Whats up with GW's prices??

[RuneBrush]

I think trying to compare different manufacturers models is a bit like trying to compare meals prepared by your other half and your mum.  You can't really say one is worse than the other without upsetting somebody when in truth some meals are better done by one than the other  

I do believe that GW are the market leaders in plastic miniatures at the moment, but they do have some companies snapping at their heels in terms of models they're bringing out.  GW have invested millions in plastic production over a number of years and continue to do so.

2 minutes ago, stratigo said:

5 minutes ago, stratigo said:

  On 07/12/2017 at 11:07 AM, RuneBrush said:

Actually the biggest reason is because we all pay it...  GW offers a premium product at a premium price and although as things go, ours is cheap hobby, GW wouldn't be able to continue charging high prices if we didn't all buy the stuff

That does sound little brainwashed there.

Totally agree with you!  My underlying point though is that there is a supply and demand aspect related to this, GW knows that the prices they set people will pay, so where's the incentive to change this?

[stratigo]

38 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

I think trying to compare different manufacturers models is a bit like trying to compare meals prepared by your other half and your mum.  You can't really say one is worse than the other without upsetting somebody when in truth some meals are better done by one than the other  

I do believe that GW are the market leaders in plastic miniatures at the moment, but they do have some companies snapping at their heels in terms of models they're bringing out.  GW have invested millions in plastic production over a number of years and continue to do so.

Totally agree with you!  My underlying point though is that there is a supply and demand aspect related to this, GW knows that the prices they set people will pay, so where's the incentive to change this?

because people don't.

 

They are now, sure. But for a long time, GW's stock was circling the drain and they were rapidly losing their spot as the top wargaming company. They were never the top miniature company (GW still can't match the stuff the Japanese do), and when they pretended they were a hobby company for hobbyists only and rich idle people would just buy anything they put out for the joy of painting, their stocks tanked.

 

But their prices from those days haven't changed. For the units that exists back then, prices have remained static or even risen. And I am betting they aren't selling that hot right now. But boy do start collectings fly off the shelf.

 

Pricing something at 10000000000 dollars that no one buys makes you 0 profit. Pricing something at 10 that 10000000 people buy makes you a lot of profit.

[Twitch of Izalith]

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

Yeeeah. That's not how value works. Blithely accepting everything is worth a whole lot of money is dumb. It does not benefit you or me or any other consumer to just shrug and accept over inflated prices because "Well you can get some value maybe under these vary narrow circumstances". That just means you get bilked for more money because you accept that it's okay for a company to charge vastly more than the cost of making a product. I wish more consumers were better informed.

Actually that's exactly how value works. Cost and value are completely different things. If you are making a product you need to consider the cost of making it (including overheads) but ultimately the price of that product is determined by how much customers will be willing to pay for it. The gap between the the cost price and the value determines how successful your product is in terms of profitability.

Take gold or almost any "precious" metal for example. It only has value because people agree it has value. its actually just a piece of metal and is relatively worthless from a practical point of view. 

Of course the marketplace is not quite as simple as that and competition also affects pricing. The only thing that can actually send GW pricing into a downward trend is genuine competition. For that the market needs a comparable product and at the moment we don't really have one. FFG are sort of acompetitor with X-wing but all GW had to do to slap that down was increase costs (stuff like the community team and the starter boxes) They have not really had to lower prices. Make no mistake that the Community team are there to sell you stuff or "add value" to the product. I would bet a month's salary that their boss is in the company's Marketing division.

Privateer Press and Wyrd are not really comparable to GW. You can compare the product quality of course but the prices are probably governed more by GW prices (ie the marketplace) than those companies manufacturing costs & overheads. To get GW's prices to move downwards you need a company that can exert as much influence on them as they exert on everybody else. PP can only really charge that much for their stuff because GW has set a high market value for that product category. These companies only really exist because GW proved you can make money out of wargames mini's (who knew!).

If you look at really small model companies like Mierce Miniatures or Raging Heroes (both make incredible mini's if you are not familiar with them) Their pricing is governed much more by the costs to make the product - they have to charge that much.

