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The Cursed City situation


The Cursed City situation.   

247 members have voted

  1. 1. Did you try to buy Cursed City?

    • I bought it
      121
    • I tried but it was sold out.
      36
    • I didn't try to buy it, but I think it's unfair that others couldn't
      54
    • I have no interest in Cursed City.
      36


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I did preorder the box as the last box I wanted to purchase from gw was the shadow war armageddon that I was unable to get.At least gw later on released the rules and the terrain in individually so it was still available yet at a much higher price 

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I'm a little baffled by the hand wringing and teeth gnashing over this.  How is the double whammy of covid lockdowns and brexit not the obvious issues at work here?  Unless folks really think GW just didn't want them, specifically, to have a copy.  Pretty sure if they could have sold every single person that wanted one a copy they would have.  There was the note on the warscrolls provided in the box about being updated for November.  So clearly production is behind.  Thats not just cursed city, all production is behind and with AoS 3 coming up I'm sure time on the production line is at a premium.  Now that is not an excuse for poor communication, but maybe its just a matter of fitting in another production run to the jam packed schedule.  Maybe they don't even know when that will be.  Maybe they do and it's a couple months off, who knows.  After 20+ years in this hobby, I know that for some folks, a big part of the hobby is crapping on GW.  Lord knows they've not helped themselves over the years, I just don't think, given the state of the world and operating during lockdowns etc.. this is entirely warranted.  

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5 hours ago, Matt Ceney-Pratt said:

On Sunday when the they announced you could buy the models separately I though that might mean Cursed City will come back. Whatever issue that they have had it doesn't seem to be linked to making the models. I can see the argument for maybe this is it and away to appease the customers that didn't get hold of CC can now at least own the miniatures. My personal opinion is GW always had plans to distribute the models outside of CC as they was always going to be part of the battletome with valid points therefore, part of the range for Soulblight Gravelords. 

I do think that this is the reality.

To release a battletome or faction that had content which was only available in a box that sold out within five minutes of release was never going to sit well, and more importantly opened them up in the future where at some game event you see a proxy model of xyz as there's no other way of getting it, once again I go back to Khorgoraths in the original AoS box.

I've no real problem with everything disappearing within seconds, after all, I only wanted the undead in it, and the rest of the game would never get looked at. However, to be able to buy the models form tha separately or as a box as was anounced yesterday is a big deal for me, and an essential deal if I'm going to buy into the gravelords at any point.

 

2 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:

I don't think GW especially care if scalpers get to them. Ultimately they're selling all their stock and getting all their money whether or not Scrooge McDuck gets a x1000 copies to scalp or x1000 individual Lil Timmy's and Tara's get them. Once it's sold it's out of their hands. Sure they put things like "Limited to 1 per order" but it's not like the major scalpers don't have bots ordering and sending them to the same address. FOMO is probably touted as a good thing by the guy/gal who gets to go into investor meetings and show how they get thousands of people spam F5'ing their webstores at 10am to buy their product because "it's so valuable to them."

The Pile of Shame is a real thing and I expect these days a sizeable portion of sales is people who buy limited products 'just in case' and then never touch them because they decided not to play that army/game in the end. Whilst there's always been people with horrendous impulse control who go 'all in' whenever the new shiny pops up, being told they can NEVER GET IT AGAIN UNLESS YOU BUY IT RIGHT NOW HOLY COW PILES(!!!) probably does a lot to tip many more people into clicking Buy.

If anything Cursed City has probably been a net positive to GW's sales in the short term, because combined with their lack of stock all around there's a great deal of paranoia surrounding whether or not X or Y is going to be a single-print run which is no doubt driving up a good deal of the above. Crimson Court sold out stupid fast and although Underworlds warbands have a two year life cycle (and you can still buy the models without cards after that) I do wonder how many people bought it out of fear it would be gone, who might bought it later down the line.

Indomitus was probably the exception because of how ridiculously popular Space Marines and 40k at large is and it was probably going to be too massive of a PR blunder to ignore, nevermind how many hundreds of thousand were bought (direct) by independent retailers alone. 

