[Getting Priced Out]

3 hours ago, Overread said:

GW already produces everything (save for endless spells and terrain) in-house. The New Factory isn't to allow them to produce at home, its allowing them to expand their production capacity. They also invested in a new warehousing system and site as well. Which I assume means that with the new factory and warehouse they'd be able to produce at a greater volume for a longer period of time and to produce larger overseas shipments to reduce the chances of overseas sites running out of stock.

So it like as not won't have any impact on prices at all. It wasn't made to allow GW cheaper production (if anything its increased their overheads) its to allow them greater production as a result of them increasing their range significantly and their increasing customerbase. 

In Oz we are having major issues with supplies. Most stores have had lets say 20% of their items out of stock for months now. 

Paints seem to be the worst. Dryad Bark almost doesn't exist in Australia at the moment. 

[Getting Priced Out]

15 hours ago, Cordova said:

Actually casting the models is cheap, but designing the models and making the moulds is less so.  According to N1SB on the Bolter and Chainsword who's gone through their accounts, their profit margin is in line with Lego - about 75% (obviously, that includes logistics, store costs, pensions, etc), which is still seriously high.

Designing models? They'd be making a fortune on those potato space marine releases they've been vomiting out lately which look like half baked attempts to Frankenstein two existing kits together to make a new one. 

[Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS?]

5 hours ago, Popisdead said:

I agree.  Granted it's not always flash new models.  Kroak looking at you.

No argument from me on that one. Kroaks comets call is a rather unpleasant spell when it can be cast anywhere. It encourages seraphon players to hide Kroak behind terrain so you can't get near him which is pretty frustrating and given his abilities, its not a model you can ignore. I'm not a huge fan of mechanics that encourage narrow tactics. I played freeguild as my first army and the hit bonuses for shooty boys meant all i ever did was hermit and murder which wasn't fun for my opponents. Haven't had much luck changing it up though 😆

[AoS 2 - Maggotkin of Nurgle Discussion]

7 minutes ago, Hannibal said:

You should do quite nice with a horde of models. GUOs aren´t particularly strong and that list severly lacks any damage output. Whenever I played low model Nurgle lists – even against new players – I lost due to low model count. Remember that you can hold / occupy an objective just by having more models around which isn´t that difficult if your opponent fields 17 models.

A mounted terrorgheist should be able to quite easily handle those GUOs. And if you get the charge with 20 Ghouls on a 5 man unit of Blightkings – especially with the double fighting ability of FEC – that unit of Blightkings won´t last long.

In addition, with FEC you should be able to start the game with around 20% more points due to your superior summoning.

 

Honestly, I can´t see any reason why this Nurgle list can win against FEC.

Exploding 6's smashed my 20 man ghoul units which i was using to tie them up and i had the zombie dragon which whiffed only taking 6 wounds off the GUO. 

I just find it hard to deal damage on the big guys who heal so well. 

[What would you like to see for 3rd edition?]

On 8/26/2020 at 1:33 AM, Ganigumo said:

I really don't want to see a 3.0, but i'll make a wishlist anyways.

