I’ll revise my assertion:

Tamwulf said:
For those of you that want plastic, don’t fool yourself. Plastic comes from oil, and in case you didn’t notice, oil is sky rocketing in price, and it will only go up. In comparrison to metal prices, it would be insane to make the switch to plastics right now.

The price of oil does not have a major impact on the price of plastic used to make plastic miniatures.

However, larger packaging, often seen in plastic miniatures, will affect transportation costs, which of course are directly affected by oil prices.

For example, with AT-43 think of how much smaller those units would be (packaging size) if they were pewter in little blister packs. One of the weird tradeoffs with cargo planes in service now is, you can fill up the cargo hold long before you max out the available cargo weight. Think of it this way - ounces of pewter or plastic is incidental when you consider even just a shipping container that weighs hundreds of pounds or an aircraft thats measured in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Its going to take A LOT of GW blister packs to fill the cartons to fill a container. Now think of the size difference between an AT-43 Tac-Arms pack and say a Bolt Action Minis clamshell blister with 3 soldiers in it. Both get you 3 figs, and the prices are vastly different due to complexity, size, material, marketing, and probably another 10 reasons. And I know which one I would say ships easier and cheaper.

Which only reinforces the point…metal minis are heavy and will be more expensive to transport

Most international shipping is by volume and then by weight. Large bulky boxes like the Rackham AT-43 and Conf boxes are probably just as expensive as smaller metal boxes to ship

Well one flaw, sort of, is the real killer for oil price changes - transportation costs.

Which only reinforces the point…metal minis are heavy and will be more expensive to transport all through the production process. So if anything the cost rising cost of oil could affect metal minis worse!

On the other hand PPs comment abour redesigning some models to use less material is a good choice regardless - and anything that can solve problems like Khador/Bloat gap is a wise decision in my mind.

And what is this “on topic” thing you speak of? Bah :P hehe

Here’s the cost of raw materials (when bought in tonnes):

Polystyrene Resin (ides.com)
$0.60 - $0.80 $US/lb

Tin (lme.co.uk)
$9 - $11 $US/lb

Consider how many miniatures can be made from a pound of plastic vs a pound of pewter. Conclusion: the plastic in minis costs pennies, vs the tin in minis costing closer to $1 or more.

If anyone can find flaws in my math I’m open to hear it!

I agree with you on the wooden poses, but everyone that had to force 20+ models on a movementtray will be happy when the lads don’t have exciting, room-taking poses and just keep their extremeties to themselves. This doesn’t apply for Warmachine (or 40K for that matter) though.
Of course a full fledged single pose mini will always make a bigger impact than any “kit” - but that’s what I am saying, give me plastics for the numerous stuff and take your time on the important models. For example I could see PP doing those… uh… Storm Blades or Doom Reavers, or lots of the core Menoth units in plastics - as they would actually benefit from a few cut arms here and there to change the pose a bit (some of the D. Reavers look very awkward pose-wise IMO).

Regarding the easiness of painting models, it all depends on what army you pick really - and with the massive numbers needed (I helped a friend with an Ork army, a whooping 500 models!) they better paint up well… otherwise we would see even less painted armies (or more prepaints *shudder*). I have yet to touch my Warmachine stuff - but they seem okay, though Cryx seems a bit more complicated than the rest, imo. And to be honest, I think big, flat areas can be difficult, depending on what color your chose OR what you plan to do with it. I was actually surprised how tough it was to make some decent modern Space Marines, the old 2nd ED ones almost paint themselves compared to the new kits.

as to “entry level” models, i think GW and PP kits actually make a good job there. many of those models are relatively flat, have big details that are easy to reach and paint with size 4 or 2 rather than 0 or 00. in fact GW still packs their 2ed SM into the starter paint-sets for people to practice on, which is a good idea.

Indeed, that might be the case here.
Though, I want more than a mere token - especially for characters and important/big things. Also, if tokens were enough for me, I wouldn’t go the extra mile to get old Rogue Trader models, or stripping used models and repainting them again.

