thrawn:
So it seems to me that’s its now common knowledge that after the destroyer and centaur renderers we aren’t getting anymore models from forgeworld.
so i have a question, how serious are you about having hobgoblin models? someone started this before, but nothing came of it. i’m 100% serious. the forgeworld sculptors are free lance right? so why can’t we just contact one of them, say Edgar Skomorowski or Steve Whitehead, ask them what they’ll charge to sculpt one khan on wolf, one khan on foot, hobgoblin command and maybe 5 different hobgoblins. i have no idea, but what can it be, $1000? once we have the originals it’s not hard to contact one of these knock off chinese companys to cast the models and done. we’ll have amazing/original looking hobgoblins! we obviously won’t sell them to anyone except our selves, to avoid any copyright laws, but besides we’re not resculpting anything GW is producing so we’re not infringing on any copyrights anyways.
so how about it? if we can get, say 20 people to pitch in $50 each, will that be enough to hire a sculptor to make us the models?
if you are interested in this, please PM, i’ll see how many people i can get together and will look into it.
if this is illegal in anyway than obviously delete this now, but to be honest i don’t see how.
Thorgar:
I think eventually they will do Hobgoblins, I thought I heard the Chaos Dwarfs were selling really well and were a good source of income for them. I dont see why they wouldnt flesh out the hobgoblins eventually, maybe in a year or something.
I personally want great hobgoblin models, but I want them to look consistent when placed aside the Warhammer Forge ones.
Thommy H:
Again, is there a good reason you can’t just purchase one of the zillion Goblin models on the market instead? FW aren’t doing this because there’s no money in it. There are already Hobgoblin models: they’re called “Goblins that look about right”.
JonJon:
I agree hobgoblin wolf riders ate just goblins with Hun / Mongol hats,also there is a guy who on this site that has already sculpted a humanoid hob with samurai armor ,so just buy those
Grimstonefire:
A good bet would be Daniel Cockersell. He is sculpting a lot of models for Banebeasts at the moment and still doing freelance stuff for FW.
I think this would be more likely to be a success if it were tied into an existing and well known company.
You could actually contact Banelords/banebeasts directly and suggest something to them. Something like this might require a pledge of orders etc.
Depending on how they looked I might be tempted to get some, even though I’ve already gone down the stormvermin route.
You could contact the sculptors who walked out of WF at the start, they’re commission sculptors who would always accept work for the right price I imagine.
Asking FW sculptors to make something that may one day compete with GW may not work.
Edit. The Mantic orcs would make good hobgoblins as well imo.
zobo1942:
Those Heresy goblins are my favorites… but the ‘Classic D&D’ feel of the Otherworld miniatures is awesome - they look exactly like the illustrations in the 1st Ed. Monster Manual!
Valrim:
I am a huge fan of those Heresy goblins! Anyone have a size comparison between those and GW dwarf sized miniatures?
Also sending stuff to China, while cheap, is not a good idea. Support the companies that are making you the games you enjoy. The only way to prove to the companies that the CD army is something worth investing into is if they continue to make money from it. Otherwise, it will just go out of print.
Baggronor:
An interesting idea. A few words of caution:
- When approaching a sculptor, make sure you have a very clear brief; what do you want them to look like? Mongol, Sneaky Gits, something else? Equipment? How many parts? How many troopers? You’ll probably need at least a rough drawing and plenty of reference material. Approach them with as much info as possible to avoid wasting their time. If there’s one thing that will put off a freelance artist, it’s time-wasters.
- Use a European or US caster. These companies can generally be trusted to use the right metals and won’t screw you over like some knock-off monger in China might. They aren’t even expensive. I use Fire Dragon, the guy who owns it is very approachable and affordable too. As Valrim says, support the industry.
- Postage. How are you going to handle it? One person receives the order from the casters and gets P+P from everyone else and then posts them all out? That is probably the best method but as we found out on CDO before, it’s a lot of stress for that person and organising even a dozen people via the net is pretty frustrating.
- Who owns them? Not so important for the initial order, but what if more people see them on the net later on and want them?
Thorne:
Andy fosters goblins quality wise take a lot of beating. If I were to invest in hobgoblin models his would be the ones I would buy.
thrawn:
i guess your all right, there are soo many goblin models out there, it’s just the FW chaos dwarfs are so good, i want that consistancy throughout my army, but maybe i can make it work. i really hope GW does them.
brotsorrow:
I like the look of the Heresy ones, but I have also gone the route of the stormvermin and goblin heads&arms.
An interesting idea. A few words of caution:
- When approaching a sculptor, make sure you have a very clear brief; what do you want them to look like? Mongol, Sneaky Gits, something else? Equipment? How many parts? How many troopers? You’ll probably need at least a rough drawing and plenty of reference material. Approach them with as much info as possible to avoid wasting their time. If there’s one thing that will put off a freelance artist, it’s time-wasters.
- Use a European or US caster. These companies can generally be trusted to use the right metals and won’t screw you over like some knock-off monger in China might. They aren’t even expensive. I use Fire Dragon, the guy who owns it is very approachable and affordable too. As Valrim says, support the industry.