GW most certainly do not have to charge as much as they do for their products but it would be ridiculous to expect them to charge any less while while people are buying many kits faster than they can make them (40k kits anyway).

[Killax]

3 hours ago, stratigo said:

The deals exist because the current leadership of GW is aware that prices are dumb, but is still bound to never ever lower them. GW's pricing isn't... bad. It's bizarre if you think about it in a purely logical profit making way. They'd sell more if they lowered prices to a reasonable level across the board. BUT, they can't. Once a product is priced, it will remain that price whether it is selling like hotcakes or not selling at all, because they are bound to not change it.

 

I mean, vulkite berzerkers are my favorite example of this. The start collecting is great value. The berzerker box is awful. The start collecting box is great because the vulkite box is awful, but GW can never correct that particular awful.

That does sound little brainwashed there.

That could be very well the case, though it's obviously an assumption. With the examples at hand, I do not think the difference in quality is an assumption. It's objectively a good product what you recieve from Games Workshop. At this moment still the most modeller friendly on the market.

I believe there is a very simple reason why the "army deals" have better prices as the seperate boxes though and that comes in the form of 'rewarding' the army player ever so slightly more as the 'pure hobbyist'. GW is fully aware that those who buy army deals will buy more. Hobbyists on the other hand quite often settle for just a box or single model to paint because they have less interest in the game. Initially GW wanted to produce for the hobbyist and I think we can confirm that they too understand this was a mistake and as such have corrected themselves in 2015 and onward.

While it can be viewed as silly to alter your product prices I have to say that there is no compagny I know of who does such a thing. Not PP, not Wyrd... If prices for the same product are changed they are going up in price... This is common even for non-miniature model related products.

As a player of many games, collector of many miniature brands and aware of the differences in quality I can safely say I'm not brainwashed by GW whatsoever. Their current price policy simply said is much more interesting as it used to be in the 2000-2010 era. It was also in this era that other compagnies like PP and Wyrd gained a lot of ground in terms of players looking to their games and miniature products to get hooked. But make no mistake, Malifaux is clearly inspired by GW's older Mordheim and I don't even believe the designers of Malifaux make any secret of that. 

Quality is in the eye of the beholder but if we are looking at details, costs and ease to hobby I think there is no real competition for Games Workshop right now. The only way that the competition can gain ground (again) is if they create games who have a certain depth or balance that Games Workshop (used to) refuse to incorporate in their design. But the fact of the matter is that AoS and 40K gained a massive following because GH2016 and 8th edition 40K are really good games who do not lack the depth found elsewhere.
When GW will return with Mordheim and other skirmish games like Necromunda the only logical effect is that more gamers will turn towards Games Workshop again because of their price/quality.

In recent examples, we can also compair Necromunda gangs to skirmish alternatives. For $40 you get 10 gang members with 'scenic bases' and all the bits a player would ever require for that unit/Warband. Wyrd now asks $50 for their newest unit/Warbands and Privateer Press asks $60 for their newest units/Warbands. Which leads to the fact that Games Workshop most certainly isn't asking the highest price. By new product comparison it's even the lowest out of it's arguable competitors.
 

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I think trying to compare different manufacturers models is a bit like trying to compare meals prepared by your other half and your mum.  You can't really say one is worse than the other without upsetting somebody when in truth some meals are better done by one than the other  

I do believe that GW are the market leaders in plastic miniatures at the moment, but they do have some companies snapping at their heels in terms of models they're bringing out.  GW have invested millions in plastic production over a number of years and continue to do so.

Based on additional tools and costs required to get the model into the shape you want to you can actually put an objective view on quality. As before PP is not know for their great quality products. I will exclude you all the details of it but they have several models returned to them because of poor quality. Then there is also a reason why several of their restic lines do not come with sprue. They do not come with sprue because they re-use the plastic to create the same kind of models with the inferior kind of quality (at least inferior compaired to GW).

