GW make a truly stunning line of plastic kits. The quality and quantity of the sculpts, from the best artists in the industry is astonishing. The way that popular builds of units has fleshed out across multiple releases makes me think that this is the best time to get into the hobby.
It certainly used to, anyway. But lately I've been looking at these minis and I feel less inspired about them than I should be. I came to realise that by making such choice, it had limited what was being used on the table. Where had all the cool, one off conversions gone?
Many years ago, GW took a studio to court in the USA for IP infringement. Although ultimately the studio was found to be infringing on the names of their products, their minis were not. Bit of an odd outcome, for sure.
Subtly, ever since that court case, GW have only made rules for minis they made or intended to make. Looted wagons disappeared from the Ork codex, only to reappear as fun rules in White Dwarf. By 2017, wargear options for space marine heroes were limited to production minis, the non-production minis became Legends (ie, not matched play legal, the most popular form of play).
With that, the need for converting was gone. White Dwarf and army books used to have regular conversion articles. One of the most famous John Blanche artworks was in the 2nd Chaos Codex, and it was all about converting minis. All gone now.
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