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RuneBrush

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Posts posted by RuneBrush

  1. 1 hour ago, Greybeard86 said:

    But if anything, the experience with GW has taught us that (big surprise) excessively dominant companies entrench and this results in lower value for the consumer (higher prices, stiffled innovation).

    I think stifling innovation is a bit of a subjective topic.  Although GW has some very strong IP constraints, there are a huge number of authors, sculptors and painters who have interacted with GW's IP in some form, adding new layers and facets to it.

    I'd also say that I think society has changed a huge amount over the past 20 years and generations are generally less innovative than they used to be because they've grown up not needing to innovate (if I want a background to photograph miniatures, I just need to look on Google Images - years ago I would have used a spray can and a piece of cardboard).  There is still innovation possible, but you actually want to have to do this rather than it being the defacto option.

  2. Really difficult questions!  I thoroughly enjoy most stories written by Chris Wraight, his portrayal of White Scars and Space Wolves has been fantastic in both 30k & 40k eras.  ABD & Graham McNeal sits up there too without a doubt, although that feels like a disservice to the many other amazing authors I've read and enjoyed.

    AoS wise, pretty much anything by Josh Reynolds.  I've enjoyed the newer Gotrek stories, Callis & Toll and the Eight Lamentions.  If I had to put my money on one book, I'd say The Undying King though.  Technically it's Age of Myth, but still in the mortal realms 😉

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  3. 10 hours ago, Enoby said:

    Also, I've noticed that it's the newest players who seem the most desperate to get to 2,000 points. A lot of the more experienced players prefer the lower points lower tier games, but the newer players want the opportunity to use all of their coolest stuff.

    This is part of the reason why I created this thread.  I'm genuinely curious how we seem to have ended up at 2000 points being perceived as the "normal" or only size of an army when very clearly from this thread, lots of people actually really enjoy games at smaller sizes.  Smaller sized games generally means a quicker game, less models needed and requires different tactics and generalship to win.

    What I also find curious is that when it launched AoS actually had no points and GW added them because players pushed for them and created their own points systems, so I don't think that 2000 is something GW actually stuck down as the standard (albeit they are now because that's where the pointer has settled) and in fact the first pointed game they ran at WHW was 1000 points.

    5 hours ago, Rors said:

    If we moved to say 1500 as the new standard I'd expect some factions to drop off competitively, that might also cause a backlash as these are generally the popular armies. DoK for example can't really do the Morathhi snakes combo. Pink horros remain really point efficient but it's a big investment in holding one objective when you have less points to threaten others.

    Is this necessarily a bad thing though?  Should a handful of armies stay at the top of the competitive scene because they're popular?  I've been in the hobby for a long time now and seen the rise and fall of many armies due to changes in the rules and associated army books, I can 100% say that it's not unprecedented to see an army go from smashing face to the middle/bottom of the pack.  Yes there is a load of backlash, but it lasts a few weeks until people spot the latest fomo army and grab that.

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  4. Was just reading through the thread on the recently announced GW price increase and had a bit of a random thought.  With the overall cost of an army increasing when purchased from scratch, why as gamers do we seem to constantly end up with the scenario that 2000 points is the defacto size to play games at?  Specifically thinking of organised events more than anything, but as a wider line of thinking when writing lists etc.

    Is now a good time to rethink this almost self-imposed point level and try to encourage slightly smaller games to be played.  It would not only lower the monetary cost, but also speed games up (less to move and think about), plus it would certainly shake the "meta" up - you'd not see a 4 mega-gargant army for example.

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  5. 3 hours ago, AdamR said:

    This.
    One of my suppliers at work has been hit with a 1200% increase in shipping costs, from $5 a landed unit to $60! :o

    Ouch!  The company I work at (UK based) has had a container of goods from China go from $2500 to $18000, but your supplier certainly has it a worse.

    2 hours ago, Durgin said:

    It is undoubted that the last years of pandemic made the prices of raw material, energy and logistic go up significantly.

    What I am wondering is: how does this rise of costs affect GW?

    I try to explain despite my horrible English (I know, it's painful).

     A) let's imagine I own a pizzeria. An average pizza (margherita) costs about 0.5€/0.8€ in ingredients/general production costs, and is priced 5€/5,5€. If the cost of ingredients goes up, and I have to face 1,5€ of costs, it has a huge impact on my finances.

    B) I'm Cracco (a famous chef here in Italy). In my restaurant, an average pizza (margherita) costs about 1.5/2€ in ingredients (because of higher quality raw materials etc), but I sell it at 16€ each. If my costs go up even by 100%, I would still have a very consistent margin of profit. 

     

    In what case does GW belong?

    In short - we don't know.  GW has a massive amount of overhead involved in the creation of each product, with multiple teams of individuals involved at each stage, plus places like WHW to run.  We also don't know the actual manufacturing cost (other than the costs people pluck out the air).  The UK also has the highest business rates in within Europe - so models actually cost GW to store.   In reality, I suspect the true answer is something between A and B.

