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I've loved sniper drones since I got the codex and read the fluff about them taking out a whole squad of termies by shooting them through the eye lenses of their helmets, but why are they so expensive?

Tau Sniper Drones cost £24 and that gets you 3 drones and a spotter.

Eldar Rangers are £20.50 for 5 models,

Catachan Snipers are cheaper at £10.75 for 3,

and finally Space Marine Scouts with snipers are even cheaper at £15.50 for 5 models!

If we say the Spotter is a fancy fire warrior like the Fireblade (£12) and the snipers are gun drones (£6.50) with a shield drone upgrade kit (£8), that's £26.50 and you get more and better bits.

I can understand charging high for rangers and scouts as there's a reasonable demand for them but I've never even seen a sniper drone apart from in pics

so what's up with this?

I'd like to hear your thoughts

It is what it is man.


I am sorry.

Asking why GW's prices are so high is like asking why the sun rises and why the river flows downhill. It is a key part in nature, and if they were to lower their prices the world would be cast into ruin and life as we know it would cease to exist.


Seriously though, it's cause wargaming is an expensive hobby pretty much everywhere you look, and that's just how it is.

They're finecast miniatures. And the prices for that stuff is so damn high it makes Battle£ront pricing look reasonable.

I can understand the prices being high, they just seem inconsistent and illogical.


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 sing your life wrote:
They're finecast miniatures. And the prices for that stuff is so damn high it makes Battle£ront pricing look reasonable.

Ahhh your probably right.

Thanks

When everything changed over from metal to Finecast, it immediately received (at least) a 25% price hike overnight. Sometimes 50%.

Welcome to the benefit of a "cheaper material", lol.

Welcome to one of the many reasons players are abandoning GW in droves. Higher prices than competitors for average models in inferior materials does not a satisfied customer make.

 Toastaster wrote:
Seriously though, it's cause wargaming is an expensive hobby pretty much everywhere you look, and that's just how it is.

Not really. Some games are expensive, but depending on the game you want to play, models can be had quite cheaply. WW2 games, for example, can actually be quite cheap. Look at Perry plastics or Wargames Factory plastics and you can throw together armies for various wargames quite cheaply. A Vampire Counts skeleton horde for 60 cents a model, a ton of historics, some sci fi stuff as well. 1/72 scale WW2 stuff is super cheap and viable for games like Bolt Action.

If you play 1/72 scale models for Bolt Action, at a guess I'd say you can get a 2000pt army (which is a larger game) for under $50. If you want to play 28mm scale probably more like, ummm, a bit over $100. That's for an entire army.

The Sniper Drones kit was produced for the 4th edition codex in 2006. Back then it cost £12 or £15. It may have launched at £12 and gone up to £15 in 2008, I don't remember even though I have two sets I bought at the time. (In the original metal.)

The point is that between about 2008 and 2012 GW had a policy of putting large price increases on a lot of the range of kits each year. Typically a 25% increase. The drones went up from £15 to £18 when they were turned into Finecast.

It doesn't take long to inflate the price of a kit when you add 25% every other year.

Interestingly, the rapid price increase policy is rather loosely applied. The X25 Stealth Team kit came out at the same time as the Sniper Drones, and cost £12. It still only costs £16 now.

The reason is, indeed, the regular price increase it has seen and they are quite old (originally metal) models, so many price increases.

The solution is convert them yourself from generic gun drones, i watched the how-to video on this Forum yesterday. Looks perfect, easy to do and a lot cheaper.
I have 2 of the metal sniper drone units, but will probably build a plastic unit too.

I say "only £16" for the Stealth Team, but when you think it is three infantry models it is a lot for each figure.

(I remember when a Series 1 Airfix kit was 20 pence.)

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Welcome to the benefit of a "cheaper material", lol.

The benefit is that GW can afford to send you a dozen replacements when you inevitably get a miscast!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I

(I remember when a Series 1 Airfix kit was 20 pence.)

It's not just that. You can still get the same amnount of 1/35 full sniper figures with better resin casting for a little more than the cost of this set.

Sniper drones are pretty easy to kitbash - glue a firewarrior pulse rifle onto the bottom of a drone.

Don't feed the £east.

To ask why we overprice, is to ask why the leaves fall. It is in their nature.

Why do we overprice? To protect shares, and wallets.

For my kind, the true question is: What is worth overpricing for?

 Ashiraya wrote:
To ask why we overprice, is to ask why the leaves fall. It is in their nature.

Why do we overprice? To protect shares, and wallets.

For my kind, the true question is: What is worth overpricing for?

No offence but that makes absolutely no sense.

