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techsoldaten wrote:
A change in the leadership at GW will likely lead to improvement in these areas and more. Kirby just seems to be in over his head.

Depends if the new leadership is a hand-picked Kirby Krony or not.

Pyeatt wrote:I don't hear any GW death throes.. Just see a bunch of posts on Dakka.

You need to see a bunch of financial reports.

 Pyeatt wrote:
I don't hear any GW death throes.. Just see a bunch of posts on Dakka.

Taking your fingers out of your ears might help.

Death throes is a little strong. GW is in a managed decline where they are choosing the protection of their margins over the maintenance of their revenue and market share. They'd rather close a multi-employee store and replace it with a single employee location and save on the staff costs even if the new store will sell 60% of what the old store did. They are also trying to shift as many purchases as possible into their own direct channels, again, to capture a greater margin even at the expense of the revenue of their trade sales.

GW is basically continually trying to find a way to keep more of each dollar earned even if it means earning less dollars overall. If that can continue to do this they can keep paying out dividends, not invest in any real changes and stay profitable until they find a stabilization point where the revenue stops declining. The right staff and the right locations using traditional hard sales techniques to sell their products via direct channels.

The risk is that the revenue doesn't stabilize and never stops declining. Or worse, begins declining more rapidly than they can cut costs.

EDIT: Also, there is something fundamentally at odds between higher prices/lower volume sold and injection moulded plastic kits. The kits end up with a lower and lower cost per unit sold as you sell greater and greater numbers of them, so intentionally selling less at a higher price is failing to take advantage of the lower per-unit cost that injection moulded styrene can provide. Basically their pricing strategy and retail plan are contrary to their manufacturing process.

---

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 reds8n wrote:
The LOTR/WOTR/HObbit rules are actually pretty tight and well written.

Comparatively anyway..

best of my knowledge there's no rules or game as such but

http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/

have the a anyway .. license for GoT minis.

Aye I know about them and they're excellent models, but they're more painters'/collectors' models than wargaming models no? And they don't have a companion wargame for the range. And they're like 32mm or something, not 28mm.

Pretty sure Darksword sells 28mm. They say so themselves. They always have to make it clear which minis are 30-32mm, and which ones are 28mm. Most of the their GoT minis are 28mm, with 2-3 that comes in bigger versions.

Choose a picture of the best Inifinty models painted fantastically, and choose some of the worst examples of 2nd Ed GW sculpts, win argument.

I had a closer look at the new (thats new people, as in only just released so should be the best possible) Infinity models last night. Really nice, certainly on a par with some of the later GW metal models. but it looked like about 15 models for about 70 quid starter box. That can't be right, that's GW prices!

And another good tactic is to only answer the points you can, and ignore the bits you know are right. I love the internet!

What later GW metal models? GW has not released any metal miniatures in ages. You're talking about finecast then?

And the individual Infinity model is leagues above the bog standard plastic Space Marine who is more a joke in terms of details, poses, anatomy and stuff than a serious miniature.

Off the top of my head (and using minis I own) I'd compare them to the metal Abbadon, Azreal or Ezekial. Or maybe one of the Librarian models.

I've mentioned some great 2nd ed metal sculpts there by the way.

Wait.. http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Chaos-Space-Marines-Abaddon-the-Despoiler this one?

Or this one?
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Dark-Angels-Azrael-Supreme-Grand-Master

This?
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Dark-Angels-Ezekiel-Grand-Master-of-Librarians

It's become pretty obvious that you're either just trolling or hthat you have never actually seen an Infinity model in real life.

The would all look better if they had the same paint job standard, apart from the Abaddon maybe. I'll give you that one.

I had the operation Icestorm box in my hands last night, nearly bought it as the models would proxy well for awful Enforcers in Deadzone. I bought some Malifuax stuff instead.

Not trolling at all. If you can't have a discussion without calling windup within a few minutes, I'll have to assume you are trying to start one of these 'flame wars' I keep reading about.

I notice no-one has given me a better product, at a cheaper pricepoint, for a large scale 40k style or fantasy style game

See, whatever people will show you, you'll automatically reject it. We (the forum) have done so a thousend times.

You'll stay true and honest to GW and everything else will automatially fail against your perception of it.

There is just no point in giving you examples. Like I said, we've done so a thousend times.

And by the way "large scale 40k style" is not a category.... large scale is not something you can do with 28mm miniatures. YOu use 6-15mm for that. 28mm is horrible for "large scale".
Fantasy style game does not mean 28mm either, nor "large scale".

So your categories don't even make any sense.


