Rodiger

I live in South Korea, we haven't been under any official lock down, but the schools have been closed for the past month, so subsequently I've not been working and my 4 year old daughter has been home. Despite 'not doing anything' and living Groundhog Day, I've never been more busy keeping her entertained for every waking minute. I've managed to cut out 4 blood bowl teams and build them on the rare days she goes to her grans. Got a chance to base coat them today, first I've had in 2 weeks. Base coated them white because I want to try contrast, felt very weird after years of black.

Yeah, I largely argree, I don't think they look good, it's been putting me off trying them, but that's why I asked about it on here, I was hoping after 8 months people had worked out how to make them look good. I suppose I wouldn't bother buying them now, but I bought a load so I should try them, and I would like to paint faster. I'm not the slowest painter nor the fastest, my main problem (other than finding time between work and family) is I get bored with painting the same paint scheme after about 6 models and the last ones just become a chore and the quality slips a bit as I lose interest in it and just want to get it finished. I plan on painting like I normally do, but if I can speed up aspects like; cloaks, trousers, skin, skulls and other mandatory skeletal stuff that is on everything then it would help me a long. At the same time I don't want it to be the 'one thick coat' out of the pot. Now knowing how to mix and blend it helps with that. And as I'm sure others have, I have a mountain of models sitting on sprues and no where near being painted.

Finally got a chance to watch that video, that was exactly what I was looking for, learnt a lot from that. Thanks for the other replies too.

Hi, it's been a while now since contrast was released. I bought some on release and have only used it very occasionally as a wash for certain things, skulls being the main thing (I'm so tired of skulls on every model, painting them just drives me nuts). Anyway my next paining project will probably be Blackstone Fortress or Talisman 3rd edition. I want to use contrast for the project but I haven't had much practice with it. So has anyone got any advice, tips, tutorials? There are a lot on youtube, but they are all from around release, and I'm hoping for experienced tips, what people have found after over half a year of using it. I'll most likely not be solely using contrast and I probably won't be doing the one thick coat approach from the GW vidoes. Thanks

The AOS boxes are going online only so this is my last chance to buy them from my flgs. I already own the cards, I got them from a bit site when the AOS boxes were released with the idea of buying them later. £80 is a lot for a game I haven't played yet and most likely will only use just over half the models though. I'll just take a hit on those cards, they weren't that much. One box seems fine for me. Thanks for the help.

How realistic is it to use all of the models in the second box? Or do you only end up using about half of it?

Hi, I haven't played a game of this yet, but I am wondering how necessary second boxes of the core Warbands are to play a campaign with? Can you get by with 1 or do you really need to get a second? The Warbands I'm interested in are the Splintered Fang and Corvus Cabal. Thanks.

Awesome, from looking at the map you appear to be a brief walk from my mates house so that is a bonus, and a bit of a random coincidence.

I will be back home in the North East over Christmas for the first time in years. I am wondering what independent shops there are in Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham, Darlington and Middlesbrough. I might take advantage of the large discounts that aren't normally available to me. Thanks. Just noticed the store finder on the GW site has independents, still any recommendations?

I don't think so, these are AOS boxes not War Cry. There isn't much point in including the cards for a different game system. I wonder how long they will stick around.

Double models with a discount then.

Well, from what only says '14th December, Warband name, then $65 dollars, we can't tell much. However with some inference and good old dose of wild speculation we can make some guesses. First thing is they don't say 'warcry' before the listing, although other entries also don't state the game system. The list does appear to be in game system order though and they are sandwiched between the Slaves To Darkness releases and some AOS Terrain. There is a new Warcry book listed after this. This suggests that they are part of the Slaves to Darkness release. I also don't think that it is a price rise. I agree with @passtheKhorneplease that if it were more sprues it would indeed look odd. I like the idea @Moldek has about the Killteam style release with terrain, the price seems about right. If it is part of the Slaves to Darkness release though then it may be a double set minus the cards, comparing a warband price to similar things like a Necromunda Gang, $42, what were the cards $8? that would be about right and make them $50. Could be double limited time Christmas set minus the cards, the Chrimbo boxes are on sale the week before after all. Could be 2 extra sprues instead of 3, I don't know the sprue composition well enough, are the leader and special fighters on their own sprue, or are the mixed up with the others, and is it different for every warband? I have no idea, my gut feeling is they are for Slaves to Darkness, I have no idea in what form they will turn up though.

