The last thread was unfortunately 'lost' while being moderated for some heated behaviour towards the end of it. This is a reboot, please conduct your conversations in a civil manner and avoid personal attacks at all costs.
Earnings dropped 12%, profits dropped 38% compared to the same period in 2012.
The company was still in profit.
No dividend was declared.
Share price dropped 25%.
Many users took these figures to represent GW nudging over the edge of the abyss, which will lead inevitably to their fall in the near future.
Kirby said the problem was one man shops. (Which were Good News! when they were introduced by GW.)
It should be noted that the period does not include December, so their full year results may show a good upswing from that. OTOH the comparison period in 2012 also did not include December, so there may be no upswing.
My argument is that PS4 and XBone sold over $2 billion worth of units in November-December 2013, compared to $0 in Nov-Dec 2012. I contend that some of this cash must have come from the pockets and savings of people who would otherwise have spent on tabletop wargames. Even if the cash was spent in December, it was saved during the previous months because not many people can pull $500 out of their pocket at a moment's prompting.
Note that GW's annual turnover is only about $200 million. If one percent of the money spent on new consoles was diverted from spending on GW, that in itself would explain a lot of the results.
However many people still believe there are underlying problems at GW. I am one of them.
Why delete an entire thread for a couple of people breaking forum rules? youve lost hundreds and hundreds of posts of valid discussion there well done, surely just removing the offending posts would have been a better option?
Do we have an accountants or investor types kicking around dakka that can give the laymen a run down of what the report is really saying?
Sure we can all read it, but most of us arent going to know the specifics of reading a financial report for a company.
Numbers are almost always misleading when written corporate types
Pretty sure after 40+ pages of nonsense I'd much rather hear theory's about a mod being drunk on power (Scotch) secretly being a GW plant and "censoring" the thread
ironicsilence wrote: Pretty sure after 40+ pages of nonsense I'd much rather hear theory's about a mod being drunk on power (Scotch) secretly being a GW plant and "censoring" the thread
You heard it here first, MajorTom11 is actually Tom Kirby! How did we not make the connection before!?
Adding in an Orkmoticon to make it clear I'm being facetious. Here it is!
ironicsilence wrote: Pretty sure after 40+ pages of nonsense I'd much rather hear theory's about a mod being drunk on power (Scotch) secretly being a GW plant and "censoring" the thread
You heard it here first, MajorTom11 is actually Tom Kirby! How did we not make the connection before!?
I'm not saying...im just saying....
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. - Churchhill
HairySticks wrote: Why delete an entire thread for a couple of people breaking forum rules? youve lost hundreds and hundreds of posts of valid discussion there well done, surely just removing the offending posts would have been a better option?
Because Hollywood is obsessed with reboots and has no respect for the source material?
I'll take the heat on this one boys and fess up lol, I was dealing with some... stuff... in the last thread and I accidentally hit the big red 'do not push' button... the thread was not deleted on purpose and unfortunately there are no 'backsies' on that particular boo-boo.
If some of you in the North East heard an echoing slap about an hour ago that was me facepalming lol.
Anyhoo sorry for the inconvenience to those that were reading and or participating, but regardless of my mistake it was getting a bit off the rails so this reboot isn't the worst thing in the world either.
How disappointing.
It's a detailed and serious business topic, not a disposable kiddy-fest about rules balancing.
So the new thread will be pointless until some of those members experienced with corporate management and market forces can make significant comments again.
Meanwhile, THIS 45yo mini sculptor has two dragons, a draco-lich, a basilisk, a chaos warrior, and a Baba Yaga's Hut left to sculpt. So I'll just return in a week to see if any valuable insight was brought in.
Live2sculpt wrote: So the new thread will be pointless until some of those members experienced with corporate management and market forces can make significant comments again.
Or until some of the usual suspects (-1 of their number ) show up to preach the virtures of my signature.
Live2sculpt wrote: How disappointing. It's a detailed and serious business topic, not a disposable kiddy-fest about rules balancing.
So the new thread will be pointless until some of those members experienced with corporate management and market forces can make significant comments again.
Meanwhile, THIS 45yo mini sculptor has two dragons, a draco-lich, a basilisk, a chaos warrior, and a Baba Yaga's Hut left to sculpt. So I'll just return in a week to see if any valuable insight was brought in.
Any chance you have a blog or website where I can see more of your work or work in progress shots?
As for GW's financials:
Their stock price is coming to be more in line with their actual earnings but probably has much further to go as their PE ratio is still way out of line for their sector, size and the exchange they are one.
Their earnings, profits and sales volume are all continuing to decline, but in a slightly faster rate in the last 6 months.
They're going to continue to open and close one employee stores until they get enough of them with a profitable combination of location and employee that they can start being stable again and maybe even return to paying divdends. This won't really address the larger issues with their actual product, but GW doesn't believe there are any issues with their actual product.
They will continue to shrink each year, but be able to keep costs down and mostly stay profitable. They'll slowly cede more and more of their market share to their competitors and become less and less relevant over time.
Nothing exciting or flashy. Just a company that's watching their margins like a hawk carrying on with the exact same thing that they've been doing for quite some time.
EDIT: And yes, this on-topic part was largely to justify me asking you about your work
Live2sculpt wrote: How disappointing.
It's a detailed and serious business topic, not a disposable kiddy-fest about rules balancing.
So the new thread will be pointless until some of those members experienced with corporate management and market forces can make significant comments again.
Meanwhile, THIS 45yo mini sculptor has two dragons, a draco-lich, a basilisk, a chaos warrior, and a Baba Yaga's Hut left to sculpt. So I'll just return in a week to see if any valuable insight was brought in.
Accidents happen. Give me your address and I'll send you my pinky if it makes you feel any less dramatic
If only there were a giant, monolithic corporation, answerable to no one, who hoovered up all of our data for purposes it claims to be benign but in truth, no one really knows?
Luckily, there is such a corporation, and when it's not remotely activating your webcam to look at you in your underwear, it's doing that above hoovering thing.
If you wish to go back further, go to a cached page, and in the address bar, decrease the post number by 30, as shown. It's not all in cache - right around page 36 it starts going off the rails - but everything older should more or less be there.
Live2sculpt wrote: How disappointing.
It's a detailed and serious business topic, not a disposable kiddy-fest about rules balancing.
So the new thread will be pointless until some of those members experienced with corporate management and market forces can make significant comments again.
Meanwhile, THIS 45yo mini sculptor has two dragons, a draco-lich, a basilisk, a chaos warrior, and a Baba Yaga's Hut left to sculpt. So I'll just return in a week to see if any valuable insight was brought in.
Accidents happen. Give me your address and I'll send you my pinky if it makes you feel any less dramatic
I'm afraid your pinky just won't do it for me. No. You'll need to send me a Riptide, NIB.
Anyway, when I left the old thread, we were trying to determine whether or not the Warhammer 40,000 property was more valuable without the Games Workshop attached. I'm not sleeping until I have a definitive answer.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and I apparently have the whole thing up to page 36 in my other tab.
Earnings dropped 12%, profits dropped 38% compared to the same period in 2012.
The company was still in profit.
No dividend was declared.
Share price dropped 25%.
Many users took these figures to represent GW nudging over the edge of the abyss, which will lead inevitably to their fall in the near future.
Kirby said the problem was one man shops. (Which were Good News! when they were introduced by GW.)
It should be noted that the period does not include December, so their full year results may show a good upswing from that. OTOH the comparison period in 2012 also did not include December, so there may be no upswing.
My argument is that PS4 and XBone sold over $2 billion worth of units in November-December 2013, compared to $0 in Nov-Dec 2012. I contend that some of this cash must have come from the pockets and savings of people who would otherwise have spent on tabletop wargames. Even if the cash was spent in December, it was saved during the previous months because not many people can pull $500 out of their pocket at a moment's prompting.
Note that GW's annual turnover is only about $200 million. If one percent of the money spent on new consoles was diverted from spending on GW, that in itself would explain a lot of the results.
However many people still believe there are underlying problems at GW. I am one of them.
HairySticks wrote: Do we have an accountants or investor types kicking around dakka that can give the laymen a run down of what the report is really saying?
Sure we can all read it, but most of us arent going to know the specifics of reading a financial report for a company.
Numbers are almost always misleading when written corporate types
As this is what I do for a living, I'll give it a bash. I will say, this is my theories based on figures as they exist. Theories are opinions and not facts which is what makes my job hard to do. Someone else might read the same figures and read something different. Plus, I'm not very good at my job
Revenue fell by £7m (ignore revnue adjusted for currency and interest as these can be manipulated by internal estimates that I do not have access to). Obviously not a good thing as revenue going down is revenue going down. Even worse, a relaunch for WH40k in that period should have seen an increase in revenue not a decrease. Also, revenue decreased accross all geographical regions showing that this is not an isolated economic situation.
Gross margin held steady at 70%. Basically, for every 30p of raw materials GW buys they take £1 worth of revenue. This really points to the fact that they could quite easily charge less for their goods. However, it debunks the theory that price hikes are purely revenue decisions. Price hikes are protecting GW's margins, they are merely passing on their own purchase price increases.
Operating expenses (the cost of the stores is the main cost to this I assume) holds steady at £37m. Kind of goes against what is being said that they have cut cost basis with one man stores. Or we will see a reduction in the second half of 2014 financial year.
Royalties increased rapidly suggesting that all these independant apps and novels (assuming Black library is outside main group) are making much higher sales and can be forecasted to increase as they gain traction in their respective fields.
Profit before tax has reduced by £3m. Lower revenue, lower profits and this leads to the lower Earnings per share.
Intangible assets have increased by £2m. I find this interesting because intangible assets are often ways of hiding costs on balance sheet as it is purely on the directors opinion that an intangible can be capitalised. Without detailed reports its impossible to know what has been capitalised or not. My assumption is the spead of producing codexes has led to an increase and an increase in intellectual property which has been capitalised to be written off over its "useful economic life". I would flag this as a red herring in my job. If not capitalised profits would reduce by £5m.
Debtors reduced by £2m showing a decline in sales to companies. Deterrant business practices would be the main reason for this.
Here is the big reason I would flag this company as a concern. Cash has reduced by £7m. A reduction in cash is the first sign a business is failing. You can sugar coat costs by moving things about but you cannot miss the fact that cash in the business is down. However, trade creditors are down by £7m. Perhaps they have paid a larger amount of creditors quicker than last year? It might explain downturn in cash but not excuse it.
Current is above 1. This is a companies ability to pay its current liabilities with is current assets. Anything above 1 is good. Also the acid test ratio (ability to satisfy current liabilites with cash) is 0.7. Anything above 0.5 is good. This is not a company that is about to disappear down a black-hole or be bought by anyone else. Sorry to those hoping for that.
Stock started this week at 548.5, finished at 533, down almost 3%, for a total of 26% loss from its peak on Jan 15.
I think Sliver_Skates assessment is spot on. GW is currently not in a negative position where they have become unprofitable. The next report will be telling as to if a downward trend is going to continue. Unless a company has a catastrophic even (typically Legal related) they rarely go from being profitable to doors shut in a short time frame.
With that being said, there is a chance that the Chapter House lawsuit could open the doors for 3rd parties to produce alternate models and rules at reduced cost. Someone could easily write a set of rules which are compatible with 40K for the Chaos Legions and fix all the issues. All it takes is someone to be smart about it and the tournament scene to use them as official rules and it becomes mainstream. Then GW starts having real problems because there is a viable alternate product.
I've realised I made a slight error. The reboot of 40k was last year. A fall in revenue is totally expected as a result.
If I was advising an investor, I would tell them to buy stock in GW before the Warhammer reboot (this year allegedly). If Warhammer succeeds, sell half of stock and make a profit. If its a flop, buy more stock before the panic reaction of launching 40k next year. Of course, I'd have to look at the trends of more than just two periods to have a completely firm grasp on what's going on if money was at stake.
In other words, GW is doing as expected. The company is likely to go nowhere.
Yeah GW aren't about to disappear or anything but the worrying thing (or silver lining, depending on your view ) is that GW's responses to all this seem to be more of the same stuff that got them here, only faster.
Silver_skates wrote: I've realised I made a slight error. The reboot of 40k was last year. A fall in revenue is totally expected as a result.
If I was advising an investor, I would tell them to buy stock in GW before the Warhammer reboot (this year allegedly). If Warhammer succeeds, sell half of stock and make a profit. If its a flop, buy more stock before the panic reaction of launching 40k next year. Of course, I'd have to look at the trends of more than just two periods to have a completely firm grasp on what's going on if money was at stake.
In other words, GW is doing as expected. The company is likely to go nowhere.
I think if you were advising an investor you'd probably not even really have your clients looking at GW stock...
Tom Kirby's response is to blame everyone that blindly followed his orders, like one-man shop staff and all foreign HQs. From now on all false decisions are made directly in Nottingham... like before actually.
In other words, GW is doing as expected. The company is likely to go nowhere.
For the next couple of years you are almost certainly right. The issue is that GW's declining sales volume is not a new thing, it has been a trend for (8?) years. Revenues have stayed steady throughout this period but these have now taken a very noticable drop. If this continues, and I strongly suspect that it will given how poorly WHFB 8th is reputed to have performed and GW's seeming reluctance to reform itself, then GW will be in serious trouble.
As it is they are still healthy although they have been given a nasty shock. It is now up to them to get their house in order so that a series of extremely similar shocks doesn't end up killing them.
HairySticks wrote: Do we have an accountants or investor types kicking around dakka that can give the laymen a run down of what the report is really saying?
Sure we can all read it, but most of us arent going to know the specifics of reading a financial report for a company.