 

Absolutely correct.

What happens to their stock once it's out in the wild is not their problem as long as they've sold it at source.

And as for one per order, yea well, there's always a way round that, even now with their warhammer ID thing as you say.

I actually like their built to order methodology, and that could easily be ported to their one shot releases.  You have a pre-order window.  That number of orders plus X per store get made.  The end.  That way everyone that wants one can just go and order it, the money is already in the till, and that number get made, everyone's happy and scalpers can load up if they want to for what it's worth to them, but then you're telling everyone that didn't get one that they had two weeks to hand over their cash and get their name down for one, no arguments, and if they didn't.. well, what can you do.  And then you just wait a month for your stuff to arrive - happy days.

Edited by Kaleb Daark
spellin an all dat.
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Here’s the thing, I don’t believe Brexit had anything to do with it and here’s why: regional pricing.

If brexit and/or tariffs increased their costs, they would have just put up the price in those regions affected rather than ****** the rest of the world. If the extra costs made the product unviable in those regions, they just wouldn’t sell it there. Apparently I was told there are laws that mean they can’t restrict sales like that, but even if that was the case I doubt anyone would actually enforce it against them.

the copyright theory: if true, they would have completely removed the Cursed City website and the novel would disappear as well (I believe it’s still available digitally). The things people have pointed out as possible copyright infringements are not. Let’s also not forget about the Chapter House lawsuit, GW are well aware of what is and isn’t copyrightable these days (hence why Space Marines became Adeptus Astartes etc)

the only thing that really makes sense (and also explains why they haven’t said anything) is issues with the printers in China. GW can’t really say anything without possibly pissing off their printer, if they still have one since one theory was the printer they used went out of business/closed due to covid. Additionally, they can’t say for sure if it’ll be back as that’s completely up to when they can fit it in to the printers schedule while also printing all the other GW stuff as well as whatever else the printers have to do. However, nothing has been said about the expansions which is a little bit concerning, because that kind of supports the theory that maybe they’ve dropped it completely (the ratprince vampire and the lady with the fan I believe were supposed to be expansions at some point)

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On 5/17/2021 at 3:31 AM, Joseph Mackay said:

Based on the previous Warhammer Quests and the fact GW said it was a ‘permanent’ range item, I planned to pick it up shortly after release. However, that doesn’t seem like an option anymore.

This.

Originally I was relieved that GW did not throw yet another FOMO box at us... and then this whole affair blew up. Having the "miniboss box" coming as a seperate release is great, since I seriously grieved having missed out on those - but still, having the whole box would be preferable. Not going to happen apparently, so I'll take these* with a laughing and a crying eye.

 

* ... if the price ain't pants-on-head bonkers that is. So... who knows? :ph34r:

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11 hours ago, Joseph Mackay said:

the only thing that really makes sense (and also explains why they haven’t said anything) is issues with the printers in China. GW can’t really say anything without possibly pissing off their printer, if they still have one since one theory was the printer they used went out of business/closed due to covid. Additionally, they can’t say for sure if it’ll be back as that’s completely up to when they can fit it in to the printers schedule while also printing all the other GW stuff as well as whatever else the printers have to do. However, nothing has been said about the expansions which is a little bit concerning, because that kind of supports the theory that maybe they’ve dropped it completely (the ratprince vampire and the lady with the fan I believe were supposed to be expansions at some point)

So saying nothing is the alternative? Not a great idea when they are already piecemealing out the models, there is going to be a lot more complaining if they sell the models at a huge mark up, only for CC to suddenly show back up next month. They could could have said that if it was an issue, without upsetting their printers. 'Sorry but due to an manufacturing issue we can no longer continue to supply CC. If we get any news on the game returning in the future we will say on warcomm blah blah etc'.  People have an answer, they can then decide if they want to go out and buy from ebay/trade groups, buy what ever scraps from the game get a piecemeal release or spend their cash on another game instead.