Since I started this thread there has been 3 box set releases with eye watering prices, Feast of Bones, Necromunda Uprising and this Sister of Battle Army, (I have no interest in Sisters, but making a limited quantity boxed release, especially after 2 years worth of blogs following it, and the years of 'plastic sisters' comments, and then advertising when to get online to pre order it so you don't miss out, why make that box set limited? At least give it a decent run before it's broken down into separate units. What a reward for all your waiting. In Bird Culture that is considered a D... ...) Anyway for me, all 3 have left the realm of reality in price and gone off to crazy land. I can afford these things, I could have bought all 3 if I wished, but it's like GW are trying to outdo themselves each week with the next insanely priced release. Some recent examples include the Underworlds Beastgrave Gift Set, Champions of Dreafane Collection, the two new 40k Start Collecting boxes taken from Shadowspear, which means the Shadowspear box had a saving of $15, the Tooth and Claw box set from last year was $195 saving. We can try and justify this to ourselves anyway we want, we can compare it to other hobbies, we can compare it to eating out at restaurants, we can talk about the production costs and the prices of injection molding, we can even claim that these things are 'great value' if we bought them separately, but the cost of them separately is so inflated anyway that it shows how brainwashed we are. But we are still buying it, the Sisters box sold out, so did the Feast of Bones and I've seen people being delighted with the Necromunda one. Sorry I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I've just been scratching my head a lot over the last couple of months when the new releases come out and this weekend has been no exception, I'm not rage quitting or anything, but I'm certainly not spending anything at the moment.

Sorry of this has been covered before, I couldn't see anything though. From looking through the leaked release schedule and price list for November and December that has been floating around for a few weeks, there are the War Cry warbands listed as a release for 14th December with a U.S price of $65. So far that leak has been spot on with release, date and price so it looks legit. Does anyone know what this is? At face value it looks like a straight up $15 price increase, which with current GW pricing would not surprise me, but it is the same release week as the Slaves To Darkness Battletome which makes me wonder if they are a rebox without the cards and more models. What do people think?

This has wandered wildly off topic, but I found this interesting. https://magalparts.com/why-are-injection-molds-so-expensive/ I still don't understand how that Land Raider mold cost £100,000, I'd really like to see a cost breakdown, just so I can understand it. That is a lot of money, you can buy a house for that. I am assuming the price of mold production for GW must have gone down in the 10-15 years since that article was printed, and when they tool a mold they probably have a number of different kits cut into the same piece of steel. They cram so much into a single sprue nowadays, they must be maximising as much of the mold as physically possible, you can tell the age of a kit just by looking at how much space is between bits. Anyway this should be in another thread if it is interesting enough to carry on with.

I'm not meaning to be rude, but this warcry discussion should maybe go to the warcry forum.

@Pariah Thanks for the reply, I found your opinion very interesting. It also made me feel a bit sad too, you had to get a 30 hour a week job to support your hobby, and it is also disheartening that it is too expensive for your friends. It is also not just teenagers who get caught out with the paint, I have a friend in his 30's who is put off by that too.

