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So what does everyone think about Made to Order?


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I'm interested to hear what everyone's thoughts on the Made to Order initiative are, now that we're getting a solid stream of them on what feels like a monthly basis.

On the one hand I think its great that GW are bringing back their cool old models, however fleetingly. Its given me the chance to get a few bits which I never would have dreamed I'd be able to add to my collection. As a fan of older sculpts its nice to see those in circulation again, and there are a few things I'd definitely like to see them do.

On the other hand... the one week pre-order is massively frustrating. It is absolutely a "Fear of Missing Out" marketing strategy, of the most blatant sort. If you don't happen to be able to get the Made to Order at the exact moment it comes out then you are stuck. I've also found that they increasingly put too much up at a time. There were some, like the big Beasts of Chaos run, and some of the Lord of the Rings ones, where I would have happily ordered everything if it hadn't all been at once, but there was simply no way I could afford to do so.

In some ways the more varied runs have been better. If there are a couple of things from four or five different factions then you can more easily afford the ones you are collecting, whereas if everything is from the same theme, then you can't get them all. On a few occasions I've looked at a made to order selection, and thought "oh good, I already have all those"

So what do we all think? How many people actually go for them? Who would rather they were more spread out, or structured differently? Does the chance to get rare models outweigh the problems of being forced to get them there and then or miss out?

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I wish they announced things further in advance and also ran the order period for a longer time slot. Considering that many times the orders appear and then vanish forever its a last chance and often as not you get very little warning and often very little buying time. Heck the last round for the old high elf stuff GW wasn't even casting any fresh, it was just running them out of stock of what they had so it sold in well under a day. 

 

Now I can accept that when moulds break, but otherwise I really wish GW gave us a fairer and better chance for things. Of course in the long run they are one time affairs though there's a few things that I really wish GW would bring back. Eg their Diaz Deamonettes sell for a fortune on ebay - it would be great if GW stayed abreast of such developments and focused on recasting fresh waves of things that prove really popular. Far better for GW to profit direct than for models to be going in circles and eating up way more of hobbyists budgets. 

 

 

Of course there's always limits on these things and we've no idea how disruptive they might be to GW's general production flow nor now pressure they are (their new factory isn't yet online if I recall right though it should be "soon?" 

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Given that they are winding down resin and metal production for Age of Sigmar and 40K, I'd think that made to order can't be that disruptive. I've speculated that it might actually be conceived as a way to get more use out of metal casting machines which would otherwise go idle, as they probably have gaps between needing to produce new batches of metal Lord of the Rings stuff these days. Its impossible to know for sure, but you don't see the metal stuff go out of stock with nearly the same regularity that the plastic does!

I'd definitely appreciate more advanced notice. If they published a schedule of when different things would go to made for order then it would be possible to save up for particularly interesting runs. As it stands there is too little notice for that to really be feasible, and its easy to miss out, even if you don't miss the announcement outright, which has happened to me more than once, including the time they did do the old Daemonettes. (I think because it was allegedly a 40K run it didn't come to my attention until too late.)

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I missed the Deamonettes too but that was more because I was in a gap with my Slaanesh so wasn't interested back then. But its more when they give you a week to go "OMG I need £100+" for some limited edition castings that you know will only go way up on ebay. That isn't a long time to find that kind of money. 

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For me and my case it is 100% useless.

 

Im a dwarf player,i started to play with aos and i loved dwarfs so i bougth them.

 

Reading old fantasy codex i really liked thorgrim and ungrim and i would love have them,but i cant play them in aos.

 

So even if i would get thogrim made to order because i love him,i wont pay 50€ for a human sized mini that i cant play in aos.

 

Before people say the legend aos mode.........for me all out of matched play is nothing

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Yes i would have done that with ungrim,but dwarfs heros have 25 bases(new starter have the king with 32 when he was suposed tonbe 25) and thogrim had a bigger base,one of those oval of war machines.

So i cant use him as proxy because people gonna argue that the base isnt even close.

 

I was close to buy him when we had our made to order and play him as the dwarf king om throne of the index of dwarfs but finnally 50€ was too expensive for a small dwarf,20-30€ and i would buy him only due to collection

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I have used made to order twice.

The first time for some Vostroyan models and the second time for Throgg.

The main problem I see with made to Order is that you normally will have 1 week to Order the stuff or you will never have the chance again.

After GW already has problems to keep the regular stuff on stock they maybe don't have other choices but maybe it would work better if it would be a permanent thing having models models or books made to order instead of having a single run.

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My understanding is that it used to be the case that you could just back order any of their quite large catalogue, but eventually they had to stop doing that, since it was no longer cost effective to just make one or two of various discontinued figures every so often.

Made to order as it stands now seems to be a compromise solution of sorts, they bring the stuff back, but only a few things at a time.

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Wayback when most of the range was metal they published a catalogue every single year and within that they showed every model alongside every part of that model with the part number. Because it was mostly all metal you could order any bit you wanted off any model. For GW it worked because most metal assembly lines use part pickers to pack the packs so the models are cast and then the parts picked out to make a pack. So it was easy to just pick out bits you did need and any error in volume at the end of a production cycle could just be thrown back into the melting pot and made into fresh models. 

 

 

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I am one of the people who asked them for it.

When I got into AoS, I entered from the World that Was, and wanted Oldhammer. When the survey happened I reminded them how much of their new business comes from Warhammer Total War. Finally, they are acknowledging that and selling models, see Gotrek for the best example yet.

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Made to Order is awesome. I don't care much for most of the models and unfortunately I was low on money when they put Settra and Khalida into the made to order, however it's great for anybody who wants some of the older models and shouldn't bother people who don't. One could argue the made to order stuff costs a bit much, however I'd rather have it cost much than not having a chance of getting those models at all.

In my book there's literally nothing negative about Made to Order.

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I hope Made to Order is how they decide to do any releases honestly. It would cut down on waste and be a smart business choice as well. Stores could stock some items, but the majority you could get MtO and get it shipped for free to your local store. It feels like they have enough stock in the wild at the moment that even any current boxes could be Made to Order.

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