of whether you could persuade your opponent to accept a rule interpretation that was most favourable to you and not them.[/size]




....Ignore me, I\'ve spent far too much of today watching extremely snarky computer game review videos.

 

[Shadzar]

No need to blame anyone else, I blame GW for their own decisions.

While all those banners and tomes and such on the minis can be cute, they aren\'t in any way needed.

Let those that want them buy them or make then, and those that don\'t shouldn\'t have to remove them and pay for stuff they don\'t want on them.

Rackham has some nice stuff, but you can chose to get those if you want, unlike GW where you have to have all that crap to remove if you don\'t want it on the minis.

It is just the space mariens and other stuff getting too much crap on them. Purity seals are too pristine on the minis as is, and you are expected to think a scroll will last forever and paper isn\'t destroyed during battle while frag and krak grenades are being thrown around? Bio-acid form a Nid or a good multi-melta or chaos variant weapon means these little pieces of paper and cloth are gone first thing when engaging into battle.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1020019&prodId=prod1060074

Just look at the loin-cloth type scroll on the one, and scrolls hanging off shoulder pads? Come on!

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1020023&prodId=prod1060104

More loin cloth, and even a scroll hanging off a heavy flamer. Power armor is there to protect marines, but you think this cloth/paper scroll will survive must use from the radiant heat of the flamer? ???

There is only GW to blame for GW decisions. Mostly I blame the Grey Knight Terminators concept and art design for all this crap.

While some thing may look good in 2D art, it doesn\'t always translate well for minis for the masses.

I expect it has to do with them trying to force everyone to buy the new sets with the new rules about using the base supplied rather than bases able to be bigger than that supplied, and such to try to remove the option for using older minis.

Likewise I blame WotC for adding the GW look to D&D because they chose the art direction.

Blisters at least let you see what is there and can avoid paying for $5 worth of crap you don\'t want, and allow you to get a single mini, if that is all you want.

So I don\'t blame someone else for being copied, I blame the ones doing the needles copying.

Just because you can do a thing, doesn\'t mean you should.

 

[laurence]

Posting peeves!

Why must there always be a double space after each sentence?

Oh no, I\'m worried that you\'ll get so bored with what i\'m saying that you\'ll lose the will to read my paragraph.

So I\'ll double space every sentence I type.

This way you\'ll stick with me till the end of my yawn inducing rant.

Please, keep reading.

The next sentence gets interesting.

Really it does.

I promise.

You won\'t get bored with my blabber.

I have some really positive and insightful comments to share with you.

Truly.

I\'m not kidding \'round. You will gain tonnes of wisdom from my intelligent words.

Stick with me guys, the next sentence really gets to the core of this thread.

It\'s just...

My keyboard keeps wanting to double space all the time.

Please don\'t stop reading.

It\'s gonna get interesting.

Oh the hell with this!

 

[cyberakuma]

i\'m really tempted to triple space this reply but i\'ll resist

it does suck tha blisters are vanishing from shops especially for those of us who have been collecting a pretty much all metal army (witch hunters/grey knights etc.) as if your local GW is anything like my local there is fuck all you want and you just get the annoying gimp in the polo shirt saying you can get it all from mail order

yup fine and dandy except the armies i\'m buying for haven\'t been updated in about 5-6 years and from the look of the state of the metal minis i\'ve gotten of them recently nor have the molds or they just haven\'t been bothered with casting new ones and are throwing all the quality control rejects at us thinking if they can get away with saying mishapen and crap quality resin pieces from forgeworld are for more experienced modellers then they can say the same for the metal minis of specialist forces

i\'ve collected sisters of battle for a good few years not since they were first released i admit but i bought minis for them before the 3rd edition re-release and just after and the quality of the casting was good some minor flash and that was it but i\'ve bought the same minis more recently and there is no new complex designs to blame or anything like that but the state of them is atrocious with mold lines and far more flash (if they are worried about tin prices maybe they should offer a flash recycling incentive instore (i.e. bring back x grams of metal flash and get £x off your next purchase) or can\'t they melt metal and use it again?

