Games Workshop: phasing out metal minis?

I cannot imagine that this blog will provide a source of late-breaking hobby news for anyone, but I learnd something interesting yesterday when I went to pick up my order at All Fun and Games. Apparently Games Workshop (the 800-pound gorilla in the minis wargaming room, for those of you who don't know) are moving away from at least part of their metal minis production. The stuff in the distribution chain right now is what's left, basically, and at some point in May they're apparently going to announce what exactly their plans are for replacing them.

Obviously GW has been moving to more and more plastic kits instead of the old metal minis, and I mostly have been happy with this. However, they still tend to cast 'leader'-type minis, as well as other, more specialized units, in metal. Current rumormongering is that they'll move these kinds of lower-production run single/small group minis to some kind of resin or new-ish plastic that can be spin-cast in the same old molds used for the current metal versions. However, in the meantime, once they're out of something (say, Dark Eldar Archons, which only came out a few months ago anyway) they're not casting any more.

In the meantime? Like I said, they're not casting any more of stuff as it sells out, and several part codes have apparently been pulled from their distributor/store catalogs. What this means for Your Humble Narrator is hard to see at the moment, since I'm waiting on AF&G to call me on Monday and let me know if they've managed to scrounge up a (currently metal) Dark Eldar Succubus model for me or not. The Warhammer Fantasy Slaaneshi metal champion I ordered DID come in which raises some interesting questions. It's an older model from their collector range, and I wonder if those things will continue to be cast in metal in small runs, or if they're also going to get the plastic/resin treatment. I also wonder what this will mean for GW's 'Specialist' ranges, like Battlefleet Gothic or Blood Bowl, both of which are nearly entirely metal model ranges. Will the Summer of Slaanesh become the Summer of Proxied Slaanesh character minis? Stay tuned...