- Postage. How are you going to handle it? One person receives the order from the casters and gets P+P from everyone else and then posts them all out? That is probably the best method but as we found out on CDO before, it’s a lot of stress for that person and organising even a dozen people via the net is pretty frustrating.
- Who owns them? Not so important for the initial order, but what if more people see them on the net later on and want them?
Baggronor
It sounds like you may have a bit of experience with this?
Baggronor:
It sounds like you may have a bit of experience with this?
:)
I have an awful lot of experience of clients who didn't know what they wanted, didn't seem to have any kind of deadline or idea of scope, no designs, no brief, no budget and so on. Just trying to pre-empt these kind of issues so things would be more likely to go smoothly.
I think it is doable, it just needs someone in the group to get things moving and take the responsibility - which is the problem as it'll be a lot of hassle.
I know one of the guys at FW from when he worked the GT staff at GW; spoke to him at Salute and he said they weren't considering Hobgoblins as they are in the wrong price bracket to be suitable for FW (basically they won't shift enough at £3 each to be worthwhile). Makes sense I guess.
Thommy H:
I think FW doing Hobgoblins would be more viable if they were something properly unique. That’s really what FW are all about - make models that the main GW studio just don’t or won’t. And since there are a billion Goblin models out there already, what’s the point in them even bothering? There’s no market for incredible expensive, slightly taller gobbos.
brotsorrow:
I think FW doing Hobgoblins would be more viable if they were something properly unique. That's really what FW are all about - make models that the main GW studio just don't or won't. And since there are a billion Goblin models out there already, what's the point in them even bothering? There's no market for incredible expensive, slightly taller gobbos.
Thommy H
and how many people will buy a horde unit at 3GBP a pop?
AGPO:
As Bagg has said the main issue here is price. Hobgoblins are a cheap unit, and you’re going to want a lot of them. To make that viable you have to make them much cheaper. Your return on individual models is therefore much lower. From FW’s point of view it costs the same amount to produce ten hobgoblins as it does say ten sternguard. However, far more people will pay a premium for Sternguard as it’s a centrepiece unit.
There is a precedent for FW horde armies however - Imperial Guard. The average guard army is either mech or infantry heavy, and there are a lot of death corps and ellysian armies out there.
khedyarl:
I don’t buy the argument that FW doesn’t think it would be dollar-point cost effective for people - people will buy things they are interested in. If they made hobgoblins, I’d already have sixty of them.
As AGPO said, the Death Korp and Renegades of Vraks are very infantry heavy armies (specially the Renegades), and the Renegades actually require Cadians miniatures for their legs. If they were ever worried at all about points to dollar conversion, they broke that rule a long time ago.
Murdock129:
If their worried about that, then why not conversion kits for Goblins like those Mann’s Blades models?
Also, for Hobgoblins, probably not, there’s plenty out there, for more CD stuff, maybe some kind of ‘not chaos dwarf’ warmachines and such would be nice, I’d happily chip in for say, a Lammasu or something
Admiral:
As already pointed out, mass-infantry Death Korps of Krieg (which can admittedly be used as a mechanised army) became hugely popular. Good enough Hobgoblin models would probably pay for the investment in making them, especially if they were Sneaky Git or Hobgoblin riders, of which you don’t need as many. Now, Sneaky Gits are no longer a unit type of their own, but some people play them as such with non-FW rules and I can see handfuls of CD players mixing in some FW Sneaky Gits in their converted or 5th edition Hobgoblin hordes. I’m sure even a conversion kit consisting only of Hobgoblin heads would work out for FW. After all, why not go the extra length and use proper Hobgobbo heads for your tailed-off Stormvermin bodies instead of Goblin or Gnoblar heads?
Despite the good Stormvermin-into-Hobgoblin conversion formula, there are after all people who would buy enough Forgeworld Hobgoblins to make them financially viable. With FW’s boutique business approach of selling generally small amounts of the finest wares at high costs in mind it seem strange to me that they haven’t released any Hobgoblins.
The answer to the absence of FW Hobgoblins probably lie in their release schedules and priority planning. Warhammer Forge has just started up, and although its first “own” army, the Chaos Dwarfs, sold well it’s time to move on and direct resources at pumping out monsters and kits that will sell well with established armies, such as Dwarfs or Empire. The same is true for the Dawi Zharr section of the Chaos Dwarf army - they’ve released enough for the time being, and as such elite choices and even possible, ordinary CD Warriors will have to wait. Later on we might very well see some FW Hobgoblins, but not now in the rapidly expanding pioneer stage of WHF.
AGPO:
Renegades and Death Korps have a huge advantage over hobgoblins - fan base.
There are vast numbers of Chaos and Imperial Guard players out there, whilst Chaos Dwarf players remain a tiny minority. They have large ranges of official, easily available models they can be used with, whilst the Chaos Dwarf range is only available at great expense from Forge World.
The only way I see Hobgoblins being viable is as an independent Wolf Riders unit which could also be taken in Ogre Kingdoms and O&G armies.
