I most definately think they will!

Seing the perry brothers, gw, rackham, warlord-something and warfactory-the-other all going 28mm plastics really doesn’t leave much doubt in my mind.

Personally I have begun my recent smallscale projects in 1:72 instead of 15mm as the price is about 1/3! Whether you play Fire & Fury in 15 or 20mm matters not. The same can be said of other games.

Too bad that the smaller companies are the ones who will be hurt the must. Argueable you can’t go into plastic unless you’re a giant already, right?

So smaller companies with a niche line will have to be part-time doings (which most probably are) with little problems from smaller sales.

Interesting to see what a company like Privateer Press will do - they’re quite the ones to cling to metal it seems. Metal and “heavy” miniatures being part of their “style”. Couldn’t imagine a plastic ‘jack although it’s perfectly doable :)

cheers,

Thorbjørn Nielsen

http://therandomencounter.blogspot.com

Yup - I think it is going to have a longterm impact on metal minis in our hobby.

It’s certainly going to be hitting the smaller firms hard when it comes to their bottomline.

But saying that, some people simply prefer metal minis so perhaps there will be a few casualties along the way but metal minis will endure in the hobby. Albeit the cost for the consumer may have to increase to keep it viable for the producer.

As far as costs are concerned for moving into plastics they’d be looking at 40k’ish (including packaging) to put a multipart kit together in the vein of GW, Warlord or the Perrys. But that’s all front end costs, after you’ve recovered this initial outlay you’re printing money as the unit costs are pennies but that’s a lot easier to say than do.

GW have a massive following so they’ll find it easy to recover their initial costs, the Perry’s and Warlord have picked eras which need a lot of minis to make armies so they’ll recover their costs pretty swiftly.

The tricky bit is having the money at the front end to invest and picking the right kit to make which you can move a lot of in as short a time as possible - not easy but not impossible either. My guess is we’ll have more plastics companies (or at least more companies doing plastic minis) as the plastics technology costs come down and base metal prices continue to rise.

(Well unless some new super-duper cheapo enviro-friendly alloy is discovered in the next few years which is suitable for minis)

Well the rising price of anything will cause us to freak out about how that effects what we buy. All metals and plastics are limited to what the earth has to give.
Yes I do think the prices will hurt the industry. Every year we see new models from all over the industry. It is likely that unless new sources are found you will continue to see rising prices. I figure that there may be people looking into alternatives for our hobby other than plastic. It would be nice to know if recycled metals would work. Or if we could just collect all the old leads that sit around and reuse them. I don’t know anything about that so I’m only guessing.
I’d be interested in seeing weather corn plastics could also be used for miniatures but then they would eventually bio-degrade.

I think the impact has already started in the way games are designed. We are beginning to see more and more games being created on a skirmish level. These games are gaining in popularity as it only requires a low model count. For example.

- Infinity
- Hell Dorado
- AE-WW2
- Rezolution
- Anima Tactics

All these games are not cheaper per model but the fact they don’t require a lot of models makes them a cheaper game to play than mass combat games.

As metal prices rise I think we will see more people flock to these kinds of games.

I think spending time to paint is a small factor from the miniatures producers point of view. If I were developing a game using metal miniatures having a low model count game would be easier to sell at a higher than normal price point than say for instance a large model count game. This would allow people to actually play my game without the high cost of entry.

For example Anima Tactics sells their models at $10 each. If PP priced their units out the same way a min. unit would be $60.00. for 1 unit. Not because Anima requires less you could get a full warband to play for the same price and be done with it.

Rising metal prices does make it more difficult to create a new mass combat game for new players to invest in.