Numbers are almost always misleading when written corporate types
As this is what I do for a living, I'll give it a bash. I will say, this is my theories based on figures as they exist. Theories are opinions and not facts which is what makes my job hard to do. Someone else might read the same figures and read something different. Plus, I'm not very good at my job
Revenue fell by £7m (ignore revnue adjusted for currency and interest as these can be manipulated by internal estimates that I do not have access to). Obviously not a good thing as revenue going down is revenue going down. Even worse, a relaunch for WH40k in that period should have seen an increase in revenue not a decrease. Also, revenue decreased accross all geographical regions showing that this is not an isolated economic situation.
Gross margin held steady at 70%. Basically, for every 30p of raw materials GW buys they take £1 worth of revenue. This really points to the fact that they could quite easily charge less for their goods. However, it debunks the theory that price hikes are purely revenue decisions. Price hikes are protecting GW's margins, they are merely passing on their own purchase price increases.
Operating expenses (the cost of the stores is the main cost to this I assume) holds steady at £37m. Kind of goes against what is being said that they have cut cost basis with one man stores. Or we will see a reduction in the second half of 2014 financial year.
Royalties increased rapidly suggesting that all these independant apps and novels (assuming Black library is outside main group) are making much higher sales and can be forecasted to increase as they gain traction in their respective fields.
Profit before tax has reduced by £3m. Lower revenue, lower profits and this leads to the lower Earnings per share.
Intangible assets have increased by £2m. I find this interesting because intangible assets are often ways of hiding costs on balance sheet as it is purely on the directors opinion that an intangible can be capitalised. Without detailed reports its impossible to know what has been capitalised or not. My assumption is the spead of producing codexes has led to an increase and an increase in intellectual property which has been capitalised to be written off over its "useful economic life". I would flag this as a red herring in my job. If not capitalised profits would reduce by £5m.
Debtors reduced by £2m showing a decline in sales to companies. Deterrant business practices would be the main reason for this.
Here is the big reason I would flag this company as a concern. Cash has reduced by £7m. A reduction in cash is the first sign a business is failing. You can sugar coat costs by moving things about but you cannot miss the fact that cash in the business is down. However, trade creditors are down by £7m. Perhaps they have paid a larger amount of creditors quicker than last year? It might explain downturn in cash but not excuse it.
Current is above 1. This is a companies ability to pay its current liabilities with is current assets. Anything above 1 is good. Also the acid test ratio (ability to satisfy current liabilites with cash) is 0.7. Anything above 0.5 is good. This is not a company that is about to disappear down a black-hole or be bought by anyone else. Sorry to those hoping for that.
The second six months will be interesting.
solid analysis
I will add, no dividend will usually produce a drop in share price, particularly if unexpected.
My analysis is as follows.
The relevant facts seem to be the following - sales declinging slightly, profits declining more.
What this shows is on the retail side sales fell from £67m to £60m but operating profits in the stores were static at £11m. the same profit from less revenue, exactly what you and I know, prices up, sales down, but it is overall neutral to GW.
The issue was actually in the factories or "product and supply" which fell by over £5m. Now the internal estimate of revenue for "product and supply" was down about £2m. That leaves a £3m additional expenses in the factories . It might have something to do with some production problem, it might have something to do with the closure of the US factories, but it doesn't appear to be massive loss in sales from people getting disaffected.
Silver_skates wrote: I've realised I made a slight error. The reboot of 40k was last year. A fall in revenue is totally expected as a result.
If I was advising an investor, I would tell them to buy stock in GW before the Warhammer reboot (this year allegedly). If Warhammer succeeds, sell half of stock and make a profit. If its a flop, buy more stock before the panic reaction of launching 40k next year. Of course, I'd have to look at the trends of more than just two periods to have a completely firm grasp on what's going on if money was at stake.
In other words, GW is doing as expected. The company is likely to go nowhere.
I think if you were advising an investor you'd probably not even really have your clients looking at GW stock...
I really do think you guys are seeing what you want to see in these reports. Management can't control everything and pointing to revenue dropping 12% as a "failure of management" is complete nonsense. Previously, other board members tried to argue that UK retail has been doing great so this is a GW specific problem. The REAL reported numbers coming out of retailers has been absolutely terrible. Hence, why so many major retailers are closing stores at a pace we have not seen since the great depression. Who do you believe? The companies that are driven by the bottom line? Or the bureaucrats trying to get reelected?
I would most certainly put a stock with a 7% yield and 33% ROE in a portfolio. I will not be doing that because I don't like the current market environment though. I'm saying this objectively as a financial advisor. I'm a market technician, a RIA and have worked for some pretty major hedgefunds. Now I'm in the ETF world so I don't get to do as many hot shot calls. Well.. at least I don't get paid to.
When taken in context, they successfully turned around a failing company and over 5 years took the stock price from 120 - 820.. Even after the correction, they are still outperforming the major indexes. And corrections always happen. It's the market's way of clearing away the excess speculation. The stock market is overvalued on every metric. Even in the UK. Being a specialty retailer, they are much more sensitive to changes in consumer discretionary spending. If you look at their stock price, it leads the stock market. It tops and bottoms ahead of the stock market much like all retailers. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GAW.L+Interactive#symbol=gaw.l;range=my;compare=^gspc;indicator=volume;charttype=candlestick;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined;
If you want to look at companies that are actually poorly managed.. look at JCP or BBY. Those are examples where management has fethed up. I still can't get over the fact you guys are complaining about a 7% yield.
I don't think people are complaining about a 7% yield. I think what people are saying is that GW's sales volume appears to be declining, and declining somewhat faster than it has been.
For a wargaming company, this is a problem. Maybe not a doom and gloom, melt down next quarter problem, but a problem that has been steadily increasing in spite of what the company has done to address it. In other words, the company is accelerating the problem, or at least not preventing its acceleration.
Why is declining unit sales a problem? Wargaming is by and large a social activity. Anecdotally, we've heard about a lot of folks seeing a decline in 40K and WHFB being played in their local clubs or even being dropped altogether. Less people buying does not necessarily equal less people playing, but that seems to be the case. Playing and buying go hand in hand.
If you are playing a game a lot, you are probably buying related products. If you aren't, you're probably buying fewer and spending your money on what you are playing.
The less people play 40K, the less value the products have. Already the products are a comparatively poor value proposition compared to competitors if you discount how many people are playing the game. Volume of players and market saturation have been GW's principle strengths for more than a decade.
They are weakening, and beginning to weaken precipitously. That's the problem. It doesn't matter if the company is profitable NOW. It is. It sure as Hell is. But its position of strength in the market is slipping more every day. People aren't playing 40K and WHFB like they used to. If GW doesn't turn that around, its market share is going to spiral downwards. And as a company with as many costs as GW, there is going to be a point at which declining market share will not allow GW to operate in the way it has been operating.
GW might turn this decline around, but I doubt it. There's plenty of room to do so, but Kirby and Co. do not appear to know how to do it.
GW isn't selling mung beans and cans of cola. GW is selling entertainment. Its games just aren't as fun anymore, dollar for dollar.
They are weakening, and beginning to weaken precipitously. That's the problem. It doesn't matter if the company is profitable NOW. It is. It sure as Hell is. But its position of strength in the market is slipping more every day. People aren't playing 40K and WHFB like they used to. If GW doesn't turn that around, its market share is going to spiral downwards. And as a company with as many costs as GW, there is going to be a point at which declining market share will not allow GW to operate in the way it has been operating.
I look at GW being a bit like Microsoft: they're market leaders in their industries that everyone is concerned about the long-term viability of due to what are perceived as poor business decisions (one could compare the Zune to WFB 8th). Both Microsoft and GW are still quite profitable. So the question is: why change course?
I think this topic has been done to death, so I'll shut up now. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 6 months.
There is also no 7% yield. There is a 0% yield as no dividend has been declared yet and likely won't be until revenue can be stabilized. Internal returns on capital and returns one equity can be good indicators, but no one other than the board of directors actually has access to that in practical terms.
As for the old thread, there is one topic I'd like to bring back. Third part bitz sellers and the growth of alternative miniatures aimed directly at GW's game worlds.
I used to think that GW's declining sales volume meant that people making bitz for GW's games were targeting a declining customer base. Now I'm thinking they are actually taking advantage of a genuine market that is actually growing-- people dissatisfied with GW's offerings alone, but not so dissatisfied that they are going with a competitors game or quitting the hobby entirely.
Is it possible the reason GW would not let up on the CHS issue even when told flat-out by a judge that putting CHS out of business wasn't going to happen in the court case is that GW knows that this segment of the market is the fastest growing? That Forgeworld has largely had it locked down, but now it's being totally blown wide open?
The 3rd party accessory sellers might be super small individually, but there's an awful lot of them and they seem to be transitioning more and more into actual miniature production rather than just making guns and cybernetic arms and razorback turrets.
I don't think people are complaining about a 7% yield. I think what people are saying is that GW's sales volume appears to be declining, and declining somewhat faster than it has been.
Despite the fact that GW has a stable product line and SM, the best selling army, were coming out in the last half a year.
frozenwastes wrote: There is also no 7% yield. There is a 0% yield as no dividend has been declared yet and likely won't be until revenue can be stabilized. Internal returns on capital and returns one equity can be good indicators, but no one other than the board of directors actually has access to that in practical terms.
As for the old thread, there is one topic I'd like to bring back. Third part bitz sellers and the growth of alternative miniatures aimed directly at GW's game worlds.
I used to think that GW's declining sales volume meant that people making bitz for GW's games were targeting a declining customer base. Now I'm thinking they are actually taking advantage of a genuine market that is actually growing-- people dissatisfied with GW's offerings alone, but not so dissatisfied that they are going with a competitors game or quitting the hobby entirely.
Is it possible the reason GW would not let up on the CHS issue even when told flat-out by a judge that putting CHS out of business wasn't going to happen in the court case is that GW knows that this segment of the market is the fastest growing? That Forgeworld has largely had it locked down, but now it's being totally blown wide open?
The 3rd party accessory sellers might be super small individually, but there's an awful lot of them and they seem to be transitioning more and more into actual miniature production rather than just making guns and cybernetic arms and razorback turrets.
Is this segment of the market growing? Thoughts?
It's certainly a decent supposition based on the information we have to hand.
One can certainly see a number of front runners starting to transition from minnow to established player type positions, and some are producing some really quite sophisticated models of very respectable quality.
I guess the watershed will be when some of these emerging names (the likes of Anvil Industries, Puppets War, CHS, Kromlech et al) gets large enough, or Kickstarts, to transition into plastic kits like Dream Forge. If there are a number of companies producing alternate models for a number of factions, likely priced very competitively if DF and the Perrys are anything to judge by,, then that simultaneously undermines one of GW's key competitive advantages (a wider, more diverse range of modular plastic kits than anyone else right now) and will dramatically highlight how far adrift their pricing is from where it should/could be.
frozenwastes wrote: There is also no 7% yield. There is a 0% yield as no dividend has been declared yet and likely won't be until revenue can be stabilized. Internal returns on capital and returns one equity can be good indicators, but no one other than the board of directors actually has access to that in practical terms.
As for the old thread, there is one topic I'd like to bring back. Third part bitz sellers and the growth of alternative miniatures aimed directly at GW's game worlds.
I used to think that GW's declining sales volume meant that people making bitz for GW's games were targeting a declining customer base. Now I'm thinking they are actually taking advantage of a genuine market that is actually growing-- people dissatisfied with GW's offerings alone, but not so dissatisfied that they are going with a competitors game or quitting the hobby entirely.
Is it possible the reason GW would not let up on the CHS issue even when told flat-out by a judge that putting CHS out of business wasn't going to happen in the court case is that GW knows that this segment of the market is the fastest growing? That Forgeworld has largely had it locked down, but now it's being totally blown wide open?
The 3rd party accessory sellers might be super small individually, but there's an awful lot of them and they seem to be transitioning more and more into actual miniature production rather than just making guns and cybernetic arms and razorback turrets.
Is this segment of the market growing? Thoughts?
The bits manufacturers sell to veterans of 40K (maybe WHFB too, IDK).
Presumably vets often buy secondhand stuff and retrofit new bits, or use bits on scratchbuilds, that kind of thing, so the bits sellers are not so dependent on GW's full price sales. In the long run, if WH/40K stuff went out of production, that market would decline and probably they would retool to make bits for other games.
frozenwastes wrote: There is also no 7% yield. There is a 0% yield as no dividend has been declared yet and likely won't be until revenue can be stabilized. Internal returns on capital and returns one equity can be good indicators, but no one other than the board of directors actually has access to that in practical terms.
As for the old thread, there is one topic I'd like to bring back. Third part bitz sellers and the growth of alternative miniatures aimed directly at GW's game worlds.
I used to think that GW's declining sales volume meant that people making bitz for GW's games were targeting a declining customer base. Now I'm thinking they are actually taking advantage of a genuine market that is actually growing-- people dissatisfied with GW's offerings alone, but not so dissatisfied that they are going with a competitors game or quitting the hobby entirely.
Is it possible the reason GW would not let up on the CHS issue even when told flat-out by a judge that putting CHS out of business wasn't going to happen in the court case is that GW knows that this segment of the market is the fastest growing? That Forgeworld has largely had it locked down, but now it's being totally blown wide open?
The 3rd party accessory sellers might be super small individually, but there's an awful lot of them and they seem to be transitioning more and more into actual miniature production rather than just making guns and cybernetic arms and razorback turrets.
Is this segment of the market growing? Thoughts?
Except GW has left alone the parties making whole miniatures ranges. They kicked a hornet's nest with Chapterhouse and blew their legal wad on a badly chosen target. Not that they had much of a leg to stand on considering the allegations.
GW may be afraid of those producers, but GW could beat them on both quality and price. That's what's insane. GW has created a market for those products by putting out unsatisfactory art at an unsatisfactory level of quality at a price that is stiff enough to not cause sticker shock when customers look at small run boutique miniatures.