It may be in GW's nature to overprice but IMO with the Sniper Drones they're charging a price people are unwilling to pay. All this will result in is them not selling any of them and people finding ways round it such as making their own. It definitely wouldn't protect shares or wallets.

There are marketing tactics where overpricing works such as skimming however there doesn't seem to be any logic behind the price of the sniper drones box.

Don't GW want the product to sell? Or are they profiting so much from selling the occasional box that they don't have to sell many? Probably the latter

There probably are enough people buying the official kit that GW make money on it.

It is eight years old and contains only two small sprues. It must be very cheap to manufacture in Finecast and the cost of sculpting and moulds will have been paid off in the first year or two. Based on GW's own published figures, the kit costs about £3 or £4 to produce.

I have to agree with zombiekilla man, it is what it is.

if it costs £4 to produce they're making 600% profit then and for every one they sell they pay off the cost of making 6!

Thats insanely greedy! But if they dropped the price to £16 they'd still be making 400% profit and would probably sell twice as many I think.


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and therefore making more money

 Ashiraya wrote:
To ask why we overprice, is to ask why the leaves fall. It is in their nature.

Why do we overprice? To protect shares, and wallets.

For my kind, the true question is: What is worth overpricing for?

I'm certain that this is a reference, I just can't place it.

Wind blows... rain falls... Games Workshop raises prices. Don't be ashamed. It's only nature running its course. You have no choices to make... nothing to answer for.

Taffy17 wrote:

No offence but that makes absolutely no sense.

Indeed it doesn't, since

liquidjoshi wrote:this is a reference

Yes.

I don't think wargaming is really that expensive (well, depends on your income and other expenditures). In my drinking days, I could blow a hundred bucks a night in bars easily. That's an expensive hobby.


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24 pounds. Isn't that about 40 dollars? So 7-8 Long Island Ice Teas.

For one unit of four models.

I did the maths on starting a new GK army with a bit of bulk, turned out to be ~ £194. Just to start a decent (ish) army. We're talking about 1000 points.

I'd call that expensive, but I guess it's all relative to how much you earn and so on.

Taffy17 wrote:
if it costs £4 to produce

Well, it doesn't. So there goes the rest of your theory.

Material costs alone are vastly more than that, since that entails molds and machines. This isn't even factoring in labor.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Taffy17 wrote:

No offence but that makes absolutely no sense.

Indeed it doesn't, since

liquidjoshi wrote:this is a reference

Yes.

Pandaren monks can teach us a lot about real world corporation financial decisions

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Taffy17 wrote:
if it costs £4 to produce

Well, it doesn't. So there goes the rest of your theory.

Material costs alone are vastly more than that, since that entails molds and machines. This isn't even factoring in labor.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There probably are enough people buying the official kit that GW make money on it.

It is eight years old and contains only two small sprues. It must be very cheap to manufacture in Finecast and the cost of sculpting and moulds will have been paid off in the first year or two. Based on GW's own published figures, the kit costs about £3 or £4 to produce.

I was just going off how much kilkrazy said it was, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is that much, if not cheaper. Molds and machines are expensive initially but will probably have been payed off long ago with GW's profit margians. As for labour most of the manufacturing will be automated no doubt.

Taffy17 wrote:
[
I was just going off how much kilkrazy said it was, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is that much, if not cheaper. Molds and machines are expensive initially but will probably have been payed off long ago with GW's profit margians. As for labour most of the manufacturing will be automated no doubt.

Labor includes all facets of production, which includes basically every employee.

Even if they netted 20 after material costs on each one it would still take ~5000 sales to pay for the molds alone. And that left zero money to pay for people to design the thing, make the thing, ship the thing, store the thing, package the thing, write rules for the thing, market the thing, etc.

GW prices their models like French fashion, the less you get the more it costs!

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Taffy17 wrote:
[
I was just going off how much kilkrazy said it was, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is that much, if not cheaper. Molds and machines are expensive initially but will probably have been payed off long ago with GW's profit margians. As for labour most of the manufacturing will be automated no doubt.

Labor includes all facets of production, which includes basically every employee.

Even if they netted 20 after material costs on each one it would still take ~5000 sales to pay for the molds alone. And that left zero money to pay for people to design the thing, make the thing, ship the thing, store the thing, package the thing, write rules for the thing, market the thing, etc.

I was gonna write a long message about how i think your over estimating it but I didn't make this thread to discuss GW's profit margins, I made it because I didn't understand the inconsistencies between the price of sniper drones and other similar products, and I found my answer in that apparently their fine cast which means GW can charge a even more for them.

theres kits like this out there.

Ork mek gun 47 dollars, buys you a model that costs 18-30 pts.

wow!

you can field a unit of up to 5.

so 235 usd for a full unit, costs you somewhere between 90-150 pts in game.