Reminds me of the comment by Burt Rutan on the video I watched of him at the AMA convention this year...."I didn't see any balsa for sale at the convention...how the hell do you expect to learn anything and actually model without it?".

I'm sure soon someone will come in and say you can scratchbuild. But there's something really relaxing about kit building and something you can knock out quickly while stuck in think mode on a scratch build.