Matt Wilson discusses plastic figures (
http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2008/11/20/20025)
Well, this cat got let out of the bag a little early. Our intent was to be able to show you just how great the models were going to be before pulling back the curtain and revealing that they were plastic.
Really, if you’ve been keeping up on our news, interviews, etc. this shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’ve said myself on several occasions that we were exploring alternative materials, including (and of course) plastic, in an effort to control production costs and keep the prices of our products accessible to you, the players. Over the past 12 months as metal reached an all time high, we put a lot of effort into researching plastic manufacturing so that we could figure out how to do it right. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the economic conditions are anything but stable right now, so anything we can do to help stabilize our manufacturing costs and control pricing is going to be a good thing for the future.
The simple math here is that on these big, chunky figures that require a lot of material, the prices are getting too high. So that means, either we stop making the cool big stuff or we find an alternative material. Metal is a huge factor in our costs. (Sorry, Musketeer, you’re just wrong. You might make metal pieces somewhere, but I guarantee you don’t own the company and you don’t buy the metal or work out the economics of this stuff, or you wouldn’t make such an uninformed comment.) The fact of the matter is, integrating plastic into our line has no other purpose than to control the prices of the products we deliver to the consumer. Manufacturing plastic requires significantly higher startup costs, on the factor of roughly ten times: the steel molds used for plastic can range from $4,000 to $12,000, depending on the number of pieces in a kit. Compare this to mold costs of a few hundred dollars when making metal, and at first, it doesn’t even seem like there could be a benefit at all. But once you’ve got the molds or ‘tooling’ out of the way, your actual production costs are much lower by comparison. AND, they’re much more stable. Although plastic has actually gone up in price over the past 12-18 months, it hasn’t seen the sharp increases we’ve endured with metal, so there’s a very desirable degree of stability to be gained there.
Does this mean that prices are going to be cheaper on plastics? Possibly. We’re looking at things like this Bastion unit, Man-Wars, warjacks and cavalry thinking, man, these prices are getting high. And you’re thinking that as well. Ultimately, what we’d like to achieve artistically is going to be compromised by the raw materials costs, and no amount of ‘coring out’ the miniatures is going to save enough metal to make a difference. Our hope in all of this is to be to develop the plastic kits in our line in such a way that we do make these bigger pieces or units with lots of duplicate pieces, in a more economical way that will present an overall savings to you. They’re not going to be super cheap, but we’re going to be able to restrict price creep and larger pieces for less than we would in metal. Just remember when you’re thinking about the prices here, that those mold costs still have to be spread out over what is being made. And, the higher the quality of the miniatures, the higher the cost of the molds, which brings me to…
Quality. Please, don’t insult us. We don’t make products and that’s a truth that we’ve proven over the past six years (almost 8 if you’re counting our RPG products, too). If you’re on these forums, then it’s because you like our products and you know we make some of the best damn miniatures and games that money can buy. Do you really think that same crew who has established this track record is going to throw it all away that easily? (If you’re nodding your head yes to that question, have somebody check your pulse because you might be on the verge of brain damage.) Like all of our products, we’re going to pour every ounce of care into the plastic products as we do anything else. And hell, we just proved with Monsterpocalypse that we can do plastic as well or better than anyone else, so I’m not going to say this lightly: STFU and wait until you see what we do before you decide that we’re going down in flames because we’re trying to make a product that you can afford. For those 1% of you that have more money than you need in these economic times, there’s not much I can say to you if you’re a die hard, ‘metal or nothing’ kind of person. But for the other 99% of us that are watching our wallets and having to make decisions about how much of our income can be budgeted for entertainment, I think you’ll see the logic in this.
A good portion of our lines will continue to be made in metal. Many things just don’t make sense to manufacture in plastic because the economy of scale isn’t there. The beautiful, complex character models, for one, are likely to remain in metal because that’s just the most economical way to make them. But we’re doing some things with the way we design these future releases right now that are really going to be amazing: for instance, being able to offer a warjack with multiple variations within one box. And, if you look around, there’s a lot of high quality plastic stuff being made these days. It’s easier to model with, easier to repair. The only difference you’re going to notice once it’s painted is that it’s lighter— and we’ve already got a solution for that in the form of metal bases, if you really need to add some heft to your figures.
So, that’s the skinny. A little sooner than we wanted to have to do this, and I’d had preferred not to have to go on the defensive with this one because I really believe in what we’re doing and that we’re going to be making some great products. You guys should know by now that I won’t attach my name to something that sucks, and we won’t sully the Privateer crest on a product that doesn’t support our values 100%.
There’s not much else for us to say about this. So, sit back, enjoy your games, and and remember who you’re dealing with as you wait to see what we do. Like you, we’ve got an investment to protect and we don’t take it lightly.