But I don't think GW is bleeding customers to the likes of PuppetsWar and Anvil Industries. GW may be bleeding some sales to those companies...maybe. The industry is simply different now. Customers have a lot more choice when it comes to getting exactly what they want and what they want isn't always what GW has to offer. That's the market at work. GW needs to put up or shut up instead of worrying about what is "fair."
What is fair is artists creating something new that the market accepts as new and values as new being allowed to benefit from their originality. What is fair is GW being under pressure to innovate or lose sales.
I just never understood why someone could look at a work of art that consumers in a free market literally value more highly than Games Workshop's art and claim that those works of art are not unique and should, again, literally fall within GW's ownership and control.
Ultimately (toys or not, game or not), this industry is about buying art. Some companies sell art and entertainment. But customers can very easily consume your entertainment and not consume your art. GW doesn't like that. GW doesn't like someone playing its game and not buying its art. GW feels that it is unfair for a company to be able to only sell art because GW is putting effort into selling entertainment. Well tough cookies. Improve your art. Sell a better product at a better price.
Just because a company benefits from a market that you create does not mean they aren't allowed to be in business. If that were the case, we'd all be in big trouble.
One can certainly see a number of front runners starting to transition from minnow to established player type positions, and some are producing some really quite sophisticated models of very respectable quality.
I guess the watershed will be when some of these emerging names (the likes of Anvil Industries, Puppets War, CHS, Kromlech et al) gets large enough, or Kickstarts, to transition into plastic kits like Dream Forge. If there are a number of companies producing alternate models for a number of factions, likely priced very competitively if DF and the Perrys are anything to judge by,, then that simultaneously undermines one of GW's key competitive advantages (a wider, more diverse range of modular plastic kits than anyone else right now) and will dramatically highlight how far adrift their pricing is from where it should/could be.
I think if any of these companies start to move beyond the garage kit level, it could be a game changer. GW has already failed to shut one of them down in a protracted court case. For years, they've relied on smaller companies caving under legal threat, but now that people have seen a smaller company survive GW's full legal resources, who knows what people are thinking.
While we here talk about how GW gaming communities are drying up in many locations, I wonder if the die hards in those communities have really, truly quit, or if they're still happily playing with a buddy or two and continuing with lots of hobby projects at home. While there is pretty much no regular 40k gaming where I am (it's all Flames of War and WM/H) there are still a couple big 40k events each year that brings all the die hards out of the woodwork. And it's a sea of Forgeworld and 3rd party manufacturers like Scibor, CHS and Kromlech that gets brought to these events.
I think in the full annual report, we'll see that Forgeworld is continuing to perform very, very strongly and GW's core business will continue a slow decline. Hopefully they'll take a moment to highlight divisions that are doing well like they did last year.
Well, all anecdotal of course, but thanks to the only local LGS being a GW which has cut back notably on open gaming, and our events man choosing to start the New Year with a slow grow league, our club membership has broken records, both for overall attendance and number of 40K games in the last two weeks, that's even allowing for the fact that two years ago when it started, the club was exclusively GW (so de facto 40K exclusive) and now has healthy Warmachine, Infinity, X Wing and Historical sub-sets.
There's life in this particular dog yet, but the next few months could be the most important in its history.
weeble1000 wrote: Except GW has left alone the parties making whole miniatures ranges. They kicked a hornet's nest with Chapterhouse and blew their legal wad on a badly chosen target. Not that they had much of a leg to stand on considering the allegations.
GW may be afraid of those producers, but GW could beat them on both quality and price. That's what's insane. GW has created a market for those products by putting out unsatisfactory art at an unsatisfactory level of quality at a price that is stiff enough to not cause sticker shock when customers look at small run boutique miniatures.
It's actually really strange isn't it, when people can hand cast resin in small batches and offer it at a lower price than GW's mass produced plastics? GW should be experiencing some sort of competitive advantage for the whole economies of scale thing, but there's just nothing there.
But I don't think GW is bleeding customers to the likes of PuppetsWar and Anvil Industries. GW may be bleeding some sales to those companies...maybe.
When discovery occured, CHS's sales didn't turn out to be that large year over year, did they?
Silver_skates wrote: I've realised I made a slight error. The reboot of 40k was last year. A fall in revenue is totally expected as a result.
If I was advising an investor, I would tell them to buy stock in GW before the Warhammer reboot (this year allegedly). If Warhammer succeeds, sell half of stock and make a profit. If its a flop, buy more stock before the panic reaction of launching 40k next year. Of course, I'd have to look at the trends of more than just two periods to have a completely firm grasp on what's going on if money was at stake.
In other words, GW is doing as expected. The company is likely to go nowhere.
I think if you were advising an investor you'd probably not even really have your clients looking at GW stock...
I'm certainly not a broker, but I have family that follows the market obsessively. Stocks are still unstable and in this economy. Tulipomania seems to be a reoccurring theme. (The gold rally about 2 years ago, bitcoins now.)
There's no way I would advise putting anything into GW. If this were a normal market, and they actually had an open corporate culture that embraced change, ... and if my aunt had dakka she'd be a Warboss.
'Too big to fail, We are owed your loyalty' ; this is not corporate climate of a stock ready to rally. Anyone who thinks a huge outmoded company can't disappear has been asleep for the past 10 years.
May have to thank Major Tom for this, somehow the re-booting of this thread has actually generated some *gasp* financial analysis as opposed to the 38 pages of pricing complaints, calls for the imminent doom of GW and revelry in that fact.
All too often as a community we tend to embrace emotional reasoning when discussing GW's business practices, and all too often the analysis of GW's condition and future is made without any firm grounding in financial data or even with regards to simple business sensibilities. While probably made with the best intentions some of this "Analysis" that doesn't actually include anything of the sort can be dangerous to sentiments within the community. No one yells fire in a movie theater when they see an exposed electrical wire. They note the existence of the exposed wire and the risks it creates.
The bottom line is there is no current "going concern" for GW, the reductions in revenues and the potential softening of the GW market are certainly though concerning. Whether these drops can be attributed to the console releases only time will tell, and the year over year numbers should be more indicative of this.
GW due to it's market niche is a difficult company to valuate, and befitting the fact that it is a relatively illiquid small cap stock has been subject to some wild stock price fluctuations over the years (although obviously some are attributable to macro environment and performance). I suspect that GAW was overvalued at 800, and some market correction was necessary poor results or not.
When discovery occured, CHS's sales didn't turn out to be that large year over year, did they?
Some of their most popular products sold something in the neighborhood of 1,000 to 2,000 units, if I recall correctly. Many more far fewer. This industry is very small.
When discovery occured, CHS's sales didn't turn out to be that large year over year, did they?
Some of their most popular products sold something in the neighborhood of 1,000 to 2,000 units, if I recall correctly. Many more far fewer. This industry is very small.
I won't ever fully understand GWs decision to litigate there. Certainly they have to make a stand on IP somewhere, though I think they probably could've waited for a more compelling case in which to do so in.
In all likelihood they bluffed on threatening legal action and CHS called that bluff.
As I said before.. GW is a specialty retailer and I fully expect retail to do poorly as people finally wake up to the fact we are still in a full blown depression. Their sales and stock price will suffer but not for the reasons you guys are giving. The consumer is completely tapped out.
Store closures all across retail and youth unemployment numbers SHOULD tell you that.. I'm not going to try to sit here and convince everyone about that. Oh well.. back to work.
It's worth pointing out that the shares have hardly tanked, they've returned to the level of 18 months ago.
I hope this is a wake-up call for GW. They obviously need to address recruitment - I vote they introduce Space Hulk-style sets, which are cool, playable for young kids, and will ease them into the universe. But the most serious aspect is the lack of community, something they've allowed to slide drastically over the last couple of years. We play a lot in GW stores, but increasingly in our good local FLGS. The local GW used to organise leagues and tournaments with dozens of people - now this has collapsed, and we've turned up for campaigns, then been hassled by staff if the game goes over an hour.
Kirby boasts about the company attitude - their job ads, in the shops, are bizarre, very intimidating, and suggest a very fixed company culture. The biggest challenge is whether they can change their attitude and culture. I hope they do, they're a successful British manufacturing company, who produce mostly on-shore, and we don't have too many of them.
Accidents happen. Give me your address and I'll send you my pinky if it makes you feel any less dramatic
Send it to my house, I have been wanting to start an imperial cult, all i need is a holy relic from Saint Tom and a pinky will do nicely :-)
on topic... I think the tale will really be told when we see the years numbers. I think the numbers do not bode well but the stock dip was mainly due to this being a regular dividend stock, from my (limited) experience people overlook a lot of things on stocks that pay regular dividends, until they stop. so it'll be very interesting to see how things are going in the next 6 mos.
When discovery occured, CHS's sales didn't turn out to be that large year over year, did they?
Some of their most popular products sold something in the neighborhood of 1,000 to 2,000 units, if I recall correctly. Many more far fewer. This industry is very small.
I won't ever fully understand GWs decision to litigate there. Certainly they have to make a stand on IP somewhere, though I think they probably could've waited for a more compelling case in which to do so in.
In all likelihood they bluffed on threatening legal action and CHS called that bluff.
Of course they did. No reasonable person would have expected that Winston and Strawn would spend millions of dollars to defend Chapterhouse pro-bono.
On the same token, no reasonable person would have tried to destroy a company causing no measurable harm to your business purely because you could afford to sue them. Kirby even said in the last annual report that GW goes after "intransigent small infringers" regardless of the fact that they do not affect GW's profits. It's the principle of the thing, you know. Except that principle got crapped on by the Court's dismissal of claims and the jury's findings in favor of Chapterhouse Studios. And it could very well get flushed down the toilet on appeal.
In any case, Kickstarter is a much more realistic threat to GW than companies selling boutique accessories intended to modify the appearance and functionality of GW's products, which in my view includes whole models. Who has an entire not-Space Marine army of Anvil Industry models? Probably very, very few individuals. Doubtless those models are supplanting the place of similar GW products in the collections of some wargamers and doubtless they are selling well, or else Anvil wouldn't keep making more of them .
But even so, their use is probably supplemental to that of GW's products, thus adding value to GW's products even if they take some value away in the form of lost sales. But as to those lost sales, to the extent there are any, were they lost purely on the basis of a price undercut, or on the basis of aesthetic value/increased functionality? If the prices of the competing products is higher, and it is, a consumer's decision to purchase one over the other has little enough to do with price and all to do with having been offered a previously non-existent product that met an unfulfilled demand.
GW should be more worried about demand its products are not meeting, rather than with trying to prevent others from exercising their legitimate rights to meet it. That's what a responsible business does. Healthy competition is ultimately good for the consumer. We get better products and better prices. We are seeing that happen today. The industry is positively booming with new products and new ideas. If GW can't keep up that's its own problem. It is perfectly clear that someone will provide us with the type of products that we want.
When discovery occured, CHS's sales didn't turn out to be that large year over year, did they?
Some of their most popular products sold something in the neighborhood of 1,000 to 2,000 units, if I recall correctly. Many more far fewer. This industry is very small.
I won't ever fully understand GWs decision to litigate there. Certainly they have to make a stand on IP somewhere, though I think they probably could've waited for a more compelling case in which to do so in.
In all likelihood they bluffed on threatening legal action and CHS called that bluff.
Of course they did. No reasonable person would have expected that Winston and Strawn would spend millions of dollars to defend Chapterhouse pro-bono.
On the same token, no reasonable person would have tried to destroy a company causing no measurable harm to your business purely because you could afford to sue them. Kirby even said in the last annual report that GW goes after "intransigent small infringers" regardless of the fact that they do not affect GW's profits. It's the principle of the thing, you know. Except that principle got crapped on by the Court's dismissal of claims and the jury's findings in favor of Chapterhouse Studios. And it could very well get flushed down the toilet on appeal.
Kirby's bravado there just exemplifies the business precedent that GW was looking to set, if you infringe, we will squish you. Unfortunately for GW, there's a whole 'nother aspect to precedent that perhaps they didn't consider- the legal precedent that is set after a fairly unique IP case and opens the door to even more possible "infringement". Which is what we saw. Cannot imagine they feel too great about their decision in hindsight. I agree also on their focus needing to be on meeting those markets- that 250k investment could have gone to much better places.
How much money did we spend on Kickstarter alone last year? 55 Million Dollars Yea, we're tapped out alright. Tapped out from buying an unprecedented amount of gaming products. Personally, I flushed more money into my hobby last year than I did in 2012, easily.
Kickstarter alone raised 55 million dollars just for tabletop games. Corvus Beli grew by what, 75% 2012-2013? ICv2 says that from what it can estimate the market is growing by more than 16% per year in the US. You can grouse about this number or that number all you want, but it is pretty clear that table top wargaming is booming regardless of what the economy is like.
And who didn't have a Kickstarter in 2013? Yea, that's right...Games Workshop, so we know that GW saw none of that 55 million dollars. None. Some of it went to GW's direct competitors, Hell, a lot of it did.
It is all very well to say that the economy sucks all over the world and big box retailers are struggling, but the proof is in the pudding. People are spending plenty money on tabletop games. But they are clearly not buying as many GW products. That's a problem for GW in an industry this small when its major strength is market share.
dereksatkinson wrote: Management can't control everything and pointing to revenue dropping 12% as a "failure of management" is complete nonsense.
That would sort-of depend on the reason for that drop in revenue, surely?
If it's due to a down-turning market, and GW are just making the best they can of a bad situation, then no, that's not necessarily management's fault.
