Getting Priced Out

[plavski]

Since Soul Wars we've had Forbidden Power and Wrath of the Everchosen, that's two expansion pieces to the narrative in 2 years, one of which was basically a pamphlet.

Give us more, GW! More!!!

Edited November 3, 2020 by plavski

[stratigo]

3 minutes ago, Kramer said:

 

I Don’t play 40k. But from the outside it looked like quite a good idea. Get everything updated before the new edition. 

Kinda what I expect from this series as well. 5 factions in this book. 25 factions total. Add a few more because of multiple cities etc. So 6 books would be my guess. 

But exploitative is too strong a word imo. As that implies some intent. And I’m still on the more Good natured but naïf nerd gw, rather than more clever en conniving than I expect GW 

This is clearly intentional. They aren't going "oh boy, how could we predict that charging 60 dollars on top 40 dollars plus another 40 dollars, oh and 60 more dollars now, the first sixty doesn't count any more costs a lot of money?"

 

GW is 100 percent aware of what they are doing.

[Sleboda]

29 minutes ago, stratigo said:

Check how many books they forced on psychic awakening. Some people only had a book for like 3 months before it was entirely invalidated.

Same thing happened with End Times. Same thing will happen with Realms. 

Blood Bowl is about to go through it as well since literally all previously published materials (books, magazines, cards), including ones released only two months ago, are becoming obsolete by having no Passing stay on them.

It's the nature of this beast. It's not be new. We can take it or leave it ... by choice.

[zilberfrid]

5 hours ago, stratigo said:

I want to note, you can't really talk corporate pricing, value for cost, or what exactly your dollar (pound/euro/whathave you) should buy without being political.

These are all political topics. The idea that your purchase should include some guarantor of rules or if you are only buying the tangible plastics is a political discussion.

I'm not sure if you are sarcastic or not.

I could see it being business strategy, transparency or fairness. Not politics.

Things like a banner on high elves that they would be removed from play would have been transparent, it would have been fair, but it didn't align with business strategy.

We've seen the Warshrine go from available to "no longer available" in the US webshop, then it was set to "temporarily unavailable" before the news came that it indeed was discontinued. That is deliberate misrepresentation.

And no, GW's models, especially the heroes, are not worth their sticker price just for the model. They get sold because GW has locations to play and a whole game attached to it. Remove that, and about half the value of the total package of the sale is gone.

Like, say Windows. If you buy Windows '95 now, it still works, boots up and everything. CD looks fine. It just gets no security support and few programs work on it, so you can't do anything with it.

If Microsoft were to sell a Windows version until a month before support ended, their office would burn.

[Clan's Cynic]

I don't mind splat books per say, where I take issue with them is when there become so many that the bloat reaches the point you're asking, "wasn't this meant to be a much more streamlined game?" Also with PA, presumably some of these books will be outdated in less than a year when the content present is baked into the new Battletome and supersedes any supplements prior to that. 

Edited November 3, 2020 by Clan's Cynic

[plavski]

A book's rules lasting a year is pretty solid considering the length it takes to update battletomes. I mean, people were very much under the impression that the delay between Seraphon Battletomes was because they were being squatted.

[zilberfrid]

53 minutes ago, plavski said:

A book's rules lasting a year is pretty solid considering the length it takes to update battletomes. I mean, people were very much under the impression that the delay between Seraphon Battletomes was because they were being squatted.

I think that had more to do with the age of the sculpts than with the age of the book.

A year isn't very good for a book's rules. I know people that purchased stuff specifically for mercs, and only had them completed months before the new GHB (and in one case, not at all).

There is a significant amount of time and money involved in getting from a rulebook to the table.

Edited November 3, 2020 by zilberfrid

[plavski]

A year is fine for rules, especially as the rule updates are minor. In the case of PA it was some new strategems and allegiance abilities. All the core strats stayed in place, all the core datasheets, all the core everything stayed relevant. For a lot of armies, it will be a long time between 8th codex and 9th codex, and with the changes to the game, every army needed updating to handle the transition across editions. PA made perfect sense so that armies aren't stuck with dead rules for a year while they update the codexes. They aren't overhauling the armies every year and I think it's being made more of an issue than it actually is.

