Talk Fantasy Football

Hi guys,

I just wondered if you had ever considered plastic heads with Bloodbowl helmets on and arms carrying bloodbowl balls or throwing them etc.... just spare bits. I think this would be a great idea and certainly something I would spend money on especially the heads with helmets on.

The reason I thought of this is - I am currently converting a bunch of High Elf miniatures I had lying round into a high elf bloodbowl team and although arms, legs and torsos were fairly easy to come by and covert there is very little in the way of heads helmets especially ones that look very bloodbowlish, there is also not a lot you can do with most arms and hands from GWs WFB range that can be easily converted so they are holding balls.

If these spare bits were available from your store I think you could make a tidy profit and I think they would be a really valuable resource to all BB and EB players that like making heavily converted teams.

Stuff you could sell -

Heads with and without helmets.
Arms/ hands with and without balls
Legs
Arm pads, shoulder pads, knee pads, spikes etc….

Hi!

Have you seen these? Not plastic though....
http://www.impactminiatures.com/index.php?option=sprues

Also FFStore/Neomics do some nice helmeted and non-helmeted heads
http://www.ffstore.it/chaos-heads-341/

Cheers,
Spiky

If you go on the impact! forum there are a lot of these thread around. I think that would be the best place to express these ideas.

this is something i have always wanted to see produced. i know back when impact first started up when Ewan came up with the idea, a conversion bits range was high up on the things to produce, and i know Impact do currently do a range of bit/mutations and Arms. I just think its hard to commission someone to just make a range of heads ects? I know Neomics currently do some FF heads for their chaos team (which are gorgeous BTW)

Spiky wrote:Hi!

Have you seen these? Not plastic though....
http://www.impactminiatures.com/index.php?option=sprues

Also FFStore/Neomics do some nice helmeted and non-helmeted heads
http://www.ffstore.it/chaos-heads-341/

Cheers,
Spiky

Cool thanks I have been looking all day for stuff like that and couldnt find them anywhere. There is some really good stuff there :)That is mostly human and chaos though we do need more stuff that can be used for elf teams generally, there is a big hole in the market for elf stuff at the moment, there are very few good elf teams around of any variety.

robsoma wrote:this is something i have always wanted to see produced. i know back when impact first started up when Ewan came up with the idea, a conversion bits range was high up on the things to produce, and i know Impact do currently do a range of bit/mutations and Arms. I just think its hard to commission someone to just make a range of heads ects? I know Neomics currently do some FF heads for their chaos team (which are gorgeous BTW)

Couldnt they just re-cast the arms legs etc from their existing miniatures?

Hi Garion,

the cost to produce pretty much anything these days is high, and to date some of the slowest selling items in the store have been the conversion bits that everyone kept telling us they wanted up front, but no-one seemed to buy after the fact. For a small company like Impact to invest thousands of dollars in any project (and that is pretty much what a conversion sprue for football would cost) requires us to expect to break even within 18 months. Note, we're not always looking for profits here, sometimes breaking even would be a victory for certain minis! Production in plastic is literally out of the question for a company our size, so it's pewter or nothing I'm afraid.

In all truth, if the various heads and hands we sell don't fit your needs, support Neomics please. The new range of chaosy/human bits is just phenomenal - I can only guess how much it cost to have them sculpted (by Sylvain!) and cast, but my guess is about the price of a second hand family car. The football heads are excellent, and I'm not really sure if you can tell how pointy someone's ears are if they are wearing a helmet anyway!

Lol, that is true thanks for the response anyway guys

It would be amazing if such a plastic sprue set existed, though given the difficulty of producing plastics as noted above, we'd probably have to see it from GW themselves. But, it could be a great way for them to support BB and promote the sale of their other plastic sets which would have to be used as a foundation (the bodies) for the conversion set bits.

Good arms are often hard to come by -- for example the High Elf Warrior boxed set which makes 16 spearmen only has six usable right arms (and two of those don't look great because they are intended to be holding a sword high in the air at an odd wrist angle. All the rest of the right arms are holding spears that in a way that makes them unusable for BB. But at least the left shield arm is perfect and plentiful. Heaven help you if you want to make a Lizardmen team using the Temple Guard box, as you only get two left arms (from drummers) that aren't fused to giant shields.

A plastic 'BB Conversion Sprue' might be feasible if it was around $35 and contained something like various arm and head sets for the humanoid teams (do 'no armor' / 'light armor' / 'heavy armor' arms -- aside from that the arms of elves, humans, zombies, etc. need not differ that much) These teams could benefit most from the plethora of various Fantasy/40k plastic sets available as suitable foundations for the team, namely High/Dark/Wood Elf, Eldar / Dark Eldar, and Bretonnian/Empire/Imperial Guard. Such a set could also potentially appeal to at least half a dozen of the core teams: Human, High/Wood/Dark/Pro Elf, Thralls, Rotters, Zombies, possibly Norse, etc.). Unfortunately, teams like Amazon would be hard to include because there is no great base plastic set to work from (except, maybe the new Dark Eldar Witches). Teams like Dwarf and Lizardmen would not work, because while their existing plastic sets are far from ideal for building teams, their sets also don't have easy head swaps (eg Skinks or the Dwarves with how their beards connect to specific bodies) and making arms specifically for these teams would probably not have enough appeal to devote valuable sprue space in such a set. Additionally, teams like Orcs already have a multitude of good Fantasy/40K plastic options that are perfectly suited for the pitch, so probably not much appeal in making these either. To this, add in a bunch of nasty mutation options to appeal to Skaven, Chaos, Nurgle, Chaos Pact, and Underworld and maybe a chain saw or two for making the various Star Players, and you've got a great.