If it's due to regionalisation, supply issues, cutting independants off from new releases and large chunks of the range, 1-week preview windows, cutting off internet sales to drive people to their own webstore, price rises, resentment from dodgy litigation, poor PR, poor product support, lack-lustre releases and/or switching to one-man stores ... that would certainly seem to be the fault of management.
We keep hearing that the miniatures industry outside of GW is booming. The apparent rapid growth of a whole bunch of little games producers seems to bear that out. Which does seem suggestive, when trying to make a stab at which of those options would be more likely...
Kirby's bravado there just exemplifies the business precedent that GW was looking to set, if you infringe, we will squish you. Unfortunately for GW, there's a whole 'nother aspect to precedent that perhaps they didn't consider- the legal precedent that is set after a fairly unique IP case and opens the door to even more possible "infringement". Which is what we saw. Cannot imagine they feel too great about their decision in hindsight.
GW lives with blinders on. Maybe they'll start to get nervous when the appellate shoe drops...maybe. Right now, there's only some murky, lower court precedent on the books. If the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals comes down with a landmark decision on this (which could certainly happen), that's something people can hang their hat on, and I think you'll really see GW's grip on the market loosening.
I would be tickled pink if a few years from now the copyright and trademark filings were ringing with citations to the Games Workshop decision. That'll help their brand for sure.
dereksatkinson wrote: Management can't control everything and pointing to revenue dropping 12% as a "failure of management" is complete nonsense.
That would sort-of depend on the reason for that drop in revenue, surely?
If it's due to a down-turning market, and GW are just making the best they can of a bad situation, then no, that's not necessarily management's fault.
If it's due to regionalisation, supply issues, cutting independants off from new releases and large chunks of the range, 1-week preview windows, cutting off internet sales to drive people to their own webstore, price rises, resentment from dodgy litigation, poor PR, poor product support, lack-lustre releases and/or switching to one-man stores ... that would certainly seem to be the fault of management.
We keep hearing that the miniatures industry outside of GW is booming. The apparent rapid growth of a whole bunch of little games producers seems to bear that out. Which does seem suggestive, when trying to make a stab at which of those options would be more likely...
As a dedicated GW fan who has very little interest in other systems due to aesthetics or storyline, I welcome a little competition to push GW in the right direction towards focusing on improving player satisfaction and experience. Assuming that they actually take thought to do so.
GW gave out a huge amount of computer game licenses last year. Armaggeddon, Warhammer total war, Space Hulk, the FPS Space Hulk to name a few off the top of my head. Which financial reports would the money they got from them have been in?
GW gave out a huge amount of computer game licenses last year. Armaggeddon, Warhammer total war, Space Hulk, the FPS Space Hulk to name a few off the top of my head. Which financial reports would the money they got from them have been in?
That Revenue might not come in untill said games go to market. Accounting has never been my strong suit thow, so i can't be bothered to read the whole report for "fun".
GW gave out a huge amount of computer game licenses last year. Armaggeddon, Warhammer total war, Space Hulk, the FPS Space Hulk to name a few off the top of my head. Which financial reports would the money they got from them have been in?
That's in their statements. Revenues from licensing did in fact increase a substantial amount the previous 6 months.
GW gave out a huge amount of computer game licenses last year. Armaggeddon, Warhammer total war, Space Hulk, the FPS Space Hulk to name a few off the top of my head. Which financial reports would the money they got from them have been in?
That's in their statements. Revenues from licensing did in fact increase a substantial amount the previous 6 months.
It definitely struck me as a bit desperate at the time. It seemed like a half dozen titles were announced in the span of a month or two.
GW gave out a huge amount of computer game licenses last year. Armaggeddon, Warhammer total war, Space Hulk, the FPS Space Hulk to name a few off the top of my head. Which financial reports would the money they got from them have been in?
That's in their statements. Revenues from licensing did in fact increase a substantial amount the previous 6 months.
It definitely struck me as a bit desperate at the time. It seemed like a half dozen titles were announced in the span of a month or two.
Exactly. GW was spamming out licenses to anyone with a few grand in their pocket. I took it at the time as GW attempting to rabidly monetize any existing assets, and now we know why. They knew it wasn't going to look pretty, so if you could throw $7K at them they took it and did't look twice.
GW gave out a huge amount of computer game licenses last year. Armaggeddon, Warhammer total war, Space Hulk, the FPS Space Hulk to name a few off the top of my head. Which financial reports would the money they got from them have been in?
That's in their statements. Revenues from licensing did in fact increase a substantial amount the previous 6 months.
It definitely struck me as a bit desperate at the time. It seemed like a half dozen titles were announced in the span of a month or two.
Exactly. GW was spamming out licenses to anyone with a few grand in their pocket. I took it at the time as GW attempting to rabidly monetize any existing assets, and now we know why. They knew it wasn't going to look pretty, so if you could throw $7K at them they took it and did't look twice.
Well there's no question the loss of THQ derived income hurts and they needed to find new partners but as mentioned before, a lot of these licensing deals can go a long time before seeing revenues and games development is also no short term quick fix. Just look at the pre-alpha sneak peak at the 40k MMO out today, that thing is well over a year from being ready to hit shelves.
weeble1000 wrote: How much money did we spend on Kickstarter alone last year? 55 Million Dollars Yea, we're tapped out alright. Tapped out from buying an unprecedented amount of gaming products. Personally, I flushed more money into my hobby last year than I did in 2012, easily.
weeble1000 wrote: How much money did we spend on Kickstarter alone last year? 55 Million Dollars Yea, we're tapped out alright. Tapped out from buying an unprecedented amount of gaming products. Personally, I flushed more money into my hobby last year than I did in 2012, easily.
And how much of that was debt?
The consumer is levered to the hilt.
Well, for me, none. I don't have any debt other than home and car, but I get your point. There's no way for you to answer that question though, and 'yea, but it's probably debt,' doesn't do much to change the fact that the money was spent and that it went to tabletop game companies.
weeble1000 wrote: How much money did we spend on Kickstarter alone last year? 55 Million Dollars Yea, we're tapped out alright. Tapped out from buying an unprecedented amount of gaming products. Personally, I flushed more money into my hobby last year than I did in 2012, easily.
And how much of that was debt?
The consumer is levered to the hilt.
Whiff of goal post moving here.
It isn't relevant to GW's performance or their relative performance to other companies in their sector where the money came from. The relevant point is that money was spent, and large quantities were spent on things that GW doesn't make.
It might be pertinent to the argument about whether recession has gone away or is just hiding, but that isn't what we're talking about.
Davor wrote: Wouldn't all the money they get from licences just go to the lawyers in all the C&D and legal battles with CHS?
So they get from one hand, licences but give to the other hand lawyers and court battles.
I just want to know, how much money GW lost in money because of lawyers and court costs/battles.
HA! It wouldn't pay for it, no. Especially not with how much GW is paying for its own licenses.
GW is probably into seven figures already in the GW v CHS case. They spent close to $200,000.00 on printing for the trial alone. And they're looking at another several thousand bills in the appeal process. This doesn't count what GW normally budgets for in house legal counsel, which Mr. Jones testified last year has more than 200 targets it is considering. Of course, GW also got rid of its senior in house counsel last year too, maybe because she demolished he department's budget.
And then you have to consider the financial cost in terms of lost goodwill that this behavior has generated, especially considering that Kirby himself stated that the legal expenses are not spent to protect the company's profits. So no profits protected, lots of money spent, and massive loss of goodwill.
Rich at Wayland confirmed that in the last year, the sales of Wayland Games went up 15% and GW sales made up no part of that. Given Wayland's direct relationship with hobby distribution and their generalist approach to supplying the UK and Europe, it might be a fair corallary to the ICV2 numbers from the US reporting around the same level of growth.
People might be putting things on their credit card in completely irresponsible ways, but that money is going more and more to other places and less and less to GW.
GW gave out a huge amount of computer game licenses last year. Armaggeddon, Warhammer total war, Space Hulk, the FPS Space Hulk to name a few off the top of my head. Which financial reports would the money they got from them have been in?
That's in their statements. Revenues from licensing did in fact increase a substantial amount the previous 6 months.
The highest royalties were in 2009 and 2012 with £3.5m and this year they are on track for £2.0m. The fiscal year ending in 2013 was one of their worst years for royalties at only £1.0m.
In short, GW hasn't really had the explosive royalty growth they were talking about in the past. They had a bad year and are turning things around a bit, but it's been inconsistent.
I think that GW's willy nilly licensing might be a (not entirely bad) attempt to give the brand a more mass-market appeal, and to draw back in some of the market share that they've lost. The problem that i run into as a fan of the 40k universe is that even if as the IP holder, they retain some sort of quality control over the things that are done with their IP, you still might end up with finished product made by someone who doesn't understand what the universe is all about. Dawn of War really seemed this way to me, it seemed like a video game made by people who had read 1 paragraph blurbs about the different factions, instead of people who had studied the settings in-depth. Over time, this could lead to a weakening of the brand, but as an attempt to stave off the end of the road, it definitely makes sense.
As a fan, I don't think it's a good thing; as a business student, I understand what they're trying to do.
If you compared the current share price at 536.75p per share to the 52 week high of 823.5p per share this means that overall GW share have dropped 35% over that 52 week high. Worth noting isn't it?
azreal13 wrote: It isn't relevant to GW's performance or their relative performance to other companies in their sector where the money came from. The relevant point is that money was spent, and large quantities were spent on things that GW doesn't make.
It might be pertinent to the argument about whether recession has gone away or is just hiding, but that isn't what we're talking about.
Well.. My argument is that extrapolating a single data point into meaning that management has failed is silly. There simply isn't enough data to say that. Especially not a single earnings report.
Now, I do think we have enough data to suggest we are still in a recession and enough economic evidence to show that the consumer is struggling. See below..
We are now seeing the lowest amount of disposable income per capita in over 50 years. That is significant. That shows that people are having less and less money to be able to spend on recreation. Anecdotal evidence aside, I do think the consumer is the real story here. As it is with Best Buy, target, Sears and the list goes on and on.. http://www.retailresearch.org/whosegonebust.php
The point i'm really trying to make here is that for someone in the financial industry, it's pretty obvious that Games Workshop recognizes that they need to take a defensive posture with their business right now and not expand. They aren't acting the way you'd expect simply because they understand where we are in their business cycle. These are tough times and they are looking to survive.
dereksatkinson wrote: We are now seeing the lowest amount of disposable income per capita in over 50 years. That is significant. That shows that people are having less and less money to be able to spend on recreation. Anecdotal evidence aside, I do think the consumer is the real story here. As it is with Best Buy, target, Sears and the list goes on and on..
And yet GWs competition seem to be experiencing massive growth right now.
dereksatkinson wrote: We are now seeing the lowest amount of disposable income per capita in over 50 years. That is significant. That shows that people are having less and less money to be able to spend on recreation. Anecdotal evidence aside, I do think the consumer is the real story here. As it is with Best Buy, target, Sears and the list goes on and on..
And yet GWs competition seem to be experiencing massive growth right now.
That could well be a price point thing, that ties into the prior post about consumers having less money; maybe they cant afford a decent sized collection of GW anymore, but other games springing up demand smaller collections of figures, or just plain have cheaper price points. The rise in 'GW's competitors' you speak of could very well be people striving to maintain their hobby time on a decreased budget.
If that is the case, then it wont matter what GW does really... if they definitely wont drop the prices, then basically less people can afford it right now.
dereksatkinson wrote: We are now seeing the lowest amount of disposable income per capita in over 50 years. That is significant. That shows that people are having less and less money to be able to spend on recreation. Anecdotal evidence aside, I do think the consumer is the real story here. As it is with Best Buy, target, Sears and the list goes on and on..
And yet GWs competition seem to be experiencing massive growth right now.
That could well be a price point thing, that ties into the prior post about consumers having less money; maybe they cant afford a decent sized collection of GW anymore, but other games springing up demand smaller collections of figures, or just plain have cheaper price points. The rise in 'GW's competitors' you speak of could very well be people striving to maintain their hobby time on a decreased budget.
If that is the case, then it wont matter what GW does really... if they definitely wont drop the prices, then basically less people can afford it right now.
hhuuummmmmm. Some interesting thoughts this brings up in my mind.
Isn't that implying that these other wargames that are growing are Inferior goods in the wargameing market? This implies that once consumer income rises, GW will grow well over companies shrink.
I feel alot of these companies are already positioning themselves for when income rises, they can start transitioning into being normal goods.
To me this also highlights that GW has made huge mistakes in trying to recession proof themselves. Specalist games could of been GW's "Inferior goods" product line for the same reasons you listed. I know a year or so ago when the recession was kicking into effect, alot of the specialist games had a huge comeback. In my area Catachan boxs and Empire Free company were flying off the shelfs for Necromunda and Mordheim gangs! Sadly GW's numbers probably never recorded this, or realized the renewed interest the games were haveing.
Infinity has a much lower model count and buy in than 40k but I'd never call the models 'inferior goods'.
On the same note (although I'll fully admit this is entirely anecdotal) I, as well as more than a few others I know, have gone out and bought a ton of dyst wars stuff. Sure it's cheaper than GW but 4000 points of dyst wars (when the average game is 1000) adds up.
jonolikespie wrote: Infinity has a much lower model count and buy in than 40k but I'd never call the models 'inferior goods'.
On the same note (although I'll fully admit this is entirely anecdotal) I, as well as more than a few others I know, have gone out and bought a ton of dyst wars stuff. Sure it's cheaper than GW but 4000 points of dyst wars (when the average game is 1000) adds up.
Inferior goods in economics doesn't always mean it's a Inferior Product. I included a link to the wiki article to try and avoid that confusion.
I don't know if I would go as far to say they are inferior goods, but an example; Mantic, Kings of War, £50 army deals are currently giving you 4-6 usable units for the game.