They certainly have compagnies snapping on their heels but as above I do not believe it's in terms of models. What I do believe is that it's in terms of game systems. GW has had a decade of where they simply said did not create interesting games for the "hardcore miniatures gamer". However the moment others slip up (and PP has with their Mk3) it's clear how easy a fanbase can shift to another game.

Comming back to prices, while many agree GW is expensive in reality I have yet to see a cheaper alternative producing the same quality. I've seen many great resin sculpts and own quite a few too but the costs involved for those models is always higher as GW's. Wyrd is the closest in terms of model quality to GW and the costs are also higher for those models.

 

[Kugane]

Games Workshop does offer great support when a product is broken though. With pricing like this it is easy for them to replace broken products, since it costs them little in comparison to the price per sold unit, so that's a plus. I think overal Games Workshop is a niche market in the sense that you cannot just profit off mass sales. The gaming community for wargaming is probably a lot smaller (and declining) than, lets say, Magic the Gathering (which has also lost 40% of its playerbase in the last 3 years alone). So the ammount of people they can cater to is decreasing and as a result, I assume the prices are rising (to keep meeting quotas for stockholders).

I think it would do GW good to release more things such as Shadespire, where a little investment gets you a solid game. It'll be easier for people to make the step to collecting and painting an army.

The only thing I am quite unsatisfied about is the quality of things such as brushes, sprue cutters, etc.

I have been using an Army Painter sprue cutter for years, cutting anything from plastics to metals with it. I've gotten a sprue cutter from games workshop about a year ago, and recently that cutter just bent  on me when trying to cut a bit of metal off a mini. This kind of points to cheap building materials. Same with their brushes. On average, I can paint about 10 miniatures before their brushes start showing wear, at a price of nearly 10 euro per brush.

For 10 euro you can buy a decent synthetic brush set at art stores (which last me about 50 to 100 miniatures per brush).

While their miniatures are great (not you Finecast, go away), I think you don't just pay for what's in the box, but also for the ruleset/useability tied to a miniature. Battleline miniatures that you need many of tend to be cheaper than for example hero units. The simple reason being that they will only sell you hero, but probably 2 to 8 battleline boxes.

All in all, it is an expensive hobby :/.

 

[Ollie Grimwood]

GW products like all other hobby items are luxuries so whatever the price their value to you is going to be based on the enjoyment to derive from them.   I’d expect all hobbies to be expensive as they are money none of us needs to spend but rather we spend it because we like the activity.  I’d say the ratio of time involved to money spent compares pretty favourably with lots of other hobbies. 

[Twitch of Izalith]

3 hours ago, stratigo said:

They were never the top miniature company (GW still can't match the stuff the Japanese do)

Can you post links to the stuff the Japanese do? Not because I want to argue with you but because i haven't seen Japanese companies making wargames mini's and i'm interested!

[Kugane]

19 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

GW products like all other hobby items are luxuries so whatever the price their value to you is going to be based on the enjoyment to derive from them.   I’d expect all hobbies to be expensive as they are money none of us needs to spend but rather we spend it because we like the activity.  I’d say the ratio of time involved to money spent compares pretty favourably with lots of other hobbies. 

I think a lot of people don't consider this. In GW its still more clear, since you can buy an army and play with it. I see the arguement a lot with games like MTG or Yu-Gi-Oh!, where some of the competitive cards can cost 50 to 100 euro each. People will complain it is "just a piece of plastic" or "just a piece of cardboard", but I personally look at these things as a money/hour investment. Same thing with videogames.

If you go see a movie at the cinema, on average over here, it'll cost 15 euro for 1.5 hour of entertainment. So in my opinion, buying a Start Collecting box with at least 30 hours of entertainment building and painting, is a much better money/hour of entertainment rate, plus at the end you still have something to show for it.

[Kugane]

3 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

Can you post links to the stuff the Japanese do? Not because I want to argue with you but because i haven't seen Japanese companies making wargames mini's and i'm interested!

Probably referring to stuff like those Gundam miniatures/action figures. There are huge collectors for those kind of things. At least, that's what I would assume.