so with this in mind i\'d rather see the state of the mini in the blister than spend a load on ordering it from mail order and paying extra for postage and ending up with crap and that\'s if they even get the order right

seriously a few years back it took a mail order troll three attempts me the right leg of a warlord titan as it was boxed up with two left legs the first time they sent another left leg so i now had 3 left legs and again so i was upto four left legs before they decided that it would be easier to send out both legs than work out their left from their right and i could finally build my titan so i ended up with 4 spare left legs to a warlord titan that i couldn\'t exactly so much with gave ove to a mate as he had some idea for a conversion and used one as a terrain piece and i still have two left in my bits box and that is just one of many mail order screw ups over the years

so is it really too much to ask for

quality control, customer service (where its needed rather than the false befriending shit as a crap sales practise) and to actually be able to buy the products i want in store without feeling like i just experienced a labotomy whilst trying to do so?

seriously it is a bad thing that a mini that cost me £4 back in 98 now costs double but that\'s an expected inflation over 11 years and it\'s my own fault for not buying more of them when they were cheaper

but to force me to pay double what it would have cost then make me pay postage and packing on top and all the phonecalls afterwards that i\'ll need to make because they still pay peanuts and end up with staff that can\'t tell left from right just to get a mini? that\'s what will drive us away more than anything

the price i can live with (just) if the quality of product and service are there unfortunately for GW i get better customer service off ebay (and better prices too) i think i\'ve set foot in GW for the last time i don\'t play instore i think i\'ve only ever played one demo game instore back when i was 14 i really feel like squeezing the testicles of the staff in my nearest GW until the burst every time they creep up on me when i\'m trying to browse what little selection they have and their forced conversations are about as pleasant as being sat in a dentists waiting room listening to kenny G knowing that you are about to have your teeth drilled

i know its not their fault they are following the holy commandments (which at face value are a great model for customer service, the downside is GW\'s implementation is more indoctranation than customer care) but hiring hobbyists with the social interaction skills of a frightened hedgehog faced with a robin reliant heading towards them doesn\'t help matters either....if someone is not keeping your eye contact and deliberately answering your open questions with closed answers it generally is them politely saying fuck off i\'ll speak to you at the till if i find something i want to buy)

in short they suck at their own commandments and the service those commandments is supposed to allow is pointless if you can\'t buy anything you want in store they may aswell turn everystore into paid entry gaming centres for painting, modelling and gaming etc. with a rules lawyer and painter/modeller on hand at all time with a computer terminal to order stuff to the gaming centre or their homes and not have any stock on the shelves that would be a fantastic business wouldn\'t it (your sarcasm detectors should have just exploded)

i\'d buy other companies minis but unfortunately as anyone else who\'s local GW is cardiff knows the only alternative brick and mortar mini seller is cardiff gaming store and they haven\'t exactly got the widest selection (though the paints and brushes for £1 each are always good)

so without the internet and ebay i\'d be screwed unless i want to fork out a fortune on a plastic space marine army and if i wanted to do that i\'d have bought them when you got a lot more than three marines for a fiver

so fingers crossed GW will one day have stopped selling all their tin deposits they have acrued over the years to (insert waring country here) for weapons manufature and start stocking blisters on shelves or some of us have no real need to ever give GW our money directly again 2nd hand metal minis are easy enough to strip even if at the same time it strips a bit off GW profit margins

if they want me back in store they\'ll need to update witch hunters or at the very least stock more variety of their minis and if space is an issue (not that i can see from all the empty hooks they have on their walls) they could make books mail order only as i\'d say having necromunda/bfg/gorkamorka/bloodbowl minis available on shelf is going to get people to buy them and start playing more than seeing numerous copies of gaunt\'s ghosts, horus heresy and felix and gotrek books that have been sat there since they were released

 

[cyberakuma]

good thing i didn\'t triple space it eh?

 

[exilesjjb]

well said that man I have already vowed to my wife I have bought my last GW figure.
She does not know I have my eye on 54mm historical figs which cost twice as muchlol

 

[Shadzar]

Originally posted by cyberakuma
good thing i didn\'t triple space it eh?

You should have. The textarea to enter the post is so damn tiny, it is near impossible to read what you have written in it unless you do something to space it out a bit.