More content is good - a book for your army each year is great, especially when it compliments your army instead of replacing it. More content for this game is good. I'd love some new Fyreslayer lodges, some new Skyports, some new Glades... another round of those every year would be fantastic. You don't have to play them or buy the book if you don't want the rules. But for those of us who like to mix things up and try something new, a yearly stream of updates would be very welcome.

[Irvy]

Don't forget to check your local charity shops/'thrift stores'.

I found this lot for £4 in the UK recently... 40 necrons, 3 destroyers and 9 scarabs (sorry it's not AoS - I'm new is this allowed?)

[Grim Beasties]

12 minutes ago, Irvy said:

Don't forget to check your local charity shops/'thrift stores'.

I found this lot for £4 in the UK recently... 40 necrons, 3 destroyers and 9 scarabs (sorry it's not AoS - I'm new is this allowed?)

This is a perfect example, charity shops, thrift stores, garage sales, heck I was even able to find most of battle for skull pass at a carnival market place for $10

[Beastmaster]

It’s what someone who doesn’t know anything about miniatures or GW would think they are worth. 😎

[RuneBrush]

7 hours ago, Irvy said:

I found this lot for £4 in the UK recently... 40 necrons, 3 destroyers and 9 scarabs (sorry it's not AoS - I'm new is this allowed?)

+++ MOD HAT +++

Not really, but it's a good example of there being bargains out there if you look, so we'll let you off 😉

[stratigo]

12 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

I'm not sure if you are sarcastic or not.

I could see it being business strategy, transparency or fairness. Not politics.

Things like a banner on high elves that they would be removed from play would have been transparent, it would have been fair, but it didn't align with business strategy.

We've seen the Warshrine go from available to "no longer available" in the US webshop, then it was set to "temporarily unavailable" before the news came that it indeed was discontinued. That is deliberate misrepresentation.

And no, GW's models, especially the heroes, are not worth their sticker price just for the model. They get sold because GW has locations to play and a whole game attached to it. Remove that, and about half the value of the total package of the sale is gone.

Like, say Windows. If you buy Windows '95 now, it still works, boots up and everything. CD looks fine. It just gets no security support and few programs work on it, so you can't do anything with it.

If Microsoft were to sell a Windows version until a month before support ended, their office would burn.

What is legal and what is moral for business strategies, transparency, or fairness are political considerations. 

[Beastmaster]

32 minutes ago, stratigo said:

What is legal and what is moral for business strategies, transparency, or fairness are political considerations. 

What isn’t, then?

[zilberfrid]

41 minutes ago, stratigo said:

What is legal and what is moral for business strategies, transparency, or fairness are political considerations. 

I get what you mean, but I still think it's a bit of a stretch. I do not like GW's business strategy towards their customers. I do like some of their business strategies on a global and internal field.

I don't think something that isn't on the box, but part of what makes that box valuable should be enshrined in laws. I do think the back cover text for the Necromunda book should state it's useless on its own, and that sets should stop being sold longer before the removal of their warscrolls.

Edited November 4, 2020 by zilberfrid

[Sonnenspeer]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

Not really, but it's a good example of there being bargains out there if you look, so we'll let you off 😉

Yea, waiting for the "Angry wife sells her husbands 10.000p of Warhammer Stuff for 10 bucks"  ad

[Mcthew]

Another slightly concerning issue is availability. So according to several sites, most local hobby stores are getting very limited stock of new product from GW. We could speculate as to why, but the only rational explanations are:

GW don't have the resources to create more stock (possible but worrying),

the stock isn't selling well (possible, just look at LRLs, and again worrying),

or they are shifting away from non-GW stores to concentrate on their own online and physical stores (very possible as the non-GW stores offer a discount - and worrying as this would be a complete monopoly of the hobby).

Its one to watch I think, more than price rises.

