How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?

[NauticalSoup]

@NkfPanda

No fear ahahaha

[Sleboda]

3 hours ago, NauticalSoup said:

Because I think it is very relevant to this discussion:

Is it against TGA forum rules to discuss recasting?

Even if it's not, please don't.

It's morally bankrupt to steal art (or any other product). Let's not encourage awful behavior.

[Gaz Taylor]

@NkfPanda - we’ve said no more discussion about recasts here, so please no more.

56 minutes ago, Moldek said:

 

I find myself often thinking about something I heard, I think from Vince Venturella : people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in three.

 

This is bang on. At a guess with the price rises, GW want people to spend around £400 on an army. So looking at myself, I’m unlikely to do any events this year and if I started a new army in a June and took six months in it, that works out to about £66 a month. I think the days of bulk buying have gone for many people and we just need to adapt.

Ive been doing GW stuff for nearly 30 years and it’s like this every time there’s a price increase. I used to get annoyed about it but then I realised I like the models, the games and the people. Also being older, I’m realising I should slow down and enjoy all aspects of the hobby. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve brought a load of models and not done anything with them. I’ll of course want all the models and be distracted a lot but there’s no way I would paint and play everything. 

[123lac]

8 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Even if it's not, please don't.

It's morally bankrupt to steal art (or any other product). Let's not encourage awful behavior.

Meh, recasting wouldn't be so popular if GW prices weren't so absurd.

[Thiagoma]

It didnt help, that is for sure.

Brazil currency just bombed and along with the raises, made the cost go double. 

My option has been selling older projects and working on stuff i already had. Gladly Cow Elves made me kinda give up on Lumineth, so i decided to rebase my Seraphon collection i made many many years ago. 

Also, second hand market ftw!

[Gaz Taylor]

+++ Mod Hat On +++
 

No more discussion about recasting. 

[NauticalSoup]

*snip*

Quote

Have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?

Yes.

Edited May 23, 2020 by NauticalSoup
See previous

[zilberfrid]

3 hours ago, Overread said:

Yes. Up to and including a full ban. Recasting is not something we permit discussion of here.
Proxies, making your own models etc... that's all legal and fine, though we generally don't have much encouragement of such discussion or engagement of such discussion. However making recasts is illegal and immoral and overall only harms the hand that feeds. If you like the game and want it to survive then in the end you've got to put your money into the pot to keep GW around. If you steal from the hand that feeds then one day that hand will close and will feed no more - sure "one person won't matter" but that attitude can fast breed a very toxic attitude. 

So short answer again - NO RECASTING

For what its worth its my observation that more people give up on GW, but its only ever a "straw that breaks the camels back" situation. Ergo they already had several issues and a price hike just forces them to confront and rethink and finally make the choice. New rules editions do the same thing; new battletomes even sometimes a new big model can make people stop and go "what am I doing". etc... 

Many don't give up on wargaming, they shift to other games. Either using models as proxies in warhammer games or going to other systems. I've said before/elsewhre, that I've taken breaks from my 40K armies and often as not when I've returned I've engaged far more in the hobby than before. My most recent return included AoS in a big way and also reading BL novels, something that I've greatly enjoyed and yet never interacted with before. 

For my case, I decided just a while ago that Warhammer isn't for me. Mostly because of scale creep and me not liking the design of half of the army.

There were some things I would like to build and paint because I like them artistically, but I don't feel like adding them to the grey pile at the moment. If, say, the Ironclad goes up to over €100, I'm not going to get it.

Similar for things that are good value now as generic d&d monsters, like the blue horrors. They can easily price away from being good value monsters, and are not *that* pretty.

[123lac]

2 hours ago, MrTuna said:

I spend maybe 4-5k on war games a year? Maybe half GW? Don’t really look at prices. Try to get my best, but I accept a full army is going to end up costing $600-$1000

Whoah, consistently 4-5k per year?

Even if I had the spare cash to do that I don't think I'd ever have the time to build and paint 4-5k worth of models per year.

[123lac]

*delete post*

Edited May 23, 2020 by 123lac

[MrTuna]

12 minutes ago, 123lac said:

Whoah, consistently 4-5k per year?

Even if I had the spare cash to do that I don't think I'd ever have the time to build and paint 4-5k worth of models per year.