I do wonder how this will affect teenagers. I think teenagers are the lifeblood of this hobby, anecdotally I think most of us start as teenagers, there was a poll on here that seemed to back that up too. Warhammer isn’t a cool thing to do, it is easier as a teenager to get into as a lot of us aren’t that cool then anyway, you can meet other likeminded people, form social groups. Anyway the typical pattern from what I can tell seems to be, start as a teenager, have a break over uni/first employment or whatever, then get into the hobby again in your late 20’s when you have more cash. The point being is that when we are older we will spend more because we can, but if we didn’t start as teenagers, many of us wouldn’t take it up when we are older. GW are competing with other things like computer games and other war/boardgames, with the current prices of models and the extra costs of paints, tools, as well as scenery and rule books, you are already approaching the cost of a games console. Games consoles are more cool, there are lot’s of people all over the world to play with at the push of a button, buying a game is now the same or cheaper than buying a unit for your army, you don’t have to do anything, like you don’t have to build and paint a computer game to use it. So, if you are a teenager, you are completely dependant on parents for this hobby, you mainly always were, but I can see it being a hard sell to parents who did/do not play Warhammer themselves. Not even a part time job is going to really be enough anymore. If the prices normalise at a point where it stops teenagers taking up the hobby, then it’s the start of a slow death. Sorry if that is a bit hyperbole, but thinking back to when I was a teenager, it was expensive then, and not coming from the richest of families it was hard enough for my dad to really get me anything, I was limited to birthdays and Christmas. I think if they were the current prices (inflation adjusted), he may have just said, sorry son, no.

GW has always been an expensive hobby, and compared to smoking it is a much better deal, it's cheaper, it lasts longer, and it doesn't kill you, but unlike with a price rise in smokes which at least you know is designed to make you stop and the taxes will go the the nhs (if you live in the uk) but with this price rise I didn't feel like I was getting anything out of it, and this has been another reason which has affected my spending. We all know GW have had some record years for profits, and that has just made it feel like a cash grab. It doesn't feel like an inflation adjusting price rise, I am not getting something better, I'm not getting more, and in most cases I'm just getting the same thing. Thankfully I am in a position where the price rises haven't stopped me being able to afford to buy anything extra, it is more I now feel like I am getting ripped off. And as VBS said on here before, 'having money to spend is not a reason to get ripped off'. From reading through all this, which I am finding very interesting. It seems people who generally spend less are not as bothered by the price rises, and people who spend more are, which shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. Maybe the ones who do spend more are being moved into the spend less bracket. I wish I had access to those 'cheap' online stores. They make me want to cry anytime I go on them. ( I'm a British expat if this is confusing to why I appear to be British but with no access to these stores btw)

It is certainly making me do this!

It seems people have been cancelling bigger purchases, I wonder are you still buying smaller things like a single unit box? This has all just got me thinking about spending patterns. I have no idea what the average yearly customer spend is, like the mode not the median or the mean. So out of their total consumer base do the most amount of people spend under £150 a year and this is where they make most of their profit? A price rise across the board would not be so much for these people as it is only a couple of pounds on something they occasionally buy, and the people who spend more than this already spend so much more than the majority that if they don’t buy as much it won’t be noticed. Or is it that customers spend much more than this and they are gambling that they will continue to spend more? Do they just discount the people who spend over £1000 pounds a year as being so far down the rabbit hole that they will just buy anything? This is a micro sample, but it appears people are spending less, is the price rise pushing people into the under £150 or £100 a year bracket. If this is where they make most of their money does it matter, or has it been a bad gamble and profits will down. All of this is guess work on my behalf, I have zero data to work with, I am interested if anyone knows though. For myself with smaller purchases it has put me off a bit, I have been thinking about buying another Bloodbowl team, there is no rush, I am not playing it right now, but I would have just bought it and put in on my shelf to get to later, but the increase and including postage has just pushed it over the edge of being reasonable for me, and it can wait until I actually need it, if I ever do.