It just seems that they are happy to stick their head in the sand long enough for people to be caught up in the next hype train and forget about this one- just like they did with Shadow War. They also know that in a months time, people complaining will be told to leave it alone its not coming back/get over it/buy if from ebay/leave the hobby and all the other usual rubbish that get shouted around on facebook groups.

 

 

11 hours ago, Darnok said:

This.

Originally I was relieved that GW did not throw yet another FOMO box at us... and then this whole affair blew up. Having the "miniboss box" coming as a seperate release is great, since I seriously grieved having missed out on those - but still, having the whole box would be preferable. Not going to happen apparently, so I'll take these* with a laughing and a crying eye.

 

* ... if the price ain't pants-on-head bonkers that is. So... who knows?

I have a nasty suspicion that between the bad guys and then a later hero release, the total will end up being way more than the box alone. Oh well, If I can convince myself to get it (There is really only the one model I really, really wanted out the whole box anyway, but the rest will make for nice conversion material) then I won't be getting the other stuff out this week and that will be sold out by the time I can be bothered to do another order.

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On 5/17/2021 at 12:20 PM, Clan's Cynic said:

I don't think GW especially care if scalpers get to them. Ultimately they're selling all their stock and getting all their money whether or not Scrooge McDuck gets a x1000 copies to scalp or x1000 individual Lil Timmy's and Tara's get them. Once it's sold it's out of their hands. Sure they put things like "Limited to 1 per order" but it's not like the major scalpers don't have bots ordering and sending them to the same address. FOMO is probably touted as a good thing by the guy/gal who gets to go into investor meetings and show how they get thousands of people spam F5'ing their webstores at 10am to buy their product because "it's so valuable to them."

You're making a couple of pretty cynical assumptions here.  If they didn't care about scalpers they wouldn't have modified their website to limit customers to 1 purchase per account.  We don't know if there's any form of de-duplicate order mechanism in place for those limited products either.  Yes scalpers still exist and are (in my view) the scourge of the earth, however the number of limited ed products being listed on ebay has dramatically reduced since GW implemented a 1 per account limit on some products.

 

On 5/17/2021 at 1:53 PM, Mikosan said:

I'm a little baffled by the hand wringing and teeth gnashing over this.  How is the double whammy of covid lockdowns and brexit not the obvious issues at work here?  Unless folks really think GW just didn't want them, specifically, to have a copy.  Pretty sure if they could have sold every single person that wanted one a copy they would have.  There was the note on the warscrolls provided in the box about being updated for November.  So clearly production is behind.  Thats not just cursed city, all production is behind and with AoS 3 coming up I'm sure time on the production line is at a premium.  Now that is not an excuse for poor communication, but maybe its just a matter of fitting in another production run to the jam packed schedule.  Maybe they don't even know when that will be.  Maybe they do and it's a couple months off, who knows.  After 20+ years in this hobby, I know that for some folks, a big part of the hobby is crapping on GW.  Lord knows they've not helped themselves over the years, I just don't think, given the state of the world and operating during lockdowns etc.. this is entirely warranted.  

The biggest issue has been that people were assured by Games Workshop that Cursed City was going to be a stock item, but after it launched it turned into a limited edition run that sold out pretty quickly which resulted in some people missing the opportunity to pick up a copy.  Unlike Indomitus last year a second "made to order" wave wasn't offered.  This has been exacerbated because GW have gone completely radio silent on it - we've not had a painting video or play through for the game since it was released and it's vanished off the website, which has got people questioning if we're going to see any expansions or future support (the game rules do mention expansions).

As you say, it's given the anti-GW brigade a huge amount of ammunition which will have made the situation worse.  The whole thing boils down to a communication break down.  The root cause most likely is covid/brexit/production (probably all of them), currently the issue is that nothing has been communicated out to correct what was at best a mistake and at worse misinformation.  For a company that has heavily invested (and succeeded) in improving their image and connection to their customer base, this incident has knocked a lot of people's confidence in the company.

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2 hours ago, RexHavoc said:

I have a nasty suspicion that between the bad guys and then a later hero release, the total will end up being way more than the box alone. Oh well, If I can convince myself to get it (There is really only the one model I really, really wanted out the whole box anyway, but the rest will make for nice conversion material) then I won't be getting the other stuff out this week and that will be sold out by the time I can be bothered to do another order.

