I was wondering, why did FW use resin and not metal? Is it because of price?

Everyone complains that the resin is too brittle (tau, grey knights). Why would they not use metal on the brittle infantry then?

Help me understand guys.

Forgeworld only do resin, for everything. They're GW's resin arm. They have no facilities for metal casting.

The main reason to use resin is that it allows a much higher level of detail than metal. The FW infantry models couldn't have the same high detail if cast in metal.

Also, metal moulds are more expensive than resin moulds, so resin is more apropriate for low-volume, specialist ranges.

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Zombocom's spot on with the detail. Some of the amazingly thin detail on the likes of the Forge World Tau simply would not be castable in metal. Sometimes they push things a bit too far like the structurally laughable Fire Storm, but overall I'm very happy with Forge World and the resin and would prefer to be able to buy much more of it to replace plastic/metal models.

I like the resin, though for gaming with infantry it's fragile and I may resort to picking up the bases with magnetised clear plastic rod sticks, rather than handling them often, in the hope of keeping them more pristine.

There's also the fact that FW was to a large extent set up to do very large models, for which metal would have been too heavy, and plastic would have been much too expensive to produce in the small quantities that such specialist collectors pieces sell.

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"Good ale, the true and proper drink of Englishmen. He is not deserving of the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale, that is good ale."
- George Borrow

Resin is definitely the right medium for what FW does.  

The old leads, before the big pewter switch, actually had excellent detail if you were able to get one that was pretty new & cast well.  Detail for metal minis suffered quite a bit in later models and the initial pewter switch out was a mess, but the models now look better.

At this point, I think FW needs to invest in making better models consistently and improving their resin strength.  Currently, the difference in detail across identical models isn't any better than what GW was doing in pewter back in the 90's.

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WAAARGH!!
The Lost & the Dipped

Yes, the great detail that the resin can produce + the weight for larger models if metal are the best reasons for the resin.  The F/W Epic infantry, and I have all the F/W Epic Tau, G/Kngts etc., are just not gamer friendly ...  I'll take a little more survivability over so much detail that can barely be seen.  Really IMO the original G/W Epic plastic IG, Mk.7 SMs, Squats, the 2nd Ork sprue with Warbosses, Nobs, etc. and the other early sprues thru E40K is really all the detail you need ...  The DRM & E/W Infantry has all the detail you need and they are metal ...  Once again, F/W misses the mark ...

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

I'm with L4 on this. Plastic really is the way to go for infantry. It's far more durable than resin and the level of detail is quite adequate for my needs.

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"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate." N. Peart

Plastic is of course best for infantry, but it costs twenty thousand pounds to make a sprue.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

The 'Necron' sprue gives a good indication of desire for new Epic sprues (stalled at about 960 pre-payments).

So let's assume that FW would sell 2000 sprues if they released a Tau Infantry sprue, which would sell for £3 per sprue (the same price as SG's infantry sprues sell for).

That would give FW £6000, meaning that they would have made a £14,000 loss, and that's before you even account for production costs.

Without extensive promotion, Epic could never sell enough sprues to make back their investment let alone make a profit, and FW have no need to make that kind of risk when they're making so much money from Warhammer 40,000.

Sorry, it's not at all feasible.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

I think you're probably right though I don't think the necron sprue is a good indicator - a very seldom used list, complaints over the actual sprue contents, limited advertising and a confusing process,

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That's why I doubled the buy from 1000 to 2000 units.

You could even go to 6000 sprues sold and you'd still not be in profit. No way can Epic support those kind of sales without significant backing.

GW's/FW's overheads are simply too high to justify making such detailed sprues for such a low price.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Were the proposed necron sprues plastic? If so they must have a cheaper process

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