[Killax]

38 minutes ago, Kugane said:

Games Workshop does offer great support when a product is broken though. With pricing like this it is easy for them to replace broken products, since it costs them little in comparison to the price per sold unit, so that's a plus. I think overal Games Workshop is a niche market in the sense that you cannot just profit off mass sales. The gaming community for wargaming is probably a lot smaller (and declining) than, lets say, Magic the Gathering (which has also lost 40% of its playerbase in the last 3 years alone). So the ammount of people they can cater to is decreasing and as a result, I assume the prices are rising (to keep meeting quotas for stockholders).

I think it would do GW good to release more things such as Shadespire, where a little investment gets you a solid game. It'll be easier for people to make the step to collecting and painting an army.

The only thing I am quite unsatisfied about is the quality of things such as brushes, sprue cutters, etc.

I couldn't agree more. I believe that a lot of GW's future plans and additional succes will come back forth out of their resurgeance of the Specialist Games agian. Luckily for us they have confirmed they will indeed go that route. Bloodbowl, Shadespire, Necromunda and Warhammer Quest are not alone, many of the old favourites are confirmed to make a return eventually. 

The advantage for GW is also two fold with going into a boardgame market also, as it means they will cater to a much larger audience. An audience that isn't solely made up of either hobbyist or army gamers and very little in between. As that space in between is exactly what Specialist Games used to be and keep the audience focused on Games Workshop. While it's obvious that an Age of Sigmar forum wants to focus on AoS I think it's a great idea for GW to continue to blend their games. With this I mean that we can and will use our Warhammer Quest and Shadepire models in Age of Sigmar's army game aswell. Which is also why I think Age of Sigmar should be on the agenda again with a potential new edition the moment the vast mayority of 40K Codexes are available. This way the pendulum swings both ways as even fans of sci-fi might become fans of the epic fantasy setting AoS has, 7th edition 40K was absolutely proof that the community will look for different games if the game system is outdated or doesn't work as fans love it to (which is still ideally a narratively correct designed system).

In terms of Citadel products I agree that I'm not a huge fan of them either but there is one saving grace here too. Duncan's videos and the Citadel paint app are amazing tools to get to a good quality of painting and basically removes all the errors a beginner could have made without. This type of digital info is also still lacking at the 'competition'. Knowing how to use my paints or which colours they produce on a certain background is worth some additional cash for me.
The app in particular has lead me to buying more and more Citadel paints. 

[Kugane]

1 minute ago, Killax said:

I couldn't agree more. I believe that a lot of GW's future plans and additional succes will come back forth out of their resurgeance of the Specialist Games agian. Luckily for us they have confirmed they will indeed go that route. Bloodbowl, Shadespire, Necromunda and Warhammer Quest are not alone, many of the old favourites are confirmed to make a return eventually. 

The advantage for GW is also two fold with going into a boardgame market also, as it means they will cater to a much larger audience. An audience that isn't solely made up of either hobbyist or army gamers and very little in between. As that space in between is exactly what Specialist Games used to be and keep the audience focused on Games Workshop. While it's obvious that an Age of Sigmar forum wants to focus on AoS I think it's a great idea for GW to continue to blend their games. With this I mean that we can and will use our Warhammer Quest and Shadepire models in Age of Sigmar's army game aswell. Which is also why I think Age of Sigmar should be on the agenda again with a potential new edition the moment the vast mayority of 40K Codexes are available. This way the pendulum swings both ways as even fans of sci-fi might become fans of the epic fantasy setting AoS has, 7th edition 40K was absolutely proof that the community will look for different games if the game system is outdated or doesn't work as fans love it to (which is still ideally a narratively correct designed system).

In terms of Citadel products I agree that I'm not a huge fan of them either but there is one saving grace here too. Duncan's videos and the Citadel paint app are amazing tools to get to a good quality of painting and basically removes all the errors a beginner could have made without. This type of digital info is also still lacking at the 'competition'. Knowing how to use my paints or which colours they produce on a certain background is worth some additional cash for me.
The app in particular has lead me to buying more and more Citadel paints. 