So, only been wargaming like 2.5 years. 
 

and that is counting stuff like paint and airbrushes and gaming mats.

 

my main game is warmachine/hordes. Easy to spend maybe 1.5k to buy a full faction, bought two pretty quick. 
 

then I bought a 40k army with a few FW things. So maybe 2K there?

 

then some FW stuff for 30k

 

then a faction for Malifaux

 

this month started FEC for AOS.

 

also spent $500 to fully back a warcaster faction, shipping this fall.

 

I paint everything I play with, but I obviously don’t play with everything. Currently have 44 FEC ghouls on the table I just started tonight, hoping to get them done by the end of the weekend!!

 

at the end Of the day, this hobby seems cheap. My previous hobby was triathlons which involved 10k bikes and 1k just to do an iron man. My buddies that golf spend way more than me.

 

Edit - I suspect long term I can live on a 3k a year ($250 a month) budget. I don’t think I would want more than maybe 3 armies a year? But little new releases to keep up my armies cost something...

Edited May 23, 2020 by MrTuna

[NauticalSoup]

2 minutes ago, MrTuna said:

at the end Of the day, this hobby seems cheap. My previous hobby was triathlons which involved 10k bikes and 1k just to do an iron man. My buddies that golf spend way more than me.

This is an interesting point, because some hobbies can get ludicrously expensive. I have a family member that participates in two of the most expensive hobbies I can think of - competitive vintage automobile collecting and restoration, and firearm collecting. Compared to that minis is dirt cheap. But at the same time, there are tons of hobbies that cost much, much less. Even at your local game store, those playing RPGs for example are investing FAR less for their return. It's just a matter of perspective.

The real issue is ambient population. You can enjoy some hobbies alone, but the actual playing the game portion of this hobby requires a community, and the more expensive it gets the higher the barrier to entry and, correspondingly, the smaller your community will become.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

24 minutes ago, NauticalSoup said:

the more expensive it gets the higher the barrier to entry and, correspondingly, the smaller your community will become

I agree that it is important not to price out the community.  That said I think it is important to recognize that price is only one of the barriers to entry and over last few years GW has done a tremendous amount to lower the barriers to entry.  To use their own rubric for simplicity:

Build - the new plastic models get easier and easier to assemble with beginners having access to push fit meaning they might not even have to deal with glue.

Paint - I tried and failed to play Warhammer Fantasy years ago buying the Battle for Skull Pass set.  Managed to get through the goblins but was completely stymied by trying to paint the dwarves.  The painting system and app made it a lot easier for someone like myself to paint an army and be proud of the result.  Contrast paints take that to a whole new degree of simplicity and were key to my finishing painting a 2K Robinhood Themed FEC army to play in my local tournament that actually garnered a few compliments.

Play - even as an experienced historical war gamer the old rule set was far more cumbersome.  Sure, I worry about increasing complexity in 2.0 and power creep but I was able to get my 8 year old son and his friend up and playing in 15 minutes last year.   In twice that time I MIGHT have been able to explain to them how the armies moved in the old rule set...

Because of this lowering of the barriers to entry I’ve brought six new players (not counting my kids) into regular play and have even more waiting for pandemic to end in order play their first game.

And yes, they did get price bumps but Underworlds and WarCry still represent far lower priced entry points than were available to me when I first tried, and failed, to get into Warhammer.

Edited May 23, 2020 by Beer & Pretzels Gamer

[NauticalSoup]

@Beer & Pretzels Gamer

This is obviously an AoS forum and AoS is pretty good for this, but it's worth noting that proportionally AoS is a lot easier to learn and get into than 40k - and 40k is definitely the bigger product with the larger audience. The prevalence of soup, splatbooks, forgeworld, detachment list construction and mind-bogglingly long lists of stratagems means that 40k is about as inaccessible from a gameplay perspective as it's ever been in the past (AoS also benefits from it's 2.0 ruleset while 40k 8th is still a bit of a half-baked kludge). Have fun bringing your Dark Imperium primaris or death guard and watching them get pasted on turn 1 by even semi-casual lists. Since 8th I watched a huge resurgence in 40k's player population followed by a pretty shocking revolving door on new players in the time since. And now a lot of the older players are back to hating on 40k a la late 7th edition. Also: contrast are just overpriced acrylic inks, and One Thick Coat is a lie (contrast will rub off if not sealed under just regular game handling).