With GW Warhammer Fantasy many single units will set you back more than this, at best your looking at 2 or 3 small units.
The price speaks for itself if you check the model count, or look at Warmachine or Hordes where the figures arent particularly cheaper than GW but for a decent game your looking at a smaller collection.
I think a lot of it comes down to personal preference though; for the longest time GW were the main easy to acquire models, add a bit of selection and youl find that not everyone likes GW's itteration of skeletons, or goblins etc. Its totally reasonable that someone elses art or rulesets will satisfy consumers where GW's did not.
I'm looking at it like this; Offer kids at school icecream in the cafeteria at lunch, I'm sure many (nearly all) will like it and be happy.
Now offer those same kids a choice of 5 different flavours of icecream, and not everyone will stick to the original flavour.
Now add ontop pricing disparity between flavours and it gets pretty complex But unless theres something really wrong with it, then the cheapest flavour will probably see the best sales. Does that mean the more steeply priced ones are better product? probably not. Theyre all icecream. In this analogy probably from the same supplier arguably the cheaper one is now the better item as its clearly more popular.
Another analogy could be clothing, High price point designer clothing compared to cheap mass produced stuff. take your pick of the designer names; does the quality of their item compared to the cheap stuff justify the high price point? ...ofcourse not, in many cases its far inferiour in terms of durability and totaly quantity of fabric, or perhaps fabric base price thus paying for the brand name, elitism kind of crap.
In economics, "inferior goods" means a cheaper version of something, that people buy when they haven't got enough money for the more expensive version.
An example is that during a recession Domino's Pizza does better, because more people decide to have a pizza at home rather than spend more to go out to a restaurant.
Either way you get a meal you didn't have to cook.
Ahh economics terminology this is why I asked for the interpretation for the laymen back on pg1 which btw peoiple are doing a fine job at, untill now I was just reading hehe.
I definatlly cant comment on whihc comapny makes the 'best' miniatures.. but if price is the only criteria then GW are up there hehe (although theyre not the MOST expensive)
Kilkrazy wrote: In economics, "inferior goods" means a cheaper version of something, that people buy when they haven't got enough money for the more expensive version.
An example is that during a recession Domino's Pizza does better, because more people decide to have a pizza at home rather than spend more to go out to a restaurant.
Either way you get a meal you didn't have to cook.
exactly.
an inferior good is a good that decreases in demand when consumer income rises, unlike normal goods, for which the opposite is observed.
-In a normal product, when Income goes up, demand goes up. When income Goes down, Demand goes down. GW's warhammer games are Normal Product.
-In a Inferior Product Demand goes down, when Income goes up. Demand then grows then Income goes down. Games like infinity may actually be considered a Inferior Product as strange as that sounds. (We can all agree that they do have some stunning modles after all!)
If it is true that GW shrank because of the recession well the other products had growing demand, this means that these other products can be considered Inferior Products. For these small Companies who have managed to grow so much, they may need to start getting ready if they do not want to lose market share to a reinsurgent GW when the economy begins to grow agien.
Personaly I think GW's bad polices made a bad situation worse. A low point of entry game was sorely needed in their product line.(A Inferior good Product line, that did not compete with their normal good warhammer games.) By giving up the ghost on specialist games, GW left a niche for other companies to take up residence in. Many small companies have now gotten their foot in the door, and now are building for the long term. I don't think GW is done for yet, but I think they are going to need to start considering new leadership if they wish to survive.
The thing is that wargames are not just about the price point. You have to put in a lot of effort to build an army, learn the rules and find people to play with.
GW's advantage has been partly the large number of people ready to play. If this drops because of lower sales or switching editions, the game becomes less attractive.
For example, I haven't bought the new codexes because they are too expensive, so although I have a Tyranid army I can't play with it, so I may not play 6th edition at all.
Ok I went and read that link and I still think my point stands.
Infinity is not growing more popular because GW is too expensive at the moment and it will not decline in popularity as disposable income increases and people are once again able to afford GW.
Infinity is growing more popular because it has lovely models, a great ruleset and a company that doesn't treat it's customers like gak.
Sure that's all a little anecdotal but the idea of Inferior Product seems to be just that, it's an inferior product, a place holder until you can afford better. And GW no longer deserves the mantle of 'better'.
These financials reflect everything I already knew. There seems to be a groundswell of support for other games where I am. For the first time ever I walked into a games store and it had no GW shelf space or stock. Lots of everything else, Flames of War, Warmachine etc.
Like many Australians, I had found that GW prices (local) were fine for the occasional impulse buy, and for bulk army purchases I would grab everything from Wayland in the UK. I still find UK prices reasonable, but I don't think I should have to go through ebay or mail forwarders to accomplish this. Frankly, as a consumer, I was offended when GW cut off my entire country. The intended effect was obviously to wean me off Wayland. This didn't happen, I just kept buying products they are allowed to ship to Australia at a reasonable price.
I look forward to the day when GW allows UK independents to sell to me again, but by that time, their competition will be in a fine position to repel them. Its frankly a golden age of great games right now, and they only have poor GW decision making to thank.
frozenwastes wrote: Rich at Wayland confirmed that in the last year, the sales of Wayland Games went up 15% and GW sales made up no part of that. Given Wayland's direct relationship with hobby distribution and their generalist approach to supplying the UK and Europe, it might be a fair corallary to the ICV2 numbers from the US reporting around the same level of growth.
Did Wayland say what did made up that 15%? The ICV2 articles only mention CCG's and boardgames driving growth. No mention of miniatures collectible or non-collectible being part of the growth over the last year. They even mention game stores abandoning all non-CCG gaming in favor of only carrying collectible card games. None of the articles or economic data I have seen is showing the miniature games market is growing. The growth from the other companies appears to be from income that use to go to GW and is now going elsewhere.
CCG's and boardgames are on the rise, so I would attribute that growth to them more so than wargames or RPG's. I reckon what money doesn't go to GW goes to other figure manufacturers - wargamers are a hardcore bunch and spend their money mainly on miniatures, they don't drift off to other forms of entertainment once their favorite wargaming company ceases to please, they instead look for another one.
The interesting thing is that cost of sales dropped a fair bit, from £19,431,000 to £17,187,000. In other words GW managed to cut their costs of making stock, or they made less stock (or both).
In an ideal world, GW has started a lean production technique in which kits are moulded and packed more or less as customers order them through the website. I don't know how feasible that might be when moulding polystyrene models.
Kilkrazy wrote: In an ideal world, GW has started a lean production technique in which kits are moulded and packed more or less as customers order them through the website. I don't know how feasible that might be when moulding polystyrene models.
I'd be inclined to say "not at all". HIPS is all about economies of scale, which you don't get if you're constantly moving moulds around instead of just doing bulk production runs.
Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:It's worth pointing out that the shares have hardly tanked, they've returned to the level of 18 months ago.
I hope this is a wake-up call for GW. They obviously need to address recruitment - I vote they introduce Space Hulk-style sets, which are cool, playable for young kids, and will ease them into the universe. But the most serious aspect is the lack of community, something they've allowed to slide drastically over the last couple of years. We play a lot in GW stores, but increasingly in our good local FLGS. The local GW used to organise leagues and tournaments with dozens of people - now this has collapsed, and we've turned up for campaigns, then been hassled by staff if the game goes over an hour.
Kirby boasts about the company attitude - their job ads, in the shops, are bizarre, very intimidating, and suggest a very fixed company culture. The biggest challenge is whether they can change their attitude and culture. I hope they do, they're a successful British manufacturing company, who produce mostly on-shore, and we don't have too many of them.
Definitely agree with this, especially the sentiment of keeping manufacturing within the UK.
The 'yes man' culture is something that has been going on for some time. I remember almost a decade ago having a quite frightening experience of chatting to someone from White Dwarf, with him trying to explain that the drop in sales of LoTR (this was after the 'bubble burst') was nothing to do with films not being on in the cinema, and that is was within the power of the shop staff to maintain sales levels. Honestly, his eyes practically rolled up so only the whites were visible. Not a happy time.
frozenwastes wrote: Rich at Wayland confirmed that in the last year, the sales of Wayland Games went up 15% and GW sales made up no part of that. Given Wayland's direct relationship with hobby distribution and their generalist approach to supplying the UK and Europe, it might be a fair corallary to the ICV2 numbers from the US reporting around the same level of growth.
Did Wayland say what did made up that 15%? The ICV2 articles only mention CCG's and boardgames driving growth. No mention of miniatures collectible or non-collectible being part of the growth over the last year. They even mention game stores abandoning all non-CCG gaming in favor of only carrying collectible card games. None of the articles or economic data I have seen is showing the miniature games market is growing. The growth from the other companies appears to be from income that use to go to GW and is now going elsewhere.
Corvus Belli (Infinity) sales have gone up substantially over the past few years. I'm pretty sure others (X-Wing, now Malifaux etc.) have probably grown also. I did read about 20% of growth in the industry last year, which is heartening. GW might have a slightly smaller slice of that pie, but still have the lions share.
Still, complete domination of a market by one company is generally only good for the share-holders, and the customer will ultimately benefit if the current trend of a levelling of market share continues a little while longer - a greater variety of high-quality games, with well written rules and well sculpted miniatures, and GW themselves having to up their own game. From this side at least, hopefully things can only get better over the next five years!
Inferior product is way oversimplifying things because ultimately most sci-fi/fantasy Wargames companies don't just compete on price. Mantic is your best example of an inferior product line, because a lot of it is positioned to offer cheaper alternatives to GW's products so customers can "build big armies."
But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point.
Mantic doesn't just aim to undercut GW. Mantic aims to fill a demand that exists and that GW has not filled. That's not an inferior product. Mantic may be doing well because GW is doing badly, but that doesn't mean Mantic is going to do badly once customers have more disposable income. That's daft.
The "inferior product" idea is interesting, and certainly might represent a factor.
The hole in that theory for me is that, to the best of our knowledge with the information available, people seem to be spending more in the niche that GW competes in, even if it is on goods with a lower RRP.
So, if we are to assume that people are buying other goods because they are cheaper, one could also assume that they are being more relaxed with the quantities of cash they are spending, which surely runs contrary to the idea of why they are purchasing inferior goods in the first place?
I think if the consumer is spending in your market, but not with you, then the blame for that lies squarely on your shoulders. You are either selling a product the customer does not want/does not value, or haven't kept up with changes in the nature of demand.
I think first, we should be looking at the market then comparing how GW did versus the market.
We should all begin by eliminating the nonsense that this is a niche market. By most business definitions, a niche market is any market which is $100 million or less in worldwide revenue. The tabletop gaming market is a multi-billion dollar market today and estimates of the "miniatures" portion of that market have it at about $400m-$450m growing at about 8% CAGR. In other words, the miniatures market is a VERY healthy market right now even given the current economic situation in the world and is by no definition a "niche" market.
That being said, with the higher than usual sales decline for GW in the latest financials, coupled with the dramatically increased release schedule of products over the last year, the latest report shows that GW is showing some serious structural cracks. While their ridiculous policies (like not recognizing the internet exists and smacking down FLGS partners) and insane pricing practices have something to do with this, I think the bigger problem can be seen in how the competitors have risen and grown over the last decade. GW has abandoned their entry games (Space Hulk, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer Quest, Mordheim, etc.) which were better entry points into their main systems and this is where the competition (Malifaux, Infinity, Hell Dorado, et al.) have moved in. This is having a dramatic impact on GW when coupled with their isolationist business practices.
While the next financial report will show if this is going to be a longer term trend, I think watching if they "humble" themselves and start moving with a more sound and industry friendly business strategy will foreshadow what those results will be. Right now, GW continues to operate with the arrogance and heavy-hand that TSR did when Lorraine Williams was CEO there - and we all know how that turned out - TSR went bye-bye.
Based on past history with the current management, here is what I expect to see going forward through 2014:
- GW will raise prices again this spring which will finally cross-them over the price-value threshold and have a dramatic negative impact, more than any other price increase, on the decline in unit sales.
- As they move Finecast to Forgeworld, and current Finecast models will be repriced much higher to match current Forgeworld model pricing. This will again have a negative impact on unit sales.
- They will continue to let their lawyers run lose in stupid fashion and further damage their already volatile reputation like TSR did when they became known as T$R. The effect will be the same as it was on TSR then.
- They WILL look to release a revised 40k rulebook before the end of 2014 (probably around the November timeframe), to try and reinvigorate 40k sales. This will really be like a 6.5 version that will keep all current codexes valid.
- Late summer will see a new 40k supplement "Gods of War". Each race will get a new God of War model. Each God of War will be 250 points, have 10 D-Weapons with 72 inch range that can fire all their weapons in one turn. The model kit will build a 48" by 36" model (so you an an opponent can fill a 4 foot by 6 foot table with only two models), have 12 variants in the same kit and sell for around $1500 a model. After release, GW won't understand why every 40k player isn't rushing to buy one of these when total unit sales reach a whopping total of one, putting it only one better than the number of Adeptus Astartes chapters sold (which is none!).
- Speaking of disappointing Adeptus Astartes sales, GW will introduce GW Finance, where you can now buy Adeptus Astartes bundles with 60-months of 12% APR financing with only $100 dwon. One person will go for this which will lead them to create similar $12,000 bundles for all armies with the same financing options. No one beyond that first person will ever go for this so GW finance will be shut down before years end.
- Sales of the next edition of Warhammer will disappoint when the new version rulebook comes out priced at $250 standard, is 1200 pages, weighs 14 lbs., is three inches thick, and has 640 pages of a "miniatures showcase", showing GW continues to live in their reality-disconnected bubble.
- Games Day will move to one man shows and be set up in the closet of the convention halls, rather than the main floor.