I think games like shadespire are much more balanced than the state AOS is in right now. So I hope that kind of balance leaks into other games as well!: )

[Killax]

7 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

Can you post links to the stuff the Japanese do? Not because I want to argue with you but because i haven't seen Japanese companies making wargames mini's and i'm interested!

 

2 minutes ago, Kugane said:

Probably referring to stuff like those Gundam miniatures/action figures. There are huge collectors for those kind of things. At least, that's what I would assume.

*Folded plastic over a thousand times ready to cut through steel at the blink of an eye!*

Jokes aside, I'm interested in more examples too. Though 'the stuff the Japanese do' is produced in China and yes that quality can match GW's quality too. However Gundams and the like are on a totally different scale so to me that compairability is a bit off.

There are great statues produced too by several sculptors but can we really compair that to miniature games? I don't think so. 

[Uveron]

2 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

Can you post links to the stuff the Japanese do? Not because I want to argue with you but because i haven't seen Japanese companies making wargames mini's and i'm interested!

He is referring to the 'robotec/Gundam style toys' and he is correct. There are company's (and not just in Japan) who's scale model kits are more advanced than GW. But again the prices are higher and its again another thing thats hard to compare. 

3 hours ago, stratigo said:

But for a long time, GW's stock was circling the drain and they were rapidly losing their spot as the top wargaming company.

No, the Stock was a steady dividend earner, a number of good investment groups carried the stock and the yearly dividend was strong. In the last 2 years we have seen a change in the company as it has expanded, but no one pre-2014 was saying the stocks were in a bad place. (So people who didn't understand how corporations work focused on the fact they were reporting a loss. But they posted Dividends which is the key in any Stockholder relationship). 

3 hours ago, stratigo said:

Pricing something at 10000000000 dollars that no one buys makes you 0 profit. Pricing something at 10 that 10000000 people buy makes you a lot of profit.

No thats not how it works. Go back to the start of the thread and re-read some of the great posts on how the costs are divided between products. Or just walk away from the key bord because I know you accused someone of being brainwashed, Iam getting tired of the hate you are bringing to this  forum. You have made your point, not everyone agrees with you. Understand that and end it. (You cannot win the internet)  

[Twitch of Izalith]

1 minute ago, Killax said:

However Gundams and the like are on a totally different scale so to me that compairability is a bit off.

Probably explains why its not on my radar. 

[Killax]

12 minutes ago, Kugane said:

I think games like shadespire are much more balanced than the state AOS is in right now. So I hope that kind of balance leaks into other games as well!: )

It likely is, though keep in mind that the unfortunate thing of games like AoS and 40K is that they really cant produce "sets of rules that are finished within the context of others".
What I mean by this is that the glaring and continuous issue AoS, 40K, WarmaHordes etc. works with is that the design for all armies is never finished and thus is continued upon constantly. What this unfortunatly leads to is that you can't recreate the balance we see with cardgames or in fact Shadespire as easily as designing in that vacume is much easier to do. Because in order to do that you need to have a clear plan of what's to come.

The same issues appear for MtG aswell, which is why the designers have opted for a banlist instead. What you see there is that sets in themselves are often balanced really well but not the moment you can mix them with other sets as is seen with Modern and Legacy. The only solution to that is to ban cards. GW could ban units but most of the playerbase will not like that either. Instead they alter them after a couple of years (FAQ). Now if they would follow that up with the app things would be amazing. They sometimes do this and sometimes don't unfortunatly  

Another thing I think is very important to mention is that it's actually good for the livespan of a game to update it's editions. It allows for a continuous stream of players to enter the game and not drown in a sea of veterans. The latter as far as I know was the motivation for PP to step away from Mk2 into Mk3. The issue is that if you do that and arn't completely aware of the problems that preceded the edition before that the game doesn't really improve. 

To give an example of a game that didn't improve in the lifespan of 10 years we could look at Warhammer Fantasy Battles. 6th to 8th edition is extremely similar in design and displayed a continues set of issues that no designer seemed to want to remove from the game. While I enjoyed playing 6th I really didn't enjoy that the game basically didn't improve, it just awnsered one problem and presented another. I believe this was a cornerstone to it's downfall. 7th and 8th edition could also have been called edition 6.1 and 6.2.