TLDR: Warhammer Fantasy Battle was definitely inaccessible and Age of Sigmar did improve on that, but I'm not sure how much was luck and how much competently implemented directives to improve accessibility.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

@NauticalSoup hear you on 40K.  My son got super excited about the Tau when I was bringing him in for painting lessons at my FLGS but we actually only play Kill Team and Apocalypse.  Despite the grander scale found it so much easier to play APOC than straight 40K.

And with hours and hours using them I’m familiar with strengths and weaknesses of contrast. And I still use both styles of paint on most models.  But I know from my past experience with the dwarves (before they were Duardin lol) that I never would’ve gotten through the 2K plus full summoning bench for my FEC at all, nonetheless under the deadline for the tournament (as it was I insisted at midnight the night before..) without contrast paints. For less skilled painters such as myself every little bit of simplification helps.

On the luck vs planned GW of course didn’t plan the large secondary market which I also think has lowered barrier to entry.  While I’m proud to have an army where I can say “I did that” I’m also happy that when I want to I at least have the option of skipping the whole build & paint steps and go straight to play.  Sure there was some secondary markets and commission options my first time round but clearly a lot easier these days if that’s how you want to do it.  There of course GW just benefiting from technology advances.

[NkfPanda]

1 hour ago, MrTuna said:

So, only been wargaming like 2.5 years. 
 

and that is counting stuff like paint and airbrushes and gaming mats.

 

my main game is warmachine/hordes. Easy to spend maybe 1.5k to buy a full faction, bought two pretty quick. 
 

then I bought a 40k army with a few FW things. So maybe 2K there?

 

then some FW stuff for 30k

 

then a faction for Malifaux

 

this month started FEC for AOS.

 

also spent $500 to fully back a warcaster faction, shipping this fall.

 

I paint everything I play with, but I obviously don’t play with everything. Currently have 44 FEC ghouls on the table I just started tonight, hoping to get them done by the end of the weekend!!

 

at the end Of the day, this hobby seems cheap. My previous hobby was triathlons which involved 10k bikes and 1k just to do an iron man. My buddies that golf spend way more than me.

 

Edit - I suspect long term I can live on a 3k a year ($250 a month) budget. I don’t think I would want more than maybe 3 armies a year? But little new releases to keep up my armies cost something...

That is intense spending relative to a lot of tabletop gamers. My main hobbies for the last 7 ish years have been Brazilian Jiu jitsu and even more so Muay Thai which are very inexpensive compared to Triathlons and Golf but these are comparing apples to oranges. I just got back into the hobby about 1.5 years ago and my friends think I am crazy for the $ I have spent. I know value is in the eye of the beholder but god dayummm these plastic toys are getting cow-azy.

[NauticalSoup]

@Beer & Pretzels Gamer

Yeah but you could've been using the contrast method (ink washing) in the 90s if you had known you could. Contrast doesn't actually bring anything new to the table except a huge marketing push.

People have been using heavy dips and washes to expedite army painting for ages. All GW did was mark the price up and nail on an advertising campaign that exaggerates the paints characteristics.

I can forgive the misleading advertising. Not gonna give them a pass on the price markup.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

1 hour ago, NauticalSoup said:

Yeah but you could've been using the contrast method (ink washing) in the 90s if you had known you could. Contrast doesn't actually bring anything new to the table except a huge marketing push.

“The future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”  - William Gibson

Not disputing at all the veracity of what you’re saying.  But a tool I didn’t know about and had no simple and straight forward way to find out about was of no use to me.  In time I did the due diligence I could including asking the manager of the FLGS I was buying from what the best thing to do was given my concerns about my painting skills.  I think he gave the best advice he could given what he knew.  It didn’t work.  From talking to plenty of others even recently this wasn’t some aberration.

Marketing of course ultimately about getting you to buy something.  But any good marketer will recognize that one of the best ways to do that is to educate your customer base.  GW as the biggest kid on the block was the one with the marketing budget to invest in that education, even if, as I’m sure you are correctly noting, they didn’t invent the product and arguably oversold its virtues.  But as a reward for that marketing education they’ve reaped a reward in yes, selling a lot of contrast paint but I’d also suggest in enabling a bunch of new players, such as myself to finally gain traction in a hobby we then become very passionate about.