- When the next financial report is published, and numbers are even worse than the current one, Tom Kirby will blame it on the fact we are living in the end times, that J.K. Rowling wrote a new book, and that President Obama only scored a 74 in his last golf round. In other words, he will begin to pull out bigger and bigger BS reasons why they are failing in a "GROWING" market than it being anything but management.
Here is what I think will happen after the above takes place in 2014:
- In January of 2015, after another disappointing sales decline and all of the above "we don't know how to run a business" management mis-steps we will get good news. A long time GW40k fan, playing since the Rogue Trader days, who started an internet start up and sold it to make almost a billion dollars will buy 51% of GW stock and initiate a hostile takeover. That person will succeed and the first thing they will do is kick Kirby and the rest of the incompetent GW management to the curb. Next, they will release a brand new version of Warhammer 50,000 by Christmas 2015 authored by Andy Chambers and Rick Priestly. It will be an entirely new game system from scratch and will move the clock forward 10,000 years to disassociate it from all the damage done to the brand by Kirby and company.
- They will also realign prices to market realities and Warhammer 50k will be a huge hit bringing the masses back to the new GW.
- This same person will institute an Outrider program to expand knowledge of the game, drive the release of several entry level games (such as those noted above), allow internet retailers to post GW product pictures, become partners with GWFLGS and allow them to sell ALL GW products again.
- This person will also expand Games Day to be a Games Weekend with all sorts of manner of games being played, painting workshops, painting competitions and other such fun.
- This person will institute FLGS store and larger tournament formats with unique prizes and other goodies.
- This person will adopt a franchise program for independents to form their own GW branded FLGS and get GW out of the retail business altogether. Instead they will teach others who start their own franchise how to run a successful retail environment (in other words, not the way Kirby and Co. are doing it), and promote the GW hobby on a massive scale.
- This person will reform the studio and completely separate it from sales so that they actually are designing games again instead of marketing promotional pieces.
Will just pick up on one thing. Purely speaking for myself, I use the term niche to mean tabletop wargaming, which is a niche within the wider tabletop gaming market, which in itself is a part of the toys/games/hobby market, rather than any strict economic definition.
So, by my way of thinking, something like Magic does compete for the Warhammer £, but not as directly as something like Warmachine.
As one point of data i will offer up my own sales. My 2 stores together sell an amount of GW product in the low six figures per year. GW dropped 33% in 2013 sales, vs. 2012. We had been having a slow decline in GW sales before that, but it's accelerating. I attribute this to:
- A lack of GW stock on the wall. They moved so many things (nearly all blisters, many plastic boxes) to mail order that i simply have less things to sell.
-Inability to actually sell a customer a full army due to lack of product. (WFB in particular)
-The complete lack of information and promotional support for new products before their release.
-Increase in price.
There are other factors, but these are the major ones affecting sales.
But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point. .
There is nothing lean about Mantic's prices.
They shadow GW to be just under them and relatively cheaper, but a company that charges you 15 GBP / 25 USD for a box of 8 no-options, restic, several-repeat sculpts DreadBall miniatures isn't doing any "lean". pricing.
But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point. .
There is nothing lean about Mantic's prices.
32 Page Mini Kings of War Core Rulebook
40 Plastic Dwarf Ironclad
Hand Weapons and Shield
Champion, Standard Bearer and Musician
30 Plastic Dwarf Ironwatch
Rifles or Crossbows
15 Plastic Dwarf Shieldbreakers
Two-handed hammers
2 Dwarf Ironbelchers with crew
Ironbelcher Cannon or Ironbelcher Organ Guns
Loads of Mantic Points
20mm Square Bases
50 quid. 50.
Includes a rulebook.
Say what you like about the quality, but if you're going to try and argue on price, you'd better have more than blatant cherry picking to back it up.
GW is in a position of weakness that they haven't been in since...forever?
There's never been a better time for competitors to step in with quality product and claim bigger pieces of the market share pie!
Depends on which companies/games you are talking about. I don't put warmachine or flames of war into the same catagory as these kickstarters we are seeing pop up. Most of the kickstarter numbers i've been seeing aren't direct competition for GW products. Most are board games and other one offs.
The issue that the kickstarter companies have had and will continue to have is maintaining momentum and sales after the kickstarter is done.. After the kickstarter has completely, most of these companies have NOT continued to make adequate sales for the people working for them to take it on as a full time job. That's just reality. They don't have the distribution channels or reliable clients to make it as a full on business regardless of the quality of their product. If you are a gaming store for every dream-forge games there are about 20 defiance games. It's like shopping on Etsy. The products are slightly cheaper and there is no real guarantee that you will get your product on time or ever. Sometime you even lose all your money because someone is dishonest.
That is just the reality of the situation. Saying that you aren't taking on counter party risk by dealing with a kickstarter is complete nonsense.
The difference is that when you place an order with GW, you know you are much more likely to actually get what you paid for and if you don't they will fix it. Other small companies who take their gak seriously like chapterhouse and dream-forge have earned that same level of trust from me but they are the exception and not the rule.
So no.. I don't consider these kickstarters to be competition for GW no more than I see Etsy stores as competition for Walmart.
Wayshuba wrote: I think first, we should be looking at the market then comparing how GW did versus the market.
We should all begin by eliminating the nonsense that this is a niche market. By most business definitions, a niche market is any market which is $100 million or less in worldwide revenue. The tabletop gaming market is a multi-billion dollar market today and estimates of the "miniatures" portion of that market have it at about $400m-$450m growing at about 8% CAGR. In other words, the miniatures market is a VERY healthy market right now even given the current economic situation in the world and is by no definition a "niche" market.
That being said, with the higher than usual sales decline for GW in the latest financials, coupled with the dramatically increased release schedule of products over the last year, the latest report shows that GW is showing some serious structural cracks. While their ridiculous policies (like not recognizing the internet exists and smacking down FLGS partners) and insane pricing practices have something to do with this, I think the bigger problem can be seen in how the competitors have risen and grown over the last decade. GW has abandoned their entry games (Space Hulk, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer Quest, Mordheim, etc.) which were better entry points into their main systems and this is where the competition (Malifaux, Infinity, Hell Dorado, et al.) have moved in. This is having a dramatic impact on GW when coupled with their isolationist business practices.
While the next financial report will show if this is going to be a longer term trend, I think watching if they "humble" themselves and start moving with a more sound and industry friendly business strategy will foreshadow what those results will be. Right now, GW continues to operate with the arrogance and heavy-hand that TSR did when Lorraine Williams was CEO there - and we all know how that turned out - TSR went bye-bye.
Based on past history with the current management, here is what I expect to see going forward through 2014:
- GW will raise prices again this spring which will finally cross-them over the price-value threshold and have a dramatic negative impact, more than any other price increase, on the decline in unit sales.
- As they move Finecast to Forgeworld, and current Finecast models will be repriced much higher to match current Forgeworld model pricing. This will again have a negative impact on unit sales.
- They will continue to let their lawyers run lose in stupid fashion and further damage their already volatile reputation like TSR did when they became known as T$R. The effect will be the same as it was on TSR then.
- They WILL look to release a revised 40k rulebook before the end of 2014 (probably around the November timeframe), to try and reinvigorate 40k sales. This will really be like a 6.5 version that will keep all current codexes valid.
- Late summer will see a new 40k supplement "Gods of War". Each race will get a new God of War model. Each God of War will be 250 points, have 10 D-Weapons with 72 inch range that can fire all their weapons in one turn. The model kit will build a 48" by 36" model (so you an an opponent can fill a 4 foot by 6 foot table with only two models), have 12 variants in the same kit and sell for around $1500 a model. After release, GW won't understand why every 40k player isn't rushing to buy one of these when total unit sales reach a whopping total of one, putting it only one better than the number of Adeptus Astartes chapters sold (which is none!).
- Speaking of disappointing Adeptus Astartes sales, GW will introduce GW Finance, where you can now buy Adeptus Astartes bundles with 60-months of 12% APR financing with only $100 dwon. One person will go for this which will lead them to create similar $12,000 bundles for all armies with the same financing options. No one beyond that first person will ever go for this so GW finance will be shut down before years end.
- Sales of the next edition of Warhammer will disappoint when the new version rulebook comes out priced at $250 standard, is 1200 pages, weighs 14 lbs., is three inches thick, and has 640 pages of a "miniatures showcase", showing GW continues to live in their reality-disconnected bubble.
- Games Day will move to one man shows and be set up in the closet of the convention halls, rather than the main floor.
- When the next financial report is published, and numbers are even worse than the current one, Tom Kirby will blame it on the fact we are living in the end times, that J.K. Rowling wrote a new book, and that President Obama only scored a 74 in his last golf round. In other words, he will begin to pull out bigger and bigger BS reasons why they are failing in a "GROWING" market than it being anything but management.
Here is what I think will happen after the above takes place in 2014:
- In January of 2015, after another disappointing sales decline and all of the above "we don't know how to run a business" management mis-steps we will get good news. A long time GW40k fan, playing since the Rogue Trader days, who started an internet start up and sold it to make almost a billion dollars will buy 51% of GW stock and initiate a hostile takeover. That person will succeed and the first thing they will do is kick Kirby and the rest of the incompetent GW management to the curb. Next, they will release a brand new version of Warhammer 50,000 by Christmas 2015 authored by Andy Chambers and Rick Priestly. It will be an entirely new game system from scratch and will move the clock forward 10,000 years to disassociate it from all the damage done to the brand by Kirby and company.
- They will also realign prices to market realities and Warhammer 50k will be a huge hit bringing the masses back to the new GW.
- This same person will institute an Outrider program to expand knowledge of the game, drive the release of several entry level games (such as those noted above), allow internet retailers to post GW product pictures, become partners with GWFLGS and allow them to sell ALL GW products again.
- This person will also expand Games Day to be a Games Weekend with all sorts of manner of games being played, painting workshops, painting competitions and other such fun.
- This person will institute FLGS store and larger tournament formats with unique prizes and other goodies.
- This person will adopt a franchise program for independents to form their own GW branded FLGS and get GW out of the retail business altogether. Instead they will teach others who start their own franchise how to run a successful retail environment (in other words, not the way Kirby and Co. are doing it), and promote the GW hobby on a massive scale.
- This person will reform the studio and completely separate it from sales so that they actually are designing games again instead of marketing promotional pieces.
Anyway, just my thoughts and opinions.
sigh... this is about as rational as the autogenerated complaint letter I posted earlier..
Kilkrazy wrote: The interesting thing is that cost of sales dropped a fair bit, from £19,431,000 to £17,187,000. In other words GW managed to cut their costs of making stock, or they made less stock (or both).
In an ideal world, GW has started a lean production technique in which kits are moulded and packed more or less as customers order them through the website. I don't know how feasible that might be when moulding polystyrene models.
I thought there were shortages of newly released kits over the last year where people couldn't get things even on release day; GW were supplying their own shops and independents second. If that's right, then they're playing it very safe by underproducing so as not to have any excess stock that doesn't immediately sell.
Say what you like about the quality, but if you're going to try and argue on price, you'd better have more than blatant cherry picking to back it up.
I play DreadBall, which (going by their Kickstarter) is 3-times the game Kings of War is, so it's hardly cherry picking.
Either way, despite knowing nothing about Kings of War.. one quick look at the random units in their online shop shows...
Mantic Games
Spoiler:
5 Miniatures, no options, metal cast, 15 Quid. (3 quid per mini)
Games Workshop
Spoiler:
16 miniatures, plenty of options, hard plastic, 20 quid (1.25 per miniature).
Mantic's even more expensive than GW.
Yes, Mantic is smart, smarter than GW, and thus has a few loss-leading starter boxes and bundles, like the one you "cherry-picked".
Their "average" miniature is nearly as expensive (and, as shown above, in some cases more (!) expensive) than GW.
[
You say he's cherry picking when you didn't even compare the same thing. Go compare GW and Mantic's Dwarf warriors with each other, or GW and Mantic's "slayers". I'd go on further, but your mind is already made up and spouting rubbish so I've already spend enough time on this.
Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there.. you've pretty much picked up one of the most expensive miniatures (price per) in the Mantic range.
Someone coming into KoW wouldn't buy those. They would be far more likely to buy the box-set which Azrael posted, which costs £50. Actually an army that you can play the game with, straight up.
Dreadball is a little more expensive price per miniature, but it's mitigated by the fact that a team is all you need to play. If a friend has the boardgame already, £15 would seem to be extremely reasonable!
Pacific wrote: Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there.. you've pretty much picked up one of the most expensive miniatures (price per) in the Mantic range.
Someone coming into KoW wouldn't buy those. They would be far more likely to buy the box-set which Azrael posted, which costs £50. Actually an army that you can play the game with, straight up.
Dreadball is a little more expensive price per miniature, but it's mitigated by the fact that a team is all you need to play. If a friend has the boardgame already, £15 would seem to be extremely reasonable!
I just picked a random Dwarf from the range. How the feth should I know, which Dwarf does what. They all look the same to me
The only thing I didn't do was pick the obvious loss-leading "get-started-here" box, because that, frankly, is disingenuous. That is cherry-picking.
And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?
What if I want to play "DreadBall Apocalypse" with 100 miniatures each side? Will Mantic sell me the minis for a tenth of the price?
mikhaila wrote: As one point of data i will offer up my own sales. My 2 stores together sell an amount of GW product in the low six figures per year. GW dropped 33% in 2013 sales, vs. 2012. We had been having a slow decline in GW sales before that, but it's accelerating. I attribute this to:
- A lack of GW stock on the wall. They moved so many things (nearly all blisters, many plastic boxes) to mail order that i simply have less things to sell.
-Inability to actually sell a customer a full army due to lack of product. (WFB in particular)
-The complete lack of information and promotional support for new products before their release.
-Increase in price.