And I am pretty sure you cannot deny that many of the GW-kits are aesthetically very pleasing, the latest Bloodletters for example have to be some of the artistically awesome pieces GW have ever done - great lines, and excellent feeling for form and shape - almost like a sportscar (though, a demented horrible one spewn out from the warp). Detail alone doesn’t make a good model (as many old GW sculpts show perfectly). Pose and proportions along with good “flow” in the shapes are far more important for me (especially since I am a layouter/graphics person in the realworld - living by the maxim less
is more, and well placed details win over a “I can do it, I do it”-design any day).

Besides, I don’t think that any of the latest GW offerings, once well painted, are NOT visually pleasing. In fact, the Vampire Counts and Demons are among the best looking armies GW has ever produced, in my opinion.

And then of course, there is the matter of time & effort, and finally use in the end. A Marauder (I am just painting a bunch these days, so I keep using them as examples) is 5 pts a model, in most cases they die in big numbers before they are even close to the enemy thanks to little armor and no possibility to shoot back. In other words, especially in big games they are cannon fodder or blockers, walking meatshields that can fend of small stuff and catch arrows - why would I want complex and metal-like details on those? In fact, it fits the models quite well that they don’t have much stuff going for them - after all they are slightly more than barbarians with loincloth and some axe or sword and the famed horned helmet. They don’t need more than that. So, on a bigger scale, detail is just unecessary, especially for your rank and file troops.

If we are talking small skirmish games though, with roundabout 10 figures per side, please give me as much detail as you can or go 54mm right away. BUT, please refrain from making it too complicated for me - I am on a tight time schedule due to work (at least 9hrs per day) and thus I want to get something done on the weekends and not spend at least one day assembling 2-3 figures.
Because something most people here forget that metal means in most cases a bigger time investment.

ElectricVoodooMagic said quite some true things there, make them one piece models, and maybe give the hardcore people an alternate version with bits - that way, we should all be pleased.

And after all, as harsh as it sounds - all those models ARE tokens / game counters - sometimes you gotta tell yourself that you actually play with those things - I got back into wargaming roughly 2 years ago… so far I managed 2 testgames in Warhammer, and one round of Confrontation: AoR… the rest of the time I have been assembling, painting, basing and what not… in fact, most of the stuff I bought is now not compatible anymore with the lists I used to play, and I bought at least 3 codex/armybooks that recieved an update… heck, I bought 40K 4th when it came out, and didn’t play a SINGLE game until now… and hey, 5th is up. And I can’t stand playing with unpainted models, or stuff that doesn’t score at least a 6 on CMON (which is about my paint-level). Should I get better at painting there will be even less time for actual playing, as I will spend all my free time getting my minis up to that level… yallayalla… in the end I will just paint, and once done, realize everything has changed, buy new stuff, paint again… ad infinitum.

Also, the highly detailed models are a BIG motivation killer for any newcomers, and that is something we should really start thinking about too - seeing all those perfect models in magazines and whatnot is actually not helping at all, and I know much more people that are quite demotivated to paint. There should be, much like with real model kits of tanks and planes, be some difficulty levels and easier as well as tougher kits. As a time saver for the masters, and as a helpful entrance for new people in the hobby. I mean, everyone that has grown up with Rogue Trader or HeroQuest and stayed in the hobby has learned to paint most likely, they had their “easy” oldschool models, and could evolve with the hobby. But some teenage kid getting into stuff now… oh my, even your standard plastic Space Marine is more detailed than some 2nd Ed Characters.

There are so many factors to this, it’s really hard to stay on topic… sorry :)

I would have said the same thing probably no more than a year ago. The latest plastic releases I’ve seen (e.g. GW chaos stuff) really make me doubt I’d be able to tell the difference 100% of the time. Models as finely detailed as Enigma’s or Rackham’s do stand out, but I would bet most other metal miniatures wouldn’t lose any details if properly made in plastic.