Does that mean they get a pass on higher prices?  Not my call because obviously every person’s hobby budget and demand elasticity to price is going to be different.  Not thrilled with it myself.

I think we both agree that we don’t want to see the recent price increase push anyone out of the game or prevent new players from joining by raising the $$$ barrier to entry.  I think we both worry that it could.  I think where we disagree is how much credit GW should get for expanding the player base to begin with.  I can only speak from my own personal experience on that and my conversations with others I’ve interacted with in the game who’ve played longer than I have and the half dozen and growing I’ve directly brought into the game.  From that perspective things like easier to assemble models, the combination of the painting system, app and yes contrast paints, as well as the simplification of the rule set were all absolutely critical.  For others of course some of those steps may have been completely unnecessary.

In the end I recognize that price may force some people out of the game and keep others from joining.  Given how much I’ve come to enjoy the game though my sincere hope is that on a net basis it continues to grow.

Edited May 23, 2020 by Beer & Pretzels Gamer

[Murder Pancake]

Price increases all around I guess. It affects my hobby spending, but not as much as it should. Mostly I just need a bubble to vent about the changes. 

I find myself mostly frustrated that Tzaangor are getting hit twice in a row. When I started the Enlightened were 35; they're probably going to be 45-50 starting in June; same with the regular ones; which I always need to grab more.  I can't even begin to justify the tree revenants; they're already ridiculous in comparison to the rest of the army.  

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

To get to the specifics of the question, apologies for jumping in with a tangent first, the price increases have spurred me to acquire some Blue Horrors for our gaming group sooner than I otherwise might.  Original plan had been to see how practical it was to play two 20x blocks of Pink Horrors (which require in theory 40x Blue Horrors each) AND to see if the new GH changed the points cost any.  With the price increase looming taking a better safe than sorry approach and pulled forward the purchase (hopefully if we decide we don’t in fact need them we’ll benefit from a little price arbitrage on secondary market).

The price increases also are suggestive of high price points for the Sons (whenever they release) and as such the building of a sons army for our gaming group may be spread out longer than originally expected.  Those most obvious changes I can think of re:AoS side.

Edited May 23, 2020 by Beer & Pretzels Gamer

[JackStreicher]

9 hours ago, Overread said:

money into the pot to keep GW around

This hand of James Workshop tends to bite though. One should rather not buy GW products for a few months to make a statement to show our „friend“ James workshop‘s ever hungry wallet (while he already swims in money like Dagobert Duck) that enough is enough and the hobby + hobbyists should be more important than the dividend paid to his shareholders.

Edited May 23, 2020 by JackStreicher

[Baron Klatz]

Already eyeing up a bunch of Stormcasts and Lumineth pre-orders so count me out.

Looking back at the start of 2015 where my cheap option was the one starter set I bought then had to grab up expensive basic units or try to get the whole store to pitch  in for the massive dreadfort and now comparing it to the swarm of cheap options we have with easy-to-build, start collectings, Underworlds, Warcry, battle forces and a variety of starter sets I'm not really bothered here. Things happened and GW had to compensate further and will likely address these with the new GHB. (And in that i'm happy to pay for them to keep expanding in new directions as they've done phenomenally over the years.)

Edit: Oh! I forgot a entry level Endless Spells add. Such powerful game changers you can buy reasonable large quantities of to round out any force with instead of more units. Malign Portents but a Blessed Outcome.

Edit Edit: AND we got cheap third party boardgames and the Mortal Realms magazines now!

Honestly it's a better outcome than when the Start Collectings went up. Those are a very valuable entry point to bring people in, individual kits are more lax in comparison as you can get around to them and round out your forces.

Edited May 23, 2020 by Baron Klatz

[NauticalSoup]

@Beer & Pretzels Gamer

A lot of what you are saying is very reasonable, I'll grant, but you're talking from the perspective of someone who joined as an AoS player after the fiasco that was the original launch. I've been around long enough to watch GW not only bash a whole bunch of competing (and vastly superior) minatures experiences, but to slit the throat of one of their own major franchises and then strip its corpse for parts. AoS 1.0 was embarrassingly bad garbage, and to this day my local (and very active) FLGS AoS scene is a tiny sliver of the size of the 40k one completely thanks to how badly GW kneecapped it in those early days. 2.0 is now a better product than 40k, but thanks to GW's ineptitude in most circles it has an irredeemable reputation. As a result, in my local scene (one of the largest in a region, people drive from all the surrounding cities to play here) it is still harder to find a game of AoS today than it was to find one of WHFB even during the last days when everyone as growing to hate it. I'm pretty sure I've almost doubled the ambient AoS population too, which is basically the only reason I can find games easily. 