Buuuut.. since I'm bored: Google
Bolt Action plastics
Perry Miniature plastics
ANY historical 25-28mm metal (1 pound per minature).
Avatars of War units (dwarfs and Chaos Warriors and Dark Elves)
Dream Forge
Shieldwolf Miniatures

And there are many many others

Wait those sculpts are superior to Infinity?

I'm sure that taste is very subjective. Like to some people the Twilight saga is the epitome of novels, I guess. Or Honey Boo Boo is the best show there is.

I seem to be conversing with those who don't have English as a first language, so maybe things are getting lost in translation...

My point is thus...

I play lots of games.
Two of those are GW.
There is not a single product that replaces those two games in terms of mini quality and cost.
Either they are more expensive and designed around a skirmish game
Or poorer quality and cheaper

When a game reaches me that can offer me the same quality of figure, in the same quanities as a typical 1500-200 point 40K or 2400 point WHFB force, with the same variety, I will buy into the DOOM! THE END! attitude about GW.

Until then, I will play Deadzone, Dreadball, Malifaux, WarmaHordes and soon to be AvP, and my Kings Hold KS, and continue to play 40k and WHFB. I will also come online and share my enthusiam for all of them, and scoff at the death predictions, and laugh at those that resort to snide comments, because they are annoyed they don't have a proper answer

The Division Of Joy wrote:
I seem to be conversing with those who don't have English as a first language, so maybe things are getting lost in translation...

My point is thus...

I play lots of games.
Two of those are GW.
There is not a single product that replaces those two games in terms of mini quality and cost.
Either they are more expensive and designed around a skirmish game
Or poorer quality and cheaper

When a game reaches me that can offer me the same quality of figure, in the same quanities as a typical 1500-200 point 40K or 2400 point WHFB force, with the same variety, I will buy into the DOOM! THE END! attitude about GW.

Until then, I will play Deadzone, Dreadball, Malifaux, WarmaHordes and soon to be AvP, and my Kings Hold KS, and continue to play 40k and WHFB. I will also come online and share my enthusiam for all of them, and scoff at the death predictions, and laugh at those that resort to snide comments, because they are annoyed they don't have a proper answer

You need to move those goalposts harder! Now your opinion isn't about model quality, its about individual costs of models and some mythical number of models on the table?!

You white knights really are hilarious when you start to flounder around!

See, that's exactly what I expected.

I show examples -> you ignore them because -> all you want is 40k and thus everything else is automatically inferior.

Examples

http://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/Protektorgarde-Trupp-der-Space-Marines
5 Miniatures 40€

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2011/miniatures/hassassin-bahram/
6 Miniatures 40€

So Infinity is cheaper and the models are AT LEAST equally good. (I think they are at least two classes better than GW but whatever)


http://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/Inccubi-der-Dark-Eldar
5 Miniature 33€

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2012/miniatures/makaul/
4 Miniatures 28€ so a bit more expensive but only just a bit and at least you get 4 completely individual minatures and no doubles.

How are the Infinity Miniatures "designed around a skirmish games" and the GW miniatures are not? How are the Infinity Miniatures more expensive?

Another examples:

Bolt Action Soviets
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0288/8306/products/wgb-ri-02-soviet-infantry-c_3_1024x1024.jpeg?v=1383704254

40 Miniatures ~40€

Cadians
http://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/Cadianische-Stosstruppen-der-Imperialen-Armee
10 Miniatures 23€ so 40 miniatures = 90€

So the Warlord Games miniatures are of poorer quality and cheaper? No, they are cheaper and AT LEAST of equal or better quality (with LOADS of more options and variety) than the GW miniatures.

PhantomViper wrote:

The Division Of Joy wrote:
I seem to be conversing with those who don't have English as a first language, so maybe things are getting lost in translation...

My point is thus...

I play lots of games.
Two of those are GW.
There is not a single product that replaces those two games in terms of mini quality and cost.
Either they are more expensive and designed around a skirmish game
Or poorer quality and cheaper

When a game reaches me that can offer me the same quality of figure, in the same quanities as a typical 1500-200 point 40K or 2400 point WHFB force, with the same variety, I will buy into the DOOM! THE END! attitude about GW.

Until then, I will play Deadzone, Dreadball, Malifaux, WarmaHordes and soon to be AvP, and my Kings Hold KS, and continue to play 40k and WHFB. I will also come online and share my enthusiam for all of them, and scoff at the death predictions, and laugh at those that resort to snide comments, because they are annoyed they don't have a proper answer

You need to move those goalposts harder! Now your opinion isn't about model quality, its about individual costs of models and some mythical number of models on the table?!

You white knights really are hilarious when you start to flounder around!