The draw to skirmish games isn’t all about less to paint. In fact I would say for most people its all about affordability.

metal is recyclable, plastic is not

as has been pointed out plastic is a finite resource unless they can get this complex carbohydrate plastic off the drawing board

this is simply part of the economic cycle driven in part by speculators

but in a world of headless chickens someone who keeps theirs might just be a future market leader

OK as someone that is just getting into the mini scene here is the low down.–
I plan on selling my figures for 5.99. I have an outside company make the molds that is about 100-150 for a 8 figure mold - Lets say they are all different figures, not a squad
Each green cost me about 600 including art.
so before I cast anything I am at 4950.00
packaging is going to run .21 each and I have to order cases of 300 or so.
the mold maker can spin 22 times an hour and charges 40 a n hour so I will need at least 300 of each so 14 hours and 2400 total figures. that is .25 roughly each cast.
so
Art/ Greens 4800.00
molding and 300 of each cast 710.00
packaging and printing 504.00
I will have to sell 1005 figures to break even. that is over 200 of each figure.
Now if I want to use a distributor I have to give them a 60% off retail so now I am looking at having to sell all 2400 initial cast to break even.
The real problem for independent figure makers isn’t the cost of metal it is getting the volume of sales to make it worth while.
Plastic is the way to go if you can do it in runs of over 2500.

The impact for me is that I will buy metal but I only buy into one army. previously I’d collect multiple if not all the forces for some lines. Now…even if I like a model I just sigh and move on if it is not in the force I am playing. So instead of multiple armies for 1 to 3 games (I think I had a playable force for 10 C3 lines)…it is 1 army for each game.

Does the price point keep me away…no. However, the amount of dollars I spend on the hobby has remained flat (by choice) so I stay more narrowly focused.

Things abound like - Scrunts (sigh), Wyrd, Dark Age, Urban Mammoth that I really like but I don’t buy in due to cost - how I budget, not necessarily a bad price point by the manufacturers.

So I’m less likely to be introduced into new lines by buying a figure here and there today then in the past.

When it’s 8 for a man size fig it’s easy to slip one in your shopping cart and get into the rules later (I’m visually attracted to most games first). Then if I like what I read I may buy more. However, when the figs creep to $10 to $14 then it becomes difficult to justify the one off purchases and I’m more likely to keep playing the games I have.

I work within the housing industry and hhave seen materials prices rise due to “demand from China” by similar significant margins. Hyper inflation in materials costs is a problem which reduces the profitability of all firms, and can wipe out those without a contingency plan (plastics!) or where there are minimal profit margins to being with.

For the consumer it will mean more churn in the market place as some of the recent entries into the increasingly crowded “boutique miniatures” market feel the pinch, and larger companies face problems where they have over-extended themselves. Inevitably it will mean we see some upward pressure on end-user prices, which we will swallow, or not.

I don’t see it as the “end of the industry” though. Companies may have to “sweat their assets” (e.g. keep costs down by saving on new designes and regurgitating old ones) and try out new production methodologies (Warlord Games, Alkemy and Wargames Factory, have demonstrated that the plastics market is no longer a “no go area” for start-up companies, and with developments in rapid prototyping this trend is likely to continue further. BUT, metal costs for the “large” companies in the “industry” are still, even after double-digit inflation over the past couple of years, a relatively small factor in their cost base compared to other compnents of the business. Design, distribution and selling costs, as well as overheads continue to be more significant factors - particularly with the spiralling cost of fuel.

Certainly there can be no complacency. As ever in a changing market place, the fit survive and the flabby go to the wall. There is no easy money to be made. But then there never was: ’twas ever the way in the gaming industry!

When it comes to the rise of Skirmish level games don’t discount the appeal of the complexity and depth of the rules. In this age of simpler and simpler rule sets there is a market (sadly a small percentage overall) for quality rules and the quality metal minis that seem to accompany them.

There are games I loved back in the day, with collections of hundreds of minis from multiple armies, that I can’t ever imagine myself playin’ in their simplified current versions.

Once you’ve had red wine, red Kool Aid looses it’s appeal as the drink of choice for dinner. And there is nothin’ wrong with the kids who drink Kool Aid.

Metal prices have already had a long term effect on the hobby. Starting with GWs huge selection of plastic kits, many companies have taken up plastics as an alternative. Resin is becoming more common amoung small companies as well. We see some companies going completely plastic or starting up that way. And while there are many reasons that skirmish games have become more popular lately, metal prices is one of them.