[AGPO]

4 hours ago, stratigo said:

Yeeeah. That's not how value works. Blithely accepting everything is worth a whole lot of money is dumb. It does not benefit you or me or any other consumer to just shrug and accept over inflated prices because "Well you can get some value maybe under these vary narrow circumstances". That just means you get bilked for more money because you accept that it's okay for a company to charge vastly more than the cost of making a product. I wish more consumers were better informed.

Well thanks for calling me dumb, those are some people skills you've got there.

Value is relative. In economics it's defined as the utility of a good or service as well as the power of that good or service to command other goods, services or money in exchange. That utility is determined by circumstance. If I have the opportunity to play more I gain greater utility from my GW products. That greater utility makes them able to command a higher price in exchange. In the same vein, since the opportunity cost for a lot of purchases has a more fixed value - going to the cinema or a rugby match is only ever going to get me a couple of hours entertainment for example - the more time I get out of my minis the more that opportunity cost equation works out in their favour. I'm more likely to choose to buy their products because of this, ergo they can command more money in exchange, which brings us back to that definition of value. Last but not least, relative spending power also impacts opportunity cost. If I'm being paid 10€ an hour, then the value of a start collecting box is six and a half hours of my time. If I'm earning 100€ an hour it's only costing me 40 minutes. 

[Twitch of Izalith]

14 minutes ago, Kugane said:

I think games like shadespire are much more balanced than the state AOS is in right now. So I hope that kind of balance leaks into other games as well!: )

I get kinda nervous about the word balance. I don't think its actually all that beneficial to games like AoS and 40k. If you look over at what the 9th Age guys have done with the 8th edition WFB rules - they have balanced everything to the point that every army is mediocre. instead of some stuff being good and some being bad everything is boring!! I mean i have a lot of respect for the quality of the work those guys have put into it and its presumably the game that community wants but I don't actually want to play it!!!

I think a degree of imbalance is actually important in motivating people and giving the lists  some character. 

What i'm hoping is that the increased community play testing, attention to feedback and GW presence at tournaments will just weed out the really broken stuff and take that balancing only as far as the minimum it needs to go.

There are really balanced rulesets out there. based on historical rulesets (see Osprey's Dragon Rampant for an example) but not very many people are playing them!

 

[Kugane]

1 hour ago, Killax said:

 

*Folded plastic over a thousand times ready to cut through steel at the blink of an eye!*

Jokes aside, I'm interested in more examples too. Though 'the stuff the Japanese do' is produced in China and yes that quality can match GW's quality too. However Gundams and the like are on a totally different scale so to me that compairability is a bit off.

There are great statues produced too by several sculptors but can we really compair that to miniature games? I don't think so. 

Lol, if the folded plastic goes as far as the "thousand fold" Katanas go in Japan, its probably a casted silicon alloy from China ;).  Look at the whole 9260 Spring steel  'real' katanas, none of the budget ones are produced in Japan anymore, its all casted. A Japan produce would costs like 10k for a cheap one. A lot of stuff is simply cheaper and often times almost as good when produced in China, miniatures included. I worry about chemical contamination in these products though, far too often you see chinese produce being recalled because of safety hazards. I don't know about safety procedures in GW, but I would assume their product is less of a hazard than most other brands.

[Kugane]

5 hours ago, stratigo said:

Pricing something at 10000000000 dollars that no one buys makes you 0 profit. Pricing something at 10 that 10000000 people buy makes you a lot of profit.

That depends actually, by pricing something at a super high price, you create artificial value of other products. For example, if you look at a Magmadroth (not sure if I spelled that right); 65 euro for 1 is quite an outrageous price and nobody buys it, but when the start collecting box came along including a magmadroth, lots of people were happy to buy it because they "saved" a ton of money. While in reality, they spent a ton of money. Those same magmadroths that previously wouldn't sell are now being repacked as start collecting boxes, and people love it.