• Priority rolls remain: battles are unpredictable and so are games, it forces adaptation. Most of the "Problems" result from poor army/warscroll design and the idea of a double turn is largely fine in a game with a heavier focus on melee combat
• Strengthen look out sir: either make it a -2, pass off wounds on a 4+, or readjust line of sight rules so models can't be spotted as easily ("my archer can see your wizard's staff over your troll so I can shoot it") maybe something as as simple as larger bases block line of sight to smaller bases if they're 7 or less wounds.
• Points going digital: print them in battletomes/ghb if you want, but make them accessibly digitally for free and put more cool stuff like battleplans and Anvil of apotheosis in the GHB
• DO NOT POINT UNIT OPTIONS: I've been dabbling in 40k a bit since the new edition after dropping it for a few years and the way points is laid out is awful, a unit's weapons are not built into their cost, so in order to figure out the cost of something you need to reference: the warscoll, the unit points table, and possibly several equipment point tables. Its just too much,  and doesn't add anything of value, since different equipment has vastly different values on different units anyways.
• Keep the core rules as small as possible: 40k has way too many rules that should be moved from being keywords in the rule book, to information on the warscroll. This is something AoS already does that is great and hopefully won't change. The less things we need to reference the better.
• Reduced amount of bravery 10 and army wide battleshock immunity. I think battleshock immunity is fine if there are restrictions on it.
• Destruction to finally get some narrative focus (and characters, the entire GA only has 2 named characters with rules)
• return of gitmob (Rippa's snarlfangs are way too cool to be a one off)
• Proper rewrites of monster warscrolls, it seems that recently they've gotten the hang of it with the giant cows, and hopefully gargants follow suit.
• Clarity on what sources are matched play legal, and for how long, and which aren't
• New beasts of chaos models, Every "new" BoC model is amazing, but the line is so old. That new Slaangor looks amazing, I don't even play the army but I don't think I could resist if they had a few more newer sculpts like that, I've already got way too many Tzaangor for my Tzeentch army
• Anvil of Apotheosis built into new battletomes

 

- I would agree that battleshock has become a complete joke. Too many armies ignore it with abilities and silly CP generation. 

- Remove spells that affect the whole board/don't require line of site.

[What would you like to see for 3rd edition?]

On 8/25/2020 at 3:55 AM, Kirby said:

Personally, if i wanted to shake up list building,  i’d start by getting rid of battleline requirements.  I mean, how do battleline requirements benefit players’ enjoyment?  

If we really do need battleline, GW could add a battleline keyword to warscrolls and incentivise their inclusion with something like command points.  An even easier solution would be to simply cut their point/monetary cost.  If they were cheaper players would be more likely, but not compelled to use them.

I dont think this would be game-breaking. 

I absolutely loath playing games against armies with minimum battleline. I think it provides more balance to games and needs to be improved to stop people running lists of 3 x 5 tree revenants and then treelords or the equivalent to fill the rest of the points. 

[The Relevance of Battleline]

On 8/27/2020 at 3:37 AM, OkayestDM said:

I've been contemplating the function that battleline fulfills in AoS, and I'm not sure if I think it's really necessary at this stage of the game.

Battleline units aren't balanced between factions. In some factions they're among the best units you can take, whereas in others they are considered a waste of valuable points.

Some factions have so many options that they don't even have to worry about it, whereas others have tight restrictions on what can be battleline. This in and of itself would be fine if it was used to reign in more powerful factions, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I understand that the thematic point of Battleline units is that they represent the basic or fundamental troops of each army, and while that is excellent for things like narrative play, I'm not sure it currently serves a purpose in matched play.

What are your thoughts? Is there an element to this that I'm missing?

I feel like the rules around battlelines are too loose. I absolutely loath coming up against 2k lists with minimum battlelines. 

I don't know if the solution is to make point scoring battleline specific or make minimum battleline points based on the size of the game. 

[AoS 2 - Maggotkin of Nurgle Discussion]

I'm not a Nurgle player but a friend in my group plays a list i just cannot get past (tried FEC and nighthaunt and been stomped both times) in 1k point games:

Great Unclean One (Bloated with corruption trait, blades of putrefaction) - 320

Rotigus ( sumptuous pestilence) - 320

5 x Blightkings - 140

5 x Blightkings - 140

5 x Chaos Warriors - 90

Yeh it goes over by 10 points but they're only friendly games so we don't stress too much. 

I just can't bring down the two big boys and keep the blightkings tied up in 5 turns. Nurgle is tough. 

[Is Death the WORST faction in AoS?]

6 hours ago, Btimmy said:

People who think PE was broken are people who couldn't think of any other strategy than "run up with my dudes and try to smash." PE lists, same as all OBR lists were extremely vulnerable to shooting, mortals, and out of combat fighting, which the other top lists have in droves. Couple this weakness with OBR's complete lack of offensive spell casting and mortal wound output and the only thing allowing them to play with the top tables was their rock solid defense. They have no tricks, limited mobility, and an extremely simple game plan. PE was a legion that buffed both their offensive and defensive powers. Without it, OBR is pillow fisted and still vulnerable to all of the weaknesses it had before. Furthermore, the PE nerf is going to only hurt OBR list diversity. Katakros and Mortis Praetorians is going to be the list going forward. Gone are the varied days of Nagash being playable. 