The only indications we have, the Vampire heroes, are selling for 22,50-25 euros per model. So just the player heroes will be more than the box price. Total will probably be about 250-300% of the box price (and that is still not including the rest of the game).

Edited by zilberfrid
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2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

You're making a couple of pretty cynical assumptions here.  If they didn't care about scalpers they wouldn't have modified their website to limit customers to 1 purchase per account.  We don't know if there's any form of de-duplicate order mechanism in place for those limited products either.  Yes scalpers still exist and are (in my view) the scourge of the earth, however the number of limited ed products being listed on ebay has dramatically reduced since GW implemented a 1 per account limit on some products.

Every company is different obviously but to throw my 2 cents in, I've worked with a few companies around limited edition/easily scalpable goods. In general I'd say most companies don't care about scalpers as much as they care about the purchasing process feeling fair and avoiding bad PR from it. There's no magic number but there is a 'good' level where it speeds up the sell out time, creates a little fomo but customers don't feel ripped off.

Obviously Cursed City feels like it's got serious scalper issues but I'm not sure if it's any worse than other releases or if it just feels worse because of the extra attention. 

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In another similar thread I did the long form satire take on the situation but from the outside looking in this looks like:

1) a classic enterprise resource planning (ERP) blow up exacerbated by COVID & Brexit

2) by a publicly traded company that isn’t going to make any commentary until their accountants have determined whether or not this will require a write-off

Fully understand the consumer frustration re:communication but with two decades in the investment community also understand that there are legal and regulatory implications to any communication referencing potentially material economic impacts for publicly traded companies.

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2 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

The only indications we have, the Vampire heroes, are selling for 22,50-25 euros per model. So just the player heroes will be more than the box price. Total will probably be about 250-300% of the box price (and that is still not including the rest of the game).

The vampire faction in it are going to be available this weekend as a box in their own right which should kick the stool out from under that, and as they're in the battletome they're not going to go away.

In game, interestingly you have to take the lot as a single drop entity for 700 points.

Edited by Kaleb Daark
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49 minutes ago, Mattrulesok said:

Every company is different obviously but to throw my 2 cents in, I've worked with a few companies around limited edition/easily scalpable goods. In general I'd say most companies don't care about scalpers as much as they care about the purchasing process feeling fair and avoiding bad PR from it. There's no magic number but there is a 'good' level where it speeds up the sell out time, creates a little fomo but customers don't feel ripped off.

Would absolutely agree each company will handle this in a different way.  I work for a company that sells (amongst other things) PPE, so we had quite a few people trying to buy up huge quantities of stock at the beginning of the pandemic to resell.  Thankfully for us we have a mechanism that picks orders like that up (we had one person cancelling that type of order left right and centre for a couple of days).  The point I was trying to get across is that we don't know what (if any) other systems GW has in place.  Speaking to various staff over the years, they share the same opinion of scalpers that we do.

Interestingly glancing through eBay, I think one impact that the limited to one restriction has had is that more individuals seem to be picking up one copy and selling it on if they're not going to use it.

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2 minutes ago, Kaleb Daark said:

The vampire faction in it are going to be available this weekend as a box in their own right which should kick the stool out from under that, and as they're in the battletome they're not going to go away.

In game, interestingly you have to take the lot as a single drop entity for 700 points.

Yes they are, but without communication from GW on the game itself there are people that are hesitant to go buying up models at a jacked up price if GW are just going to turn around next week and announce Cusred City reprint or made to order. We can take a stab at the price of the minis by just looking at how jacked up they were for the indomitus were. Two sets are going to be pretty close to the price of the entire game.