There are other factors, but these are the major ones affecting sales.
Thanks for the input Mikhaila. One of my FLGS owners commented the too saw a 25% drop in GW sales over the last year. So GW's claim of the drop being due to the switch to one man stores isn't true. Have other miniature games picked up the loss sales from GW or do you see an overall decline in the miniatures market? The same FLGS stated that while games like WMH are growing, they don't offset the lost GW sales. While the other games have lower entry points, he would need players to pick up multiple systems to offset the GW loss. In contrast, he did expand his MtG section vastly with a lot of used card displays.
As for everyone who praises Mantic and KoW, none of my local stores carry it. All the owners say they don't want to carry stock for a company that throws out sales and specials on a regular basis that undercut them so heavily. They will carry Dreadball, and the other boardgames, but not KoW itself.
Silver_skates wrote:Intangible assets have increased by £2m. I find this interesting because intangible assets are often ways of hiding costs on balance sheet as it is purely on the directors opinion that an intangible can be capitalised. Without detailed reports its impossible to know what has been capitalised or not. My assumption is the spead of producing codexes has led to an increase and an increase in intellectual property which has been capitalised to be written off over its "useful economic life". I would flag this as a red herring in my job. If not capitalised profits would reduce by £5m.
Didn't comment on this earlier, but we could have just seen the CHS legal costs revealed.
Pacific wrote: Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there.. you've pretty much picked up one of the most expensive miniatures (price per) in the Mantic range.
Someone coming into KoW wouldn't buy those. They would be far more likely to buy the box-set which Azrael posted, which costs £50. Actually an army that you can play the game with, straight up.
Dreadball is a little more expensive price per miniature, but it's mitigated by the fact that a team is all you need to play. If a friend has the boardgame already, £15 would seem to be extremely reasonable!
I just picked a random Dwarf from the range. How the feth should I know, which Dwarf does what. They all look the same to me
The only thing I didn't do was pick the obvious loss-leading "get-started-here" box, because that, frankly, is disingenuous.
Well, how about simply picking a boxed set with a comparable number of miniatures for a comparable unit in a comparable game? Could you manage that?
Or simply compare it to a GW Dwarf Battalion, hey, I'd even let you use the last version if they don't make one anymore.
And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?
That doesn't make sense at all.
Of course it makes sense, a lower volume of sales means a higher margin is required, hence why a plastic Space Marine character costs over half what a squad of ten.
Frankly, if your game was good enough, and I genuinely needed only to buy one mini at £50 to start playing, I'd consider it.
Pacific wrote: Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there..
Here, there and everywhere!
Anyway, I still don't really see Mantic as 'serious' competition to GW - they've got too many hurdles of their own to overcome before they can be 'taken seriously'.
Of course it makes sense, a lower volume of sales means a higher margin is required, hence why a plastic Space Marine character costs over half what a squad of ten.
Frankly, if your game was good enough, and I genuinely needed only to buy one mini at £50 to start playing, I'd consider it.
But volumes of sales for DreadBall are ~3-times higher than Kings of War (guestimate from the two Kickstarter's popularity).
Shouldn't DreadBall minis thus be a lot cheaper than KoW by your logic?
Pacific wrote: Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there..
Here, there and everywhere!
Anyway, I still don't really see Mantic as 'serious' competition to GW - they've got too many hurdles of their own to overcome before they can be 'taken seriously'.
Agreed.
On both points.
Personally, if he was trying to argue Mantic v GW on quality and price, it would be a much more even battle. I think Mantic are very important in the marketplace for their potential to keep GW 'honest' but there's very little I'm actively considering buying right now, but then, I'm a Miercehead, so clearly I'm at the "happy to pay a premium for quality" end of the scale, which isn't really what Mantic seem to be targeting (for now)
Of course it makes sense, a lower volume of sales means a higher margin is required, hence why a plastic Space Marine character costs over half what a squad of ten.
Frankly, if your game was good enough, and I genuinely needed only to buy one mini at £50 to start playing, I'd consider it.
But volumes of sales for DreadBall are ~3-times higher than Kings of War (guestimate from the two Kickstarter's popularity).
Shouldn't DreadBall minis thus be a lot cheaper than KoW by your logic?
No. The return on investment to Mantic per customer is likely much lower because the ceiling for what an average player will spend is likely much lower. That it is more popular is great, because it means Mantic will stick around longer, support Dreadball more heavily and continue to grow. Both financially and in terms of quality.
I don't begrudge a company making a profit, at the end of the day, if you make something that people are willing to buy, you should be rewarded, but on a product like Dreadball, you must base your pricing on the assumption that a new player buys the starter and nothing else, and cut your cloth accordingly.
But that isn't the argument here, and you know it.
No. The return on investment to Mantic per customer is likely much lower because the ceiling for what an average player will spend is likely much lower. That it is more popular is great, because it means Mantic will stick around longer, support Dreadball more heavily and continue to grow. Both financially and in terms of quality.
I don't begrudge a company making a profit, at the end of the day, if you make something that people are willing to buy, you should be rewarded, but on a product like Dreadball, you must base your pricing on the assumption that a new player buys the starter and nothing else, and cut your cloth accordingly.
But that isn't the argument here, and you know it.
Not really, because the argument is stupid anyway you look at it.
You can look at companies pricing their product based on roughly supply & demand (not in a pure economics-class sense, but in a business-sense of what people are willing to buy/pay) or at costs-to-market + x% for profit.
The whole notion of "it's based around the cost to the customer for getting "into the game" is ludicrous. Might as well argue that GW is basing their prices around the average customer buying 5 clip-together Space Marines and never anything else.
How/who/by what means should, especially "pre-publication", a company know what the "average amount" of miniatures is an "average customer" will buy? Maybe the "average collection" of the "average DreadBall player" is actually larger than the "average KoW collection" of the "average KoW player", as the former has plenty of teams and the latter is pushing old GW-figures around?
I digress..
Mantic is asking the prices it can ask, because their stuff "feels" like a bargain in the slipstream of GW, and they exploit that ruthlessly (as they should, not begrudging a company its profit and all that). The stuff that sells well, they price higher. The shelf-huggers they discount aggressively. No secret there.
It has absolutely nothing to do with "how many miniatures do you need to get started", and you know it.
No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.
And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?
If those miniatures were good quality, and Kill Team was a distinct, Necromunda/Mordheim-esque game system? Yes. I've bought boutique resin miniatures to use in Mordheim or INQ28 warbands that cost the same or more than GW miniatures. Again though, you're comparing apples to zepplins; Kill Team is NOT a standalone small model-count game, you need the main 40K rules and the codex for any army you want to use, and the hardback rulebook alone costs the same or more than I paid for any of GW's old SG starter boxes that included everything you needed to play the game including full-size rulebooks, two factions of models, dice, whippy-sticks etc etc.
azreal13 wrote: No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.
You keep throwing around that "cherry-picking" argument, but it doesn't.
I picked a basic box from their currently most popular game, DreadBall (putting Deadzone into the "not-yet-released" part) and it is fething expensive as miniatures go (if you consider GW expensive that is, neither are up there in the DZC, Malifaux, KD spheres yet, admittedly).
You asked me to take a look at KoW (which I admittedly don't know anything about), and it's just as expensive - in the GW price-range or slightly below - with the exception of some very few of loss-leading army-deals/starter-bundles.
The only way I could cherry pick this is if I were to point to those starter-boxes that break their normal prices.
And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?
If those miniatures were good quality, and Kill Team was a distinct, Necromunda/Mordheim-esque game system? Yes. I've bought boutique resin miniatures to use in Mordheim or INQ28 warbands that cost the same or more than GW miniatures. Again though, you're comparing apples to zepplins; Kill Team is NOT a standalone small model-count game, you need the main 40K rules and the codex for any army you want to use, and the hardback rulebook alone costs the same or more than I paid for any of GW's old SG starter boxes that included everything you needed to play the game including full-size rulebooks, two factions of models, dice, whippy-sticks etc etc.
So what if I just buy stuff for painting? What if I buy a Box of Dark Eldar Wyches to convert to DreadBall? What if I buy Mantic's more expensive Deadzone stuff to play huge 40KApoc games? How do you "price" miniatures that don't even have a game to go with (Kingdom Death Pin-Ups, say, or some of GW's Games Day figures?)
There is no uniform benchmark to put a "game-relative" price on a miniature. A miniature is expensive or it isn't compared to similar miniatures from other manufacturers. Hitching the argument to the game is just opening up all sorts of personal biases.
azreal13 wrote: No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.
You keep throwing around that "cherry-picking" argument, but it doesn't.
I picked a basic box from their currently most popular game, DreadBall (putting Deadzone into the "not-yet-released" part) and it is fething expensive as miniatures go (if you consider GW expensive that is, neither are up there in the DZC, Malifaux, KD spheres yet, admittedly).
You asked me to take a look at KoW (which I admittedly don't know anything about), and it's just as expensive - in the GW price-range or slightly below - with the exception of some very few of loss-leading army-deals/starter-bundles.
The only way I could cherry pick this is if I were to point to those starter-boxes that break their normal prices.
Fine, by those rules, new, core troop choice, for a popular and recently updated army...
£35 for 10
Brand new range, ten cavalry models, £19.99
Also, disregarding the starter boxes is disingenuous, again. Mantic offer them, GW do not (at least not at the same level.) you cannot simply hand wave them away and claim "they don't count because reasons" and expect anyone to treat your argument as having any degree of integrity.
You can get cheaper miniatures than from Mantic games. But price aside, Mantic is positioned to give the customer what GW isn't. A large part of that is good, largely free, game rules; low cost of entry to start playing; trim, small model count games, and customer and community support.
This is mostly stuff GW did back when the folks at Mantic were working for GW. It isn't rocket science to figure out what is going on there.
What about them? 35 quid for 10 miniatures is 3.5 per Mini. 50 pence more expensive than Mantic's dwarfs quoted above, though unlike the latter, GW's come with an abundance of options (multiple banners, music instruments, 16 different head options, etc. etc.. compared to the mono-pose Mantic ones).
GW more expensive with many options. Mantic "slipstreaming" slightly behind the GW price with simpler miniatures.
Alpharius wrote: Agreed, and underscores how badly Mantic is dropping the ball with their nagging issues that continue to crop up.
Hence, Mantic. Almost.
GW is in a position of weakness that they haven't been in since...forever?
There's never been a better time for competitors to step in with quality product and claim bigger pieces of the market share pie!
And vice versa. Given how regularly Mantic buggers things up, GW should be starving Mantic to death with a better, cheaper product. Especially since Mantic has been kind enough to telegraph their releases months in advance. Mantic's plastic undead are good, but everything else is either awful plastic with no options or expensive, difficult restic with no options.
What about them? 35 quid for 10 miniatures is 3.5 per Mini. 50 pence more expensive than Mantic's dwarfs quoted above, though unlike the latter, GW's come with an abundance of options (multiple banners, music instruments, 16 different head options, etc. etc.. compared to the mono-pose Mantic ones).
GW more expensive with many options. Mantic "slipstreaming" slightly behind the GW price with simpler miniatures.
My point all along, no?
Slip of the finger, posted early. Go back and reread.
azreal13 wrote: No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.
You keep throwing around that "cherry-picking" argument, but it doesn't.
I picked a basic box from their currently most popular game, DreadBall (putting Deadzone into the "not-yet-released" part) and it is fething expensive as miniatures go (if you consider GW expensive that is, neither are up there in the DZC, Malifaux, KD spheres yet, admittedly).
You asked me to take a look at KoW (which I admittedly don't know anything about), and it's just as expensive - in the GW price-range or slightly below - with the exception of some very few of loss-leading army-deals/starter-bundles.
The only way I could cherry pick this is if I were to point to those starter-boxes that break their normal prices.
Wait, you really can't tell why Dreadball/Bloodbowl/Elfball, are not the same as 40K/WFB/KoW/Warpath/Dust. Wow just wow.
Also, disregarding the starter boxes is disingenuous, again. Mantic offer them, GW do not (at least not at the same level.) you cannot simply hand wave them away and claim "they don't count because reasons" and expect anyone to treat your argument as having any degree of integrity.
I don't. If you want to compare starter-set with starter-set, do so. Would be interesting.
But to simply pick specifically the Mantic starter sets and use these prices as a basis to argue that Mantic - as a company in general - is offering "keen" prices is both "disingenuous" and "cherry picking".
And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?
If those miniatures were good quality, and Kill Team was a distinct, Necromunda/Mordheim-esque game system? Yes. I've bought boutique resin miniatures to use in Mordheim or INQ28 warbands that cost the same or more than GW miniatures. Again though, you're comparing apples to zepplins; Kill Team is NOT a standalone small model-count game, you need the main 40K rules and the codex for any army you want to use, and the hardback rulebook alone costs the same or more than I paid for any of GW's old SG starter boxes that included everything you needed to play the game including full-size rulebooks, two factions of models, dice, whippy-sticks etc etc.
So what if I just buy stuff for painting? What if I buy a Box of Dark Eldar Wyches to convert to DreadBall? What if I buy Mantic's more expensive Deadzone stuff to play huge 40KApoc games? How do you "price" miniatures that don't even have a game to go with (Kingdom Death Pin-Ups, say, or some of GW's Games Day figures?)
There is no uniform benchmark to put a "game-relative" price on a miniature. A miniature is expensive or it isn't compared to similar miniatures from other manufacturers. Hitching the argument to the game is just opening up all sorts of personal biases.
Again, apples to zepplins; single miniatures might be more or less expensive compared to other single miniatures, but that has no bearing at all on whether it's more expensive to play Warhammer Fantasy than Warpath or Warmahordes or Warthrone or Wargasm(seriously mini-makers, enough with the "War[thing]" naming convention). Are you actually physically capable of making a post on the internet without continually shifting the goalposts around every time?
