I recently contacted GW about their decisions to make a lot of the BOTFA troops in Finecast instead of plastic and got an interesting response :

Hi Dominic

Thanks for the email.

I am afraid I only have a very basic answer for you with regards to the Hobbit miniatures, in that people keep buying them! We are working on trying to anticipate how popular the miniatures are so that we can make sure they stay in stock for longer, but the majority of the range is proving far more popular than we had expected.

With regards to the Mirkwood Armoured Elves, we make all the miniatures out of the best material we can, there are some things that we can only create in Finecast or in plastic, and I guess the Armoured Elves fell into the 'has to be Finecast' category. I have passed your email on to the design team however so that should they do a re-sculpt, they could consider this point for you, and the gamers at large.

I hope that this helps, but if you need anything further, please let me know.
Kind regards
Lydia

I appreciate the quick response but I still don't get why basic troops (Gundabad Orcs, Lake Town Milita etc) have to be in Finecast when plastic would be much easier (and cheaper). Especially the Milita, having cheap troops in expensive 3 packs is crazy Any thoughts on this ?

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Can't rain all the time.....

It makes absolutely ZERO sense to do mass core troops in failcarp and make the elites out of plastic. Should be the other way around, like when they used to do with metals.

I have been wondering about the popularity of the miniatures.

This is entirely anecdotal but I feel like the hobby has grown a TON in the last year or so. It was slowly dying and has picked up some.

Prices seem to have jumped up on ebay and local scene has grown considerably too

I wish they would not make so much online store exclusive though.

Plastic is definitely not cheaper for them to produce. The molds for plastic minis are VERY expensive, and they most likely thought that they wouldn't sell enough to make any money back. Which is the actual reason we haven't seen any plastics since AUJ (the plastic Mirkwood stuff was completed when it was still 2 movies). AUJ didn't sell that well, so they decided to make it all cheap Finecast, and it seems that the range is just starting to pick back up again.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

Draugluin is right. Cheaper for us does not mean cheaper for them. They didn't expect the range to sell this well, and Finecast has a far lower startup cost than plastic.

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I thought the molds were exactly the same for metal and finecast. I believe plastic figures are injection molded.

Let's face it. Finecast was the way to get away from the high price of metal. But instead of passing the savings to us the costs increased.

I used to be 100% metal all the time. But to be honest it was much easier working with lead compared to pewter.

And these days with the quality of the plastic sculpts I would rather have plastic. The ability to cut it easily, scrape mold lines easily is worth gold.

Plastic figures do have a higher initial overhead. But in the long run for a large amount of figures the cost / piece is significantly less than casting via metal or finecast.

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If you could be anyone would you be yourself? - yup, it's mine

Plastic figures are injection moulded - I believe the finecast is spin moulded using rubber moulds. Not entirely 100% on it - but I do know that the two materials are very very different in terms of production process, methods and investment. Finecast is more analogous to the metal minis than it is to the plastic, and for all intents and purposes fulfils a similar role of everything GW isn't convinced they can profit off in plastic due to the immense upfront costs.

I don't buy the 'it had to be in FC' excuse, but the most interesting part of this email to me is that they are pleased with Hobbit's performance. Whether that's a case of "We thought it'd do nothing, but it's actually doing something - but less than our other properties" or "Wow, this license may yet prove viable for us" I cannot say. Wonderful things to hear from the horses mouth though, and supported by anecdotal evidence too.

There is also one more important remark in this discussion , which we should not forgot about.
Finecast as base material is successfully killing 2nd hand market of the newest miniatures due to lack of possibility for safe and effective paint stripping.
Metal and plastics - easy to go, but finecast - "mission impossible"...
So, if someone desires any Hobbit, DoS or BOFA heroes , then has to pay for new ones instead of buying used , which can be poorly painted with no way for rework.

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Greetings from Dark Side of the Moon
Mars_2000
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My WIPs

Good point Mars_2000. Surely there is something which can easily strip finecast? It is time for all of us to put those chemistry skills to work..
Unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention in school to figure the mathematical solvent equations to this puzzle..