[Overread]

24 minutes ago, Mcthew said:

GW don't have the resources to create more stock (possible but worrying),

GW manufactures all their core product plastics in the UK. Overseas is only things like cardstock, certain books, terrain and endless spells. So the rest of their production has to be done in house in Nottingham. In fact after the CEO change GW's policies shifted and their sales went so high that they outstripped production. GW thus spend several million pounds buying land and building a brand new factory in Nottingham as well as securing the use of a new warehousing site (which presumably would allow them to store up greater bulk amounts for overseas shipping).

HOWEVER Corona has reared its head and GW's production and packaging and posting is all impacted in the UK. As a result the number of staff and setup are drastically reduced. This is on top of 2 solid months of buying whilst GW was shut down which basically stripped stock. Even when GW came back online they had to shut their online store at night to keep up with the order volume. 

 

Furthermore this year is a new edition year and GW couldn't really cancel that. New edition years generally spike sales on top of Corona and lockdown which is also spiking sales.

 

 

Basically GW is going through a massive amount of abnormal and heightened product demand whilst coupled with significantly reduced production capacity. It's why they are sending out less product; its why they are having issues with supplies and why so many things run out of stock. In addition international shipping has been heavily impacted, so sometimes things just getting abroad are likely costing more/more difficult to organise.

 

I'm very sure GW would love to send out more stock to 3rd parties, its jsut right now things are hard for them to keep up.

 

 

 

As for new AoS armies not outstripping sales, don't forget GW's products are long term investments. They aren't like mobile phones or DVD's or computer games - they don't have to profit entirely in their launch week. I'm sure those stats are very important, but GW has the benefit of long term sales. Heck a new edition; a new Battletome and a few new models can make an army suddenly very popular. Look at Sisters of Battle, once a very niche army now a very mainstream one. 

New armies are always going to generally show up poorer for sales than some long estabilshed forces with decades of marketing and fanbase behind them. That's not abnormal in the least, in fact that's what we should expect. Plus don't forget most of the AoS new armies are launching with a very small model roster; diverse and well balanced, but often very small. Many will likely look far more interesting to new customers when they get additional waves of models and updates. 

[whispersofblood]

3 hours ago, Mcthew said:

Another slightly concerning issue is availability. So according to several sites, most local hobby stores are getting very limited stock of new product from GW. We could speculate as to why, but the only rational explanations are:

GW don't have the resources to create more stock (possible but worrying),

the stock isn't selling well (possible, just look at LRLs, and again worrying),

or they are shifting away from non-GW stores to concentrate on their own online and physical stores (very possible as the non-GW stores offer a discount - and worrying as this would be a complete monopoly of the hobby).

Its one to watch I think, more than price rises.

As far as I've heard stuff is just sitting in shipping containers because the procedures for social distancing for example are pretty contrary to speed. Nothing particularly nefarious just the ordinary limitations of humans.

[EccentricCircle]

Yeah, at this point I'd wonder how much is a production bottleneck and how much is a shipping bottleneck. At least in the UK it more or less feels as though they'd gotten things back to normal. Webstore stock isn't perfect, but isn't far off where it was, and all the 3rd party stores I shop with have seemed ok? But I can well believe that in other countries, further from the wellspring of all Warhammer that things might be very different indeed.

I've certainly not seen the apocalyptic picture which some folks here are reporting.

[plavski]

Well we know for a fact that New Zealand and Australia have been hit by shipping delays to GW product as they have mentioned it a couple of times on their site. A lot of third parties in the UK are hit with preference being given to first party selling. For example, WaylandGames didn't get their Necomunda pre-order delivery so have had to delay shipping to customers. Likewise the Space Marine codex was out of stock for weeks despite being in stock at GW. When it did arrive, there were only two copies which sold pretty much instantly (one to me!) There is different ringfencing around product at GW for third-party sellers, so certain items are kept back even if they are standard delivery and not webstore exclusive. This makes it quite frustrating when I order through my FLGS and he can't get it for me despite it being there on the site. I've been waiting for House of Blades for months!