They do the same thing with creating artificial stock shortages, making certain items go "out of stock" in the webshop soon after a new rule release, making people feel like they should buy ASAP when new rules come out. Of course this last statement is just guess-work, but I really doubt any company would not keep a decent stock when a new ruleset for a unit rolls around, knowing people will want to buy it.

1 hour ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

I get kinda nervous about the word balance. I don't think its actually all that beneficial to games like AoS and 40k. If you look over at what the 9th Age guys have done with the 8th edition WFB rules - they have balanced everything to the point that every army is mediocre. instead of some stuff being good and some being bad everything is boring!! I mean i have a lot of respect for the quality of the work those guys have put into it and its presumably the game that community wants but I don't actually want to play it!!!

I think a degree of imbalance is actually important in motivating people and giving the lists  some character. 

What i'm hoping is that the increased community play testing, attention to feedback and GW presence at tournaments will just weed out the really broken stuff and take that balancing only as far as the minimum it needs to go.

There are really balanced rulesets out there. based on historical rulesets (see Osprey's Dragon Rampant for an example) but not very many people are playing them!

 

I think that is overbalancing stuff to the extend that paper can beat scissors kind of balancing.

What I have in mind in terms of balancing is keeping units interresting, but allowing everyone to at least have access to the tools necessary to build a viable list. Sure it'll still be a rock paper scissors kind of playstyle, but it shouldnt the way it is right now with 2 or 3 army lists dominating the scene and the rest having no chance. Like Death hasn't topped for a long time, because no matter what list they build, there is no chance to win.

 Armies should always have something overpowered that sets them aside from other armies, but every army should have something to counter that. That way you can create a meta where armies have ups and downs in their success rate. Shadespire has this in the sense that you can build an army super aggressive or super defensive, or somewhere in between and you can modify your deck while the meta changes. But right now that simply isn't an option.

Lots of games overbalance, especially in videogames, and they way they balance is by giving everything everything, making it "fair", but it just creates a playstyle where everything plays the same, and no unexpected events happen.

I just think that making 1 army overpower all other armies is a sales tactic, because you can push out a new 'overpowered' thing every year and people HAVE to buy it to stay competitive. It is a sure way to get people to invest hundreds of dollars at a time.

[Twitch of Izalith]

2 minutes ago, Kugane said:

They do the same thing with creating artificial stock shortages, making certain items go "out of stock" in the webshop soon after a new rule release, making people feel like they should buy ASAP when new rules come out. Of course this last statement is just guess-work, but I really doubt any company would not keep a decent stock when a new ruleset for a unit rolls around, knowing people will want to buy it.

Yeah I think that is more to do with the production capacity not being able to keep up with the book releases for 40k - there is not a lot of AoS stuff that is out of stock. Releases definitely drive sales so yes, ideally you would want to have additional stock to capitalise on that spike. I just think that the manufacturing facility is not big enough to cope with it at the current pace.

I think they are probably not too bothered about it though because it does create that sense of urgency you suggest around "I need to buy it before it goes out of stock again"

Also if enough people are hitting that "Email Me" button they can direct production with an idea of what the level of demand is.

[Kugane]

2 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

Yeah I think that is more to do with the production capacity not being able to keep up with the book releases for 40k - there is not a lot of AoS stuff that is out of stock. Releases definitely drive sales so yes, ideally you would want to have additional stock to capitalise on that spike. I just think that the manufacturing facility is not big enough to cope with it at the current pace.

I think they are probably not too bothered about it though because it does create that sense of urgency you suggest around "I need to buy it before it goes out of stock again"

Also if enough people are hitting that "Email Me" button they can direct production with an idea of what the level of demand is.

Fair point, I think I read a rumor somewhere that they were expanding their production capacity, so you are probably right on that front. I hope after they do they can focus some more on AOS haha, its been quite some time since a meaningful release for Skaven, Death, Elves, etc.