So what I'm saying is, growth is relative and WHFB and later AoS 1.0 hemorrhaged so much population it took a long time to just get it back to where it was. We still might not be there. Most of the new blood that gets pulled in is thrown into the 40k meatgrinder and promptly spit back out again - in my scene of all the regular players most of them have been around for probably an average of 20 years, while new players will burn out in short order. It doesn't help that the two posterboy armies (Primaris marines and Stormcasts) are some of the crappiest in their respective games, creating this negative feedback loop that discourages players from sticking. 

Also I'm curious because you've said it a couple times - what do you mean by easier to build? Some of the most unpleasant kits I've put together have been Age of Sigmar kits due to bizarre CADing choices and terribly placed seams. I think the crappiest build I can remember (in recent memory) is the 2.0 starter box sacrosanct stormcasts, shitters have pegs that are actually too big to fit flush and have to be snipped off, and even when you do that they have terribly placed seams on stupid places like directly down the middle of a flat shoulder plate. Things are a greenstuffing nightmare. GW also still forgets to undergate sometimes, which is infuriating to see in this day and age. I mean yes: things are better than when we had to build pewter gyrocopters and zoanthropes. That's a pretty low bar though.

Edit: You specifically mention Skull Pass - I don't think anything on sale today approaches the simplicity to build present in Skull Pass minis, many of which were little more than one or two solid chunks.

Edited May 23, 2020 by NauticalSoup

[valenswift]

If you enjoy it what does it matter, all hobbies cost money. My wife has a serious Lego addiction and she spends every spare penny she has on it but our kids never go without so who cares? it makes her happy. Is our hobby more expensive than others? it can be but I have a few friends who have season tickets for their football team and travel all over Europe to support them. I've followed football for almost 40 years and barely spent a penny on it (I've been to less than 20 live matches) and the thought of spending thousands on travel and hotels, on top of the tickets just seems ludicrous to me. But that is their hobby so to them it's reasonable, the cost doesn't even factor. I have another friend who has literally spent thousands of pounds in the last couple of years on a mobile game, yes really. He doesn't regret a thing!! My mum's hobby is bingo, goodness knows how much she has spent on that over the years.

 I've been collecting and playing GW games off and on since the mid 80's and correct me if I'm wrong but has there ever been a time when this hobby as been anything other than expensive? 🤣😆

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by valenswift

[Overread]

4 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

This hand of James Workshop tends to bite though. One should rather not buy GW products for a few months to make a statement to show our „friend“ James workshop‘s ever hungry wallet (while he already swims in money like Dagobert Duck) that enough is enough and the hobby + hobbyists should be more important than the dividend paid to his shareholders.

My point was not so much that we must feel obliged to pay for models to keep GW around for that sake alone - they are not a charity.

It's more that if you are going to play Warhammer with warhammer models then you should be putting money into the hobby not into the hands of recasters leaching money out of the hobby. It's the same as how many hobbyists are keen to buy products cheaper online from online stores, but will also still buy models from their local game store if they play there. Again its about understanding that our spending has an impact on the world and if we want certain things to hang around we have to sometimes not look for the cheapest option. If we want that local game store to survive and remain a place where we can game and where new people can come into the local gaming groups and where we can pop in for a chat with other gamers etc... then we've got to be part of the process that helps put money in the store's pockets and food on the staff's tables. 

And if you don't want to pay GW prices there are loads of 3rd party and other companies to buy models from. Smaller firms putting their time and money into design work to make new models for us to game with. It's perfectly valid and great to put our money into their pockets. Just not into recasters who are only leaching off the industry in general. Because for every "overpriced gw model" they can copy, they can also likely copy-cat a Creature Caster model for much less too. We don't want to feed the recasting industry, it only leaches money out which means less in the pot for new models, new ideas, new games, gaming centres etc...