I didn't buy the set as it was promised to be around for while and quite honestly I'm sick of having to rush out of bed on a Saturday morning, desperate to log in to try and order only to not get it anyway as GW have been overselling stock like made, meaning I'm left chasing my money back again. I've given up the pre-order chasing with GW now as its become a horrible shopping experience. If I miss out on something then that money goes else where now. I love AoS but I'm buying next to no models from GW for use in it now, those that I do it when its like a start collecting, battleforce or a broken realms set. I'm buying more and more historical & alternative models, they are cheaper and for the most part, I can log on when ever I want to buy them. My group are already sticking legacy rules, we are pretty much no longer supporting AoS and we've spoken to others doing exactly the same. Having been able to pick up cursed city easily would have lead to a lot more sales- I'd have run an entire cursed city AoS skirmish campaign which would had lead to:

Buying all/any new bosses/Xpacs
Buying the new zombie/skeletons (as they fit the set ones. I'm certainly never going to be convinced to buy skeletons at €45 for any other reason. €60 for 91 models elsewhere)
Buying other models from AoS to convert to new heroes/NPCs/Creatures
Probably would have brought the book alongside game
More paint as might as well chuck some in with order (I always bulk buy paints and buy top ups when I get down to a coupe of pots of favourite colours)

Instead that money will probably go to stocking up on even more oathmark kits (again). Then I get to look forward to people complaining online that 'Those models are not AoS/You are not supporting the game/You are not really playing games in set in AoS with those models etc. Good times.

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My angle was that was very keen to pick up Cursed City. I loved the models and I was prepared for a medium term core product (at few years restocked) and short term expansions. I didn't really get into Blackstone, but I wanted to get into Cursed City. I also foresaw that getting into it would likely result in me owning enough core vampire models to do a bit of casual "I'm not starting a vampire army but I am" move. 

 

However because I thought it would be medium term I wasn't ordering it on the day it went live; not because I wasn't keen, I simply did not have the money. Plus I had zero pressure on me to try and scrounge up the cash quick because I didn't think it would vanish. It vanishing is a disappointment. I appreciate that its clearly something going wrong for GW and I'm sad that they've chosen radio silence over informing us. "We got something wrong sorry" is better for me than radio silence where we are left with a million theories why and no simple answer. 

 

I'm very pleased to see the models that I liked from it are going on individual sale. When I saw CC originally I got a feeling that GW were going to pair it much closer to their core armies than Blackstone was; which actually made me more keen to get the CC Game. I wanted to own the game because I figured the models had a duel use for me. Even if I might not actually get to play CC for years I'd still get a lot out of the models. 

 

As it stands now I don't own any vampire models; I don't own CC; I don't have temptation to buy into the models as they appear to be going on general sale (if direct from GW which suggests white box which further suggests something went wrong with CC for GW to go that path and not have colour boxes for them). So chances are any vampire army from me is either a long way off or shelved (just through me being inspired by a LOT of GW armies and thus not having huge loyalties to just one or two forces forever

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On 5/17/2021 at 1:53 PM, Mikosan said:

I'm a little baffled by the hand wringing and teeth gnashing over this.  How is the double whammy of covid lockdowns and brexit not the obvious issues at work here?  Unless folks really think GW just didn't want them, specifically, to have a copy.  Pretty sure if they could have sold every single person that wanted one a copy they would have.  There was the note on the warscrolls provided in the box about being updated for November.  So clearly production is behind.  Thats not just cursed city, all production is behind and with AoS 3 coming up I'm sure time on the production line is at a premium.  Now that is not an excuse for poor communication, but maybe its just a matter of fitting in another production run to the jam packed schedule.  Maybe they don't even know when that will be.  Maybe they do and it's a couple months off, who knows.  After 20+ years in this hobby, I know that for some folks, a big part of the hobby is crapping on GW.  Lord knows they've not helped themselves over the years, I just don't think, given the state of the world and operating during lockdowns etc.. this is entirely warranted.  

What's been said here and widely by many, many people is the complete lack of communication. If they had just said, it's Tax changes, Brexit, shipping delays, Covid hitting production, basically anything, they would have taken customers with them. Instead they never let up for a second on the hype, building an expectation and demand they knew by then they couldnt meet. That is just bad business. Give people a reason, even if its vague and whatever solution is practical (the models will come out seperately) and then move on. Thats that would happen with any other company. Bond film late - production problems, garden rake out of stock - Covid shipping. Wiping all social media content and pretending the product never existed - fail. 