[Kramer]

On 11/3/2020 at 4:10 PM, stratigo said:

This is clearly intentional. They aren't going "oh boy, how could we predict that charging 60 dollars on top 40 dollars plus another 40 dollars, oh and 60 more dollars now, the first sixty doesn't count any more costs a lot of money?"

 

GW is 100 percent aware of what they are doing.

No I get that they are aware. What I doubt is the intent of selling it now and then invalidating it just to make more money while while stroking a Persian cat and mumbling ‘one billion’ dollars. 

look regarding this,  you are a bit more cynical, I’m probably overly optimistic. But to me it looks like they want to make a cool narrative expansion. That comes with stories about different forces, so lets make those stories playable. That means narrative battleplans and while we're at it and make updated allegiance abilities, warscrolls and battalions for those factions if they need it as a hold over until a bigger update.(which to be fair, is the #1 reason for a portion of the competitive audience to buy the book)

the alternative is that they would make the new rules but not publish ‘preview rules’ in these yet because some of them will be further updated down the line. 

But the end I think we judge the intent differently which is all guess work anyway. 😅
 

Edited November 5, 2020 by Kramer

[EccentricCircle]

I think the problem, for me st least isn't so much the campaign books, but the shortness of the edition cycle itself.

We were delighted that they very quickly got every faction it's tome, but once it's all updated, that really only leaves them a few options. They can just focus on new stuff, focus on campaign books, or start re-releasing and updating the existing stuff again.

what they won't do, but probably should, is slow down once the initial wave of tomes is out the door. I can't see them doing that though. 

I think I'd be perfectly happy with a rapid fire release of codexes for a year, followed by four or five years of slower support. I'd suggest a campaign book or two in Q1 to set the story for the year, with a minor update to one GA, a new army in Q2 to enter the fray and continue the story, a second campaign book or series in Q3 to tie things up, leading to a big-ish update to an old faction in Q4, as fallout from the campaign.

So maybe six books in a year if you buy everything. Then the next year's campaign begins, and they cycle through like that for a good long time before having to update the core rules and every battle tome.

 A year of intense codex releases followed by an equally intense year of campaign releases, then repeat just isn't sustainable. I'd run out of shelf space.

Edited November 5, 2020 by EccentricCircle

[RuneBrush]

15 hours ago, Mcthew said:

Another slightly concerning issue is availability. So according to several sites, most local hobby stores are getting very limited stock of new product from GW. We could speculate as to why, but the only rational explanations are:

GW availability has lots of different factors involved.  In addition to the ones people have mentioned, the pandemic continues to cause problems.  The recent announcement of a lockdown in the UK has caused a surge in people stocking up because they remember "the last time" and how difficult it was to pick up a pot of black paint.

As @Overread says, the covid safety measures put in place will have had a double whammy impact because not only will production be affected, but the distribution of product too - a lorry taking 20% longer to load means less lorries out the door.  That's going to be compounded by producing less things in China - certainly it's been noted that things like the Necromunda Zone Mortalis terrain now have a "made in the UK" sticker on the boxes.

[Scurvydog]

7 minutes ago, EccentricCircle said:

I think I'd be perfectly happy with a rapid fire release of codexes for a year, followed by four or five years of slower support. 

I can see the point of this and boy would my wallet be happy, but it also sounds incredibly boring as well.

There has been battletomes yes, but actually very little in terms of new AoS models. In general I'd love to see GW give current factions more attention and update stuff, that should still sell some models without messing too much with rulesets all the times. New units means new rules, which requires expansion books at the very least with the current model. 

I'd love to see a more elegant way to add to existing books with new rules and models. The Tome Celestial from WD is pretty cool, but I don't think the magazine format is quite right for these things.

GW loves releasing all these warbands for the specialist games, as they can just put the rules self contained in a box and ship it. If we could get a similar thing for AoS that would be great. Add a warscroll card or whatever, otherwise it takes so darn long for "your dudes" to get anything new and cool without regular edition updates.