The start-up cost for a skirmish game makes players much more inclined to try them when compared with a mass combat game. If GW hadn’t gone to so much plastic in the last few years, I cant imagine many people willing to start into a Warhammer or 40k game. Taking the above example of $7 each and an average army size for WFB of lets say 100 models…..$700 to start playing a game as it was intended is brutal compared to $60.

We also have the gateway-drug of pre-paints now that would never have existed if metal were the only option.

Metal prices have already changed the face of gaming, along with many other factors. And metal will continue to rise unless something drastic changes. All that is left is to decide whether the change is for the better or not.

I personally think that production techniques will allow plastic and other technologies to catch up to metal standards in the near future. As much as I dislike GW, their current plastic kits are far better then their old metal models already, nostalgia aside.

I just want my models decent and cheap so I dont mind. I will continue to play games even if I only have paper cutouts left as an option. I also cast my own models at home the old fashion way (like Price August moulds and some moulds I got that are about 50 years old and still working). The great thing about that is that I can melt down any old lead I can find as long as I do it safely. With two moulds of three minis each you can make a complete 2000 point army of WFB Dwarfs for about $75 even buying the metal online.

The hobby has changed and always will. Its effect on me personally is very little as I am willing to adapt, and never have had the need to buy the newest shiny or the official minis.

Not all plastics are recyclable

That’s is true. But on the other hand considering that every single miniature company uses their own particular alloys, and considering that even within one range the alloy may significantly change from one model to the next (depending on the size and/or amount of detail they want to mould), then metal may not be that easy to recycle either. I remember people suggesting to send their extra metal (moulding flash and tab) to Rackham so they can reuse it, and we were told that it wasn’t that easy and would probably not be any cheaper.

Thinking about it, I don’t believe I ever heard of any company recycling metal for their miniatures.

GW : khorngor command : 5 different models 35 $ (7$ per model)
Asmodee : Hell Dorado Westener Starter Box : 11 different models : 56.95 $ at my local store (5.18$ per model)

Are you sure? The GW US online store only asks for $22 for that Khorngor command. And comparing the Asmodée prices vs. the GW France ones, I see 40€ for the Westerner box and 20€ for the Khorngor box which makes the difference very tiny per model (especially considering that the 40€ price also applies for the 8 model Lost ones box). Granted the prices are likely to be discounted in stores, but both the HD and the WH ones are.

mathieu : my local store is a canadian store so I made my comparison with the canadian GW online store where these figs are 35 CAD $ :

http://ca.games-workshop.com/storefront/store.ca?do=Individual&code=99110201179&orignav=13

My prices are in canadian dollars. Sorry for not having specified this point.

Both products are imports.

You’re right though they’re 22$ on the US GW store and 20 euros on the french online store (about 31 US $ today at 9.33 am or 30.5 CA $).

In the worst case price per mini is identical. So the point is : you can have a nice package, free rules, nice and different minis without having to pay more for this.

unless they can get this complex carbohydrate plastic off the drawing board

Tardis, can you elaborate on what these are, pehaps a link or something? I’d be curious to know what you are speaking of.

I am a multi-army buyer, and have relatively low skills (I paint to about a 6 on coolminiornot). As such, I find plastic so much easier to use, convert, and carry to games and tournaments. As such I shop with a very heavy bias towards plastic. I generally do the ‘troops in plastic, characters in metal’ style of buying. So I source my troops based on price, and then source my characters based on sculpts. So the cost of metal only affects about 5% of my puchases. However, this 5% is where I go to the fringes of the internet and try out cool stuff. When the sculpt is right, I will pay a quadruple what I would pay for a troop model, and try smaller companies.

So the price of metal in one way absolutely affects my purchasing - metal costs and is too fiddly for my troops, and in another way it barely affects it at all as I would pay much more for great character sculpts.

On ‘green gaming’ - I’m waiting for the 6×4 lcd touch screen gaming table, where you pop on your 3-d glasses and watch the animations of your figures battle it out. Only consumable - electricity.