    The real question is at what point does hobbyists wages hit a point where they can't afford luxuries such as miniatures or game systems.

    1 hour ago, Jator said:

    I can understand the price rise on metals, but can someone please explain to me what's the reasoning behind the 20% rise on Blood Bowl teams?

    Don't understand what you mean by the price rise on metals?  There aren't many metal miniatures in GW's range any more (think they're mostly in LotR).

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  6. 36 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

    Just to add some context for anybody living outside the UK. Our energy prices are about to jump up 54% and I imagine this as well as other things going on, have contributed to GW wanting to raise prices. I’ll be honest, I don’t like prices going up but I try to look at it like this :

    The amount of time I get to spend on things I enjoy is very different now to before I was married or a father. I don’t need to have all the latest models or collect an army in one go. I want to enjoy painting rather than rushing out to get the latest unit so I can have a all conquering army. 
     

    So I’m not happy but I’m not going to denounce GW and burn all my stuff. I’ll just buy differently and enjoy my hobby.

    As an addition to this, in GW's recent 6-montly financial report they did highlight transportation/logistics having increased by a pretty significant amount too.  All things considering I feel the increase could well have been worse.

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  7. Just going to point out that GW never show anything that isn't due out in the next 3 months.  We also have Adepticon at the end of March when I highly suspect we'll have another preview.  Just because we've not seen something doesn't necessarily mean we won't see it 😉

    I do understand the frustration at no sign of any battletomes (as many of you know, I have quite a number of Nighthaunt!)

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  8. 1. Prices increasing with each new release.

    In truth, the prices have gone up less than my grocery shop, so not really noticed it much.  I'd still prefer battleline units to be less detailed and packed in 20's though 😁

    2. Rules bloated. It sometimes takes more than 4 ooks / releases to have all of the rules together.

    Although there may be some circumstances where you may need that many books, that's not normal.  You normally can get away with your battletome and the generals handbook - in truth with careful use of warscroll cards along with online resources or a photocopier, you can really cut down the amount of stuff you have to card around.

    3. Power level increasing with new releases, leaving older armies behind.

    This happens pretty much in every single game (including computer).  I don't think AoS is particularly horrific for it and often it seems to comes because of the cool factor - e.g. wouldn't it be cool to have an army entirely of dragons?  It certainly isn't a game of escalation as I've seen in the past.

    4. GW basically neglecting certain factions, wich just don't get anything new and up to date.

    There are some factions that are in need of an update, I'll give you that.  I feel AoS grew too quickly and we now have a number of armies that are far smaller than they deserve.  However AoS is only 6/7 years old - I can remember waiting longer than that for an update to a Codex.  We're seeing a lot of small updates being released in White Dwarf which is pretty cool and helping breath life into some factions.

    5. Models being locked behind paywalls, or big box sets, for a long period of time.

    Some models are, but the time between the box set and individual release seems to have reduced and now looking at ~6 months.  That said, I still want to be able to buy a Khorgorath on it's own...

    6. FAQ debacle.

    That one seems to have passed me by?

    7. Massive FOMO

    It's called marketing and it's employed by almost every company out there...  Sorry, I've just reread my post and realised that comes across as very flippant.  Most companies that sell non-essential products will use fomo tactics to sell products - I'm certainly guilty of buying into them on GW's part, with "free" items when you buy direct etc.  Broadly speaking you need to think with your wallet rather than heart.

    Why do you accept this mess? Looking for individual opinions here.

    I think our definition of mess must differ somewhat.  I've been in the hobby for the past 30 years and can honestly say I've never seen it quite as healthy or popular as it currently is.  Yes, there's plenty of scope to improve, but as a game system, AoS isn't in a bad place.

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  9. Has to be the models and background lore for me.  I know that if Ogors or Chaos Dwarves get released and I like the aesthetic, it'll be very hard to resist doing a path to glory force or army.  What I do know though is I need to reduce my existing pile of plastic if something new were to come along because I feel like I could open up a GW store with the amount of stuff I have...

    • Like 1
  10. 4 hours ago, Glaurung said:

    How did it go?
    How did you set up the board/cameras?

    Great fun!  We successfully cleared out the denizens and all gained a level 😊

    Setup wise, I put the board sections on a desk that sits in front of a window - I then put a web camera on a stand on a box over the boards.  Bit precarious and had to counterweight it with a bottle of water.  Was about 3 ft above the boards and then used Zoom on PC for that and my iPad next to the box to actually stream/watch the others

  11. 12 hours ago, Joseph Mackay said:

    Over the years there have been many times where we’ve seen that the GW rules writers are horrified by what the community (more specifically, the competitive/tournament scene) are doing.

    fact is, the rules writers play mostly narrative, and so they write rules with that type of play in mind. AoS is largely a narrative game (AoS1 before the GHB is proof of that), matched play was simply them throwing a bone. They don’t really care about the competitive scene, and frankly I don’t think they should.

    if the rules writers are mostly, or even, purely narrative players, they are never going to be able to write rules with the competitive scene in mind, because they don’t think the same way about the game.