So before we start, this isn't a post about complaining or justifying price rises, merely how they have affected you. I had thought of making a post at the turn of the year asking for peoples total yearly spend on gw products. I had quite an expensive year where I spent well over 1000 pounds. This made me feel like I had some sort of addiction, and I wanted to see how this averaged out with other people. It was an accumulation of various factors why I spent so much, such as, a lot of releases I wanted, and being more cash flush than usual as well as other things. This year I have spent a lot less, largely due to there being not many releases that really took my interest, but since the price rise a lot of things that I would have bought on a whim I've started questioning and deciding not to buy, in fact I haven't bought anything since the price rise, and there has been some things I had been considering buying, I've been mainly exclaiming in shock about the price of certain releases. Btw I don't have access to an online discount retailer so I pay full GW prices. An example of this was the release of beastgrave. When nightvault was released, I bought the core set the scenery then on a whim a card box and the card sleeves. Before hand I was positive I wasn't going to buy beastgrave, then I got caught up in the hype, I put beastgrave, the scenery, sleeves and some dice into the basket, calculated the price with the full intention of buying it, my eyes popped out, I compared it to the similar nightvault purchase from last year and decided no. (The single release of a warband too is also off putting as not only do I have the price increase there are postage costs that have to be paid twice now.) Another would be the lord of change. I was considering getting another then saw the price increase and just flat out decided no. I have occasionally bought the army boxes, the last being tooth and claw which was a great saving, but I've noticed in the most recent ones that the price rise has made them eye watering in price, despite whatever saving was in them, I have taken gambles on them before because I thought they were a good deal and it might be fun to start another army, but now they have moved into the no category even if I could use the models. I suppose what I'm trying to say is, before I was prepared to take a gamble or impulse buy something, then maybe add something extra like cards or whatever. But now it has all just been pushed over whatever my own limit of being what reasonable and an auto buy is, to being, think, decide it's too expensive then skip. So even though before the price rise I would end up spending more, as I would chuck something else in, now the initial cost has just put me off buying it at all. So in short compared to last year the price rise has me spending a lot less, in fact nothing. I just wonder how this has affected other peoples buying habits, are you buying more things, less, the same? Are you just saving extra for that box set or are you just skipping it entirely?

I've been flogging a dead horse for a while now with objective play, the sheer difficulty of it and the amount of obstacles in the way make it so hard, but I like a challenge. Yeah, the rotation of those cards out will help a lot, although we don't know if similar cards will replace them. We will have to see how easy or difficult it is to turn an objective into a lethal hex, I am assuming as it is a new game mechanic it will be easier than harder, hope I am wrong though. I think objective play will be in a stronger position than it was, but compared to an aggro play I think it will still be quite far behind. Getting to choose who places 3 objectives is huge, I would have won a lot more games if had not 'won' the roll off, your opponent sticking the third objective at the back could lose you a game. Also not getting driven back off objectives with guard is a great help too, I have a lot of cards in my hand to stop fighters being driven back, that would free up a lot of card space. Anyway I'm not bothering with season 3, I have enough with the first two seasons, however, I will be implementing those rule changes into the games I play.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/09/12/learn-to-play-warhammer-underworlds-beastgrave-todaygw-homepage-post-3/ Good change to the opening roll off, winner decides if they want to go first or second. I like playing objectives, some improvements with the opening roll off so you can choose to place 3 instead of 2, and if you are on guard you cannot be driven back, but objectives can now be turned into lethal hexes, 2 steps forwards 1 step back, not sure, I still think it's curtains for objective play. Side note, why must whoever directs these videos persist with the panning shot where the presenter doesn't look at the camera? It is awful, it annoys me so much I get distracted from what they are actually saying. A one off wouldn't be that bad, but it is in every learn to play video, and it is every other shot. Have a panning shot, just tell the presenter to look at the camera. I studied media studies at college, my tutor would have failed me for that shot, it's like they let some work experience student direct it. Sorry for the rant.

I find it odd they are not going to carry on selling season 1 warbands. A reboxing removing the universals wouldn't be that difficult. Could be to free up shelf space but they could just make them online only. I suppose this way is the best way they can try to retire them, if they stop selling them, over time less and less people will use them and with no stat card update they will become weaker so they aren't used. Anyway I'm calling it a day for buying more underworlds. Have no issue with card rotation. I own everything and it is enough for me and the people I play with. I was already heading this way before Beastgrave was announced, and Beastgrave looks underwhelming to me, so it's made the descion a lot easier. If a new warband turns up I like I'll buy it, but not use the universals.