PE are not a fun match up for a lot of armies. A lot of commentary is that they just weren't fun to play against. I certainly didn't enjoy a game against OBR. The OBR player knew what you had to do to avoid their cheese and it was wash rinse and repeat for most games against them. Yawn, 

[Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS?]

4 hours ago, Popisdead said:

This isn't a Bolt Action forum and I would suspect very few people play the game.  It is moot to argue it's a counter point to AoS's lack of balance.  

If you want to play AoS play it.  If you want to play BA play it.  If you want to play Oldhammer play it.  I'm not slamming Bolt Action, I'm saying it's more a sign of personal slight towards GW to argue that point than BA being "perfectly balanced".  Belabouring that point isn't going to do much other than validate gamers like to complain online.  

Expecting reasonable balance is surely a good thing to strive for.  I've played Wood Elves and Beasts of Chaos since 2003.  Neither of those armies have had great track records apart from 6th ed and early 7th ed dominance of WE.  BoC were fun after their AoS release.  Do I care?  It's a crumby deal.  I would like GW to balance the warscrolls into the game more but do I feel entitled that will happen?  Not sure, I was actually pretty happy BoC got a Battletome and didn't get put into Legends.  

 For now I see the game as what it is, I see the gaming industry for what it is.  

I can also get on board @Saxon when you talk about the cynic it is a marketing plan previously powerful armies got a nerf.  Sylvaneth looking at you.  

But at the end of the day, play or don't.  There isn't really an alternative.  The game is change and stuff falls by the wayside.  

BA a miniature board game. I get that it makes people uncomfortable that other games might be more balanced thus reflecting poorly on GW but it is comparable.

BA isn't perfect. I'm not arguing that at all. I'm suggesting that AOS has atrocious balance which seems to conveniently align with flashy new models. I play Cities of Sigmar, Nighthaunt and Sylvaneth. I still play AOS, i'm even still painting it. I have just decided against investing in another army given my concerns with the state of the game. 

I take further issue with the huge gap between new armies and older ones. Legions of Nagash are in an absolutely awful state right now and they had a 2nd ed tome. It's greatly concerning that an army can be so badly  affected in such a short period of time. 

[Gotchahammer and Social Contract]

My biggest pet hate is people who roll dice without explaining what they're doing. Spell-casting is the worst. I have frequent opponents who just roll the dice and then claim "oh that one failed it was only a mystic shield, now i'm casting my f*ck you spell" after spending 3 turns casting the 'f*ck you' spell first.

Another one is not explaining their artefacts/spell choices before the game and then surprise its very convenient that you chose a very situational spell without telling me. 

I frequently get accused to trying to slow the game down for asking an opponent why he's rolling 21 dice instead of the 14 from the previous turn. How am i meant to know you've used a command ability.... how many command points are you up to now...... 

Communication in a game is key. If you can't explain what you are doing and how you are doing it you're probably doing it wrong. Furthermore, it's important to never get upset about rules queries. Your opponent has a right to know how you are doing what you are doing. There can be a lot of special abilities in a game and people do make mistakes so it is more than fair to make them double check something. 

[Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS?]

On 8/23/2020 at 6:40 PM, Belper said:

This is more or less a myth. 'Powergamers' tend to be thrifty a lot of the time. The nature of needing to build, assemble, and paint 'new hotness' units in order to actually be able to use them limits the amount of full faction changes to people who either have pre-existing collections, ridiculous amounts of money, or people looking to enter into factions like space marines that can be acquired(especially prepainted) relatively cheaply. You'll either see a large percentage of their army being purchased second hand or through discount box sets, or they simply stick to a handful of factions and only make purchases that are relevant to those factions. Sure, if one UNIT get broken to hell and gone people will flock to that, but the number of individuals who have the combination of time and money to create tournament ready armies of brand new factions essentially out of the blue, within the time frame where their powerlevel is significantly above curve, is very small.