It is like someone tried to design some GameBoy game screen instead of a decent area to enter a post in.

I think being able to see the mini to know you aren\'t getting crap is a BIG plus to blisters. You can also see that all the parts are included as well. Never seen a base in a blister, but also never been shorted one, unlike boxed sets where I am missing bases or other parts every 3rd box.

 

[laurence]

enjoyable read

Originally posted by cyberakuma
good thing i didn\'t triple space it eh?

Double space, triple space. It\'s all good

I really enjoyed reading your post on the current situation with GW, and how this is pushing you away from shopping there. You made some classic/funny comments! I was literally laughing out loud. My girlfriend came to check on me to see what I was up to. Hehe... Gimps in polo shirts, Kenny \'G\' and the dentists drill. The stuff about the customer skills of the GW staff! Hilarious! And true. I hate going into GW stores for the very reasons you mentioned. It\'s intimidating for me. I just want to look at the minis and stuff in peace.

I guess if you\'re going to mail order minis, the best way to do it is make a big order with your friends. This way you can share the postage costs. Something I\'m sure you already do.

Ava a good 1

 

[cyberakuma]

Originally posted by laurence
[Double space, triple space. It\'s all good

I really enjoyed reading your post on the current situation with GW, and how this is pushing you away from shopping there. You made some classic/funny comments! I was literally laughing out loud. My girlfriend came to check on me to see what I was up to. Hehe... Gimps in polo shirts, Kenny \'G\' and the dentists drill. The stuff about the customer skills of the GW staff! Hilarious! And true. I hate going into GW stores for the very reasons you mentioned. It\'s intimidating for me. I just want to look at the minis and stuff in peace.

I guess if you\'re going to mail order minis, the best way to do it is make a big order with your friends. This way you can share the postage costs. Something I\'m sure you already do.

Ava a good 1

thanks for the kind words and i agree with you completely and i think many would some people don\'t need help in shops we learned how to use our eyes to see what they have, our hands to pick up what we want and our legs to take it to the counter

so if they do their jobs in keeping the shelfs stocked with atleast one of everything they have in then we don\'t need them asking us if we need help til we get to the till

they do need to appraoch customers that look as though they don\'t know what they want as i\'m sure some parents have been sent in to get something and would be lost without them hell my gf has been tempted to go in there and buy a mini for me before now but has walked past looked in and felt put off just by the atmosphere she probably would have run a mile if some sales assistant walked up to her whilst she was browsing and asked the sort of questions they ask me but i\'m just repeating myself now i\'ve had my rant

i will say i did use to do group orders with my friends and take advantage of free p+p offers when i could but after so many problems from dealing with them and less of my mates using them as well its a long distant memory since the last time i used mail order and i know i need to at some point to pick up some individual bits i need to complete my army but i\'ll be putting it off for as long as possible praying someone lists the parts i need on ebay or someone has some bits they\'d be willing to part ways with as a trade or donation ( the metal front hatch with the fleur de lys from the old immolator, the twin linked heavy flamer and gun shield from the same kit, a few sisters backpacks, 2 cherubim not sure which ones at the moment i\'m thinking the ones dragging chains would be the easiest to convert for what i need, and a servitor with plasma cannon...not sure if there is one to be honest i\'ve seen one on ebay but tbh it looked like a conversion using a heavy bolter servitor and the plasma cannon from a devastator marine i\'m guessing the old ones as the mini was all metal wether it was a conversion or not) if anyone has that stuff and want to part ways with it pm me

anything else i need to finish the force i want i can pretty much get hold of on the net though imagifiers are few and far between i\'m patient i\'ve got plenty to work on as it is (i\'m a lazy painter)

and the txt isn\'t that hard to read in here and i\'m severly short sighted (sucks for painting tiny details on minis ) try reading an ebook on a gba micro lol

 

[philologus]

It was simple mental calculus for GW:
Blisters obviously delight our customers, so do away with them immediately. I went into my local GW for the first time in about a year. It looked like they were going out of business compared to what they used to stock. I went in intending to buy something that my FLGS didn\'t have. Much to my surprise, I couldn\'t buy GW product at a GW store. The lobotomized waaagh ambassador told me I could get it from mail order. I told him no thanks I\'ll just by some other mfr\'s stuff instead.