I'm a white knight because I would be happy for something to stop me buying GW should it be there?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

RoninXiC wrote:
See, that's exactly what I expected.

I show examples -> you ignore them because -> all you want is 40k and thus everything else is automatically inferior.

Examples

http://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/Protektorgarde-Trupp-der-Space-Marines
5 Miniatures 40€

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2011/miniatures/hassassin-bahram/
6 Miniatures 40€

So Infinity is cheaper and the models are AT LEAST equally good. (I think they are at least two classes better than GW but whatever)


http://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/Inccubi-der-Dark-Eldar
5 Miniature 33€

http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2012/miniatures/makaul/
4 Miniatures 28€ so a bit more expensive but only just a bit and at least you get 4 completely individual minatures and no doubles.

How are the Infinity Miniatures "designed around a skirmish games" and the GW miniatures are not? How are the Infinity Miniatures more expensive?

Another examples:

Bolt Action Soviets
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0288/8306/products/wgb-ri-02-soviet-infantry-c_3_1024x1024.jpeg?v=1383704254

40 Miniatures ~40€

Cadians
http://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/Cadianische-Stosstruppen-der-Imperialen-Armee
10 Miniatures 23€ so 40 miniatures = 90€

So the Warlord Games miniatures are of poorer quality and cheaper? No, they are cheaper and AT LEAST of equal or better quality (with LOADS of more options and variety) than the GW miniatures.

The bolt action (another game I've played recently) figures are not as good as GW, come on

I noticed you've chosen an expensive example for the other two.

I play Tau and DA for 40k, so have 3 tactical squads, and depending on my list, 3 squads of fire warriors or 9 Crisis suits.

Again, if someone can point me too a game that produces models like this, that can flesh out a 50-60 model count game then I'm game! at the same price and quality mind.

And yes. I would say 40k is less skirmish based than Infinity. If the standard of Deadzone mini doesn't improve, then I'll definitely give infinity a bash should my money not already be swallowed by AvP.

Wait, I've mentioned AvP more than once, I best get off my Xeno-steed

There are plenty of manufacturers around to make comparisons with. I do find things like Warmachine a bit expensive myself but they don't represent the entire competition for GW, there are heaps of miniature lines out there, and I've not looked closely at Warmachine ranges. I am aware that line like Perry Miniatures and Bolt Action are high quality for much less than GW, also companies like Shieldwolf do fantasy ranges of plastic infantry, good quality and cheaper per figure than GW. I saw them at Salute, you get twice as many fantasy Orcs in their boxes as you do from GW for only a little more cost, and they are big figures.

I've been buying the new Warzone range recently, they do unique character figures for about £7 and packs of 5 men for about £13. All cast in resin, fine crisp detail and minimal clean up that I've experienced. Quite a different experience to Finecast resin which is a joke. Also you get the cards/rules with each pack of figures.

GW just doesn't compete with that, they often want £20 for five plastic figures. Their character figures start at £15 minimum, Space Marine Captains and Librarians are £18 a pop. Ridiculous. Many of the GW figures were sculpted for 2nd edition are are still being pushed for £15 each. Even their vanilla plastic marines, castings several years old, are £25. There are companies doing resin for less than that.

Even the Batman Miniatures game is cheaper than GW, their character figures are about £10-12 and go up for the really big stuff like Clayface for £18 or Bane for £25. But those big ones dwarf most GW figures costing similar amounts. And they are probably paying a significant licence fee to DC to do them.

The Division Of Joy wrote:
The bolt action (another game I've played recently) figures are not as good as GW, come on

Are you joking? You'd rather have blocky guys than somewhat-realistic (okay the Germans are a little of that style IMO) looking human males? Compare the Bolt Action units to Cadian (closest match - guys in combat uniforms) and the Bolt Action figures look ten times more realistic and better. There are no Aquila or skulls though if that's your thing, and of course they use rifles instead of blocky laser guns.

No offense but your arguments sound like the typical "I think GW is fine and great" argument: You don't mind buying the figures at the price they're asking and think they really are the "best" quality, so everything else is automatically inferior for what is ultimately minutiae (e.g. metal instead of plastic, not as tall/wide, not as many bits, etc. all very small nitpicking). While nobody is going to say you're wrong for liking the quality of GW (although perhaps wrong for thinking their prices are reasonable even if you're willing to pay it ) it's the dismissal of anything else as inferior for personal nitpicking reasons that gets old.

The Division Of Joy wrote:
m

The bolt action (another game I've played recently) figures are not as good as GW, come on

True.. they are a lot nicer, have more options, realistic proportions ( not perfect, but getting close), and you can field several different unit entries just out of this box. Cadians are laughably ugly, almost no options and yeah the price..
So you are right. Bolt Action Soviets are not as good as GW Cadiands, they are a lot better.