A myth? This is another deflection to avoid criticizing GW for some really stupid rules in new factions.  In our community, a lot of people will spend a fortune and get an army commission painted to get the best. We know this because after the inevitable nerf from our masters after they've pushed enough product the amount of them coming up for sale with commission painted specified to try and recoup as much money as possible on buy/swap/sell sites in massive.

If i wasn't significantly reducing my spending on GW products i would be able to pick up some really cheap full armies of bonereapers or Slaanesh haha

[Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS?]

1 hour ago, Popisdead said:

No game Games Workshop has released has ever been balanced.  Next to no games out there are balanced, that have any interest in them.  There are way too many factors.  

I don't know what BA is like now but it used to be so terrible that the community wrote the 1.5 rules which were the standard.  Calling it balanced now makes me think it's been homogenized even more so to be pretty week.  Or you are just claiming that.  And since I don't play it any longer and this is an AoS forum,.. seems pointless.

You also seem to not understand what perfect balance is.  You can care about balance all you want.  You can have the expectation of it.  Feel free to yell about it all you want on the internet.  I just won't happen.  

BA is up to 2nd edition which is pretty well balanced. Germans can be hard to play with but the gap between the best and worst factions is not even close to AOS. It's also not homogenized, each faction has its special rules that do factor into the game. It's a lot simpler and that is quite different to AOS. Some people would like that, some don't, each to their own. 

There surely has to be a reasonable expectation of balance. These forums become tiresome when people will make any excuse to defend GW and their tendancy to cheese new abilities and then nerf them later as if it was accidental. The cynic in me feels like the regularity that this now seems to happen means that its part of the marketing plan to appeal to the power gamers who will drop a fortune to have a flashy new army. Sure it works. But it's a collective eye roll from my gaming group seeing these flash rules come out each time a faction is updated. 

[Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS?]

25 minutes ago, Orsino said:

I don't really get this. Yes, you can argue that no game is truly perfectly balanced, but some games are a hell of a lot more balanced than others.  Chess is extremely balanced, something like Bolt Action is pretty balanced whilst still having distinctive factions that play differently, and AoS is very unbalanced.  Why would the difficulty of achieving perfect balance make a better level of balance an unreasonable expectation or something people shouldn't care about? 

I was going to bring up Bolt Action. I have been playing this game recently and find the balance enjoyable (mostly because i have older AOS armies that get stomped frequently by command point spamming +++ save new armies). Bolt action seems to come down to list building and tactics and making the most out of your armies special rules.  In the dozen or so games we have all played we rarely have absolute stompings like we have seen with AOS. 

I think GW's problem seems to be sales driven where new AOS releases (Slaanesh and OBR come to mind) completely blow everything out of the water which attracts a lot of interest and makes them a lot of money. When us rusted on players whinge too much they just nerf it. I'm not a fan of this approach. 

[AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion]

On 7/21/2020 at 1:22 PM, Neinball said:

Not really. OBR already had a pretty wide selection of viable lists, they were all just petrifex.

I'd wager you're likely to see even less variation in lists now because mortek guard are going to be even more valuable now for the less survivable subfactions. 

I have rarely seen anything but huge blocks of mortek guard used. Honestly i've only really seen the same core build used. 

This is a problem GW have though. Too many newer releases have seen people zero in on almost singular builds

[AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion]

2 minutes ago, Obeisance said:

RIP Petrifex Elite.

I have a team tournament in a month.  What the hell do I do now?

Thank god for this. So so sick of seeing single builds for OBR. I have found PE to be the most unfun list to play against. 

It will encourage players to look at alternative list builds and will improve GW sales as  people scramble to remain WAAC 😄

[How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?]

9 hours ago, Ravinsild said:

I guess it never occurred to me where to look. However just having a few solid stable brushes would be nice! Mostly it’s my Small Layer brush that gets messed up. I do a TON of tiny detail work and edge highlighting. 

