To be honest that doesn't surprise me one bit either, having had a few years away from the hobby and seeing the gigantic price increase for such little too. e.g £15 for twelve models or now from Hobbit £25 for just 10.

Plus factor in the fact you can get near mint models on Ebay for the fraction of the cost.
They really need to start thinking of more competitive prices.

_________________
Armies:
Eastern Kingdoms
Rohan

If you double your prices and replace traditional materials with substandard resins this is what happens!

I'm not sure if its been mentioned here before. As I went into my local GW I was told there is a rumour that Forgeworld and Games Workshop will be officially merging, and Forgeworld models will be sold in GW stores, and all future Resin models will be Forgeworld not FineCast, though existing FC will still be there. Apparaant evidence for a Forgeworld Smaug is that the Warhammer Fire Drake is now OOP.

_________________
"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

I got another email from Forgeworld today. It's almost always WH40K stuff with the occasion WH terrain piece from time to time. I have not seen anything definite about this rumoured merger (yet).

_________________
Published ebooks:
Instrument of the Empire
A Note of Defiance
Phantom Ships, Ghost Flotilla
More to come!

Yes i get that SPAM email, always 40K. Personally i dont think we will see FW do any Hobbit or LOTR models.

Hoping they will make more Fire Dragons, its out of stock at the moment

_________________
Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

On Jan 20th Forgeworld stated on their FB page that:

"we have no plans to do any more middle earth models"

They could of course be lying/not giving the game away but that's pretty unlikely, particularly for the one part of the company that is known for previews/teasers.

Seem pretty definitive to me.

_________________
Finished 2nd in the 2014 GBHL. My Wife's so proud

Free SBG fanzine: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29569

We have the rumors that FW is taking over LOTR products. There are also rumors that FW will be taking over all special characters for 40k/WFB as well. It seems like there is a mix up in rumor communication here. According to the recent set of rumors, GW is phasing out finecast and plan on replacing it with FW resin. I think that's all that's happening, which is why we're hearing FW in association with standard, GW models.

FW simply does not have the staff to tackle the hero characters of all 3 games. They can barely keep up with the demand for the Horus Heresy and have all their various other projects. Members of the FW staff have been quoted saying this several times. There are dozens of pieces needed for other books they've published, a complete Warhammer Forge book they abandoned because they simply are making far too much money with the Heresy line to dedicate time to other projects.

As to Smaug, I think everything we are hearing about it is hype. It is GW seeing if there is not only demand for the model, but a chance for us to be wowed when they finally release him as the biggest kit they have ever made, and drive up its future sales. For those of you who were around when the Mumakil was first released it WAS the biggest kit GW had ever produced. They even had to make a special box for it, so they claim, and a whole new base size. A base they now use, by and large, for all their flier models.

So I believe the LOTR/Hobbit range will stay in GW's hands. I also believe we will get smaug, just next year. Look at it this way, GW never says anything about upcoming releases, at all. Yet we know for a fact that they are having "issues" making a model that big? This rumor started from GW staff. Why would GW start talking about a problem they were having making a model to us if they had no intention of making it. To let us down easy? It sounds like marketing to me.

But, it would have been stupid to release it before it was usable. It won't be usable until laketown burns, by and large as playing a group of dwarves trying to smelt him in liquid gold as a scenario doesn't sound like fun to me.

Bottom line: Don't believe the hype.