This gives a simple set with easy appeal to at least a dozen of the teams out there.

If they added some extra goodies into the sprues such as a Ref model, coaches, two BB Babe models, a halfing chef with a big pot, two piles of gem/gold to be bribes, weather effect tokens, a 'football-fan' wizard (I'm thinking hotdog or foam finger option), alternative balls, a three dimensional score board, or whatever else, I could see lots of players buying this set, regardless of the conversion bits contained within. Given how many sprues and bits are packed into a $35 GW box, they could easily fit a bunch of heads, arms, and goodies into such a package.

Whether or not something like this would be profitable for GW is another issue, but at the very least it would draw some attention to BB and would encourage people to purchase other sets from their core lines, so it could generate 'extended' revenue. Plus, when people get a great set like this in their hands and have wonderful extra bits lying around, it can be the kind of thing that motivates (tempts?) them into starting up a second... or third... or tenth team.

Probably a pipe dream, but it seems like a great idea from my naive perspective as a player and customer.

garion wrote:Hi guys,

I just wondered if you had ever considered plastic heads with Bloodbowl helmets on and arms carrying bloodbowl balls or throwing them etc.... just spare bits. I think this would be a great idea and certainly something I would spend money on especially the heads with helmets on.

Ramsay (Norse)'s post was great ... here is something more from information we received in February when we checked into the current pricing for plastic moulds.

How Much Does an Injection Mold Cost?

At least to some degree, that's like asking "How much is a car?". Will your mold be a Pinto or a Porsche?
The determining factors in the cost of your mold are a combination of the part size, complexity, material, and anticipated quantities. For instance, if you wanted 1,000 washers per year, your mold most likely would be a single cavity mold, meaning it makes one washer per machine cycle. In that case we would build a class 103 mold, and it would probably be $1,000-2,000.
On the other hand, if you are going to need 100,000 xbox controllers every month, we would build a 12 cavity class 101 "family" mold which made four Fronts, four Backs, and four Button Trees every cycle, and you'd better have $60-$80,000 or more to spend.
Of course these examples are extreme, but it illustrates the range of costs to anticipate. Your particular part will most likely fall somewhere in between that, and the molds that Rex Plastics builds are typically in the $6,000-$12,000 range.
Material selection is another consideration in determining your mold cost. If your product requires a fiberglass filled material for instance, it will most likely need a mold made from hardened tool steel due to the wear those materials cause.
If you have a target price established for your parts, it will be helpful to let your mold builder know that, because they can design the mold with that in mind, and plan for the right number of cavities to achieve that price. The more cavities (or parts made per cycle), the less expensive the parts will be, also allowing for higher output.
While you don't need to know every detail about the types of molds available, it's always a good idea to come prepared. Supplying the basics to your mold builder will help them build the best tool for your project.

Hey Galak,

Have you considered making bits and pieces through somewhere like shapeways?

I know they can produce things in a variety of materials.

All it takes is for someone to design the shapes and/or sprues, then you can literally print on demand, which should save the huge costs involved with molds, etc.

Disclaimer: I have never used Shapeways to make, buy, or sell anything, but I have certainly browsed there on several occasions, looking at miniatures of characters and starships, and there is some nice stuff out there, to boot!

This has probably been suggested before, but you never know... Is this the way of the future for miniature manufacturers?

Cheers,


Nestyr

Yes we have checked out Shapeways.

You'd be looking at paying $9.00 for a small conversion sprue made by them.

So while the investment is low to have them made ... the cost to the consumer would be too high to be marketable.

Tom

I've done minis with Shapeways, both Blood Bowl-like and not fantasy football themed.

I haven't done realistic minis, but cartoon-like ones, but the problem is the same : as a rule, their normal printing material isn't very good for details

Here you have an example of some of my minis, printed in 3D with Shapeways :


As you can see, the texture is rather granulated, and fine detail is lost.

Right now, I've printed several new minis, with a new "technique" : knowing that printing will eat details, I have exaggerated details in 3D model.
Then those exaggerated details were softened by 3D printing, and the final result is better than before.



If you want to see more examples, tell me, or go to my blog (in Spanish, sorry).

Edit : Here a sample of my fantasy football minis done with Shapeways, the Macute Team, based on Tintin Macutes characters by Cels Piñol
(a Spanish comic book writer).