    Probably worth mentioning that the team writing the rules now aren't the same people who wrote the rules 6 years ago and certainly now includes a number of people who do and have played games on the competitive scene.  The books are written 2 to 3 years in advance, so there's a certain amount of crystal balling needed to try and make sure that they don't dominate the competitive scene.

    I'm also going to be controversial and say that there are more games played in a non-competitive setting than ones played in one - the difference is that friendly games played with a mate don't have the visibility that a gaming club or 100 person tournament has.

    • Like 5
  12. 20 hours ago, TheGrimKnight said:

    I agree with this, though doesn't that rule not work for troop choices which I guess would be similar to our battle line units? but over all I agree that outside standard battle line choices (,I play CoS so like freeguild guard) it should be limited to X amount per army. A varied list makes for more interesting games then spamming a single unit for your army like the dragons. 

    There's lots of ways it could be implemented in truth, but with varying levels of complexity.  The way it worked in WHFB was that you had limits on the percentage of points you could spend on something (e.g. no more than 25% elite troops) and then each individual unit had a hard limitation (e.g. 0 ~ 2).  It wasn't perfect, but generally prevented one super unit being spammed.  AoS has a much easier system that doesn't actually require maths, the downside is that it makes it a lot more difficult to prevent people creating an army that consists entirely of one unit - even more so in that some generals open up certain units as becoming battleline.  Limiting a warscroll to being no more than 50% of your army would actually be the easiest counter (we've already got that for a single unit in some circumstances), but it would break some armies from being viable.

  13. 16 hours ago, Chikrit said:

    Hi all, and happy new year.

    I wonder how many of you completed the collection. I stopped at number 48, Reikenor. I still got plenty of painting work ahead....

    Also, now that they have started the new 40k collection, we can almost be sure that there will be another one of AoS on 2024. In that case, what armies do you think or would you like it to be about?

    My take is that one will be good guys (aka Order) and, for a change, vs Chaos. For number of old kits, I'd say (and/or like) it will be Cities of Sigmar vs Slaves to Darkness or Skaven.

    What do you think? What would you like?

    I did complete mine!  And now have a mountain of grey plastic I'm not quite sure what I'm doing with 🤣  Have started the 40k version too as clearly I'm a glutton for punishment...

    I'm sure we'll see an AoS one towards the end of Imperium.  Gut feeling says it'll be Stormcast again and logic says Kruleboyz as they've tended to follow the "current" game box set when they land.

  14. On 12/21/2021 at 4:47 AM, Fairbanks said:

    With mention of expansions too.

    Unfortunately, I think the Bandwagon/Boardgamers Ship may have already sailed away

    That doesn't seem to be the case based on comments on various Social Media platforms.  I actually think the controversy and people who did get the game, painting it and saying what a fun game it is, has actually made it more attractive.  Time will tell in fairness!

    And I've scheduled in a zoom based game of this on the 2nd!  Woohoo!

  15. 21 hours ago, Kodos der Henker said:

    with Polystyrene you can do exactly that or do you think GW has their own chemical plant and does the polymerization in England?

    they buy packs of solid chunks from China in the right colour and melt them to put into their machinery

    Quite often plastics manufacturers get the raw material granule form because it takes less energy to melt 😊  - rather boringly I almost worked at a company that made plastic products when I left school.

  16. 2 hours ago, Overread said:

    I think that's a key point - Dominion didn't sell out as much as 40K, but it has sold really well and better than Soul Wars. Also lets not forget Cruelboyz are new whilst Necrons and Marines of Indomitus are both established armies. Domion was harmed with the same thing as Indomitus with delays after release for the follow-on products. Fleshing out Cruelboyz with a Battletome and new models and such. Same thing happened with Indomitus, but in that case the Necrons already had a Codex, they already had long established fans and such.

    Plus in AoS, Destruction has been the most neglected segment for quite a long while and the Orruks especially. So slightly lower sales on that side is expected; or if not expected at least tolerable. They also didn't have the fanatic fan service that Sisters of Battle had; however SoB also got a multiple releases in a row, front place marketing and a lot of other bonuses to marketing. They were pushed hard but were also fleshed out with a big range fast.

    I also think it suffered because Kruleboyz are radically different to the Brian Nelson Orruk/Orc/Ork design.  Within my local group, the aesthetic is quite marmite

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  17. 1 hour ago, Higolx said:

    Pretty sure thats a jetbike exhaust.

    99120104038_ELDARWINDRIDERS01.jpg

    Screenshot_20211202-100646_Chrome~2.jpg

    My guess is that it's the Vampire for Aeronautica.  The highlights on the exhaust are too chunky for it to be a 28mm model (unless it's on something like a jet pack) and we're missing a transport from the AI line of Eldar planes.

    • Confused 1
  18. Just thought of a new unpopular opinion - I really don't like meta lists like the one from WarCom because it doesn't show the sub-factional varieties.  Ogor as an example can be Gutbuster or Beastclaw 😉  That said, I do think they quite accurately highlight the half a dozen battletomes that are really struggling (yeah, two of mine)

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