If a board game, which may be expected to sell 3000 - 10000 units total, can make a go of good quality plastic figurines (and still turn a profit) surely GW can sell as many plastic kits of anything they produce? At least I would think they could. But perhaps this is far away from apples to apples.

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If you could be anyone would you be yourself? - yup, it's mine

If you pay close attention to the details on the last laketown minis, you 'll notice that they are not as "fine" as other minis (at least the shieldmen). Especialy the details close to the mouldline is almost non-existant.
Also, if you compare the chainmail to that of any other finecast mini, you 'll find it "thicker" and similar to the one of the rohirrim warriors.
These observations lead me to the hypothesis that those minis were designed and sculpted with the inention of them being plastic, but unfortunaly, seeing the low selling numbers of AUJ, they opted to take a more "economically safe" path and cast them in finecast.

My understanding was it was more expensive to do the single character models in plastic rather than the resin, and the opposite for troops etc Maybe I'm wrong but it irks me having to pay a lot for numerous troops Still, as Creaky pointed out it is a good thing that the Hobbit seems to be gaining popularity again, it makes for a promising future Maybe with the new wave of releases we'll be seeing more plastic kits again !

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Can't rain all the time.....

We all know the answer to this....theyre just profit gouging.

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BLACKHAWK 2010 2013 2015 DYNASTY

That's why finecast is expensive, not why everything is finecast.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

I'm not suprised at the tone of the response. I'd have been stunned if they'd said "It's a dying range, so we're not investing money in moulds for plastics that we won't recover before the end the of license period, and you have to pay more for your basic troops. Enjoy the GW hobby."

They can and do say that in the financial reports but I doubt customer service replies to customers get to say that. Obviously it would be great if were true though.

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Chief Sarcaster at http://www.exmouthwargames.org.uk/
Assistant Dogsbody at http://legionaryshow.co.uk/ /

No, that explains it precisely. They make money that way.

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BLACKHAWK 2010 2013 2015 DYNASTY

That's it in a nutshell. The complete lack of plastics is a calculation - based on previous sales they would not have recovered their investment. In the other two lines, just about everything is being done in plastic because it is worth the investment. It is not some attempt to keep people buying fine cast or we would see more of it in the other lines. Rather it is that finecast is cheaper to produce in smaller volumes and I suspect easier to do small future batches.

That said, I do think it was bone headed to calculate sales entirely based on minis from the previous movies. My guess is there is an uptick of interest because the Battle of Five Armies resonates much more with the originally movies - the option to build an army - as opposed to, for example, a bunch of dwarves in barrels. The price point to build such armies, however, is terribly prohibitive.

What else are they going to use to calculate sales, other than sales history? They're a company, they exist to make money, not to satisfy us...

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I guess I can agree with that now.

When the company started, Id say it was at the least 60/40 profit/good will towards the gaming community.

Now Id say its easily 95/5.


The thing is in a hobby like this especially with a lot of college age kids and younger joining, its outright disrespectful. It should often be the idea that something is awesome, and how to make profit off of it. Not what can we make money off of and not care about what the customers want and just feed them a product.

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BLACKHAWK 2010 2013 2015 DYNASTY

Absolutely. What I was suggesting was that they anticipated potential sales only based on short term performance of recent movies versus long term performance of the LOTR line.

Basically, with the options from the new movie (new trolls, new versions of the nazgul) there is potential for some great minis. And also the chance to build armies centered around the battle of the five armies. But the whole thing is hamstrung by recent performance from the last movies. So just when we should be seeing some investment in plastics, we get only fine cast. But in GWs defense, the movie makers didn't give them a lot to work with in the previous movies.

If a company does not satisfy its customers it won't make a profit. If you do something nice for your customers they will remember forever. If you do something they do not like they will tell a hundred people. That is a lesson GW refuses to learn.

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"