I really think they hate their customers.

They don\'t sell the bits you actually want, \"but we have the mail order bits packs\" which defeats the purpose of conversion, if every one\'s conversions look the same.

They no longer sell the cool older models

They cancelled our games day-Screw\'em I started winning awards at the historical shows instead (coincidentally the historical awards were cast in metal while GW still gives away \"plastic\" trophies-that made me smile)
I haven\'t bought GW product in over a year. lol lol

 

[Shadzar]

^^

I bet Lorraine Williams has been working with GW ever since she screwed up TSR. Sounds about how things are being run these days. Also Buck Rogers fits so nicely thematically with 40k......

I have never been in a GW store, cept maybe once, and there was nothing worth buying.or I would have remembered it better.

You would think that would b a great way to get those bits out. Sell things people want like that through stores, cause you can just bust open a blister and sell parts of it for more than retail of the blister and still have bits left over.

If I were to go into a store, I would buy the Imperial tank accessories, or the Catachan Command Squad, just for a couple shovels.

But you can\'t really make redneck marines with power weapons, without proper weapon, and you don\'t need all those other catachan bits for some shovels!

Just hope nobody steals my idea for redneck space marines now. lol

 

[cyberakuma]

Originally posted by Shadzar
^^

I bet Lorraine Williams has been working with GW ever since she screwed up TSR. Sounds about how things are being run these days. Also Buck Rogers fits so nicely thematically with 40k......

I have never been in a GW store, cept maybe once, and there was nothing worth buying.or I would have remembered it better.

You would think that would b a great way to get those bits out. Sell things people want like that through stores, cause you can just bust open a blister and sell parts of it for more than retail of the blister and still have bits left over.

If I were to go into a store, I would buy the Imperial tank accessories, or the Catachan Command Squad, just for a couple shovels.

But you can\'t really make redneck marines with power weapons, without proper weapon, and you don\'t need all those other catachan bits for some shovels!

Just hope nobody steals my idea for redneck space marines now. lol

does a bottle oof moonshine count as a meltabomb?

 

[Shadzar]

Originally posted by cyberakuma
does a bottle of moonshine count as a meltabomb?

You put that back in the bathroom where you found it...

I mean, yes it does. That or demolition charges.

See that is what they need blisters of...bits. Like little brown jugs. :drunk:

 

[ArsLoqui]

Originally posted by cyberakumait does suck tha blisters are vanishing from shops especially for those of us who have been collecting a pretty much all metal army (witch hunters/grey knights etc.)

Let\'s not forget Eldar Aspect Warriors! (You can only get full, 10-man squads by buying boosting unit boxes with two-man blisters.)

To take things O/T a little, are you saying that if you walk into a GW store and they don\'t have what you\'re looking for, they make the customer pay to have it shipped there? If so, that is some ridiculous bullshit.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Originally posted by ArsLoqui
are you saying that if you walk into a GW store and they don\'t have what you\'re looking for, they make the customer pay to have it shipped there? If so, that is some ridiculous bullshit.

No if you make a mail order you can get it delivered to you local store FOC. (Well at least in the UK).
When I use mail order I always do it through my local store, just out of courtesy so the money shows as going through the managers books, rather than HQ.
But then again our local manager is a personal friend.

 

[Ritual]

Originally posted by Dragonsreach

Originally posted by ArsLoqui
are you saying that if you walk into a GW store and they don\'t have what you\'re looking for, they make the customer pay to have it shipped there? If so, that is some ridiculous bullshit.

No if you make a mail order you can get it delivered to you local store FOC. (Well at least in the UK).
When I use mail order I always do it through my local store, just out of courtesy so the money shows as going through the managers books, rather than HQ.
But then again our local manager is a personal friend.

I don\'t know how it is in the UK, but the few times I\'ve ordered mail order items through the store here in Stockholm I\'ve had to pay for shipping. Not a lot, but some...

 

[DrEvilmonki]

Maybe they simply don\'t care to much about you guys as customers. It doesn\'t mean that they don\'t care about their customers, just that they are targeting different people.