I am the same. I destroy my small layer brushes. They're lucky to last a fortnight. I have purchased a couple of army painter brushes to test them out and so far they seem fairly durable in comparison. Like many things you get what you pay for. 

[How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?]

9 hours ago, Rodiger said:

I am just curious, how does Bolt Action compare in price from the U.K to the Australia, does it have a similar markup in price like GW stuff has, or is it the same price as the U.K stuff? I have no idea why Australia costs so much more, if Bolt Action has a similar markup then it could be import fees and taxes, if it doesn't then it might be GW using costs for running GW stores etc. My mate is from New Zealand and he says New Zealand pay an extortionate amount too, I have also been in a GW shop in Japan and the prices in there were astronomical. 

As an example, a Waffen SS starter set (1000 points) is 90 Pounds Sterling (equivalent to $167AUD).  It retails in Aus for $202.50 (we don't have warlord all stockists are independent retailers). The mark up is therefore about 22%. It's still a lot, but you can get a playable army for way cheaper with Warlord games.

I think its not terribly dissimilar to GW but the price point for what you get is a fair bit lower. Quality of sculpts etc. can be argued. GW has some fantastic models whereas the WWII era games is lower. 

As per some of the earlier comments in this thread, in Aus we have extortionate rents, high minimum wages as well as import costs (freight and tarrifs) so we are always going to pay a higher amount. I'm just disappointed that GW would choose this time to raise prices when affordability of their games is already very difficult and 6 million people in our country are now out of work. 

[How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?]

13 hours ago, Marcvs said:

Whatever your opinion on the issue (I do not have a strong one myself), I think that looking a the increase in prices in absolute terms might be a little misleading. What's a few dollars/euros anyway? The problem with that is that a yearly increase of 1$ over a 40$ product is a 2.5% - 2% increase year over year. I don't know much about Australia, but that would be higher than the inflation rate in the US and the Eurozone for most years of the past decade.

The present increases, while not covering the full product line, are often around 10%  (if numbers floating around are to be belived, ofc). If you are in Europe the 2019-2020 inflation rate is 0.4% at the moment I believe, so that's a pretty big hit to your hobby budget: if you are an "average" worker (buying the 400 or so products getting an increase) your hobby budget can now buy you 10% less toys.

Well absolute terms is how I justify buying or not buying. I don't look at something and go "oh it's only gone up by 2.5%". There is a point when only a few dollars is just too much. 

[Josh Reynolds leaving Black Library]

22 minutes ago, Kramer said:

I recently made an audio book for/with a client. Great fun but man it’s so much work. 
It’s just crazy expensive to make. Although I would hope black library made their own studio by now. That saves a load of money as well. 

Sounds ignorant i know but i had no idea it was that expensive to make. I was thinking $20 or $30 would be fine and id pay straight away but i can't justify $52 on a book!

[How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?]

18 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

I don't know what GW pays its retail staff, but looking at minimum wages as a benchmark is quite illuminating.  

So looking at the UK Minimum Wage, it's currently GBP 8.21 per hour for adults.

That's 6.7 hours of minimum wage work to cover the sticker price of a Start Collecting BCR.

In Australia, the level 1 retail award is $21.41 (more at weekends, more at higher levels). 

That's 7.0 hours of minimum wage work to cover the sticker price of a Start Collecting BCR.

When you look at it like that, the pricing seems pretty well-adapted to local conditions.  Not everyone earns minimum wage, and GW may well pay above that, but I think it gives a good feel for the wages that selling prices need to cover for local warehousing and retail staff, what your average person can actually afford, and so on. 

Given that there are real extra costs to cover (e.g. freight + import tariff) I don't actually think the pricing structure looks that far out of whack?

This is a fair assessment .

