Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A Bitz Problem

Soooo... As many of you know I was looking at my Deathwing army yesterday and for obvious reasons I wanted to add more Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields to my terminator units. Easy right? Go to the GW website, find the bitz I wanted and order a pack of two. My Deathwing army is generally made up of old metal and plastic termies with lots of added bitz so the smaller old termie close combat weapons still work. I found the lightning claw packs with little difficulty and was about to order the thunder hammer packs next to them when I realised that they were power armour arms…. HUH?

I had ordered Thunder Hammer arms a few years back and got the old termie arms with no troubles. It appears that in the meantime GW replaced that bit pack with one containing the newer Iron Hand Thunder Hammer from the Iron Hand squad pack. It looks like this:


I understand why GW has dropped the bitz service back like it did (to save money in a crisis) but as a customer I can’t help but be annoyed. For years I had access to every bit that GW makes and in some cases made as part of their HUGE back catalogue. It is an irritating perceived loss of service that they used to provide such a cool resource only to take it away later. Dwelling on this I busted out my 2004 GW Bitz Catalogue and Hobby Resource Guide. It is amazing how many bitz became out of print and unavailable in one fell swoop. It brings back bad memories of when they discontinued the bitz service. I had been saving for a Gaunt’s Ghosts Tanith guard army. They had the models and when I went to order them I discovered that bitz had been discontinued and that only the Gaunt’s Command Box was available. I should have bought them earlier.

Now there is talk that GW might discontinue they metal models (or suspend production for a short time). I really hope that these rumors are baseless as that would just be a tragically stupid business choice that might drive customers elsewhere for good.

B

P.S. If anyone at GW production reads this… All I really want for Christmas is the Gaunts Troopers blister back in production for a short run. I WILL BUY THEM!!! I PROMISE!!! ☺

4 comments:

  1. I noticed last night on the GW site that the old Bretonnian character Guis le Gross is available, however Bertrand the Brigand and Hugo le Petit (who came in the same blister pack) no longer exist! Who decides these things?

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  2. well, guis le gross is back in stock because he was inducted into the hall of fame a while back, so all those mini's are becoming available, but yeh SO many awesome metal bits you cant get anymore, for instance i just dug out the necromunda weapon sprus, with autoguns lasguns shotguns and revolvers ect, so awesome.. i want so many of them to convert up vetran guardsmen.. but sadly theyre such a rare resource im not willing to actually use the ones i have

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  3. LOL... I know what you mean man. After a while though.... if you don't use them... Who will?

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  4. Exactly. I try not to think about the collectors crying into their beers when I sit there chopping up practically extinct models...

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