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1 hour ago, novakai said:

TBF Radio silence has been GW's Habit of communicating recently, so I was not really surprise that they didn't address CC at all. 

the only time they really communicate is when their scheduling release has shifted or been delay,

Honestly, radio silence is pretty much their modus operandi and has been for years.

I think some people (myself included) expected more from them considering they even pointed it out in the last shareholders letter saying that they need to do better when they muck stuff up (I may be paraphrasing there!)

We can always hope from better from them though- they charge a premium price and claim to be the best miniatures. Trouble is, there are other companies out there that charge a lot less and don't make bold claims- even better for me, I can buy them at any time of day, any day of the week. I've also managed to get a refund quickly and without hassle when there has been a stock issue and more often than not, the issues been brought to my attention. With GW it is a case of email after a couple of weeks of it not showing and hope that either the order is covid delayed or wait another week to find out that they've cancelled it and just not bother telling me/refunding for it.

Their communication is really next to none. Their little social media presence is advertising disguised as interactions.

I love the models, games and universes. I'm just sick of them making it as much of a mission to buy an item or three as they have done and then seeing the community lash out at those that have had to chase items/repeatedly chase refunds/chase any sort of information.

 

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On 5/16/2021 at 10:57 PM, Chikout said:

Speculation:

2. There are shipping issues from China.

This is the issue, well, more precisely, there is a paper shortage.

I know because it severely messed up the timing for CMON's A Song of Ice and Fire game (https://asoiaf.cmon.com/news/a-song-of-ice-and-fire-2021-digital-updates). They are trying to do a big update with new cards and it got pushed back. They looked into getting in printed in other countries but it kept falling through or was too expensive. I imagine GW was doing the same for Cursed City.

I believe GW intended to do another print, but now they aren't sure if/when it will happen. 

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3 minutes ago, lare2 said:

Interestingly, there's a rather large article in this month's WD dedicated to Cursed City. 

Which issue as I want all the cursed city stuff! If fingers crossed it comes back

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9 minutes ago, CDM said:

Which issue as I want all the cursed city stuff! If fingers crossed it comes back

464 mate. Due out this weekend but I subscribe so it comes a few days early. 

6 pages dedicated to it. 

Edited by lare2
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I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned but I spoke to a couple people I know at GW and cursed city was cut as over the most recent lockdown in the UK we are only now exciting their UK print company went bust, the had big plans with them including cursed city and they had closed their China facility due to this. It’s not the best scenario but it’s one I can understand due to the unforeseen circumstances.

 

what I personally disagree with is the handling of the situation, all they needed to do was clearly explain the situation and apologise for the misinformation. What they did was sly and pushing comments under the rug didn’t help.

Thankfully I’m not interested in cursed city but I definitely feel for others. Hopefully this doesn’t happen again. 

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On 5/18/2021 at 10:35 PM, Darnok said:

This.

Originally I was relieved that GW did not throw yet another FOMO box at us... and then this whole affair blew up. Having the "miniboss box" coming as a seperate release is great, since I seriously grieved having missed out on those - but still, having the whole box would be preferable. Not going to happen apparently, so I'll take these* with a laughing and a crying eye.

 

* ... if the price ain't pants-on-head bonkers that is. So... who knows? :ph34r:

I'm cautious after seeing the prices of the Indomitus character sprues, I won't be spending 80-100 euro on one or two sprues no matter how nice the minis are. 

Hoping the prices are more reasonable though, to make up for missing out on cursed city.

It was the first quest game I was interested to get into, and planned to get all the expansions, not sure how likely a reprint is now, but it would be a shame to drop it when there was such interest in it.

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6 hours ago, MarkK said:

I'm cautious after seeing the prices of the Indomitus character sprues, I won't be spending 80-100 euro on one or two sprues no matter how nice the minis are.

Aye, and I kind of fear to know the actual price. My personal limit is set at 65€ - steep, but I can justify it for myself. Any more and I'm out.

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