[Uveron]

Just now, Kugane said:

Fair point, I think I read a rumor somewhere that they were expanding their production capacity, so you are probably right on that front. I hope after they do they can focus some more on AOS haha, its been quite some time since a meaningful release for Skaven, Death, Elves, etc.

Oh its been talked about by any GW guy you speak to. the USA Sales staff were told about it, and so have vendors who have visited the factory. 

[Twitch of Izalith]

So here is a good one for all the GW conspiracy theorists out there.

GW is currently more interested and interactive with competitive play and the tournament scene than they ever have been. We are all delighted because it feels like they are finally engaging with us as gamers and not just as customers - or not engaging with us at all at worst.

And I'm definitely not arguing against this policy. Its great for the community and its something that is in their own best interests that they have not paid attention to previously.

BUT. GW are basically being the T'au Empire here. (Go watch one of Arch Warhammer's videos on Youtube if you are not familiar with the fish smurfs) 

The more heavily involved in the community they are, the more control they have over it. If i'm playing in my garage or bedroom or basement or my local club then I can use whatever miniatures I want to play Age of Sigmar or 40k. If I'm playing in a GW Store or at a GW supported tournament then I can't.

In a world where you will soon be able to build a model, scan it and 3D print it for a tiny fraction of the cost, this is actually a thing. Or is it a coincidence that GW's marketing policy changed right at the point 3D printing is starting to become capable of hitting similar levels of detail to their casting process??

Is it for the greater good or just for the Ethereal Caste in the board room? 

 

[stratigo]

4 hours ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

Can you post links to the stuff the Japanese do? Not because I want to argue with you but because i haven't seen Japanese companies making wargames mini's and i'm interested!

 

Te japanese don't make wargaming minis. They do make the most technically impressive models on the market though. It's why, when GW was in its "We're a modeling and hobbying company, not gaming company" phase, I rolled my eyes. In terms of pure model quality, ignoring literally anything connected to gaming or game playing, japanese comapnies have the best product. People buy GW stuff because they are either into the game or dig the lore. The hobby only crowd is and was extremely tiny.

3 hours ago, Uveron said:

He is referring to the 'robotec/Gundam style toys' and he is correct. There are company's (and not just in Japan) who's scale model kits are more advanced than GW. But again the prices are higher and its again another thing thats hard to compare. 

No, the Stock was a steady dividend earner, a number of good investment groups carried the stock and the yearly dividend was strong. In the last 2 years we have seen a change in the company as it has expanded, but no one pre-2014 was saying the stocks were in a bad place. (So people who didn't understand how corporations work focused on the fact they were reporting a loss. But they posted Dividends which is the key in any Stockholder relationship). 

No thats not how it works. Go back to the start of the thread and re-read some of the great posts on how the costs are divided between products. Or just walk away from the key bord because I know you accused someone of being brainwashed, Iam getting tired of the hate you are bringing to this  forum. You have made your point, not everyone agrees with you. Understand that and end it. (You cannot win the internet)  

I also gave the emote. It's usually an accepted sign of not being serious.

 

And.... people who OWNED the stocks were saying they were in a bad place. GW was not doing well for quite some time. Considering how strong GW is performing now with a change in leadership and focus, yeah, no GW stocks were not performing as they should.

 

And, well, suck it up sunshine. GW's pricing is all over the place, some deals are great, some are mind mindbogglingly bad. This isn't a mystery to anyone. I'm sorry you don't like me disagreeing with you, but, well, I'm not gonna go away because you don't like it. I haven't superglued you to a chair and forced you to read anything I've said. You have the power to not participate in an argument, and to not even read it.

[Uveron]

26 minutes ago, stratigo said:

And, well, suck it up sunshine. GW's pricing is all over the place, some deals are great, some are mind mindbogglingly bad. This isn't a mystery to anyone. I'm sorry you don't like me disagreeing with you, but, well, I'm not gonna go away because you don't like it. I haven't superglued you to a chair and forced you to read anything I've said. You have the power to not participate in an argument, and to not even read it.

If you want to carry on this hate on GW you have please take it to another forum. You have said your peace.  This forum isnt the place for it. (As Ben talks about in this post)