Do you think the average person is going to analyse these sorts of things when entering a game? I'd think they're going to look at the upfront costs on the box. As those costs increase, the harder it will be to justify to new players. $100 for a small box of Sigmarines is a hard sell. Thank god for starter sets. At least GW got something right  

I looked up GW to see what things cost these days and interestingly the cost of space marines (A basic tactical squad) hasn't risen that much since i started playing 15 years ago. They're $55 now and were $40 when i first started. $1 a year increase. I have also discovered that i know nothing about 40k because there are now about 20 types of marines you can buy when back in the day there were about 5 haha!

[How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?]

20 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

Yep I certainly wouldn't disagree that we are paying over the odds one way or another!  I just wouldn't put it all at the door of the government (on this occasion).

I had a quick look at the last thing I bought, which was a Beastclaw Raiders Start Collecting.  That's GBP 55 in the UK, which is GBP 46.81 of sales revenue + VAT.

Add 5% on for tariffs (again I could be wrong), plus 10% GST, at the current Exchange Rate of 1.86 and that gives you a sticker price of AUD 100.56

Current price is AUD 150, which is a markup of 49.2%.  There's a few things chipping into that (freight, exchange rate uncertainty, higher wages etc), as well as the tariff which we've already built in.  But whatever way you slice it up, that's quite a bit of fat.

It would be quite interesting to do a "Burgernomics" analysis: how many hours does a GW retail sales assistant need to work, to buy one SC out of their wages?  I'd guess the equation then looks a lot tighter than the actual price at the actual exchange rate would suggest, and is probably a fairer comparison.

But bringing it back to the original premise: the experience in Australia suggests that as much as we might not like it as consumers, in practice, when push comes to shove people will continue to find the money even at prices significantly above those currently seen in the UK.

All very fair points but surely there is a point where even regular purchasers such as you and i go 'enough, that's too expensive'. 

Most people in my gaming group use buy/swap/sell pages and discounted sellers to reduce our hobby costs. 

A lot of my group have moved on to Bolt Action due to costs. I'm a little more stubborn and insist on completing a project before i start another one. 

[How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?]

2 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

Standard Australian import tariffs are 5% - I'm not aware of gaming miniatures attracting a special, higher tariff, but if anyone has a source I'm open to being proved wrong.  This 5% (?) tariff is only one of many factors in the pricing.  There's freight, local wages and probably higher margins for GW in there too.  

Bearing in mind that VAT represents 17.5% of sticker prices in the UK, yet GST is only 10% in Australia, I don't think it's fair or accurate to pin higher prices on  gouging by the Australian government.

I may be incorrect on the tarriffs. I was under the impression that it was considered a luxury item and thus taxed differently but i can't find anything. 

We have high rents, absurdly high minimum wages in comparison to other countries. If you want to talk about rents, i could chew your ear off about how absurd our government (at all 3 levels) are when it comes to affordability of bricks and mortar. 

Realistically though, in the UK you pay 25 pounds sterling for a box of Drayds which is $46 AUD. We pay $70 for the same box which is almost a third higher. If you want to talk about shipping, Canada pays an equivalent of $56 AUD for a box of Dryads which is 20% cheaper than us. No matter which way you look at it, any price rise hurts us badly when we already pay more for the same thing. 

Local gaming pages on Facebook have reacted extremely negatively to the price rise which has been magnified by the current Covid crisis. 

[Josh Reynolds leaving Black Library]

19 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

Heard the news today...

Guess I'll have to bump Soul Wars to the top of my reading list! this is really sad to hear he left because of creative differences... Hoping the best for him, and I'm sure he'll do well once he finds his feet again. This on top of the price hikes isn't giving me much confidence for the rest of AOS 2020

Probably unrelated somewhat but i wanted to buy audiobooks to listen to when i exercise and wowzers $52 AUD for a book (about 28GBP). 

That seems really expensive for a book and they were all the same price. I had no idea the Black Library charged so much for audiobooks. 

[How have Gw price rises affected your purchasing habits?]

In Australia we already pay about 30% more than the rest of the world for the same product (thanks government).

I honestly haven't purchased anything brand new from  GW in about 18 months (other than my recent trip to the UK) due to costs. Honestly, i'm going to start collecting Bolt Action before i start another AOS army.