Plastic Sisters pre-order fiasco

What an absolute shambles this thing has been…

I’m not a Sisters of Battle player, because I dislike old metal miniatures, but I’d been waiting for this release with something approaching baited breath. Back when the rumours were strong, towards the end of 2016, I really got into the idea of maybe collecting a small force for aesthetics. I mean, the idea of a new army is always appealing, and one of the things I love so much about 40k is the gothic/Catholic vibe, and here is an army that has it in spades. So I was looking forward to getting a box of Battle Sisters, maybe a Canoness, and seeing how it went. I have some vague ideas for allying with Grey Knights, or maybe Dark Angels – both of which have a similar pseudo-religious vibe going, after all!

Trouble is, they went and announced that all the minis we’d been seeing so far were coming out in one big box, which would have the limited-edition Codex, and the Canoness wouldn’t be later available separately – in fact, none of these models would later be available separately, because the whole box is a once-and-done thing. I mean, what?!

I find it mind-boggling, I really do. They’ve been banging on about plastic Sisters for ages now, and as we got closer and closer to November, the hype was real. But this is just a slap in the face, surely? Yes, the new multipart plastic kits will be out in the new year, which is lovely, but when the fancy launch box is released and there aren’t enough of them to meet the demand brought about by the hype you generated, things are just weird. It’s really like a return to the Tom Kirby years, where we saw the End Times hardcovers sell out in minutes. I thought we were in more sensible times now?

I said at the start that I was only looking to start small with Sisters but, after 47 minutes of trying to preorder through the website crashes, I managed to get one from Alchemists Workshop. That said, I’m feeling a bit of a fraud now, because of the amount of genuine Sisters players, who’ve been waiting for this day for literally decades, who haven’t been able to get themselves a copy. Yes, the kits will be out in the new year, and they won’t be these monopose things, but it just sucks that a day which, for them, should have been one of celebration, turned into a kick in the balls.

“That’s capitalism” is the response that greets reports of the ebay scalpers putting up their preorders for double the price (or more). But isn’t supply-and-demand a basic tenet of business? Creating this much artificial scarcity this often is just going to lead to more ill-will directed at the company, and that isn’t something I really want to see. I get that they wanted to hype the release, but the execution has been such a fail, it’s leaving a real sour taste in the mouth, and it’s making me want to hide the fact that I managed to get a copy and can start working on these girls…