I noticed you've chosen an expensive example for the other two. I play Tau and DA for 40k, so have 3 tactical squads, and depending on my list, 3 squads of fire warriors or 9 Crisis suits.
Again, if someone can point me too a game that produces models like this, that can flesh out a 50-60 model count game then I'm game! at the same price and quality mind.

Bolt Action? Hail Cesar? PIke & Shotte? Black Powder? All 50-100 models for a fraction of GW.

And yes, I didn't go for the plastic miniatures. True. But who cares? Your point used to be, that Infinity minature do not count because they've been made for skirmish games. Since I showed you that Infinity is actually cheaper AND better looking than a lot of GW miniatures, your point just does not hold up at all.

And yes. I would say 40k is less skirmish based than Infinity. 8)

Only kind of true actually. 40k is super skirmish but bloated to an absurd system which does not know what it wants. Whatever it is, it's not a mass unit system like Flames of War or other 6-15mm games.

I can't speak to 'tabletop gaming' as I've only ever played 40K and WFB and Space Hulk but it seems to me that GW is and has been eternally on the precipice of 'breaking' 40K into the mainstream without either realising it or caring to take the chance and push.

There is a tremendous amount of crossover between 40K and the current culture, for want of a better word, in the west. We have more and more young people who feel it's acceptable to be seen reading comic books, playing video games and generally 'being a nerd'. These are all things I can remember not wanting to admit to at school that have undergone an image change and I feel that 40K is more than ready to take a slice of that pie.

The problem is that they're stagnating. They won't allow a developer, I hear at least, to make a digital replica of the tabletop game with all the potential revenue possible there (think Ultimate Team in FIFA) because they worry that it will damage the sales of real product. I don't see that they're mutually exclusive at all and I see similarities in MtG Online, which I use because I cannot get a game IRL. Similarly, they fail to engage with their fanbase, painting us all as 'collectors'. If you're not into their product just for the sake of having lots of it, they won't help you get the most out of it. They refuse to advance the fluff in any meaningful way, creating a sandpit rather than a living, breathing world through evolving narratives. It's been a stalemate for decades and when the Tau were introduced, it was just to be part of this stalemate.

When you look at the success of games like Dawn of War and Space Marine, it seems clear that with a few good marketing campaigns and some openness to change, GW could see tremendous growth.

As it is though, they'll slowly rot until bought out. Hopefully it comes sooner rather than later and the new owners won't be so short sighted and they'll foster and support innumerable communities within the whole, rather than just focus on 'collectors'.

Please excuse my jaded ranting.

And I guess Epic was super super super skirmish.

I say what I want, and when I offer opinion I'm a white knight.

I repeat that I'm not a GW white knight, and would happily get my 'larger scale' fix from another company if it was better, but I get isolated examples, and cherry picked price comparisons, and told I'm a white knight.

I say 'give me another 40k option' and get a raft of historical army options. I don't like them and it's not what i'm asking for, I'm a GW fanboy!

The only person that has made something constructive is the person that's made the arguement for Warzone. Now they are nice (and I am a prodos fan) and should they start releasing things to scale up to a size battle similar to 40k (so bigger tanks, fliers maybe, some big toys for even larger battles) I'll be all over those. Add in AvP cross play and you can have my Tau.

If prodos start doing fantasy, or malifaux start producing in larger numbers (with slightly easier building) then my night goblins will be boxed up as well.

If you want to carry on with the 'he's a white knight' chat, and hostility, I can ask someone grown up to send you the rules

It's by definition impossible to give you another 40k options because only 40k will ever be 40k. No game which is not a 100% copy will ever meet your demands.

And Warzones does have tanks incoming. No idea why you'd want flyers in a 28mm game. They make zero sense at all.

The Division Of Joy wrote:
I seem to be conversing with those who don't have English as a first language, so maybe things are getting lost in translation...

My point is thus...

I play lots of games.
Two of those are GW.
There is not a single product that replaces those two games in terms of mini quality and cost.
Either they are more expensive and designed around a skirmish game
Or poorer quality and cheaper

When a game reaches me that can offer me the same quality of figure, in the same quanities as a typical 1500-200 point 40K or 2400 point WHFB force, with the same variety, I will buy into the DOOM! THE END! attitude about GW.

Until then, I will play Deadzone, Dreadball, Malifaux, WarmaHordes and soon to be AvP, and my Kings Hold KS, and continue to play 40k and WHFB. I will also come online and share my enthusiam for all of them, and scoff at the death predictions, and laugh at those that resort to snide comments, because they are annoyed they don't have a proper answer

I wanted to speak my mind on this, but then I noticed that you did it already. I fully agree to what you said. I love 40k and I love other games. I am glad they all exist and I can only laugh when people make a religious war out of this. But have a look at forums all over the internet, e.g. for computer games. You always have your share of people who dislike something about the game and their only known reaction is to with bankruptcy or death to the game makers.

RoninXiC wrote:
It's by definition impossible to give you another 40k options because only 40k will ever be 40k. No game which is not a 100% copy will ever meet your demands.

And Warzones does have tanks incoming. No idea why you'd want flyers in a 28mm game. They make zero sense at all.

I can reassess Warzone when more things come in.

Why are fliers making zero sense? In the future, there is only ground war?

Flyers need more space than the 100m a typical 40k board has to offer. They'd need dozends of boards to manouver and change directions.

So no, they don't make any sense at all the ways 40k uses them.

If they are going at a speed that makes them unable to turn on table, they have a turn to turn around and come back on. It's pretty straightforward, on the board, you are seeing slow combat moves.

If prodos do a marine dropship, then end up incorporating this into the rest of Warzone, I'll be happy

Infinity is far and above anything GW puts out nowadays. To compare them to 2nd edition GW stuff is mind numbingly ignorant.

To Division of Joy, I get what you're saying. For you, GW is a perfect spot of epic battle with lots of spectacle than no other game offers. That's a legitimate reason to like 40k. (But fliers don't belong in such a small board.)

But in terms of miniature quality, there are companies that do better work than GW.

RoninXiC wrote:
See, whatever people will show you, you'll automatically reject it. We (the forum) have done so a thousend times.

You'll stay true and honest to <insert alternative manufacturer(s)> and everything else will automatially fail against your perception of it.

There is just no point in giving you examples. Like I said, we've done so a thousend times.

That´s a damn nice description of the polar opposite end aswell.

RoninXiC wrote:
It's by definition impossible to give you another 40k options because only 40k will ever be 40k. No game which is not a 100% copy will ever meet your demands.

And Warzones does have tanks incoming. No idea why you'd want flyers in a 28mm game. They make zero sense at all.

The way 40k handles them makes no sense. If they worked like Bolt Action, for example (you buy them and they do strafing runs) and then there was an optional "dogfight" type of rules set to actually play out flyer v. flyer combat, that would be the proper way to handle it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RunicFIN wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
See, whatever people will show you, you'll automatically reject it. We (the forum) have done so a thousend times.

You'll stay true and honest to <insert alternative manufacturer(s)> and everything else will automatially fail against your perception of it.

There is just no point in giving you examples. Like I said, we've done so a thousend times.

That´s a damn nice description of the polar opposite end aswell.

Not really. the "polar opposite" usually presents evidence and facts, not just "I don't like X" or stupid nonsense like "I am happy to pay GW's price, therefore nothing is wrong".

It's not stupid nonsense at all.

I didn't make that statement though. I said I'm happy to play a price to play a certain type of game. If a better option was available, I would switch my buying elsewhere.

I have no real loyality to a brand, I just want to use the best standard of mini to play the best type of game. It's because I've included 40k and WHFB in the list of things I play, it's made people, that have an issue with GW (for a number of reasons, right or wrong) froth at the mouth.

It's very similar to the tribal attitudes people have to games consoles. I don't understand that either.

Hobbys exist to serve us, it's existance is purely to create joy within us. Why it would make people foam at the mouth on the internet is beyond me.

The Division Of Joy wrote:
It's not stupid nonsense at all.

I didn't make that statement though. I said I'm happy to play a price to play a certain type of game. If a better option was available, I would switch my buying elsewhere.

I have no real loyality to a brand, I just want to use the best standard of mini to play the best type of game. It's because I've included 40k and WHFB in the list of things I play, it's made people, that have an issue with GW (for a number of reasons, right or wrong) froth at the mouth.

It's very similar to the tribal attitudes people have to games consoles. I don't understand that either.

Hobbys exist to serve us, it's existance is purely to create joy within us. Why it would make people foam at the mouth on the internet is beyond me.

And here comes the final goal post moving and the haterz accusations, again...

No one is frothing at the mouth because you like GW, people are just contesting your claim that GW makes the "bestest miniatures in the whole wide world".

Believe it or not, your tactic is a really old one and people are tired of having to deal with it. You start with a ridiculous claim, when people contest that claim you start moving the goalposts and when even that doesn't make you "win" you resort to calling people haterz... Its getting pretty boring by this point.