Also, disregarding the starter boxes is disingenuous, again. Mantic offer them, GW do not (at least not at the same level.) you cannot simply hand wave them away and claim "they don't count because reasons" and expect anyone to treat your argument as having any degree of integrity.
I don't. If you want to compare starter-set with starter-set, do so. Would be interesting.
But to simply pick specifically the Mantic starter sets and use these prices as a basis to argue that Mantic - as a company in general - is offering "keen" prices is both "disingenuous" and "cherry picking".
Well, at least that's a better analogy.
Still more ~20% more expensive for ~20% fewer models, half of which, if any, are no good to anyone who doesn't want to collect Rats or HE, but that isn't a price issue.
So
GW= 1.13 per model
Mantic 0.58 per model.
Still makes a bit of a solid case for Mantic on price alone, especially if one does consider that all the models in the Mantic boxes will be relevant to the army you're starting, but at least you're arguing the original point you made now.
Again, apples to zepplins; single miniatures might be more or less expensive compared to other single miniatures, but that has no bearing at all on whether it's more expensive to play Warhammer Fantasy than Warpath or Warmahordes or Warthrone or Wargasm(seriously mini-makers, enough with the "War[thing]" naming convention). Are you actually physically capable of making a post on the internet without continually shifting the goalposts around every time?
I am fine with either benchmark really.
Are we comparing the price of "Miniature vs. Miniature"? Mantic is slightly cheaper than GW, though also inferior in production and actually pretty expensive compared to many other "non-GW" producers.
Are we comparing the price of "Game vs. Game"? Mantic (like all miniatures games) is hideously expensive compared to most other games out there, starting all the way down with free rock-paper-scissor and coin-tossing over the world of board games to whathaveyou.
Either way, I see no "keen" pricing anywhere, except in Mantic's prices relative to GW's prices as a company specifically targeting (ex-)GW customers with a "GW-price-level-sensitivity".
Of course it makes sense, a lower volume of sales means a higher margin is required, hence why a plastic Space Marine character costs over half what a squad of ten.
Frankly, if your game was good enough, and I genuinely needed only to buy one mini at £50 to start playing, I'd consider it.
But volumes of sales for DreadBall are ~3-times higher than Kings of War (guestimate from the two Kickstarter's popularity).
Shouldn't DreadBall minis thus be a lot cheaper than KoW by your logic?
Lets actually compare comparable products instead of being completely disingenuous shall we.
Comparisons here are on price not quality but the minitures are comparable in terms of type and for the most part material.
Still more ~20% more expensive for ~20% fewer models, half of which, if any, are no good to anyone who doesn't want to collect Rats or HE, but that isn't a price issue.
So
GW= 1.13 per model
Mantic 0.58 per model.
Still makes a bit of a solid case for Mantic on price alone, especially if one does consider that all the models in the Mantic boxes will be relevant to the army you're starting, but at least you're arguing the original point you made now.
But I get two player started with the WFB one, while I would need two Mantic boxes to get a game of two different armies going. So the "buy-into-the-game-price" for new players is 1 GW box vs. 2 Mantic boxes following "what you need to get started logic" above.
And again, yes, Mantic is cheaper than GW on average. But cheaper does not make "keen". Mercedes is cheaper than Rolls Royce, but that doesn't mean they are "keenly" priced.
Ok, so now we've established what practically everyone knew already (you get more Mantic minis per £ spent than the equivalent ranges from GW, by and large) is it time to steer this thread back towards the distant, exotic lands of the original topic?
Still more ~20% more expensive for ~20% fewer models, half of which, if any, are no good to anyone who doesn't want to collect Rats or HE, but that isn't a price issue.
So
GW= 1.13 per model
Mantic 0.58 per model.
Still makes a bit of a solid case for Mantic on price alone, especially if one does consider that all the models in the Mantic boxes will be relevant to the army you're starting, but at least you're arguing the original point you made now.
But I get two player started with the WFB one, while I would need two Mantic boxes to get a game of two different armies going. So the "buy-into-the-game-price" for new players is 1 GW box vs. 2 Mantic boxes following "what you need to get started logic" above.
And again, yes, Mantic is cheaper than GW on average. But cheaper does not make "keen". Mercedes is cheaper than Rolls Royce, but that doesn't mean they are "keenly" priced.
I'm sorry, but just prior to returning to topic, I just have to point out that is one of the most blatant attempts to wriggle out of a losing position I've seen, and I've seen a lot of Zwei's posts! You're now going to try and argue what constitutes "keen" relative to cheap just to avoid conceding a point?
Do us all a favour and log off and do something else for a bit, you're stinking up the forum with this gak.
I'm sorry, but just prior to returning to topic, I just have to point out that is one of the most blatant attempts to wriggle out of a losing position I've seen, and I've seen a lot of Zwei's posts! You're now going to try and argue what constitutes "keen" relative to cheap just to avoid conceding a point?
Do us all a favour and log off and do something else for a bit, you're stinking up the forum with this gak.
azreal13 wrote: Ok, so now we've established what practically everyone knew already (you get more Mantic minis per £ spent than the equivalent ranges from GW, by and large) is it time to steer this thread back towards the distant, exotic lands of the original topic?
No.
Shifting Goalposts and all that.
You said Mantic was keenly priced. I disputed that and still do.
Mantic makes very expensive miniatures (Dreadball, Dwarfs, Spearman). They are an expensive miniatures company.
Their - admittedly brilliant - trick is, that they stay just shy of GW prices and feel relatively cheaper. But they aren't "keen": They are no Warlord Games or Perry Miniatures or CMON.
Mantic makes expensive miniatures. Just not quite as expensive as GW (much less Wyrd-Games, Kingdom Death, Hawk Wargames, etc..).
They shadow GW to be just under them and relatively cheaper, but a company that charges you 15 GBP / 25 USD for a box of 8 no-options, restic, several-repeat sculpts DreadBall miniatures isn't doing any "lean". pricing.
Interacting with customers and not treating them with distain will go a long way towards helping GW's image. Sticking the Lawyers on anyone who talks about your product refusing to show upcoming releases outside of their magazine/catalog (White dwarf) and generally not interacting with the community cannot be helping them one bit.
Not to mention shrinking stores reducing places to play.
Treating FLGS as if they are people who sell your products instead of thieves would also help.
I really hate it when people start comparing prices of models.
In a wargame the company offers you a system, that is the models quality, the rules quality, how much you need to spend to play the offered game and the "after sales support" were community interaction, effectiveness of patching problems and other relevant company interactions fall into.
If I am to compare between systems I will do so as a complete system and their offerings, GW offers lets take for example 40k, a bad system that lacks direction clarity and balance, is expensive to play a basic force and its support is almost non existent.
All competitors of GW offer a better and cheaper system as a whole and this is one of the primary reasons they grow, GW has rested on their laurels and dissolution's of grandeur for way too long.
The situation is far from unsalvagable, but my faith in the management been competent enough to do it is minimal, their previous achievements lead to this and there is no reason to expect something better from them.
The epoch of them been the sole choice are way gone and never coming back, their stores chain is dragging them down and yet they stubbornly stick to them, because they do not want to accept there is competition out there and they need to do something about it.
For the record I do not view any of the major GW competition as "second grade product" nor I feel if the recession ever ends people will bounce back to GW because "they are the best out there" they are far from it and the immigration to other pastures has started way before recession the only thing recession can do at the moment is accelerate the move, but those moving are not people that are guaranteed to come back if the competitors systems have a healthy community.
In my opinion this is the prime reason why GW has such a big market share and why their competitors were slow in the past to accumulate their market share.
Wow mentioning Mantic sure opened up a can of worms!
For the record Zweischneid, I'l grant you that you said you knew nothing about KoW, but you 'random' samling was incredibly cherry picked to be the the top end of Mantics price range vs the bottom of GW's and the single player starter set vs 2 player starter set was also BS, you didnt even look at the page with their starter sets on did you? theres a single player for all the races AND a 2 player one with smaller sets of two races for two players.... Fact is Mantic are offering all the kinds of sets, multi buy deals and free rules/updates for their own systems that most people would wish GW would do for theirs.
Aswell as supporting the smaller 'specialist games'.. something that GW used to do well and we all wish they still would.
My original point was that Mantic are offering the hobby experience at a reduced cost to the consumer than GW are right now.
Again, apples to zepplins; single miniatures might be more or less expensive compared to other single miniatures, but that has no bearing at all on whether it's more expensive to play Warhammer Fantasy than Warpath or Warmahordes or Warthrone or Wargasm(seriously mini-makers, enough with the "War[thing]" naming convention). Are you actually physically capable of making a post on the internet without continually shifting the goalposts around every time?
I am fine with either benchmark really.
Are we comparing the price of "Miniature vs. Miniature"? Mantic is slightly cheaper than GW, though also inferior in production and actually pretty expensive compared to many other "non-GW" producers.
Are we comparing the price of "Game vs. Game"? Mantic (like all miniatures games) is hideously expensive compared to most other games out there, starting all the way down with free rock-paper-scissor and coin-tossing over the world of board games to whathaveyou.
Either way, I see no "keen" pricing anywhere, except in Mantic's prices relative to GW's prices as a company specifically targeting (ex-)GW customers with a "GW-price-level-sensitivity".
And there they go again, Zweischneid's Famous Fantabulous Flying Goalposts! Marvel at their speed, wonder at their agility! So now we're comparing miniature games to rock>paper>scissors? At least you're always good for a laugh.
But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point. .
There is nothing lean about Mantic's prices.
32 Page Mini Kings of War Core Rulebook
40 Plastic Dwarf Ironclad
Hand Weapons and Shield
Champion, Standard Bearer and Musician
30 Plastic Dwarf Ironwatch
Rifles or Crossbows
15 Plastic Dwarf Shieldbreakers
Two-handed hammers
2 Dwarf Ironbelchers with crew
Ironbelcher Cannon or Ironbelcher Organ Guns
Loads of Mantic Points
20mm Square Bases
50 quid. 50.
Includes a rulebook.
Say what you like about the quality, but if you're going to try and argue on price, you'd better have more than blatant cherry picking to back it up.
I gotta say, when the basic GW rulebook costs £45 without any codex, models, or supplements that actually now are required for play, it makes you think.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I really hate it when people start comparing prices of models.
In a wargame the company offers you a system, that is the models quality, the rules quality, how much you need to spend to play the offered game and the "after sales support" were community interaction, effectiveness of patching problems and other relevant company interactions fall into.
Actually, by its own admition, GW is a Miniatures company (or so they would have you consider them), which offers you a game system only as a vehicle to sell you their miniatures, thus system and miniatures should not be considered one thing.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I really hate it when people start comparing prices of models.
In a wargame the company offers you a system, that is the models quality, the rules quality, how much you need to spend to play the offered game and the "after sales support" were community interaction, effectiveness of patching problems and other relevant company interactions fall into.
Actually, by its own admition, GW is a Miniatures company (or so they would have you consider them), which offers you a game system only as a vehicle to sell you their miniatures, thus system and miniatures should not be considered one thing.
Nice quote cutting there. But if you read his whole post, you would know that is not what he talking about. But, then we all know how you feel so I'm sure no one surprised you try using what was said out of context. Have a Sheep .
I gotta say, when the basic GW rulebook costs £45 without any codex, models, or supplements that actually now are required for play, it makes you think.
This is one of the huge obstacles, IMO; every time I contemplate getting back into 40K or WHFB again, I remember I'll need to spend close to $125 just for the rules, never mind the models, and that really takes the wind out of my sails, especially when I consider that there's several other games I'm looking at with a much, much cheaper buy-in with rules and miniatures I like much more than 40K or WHFB.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I really hate it when people start comparing prices of models.
In a wargame the company offers you a system, that is the models quality, the rules quality, how much you need to spend to play the offered game and the "after sales support" were community interaction, effectiveness of patching problems and other relevant company interactions fall into.
Actually, by its own admition, GW is a Miniatures company (or so they would have you consider them), which offers you a game system only as a vehicle to sell you their miniatures, thus system and miniatures should not be considered one thing.
Nice quote cutting there. But if you read his whole post, you would know that is not what he talking about. But, then we all know how you feel so I'm sure no one surprised you try using what was said out of context. Have a Sheep .
Even then, I can admit I am the god of the universe, this does not make me the god of the universe, GW is a wargames company no mater what excuses they may give for their bad rules.
Edit
I will have to state again that the system is Everything, its not the rules, its the complete package, rules, miniatures, company support.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I really hate it when people start comparing prices of models.
In a wargame the company offers you a system, that is the models quality, the rules quality, how much you need to spend to play the offered game and the "after sales support" were community interaction, effectiveness of patching problems and other relevant company interactions fall into.
Actually, by its own admition, GW is a Miniatures company (or so they would have you consider them), which offers you a game system only as a vehicle to sell you their miniatures, thus system and miniatures should not be considered one thing.
Nice quote cutting there. But if you read his whole post, you would know that is not what he talking about. But, then we all know how you feel so I'm sure no one surprised you try using what was said out of context. Have a Sheep .
I will have to state again that the system is Everything, its not the rules, its the complete package, rules, miniatures, company support.
An opinion that i am quite certain only a minority holds, thus the very many alternative armies and models you see around in the players armies. To put it bluntly i know virtually of no people that buys "systems", but i know quite many that buy "games" and "miniatures". So does GW i would venture, thus they have the most popular game along with ever decreasing sales numbers.
I disagree, the variety of armies models has nothing to do with a miniatures company, if nothing else the cohesion and steadfast refuse to produce anything not tied in their lore clearly places them firmly in the wargame manufacturer category.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I disagree, the variety of armies models has nothing to do with a miniatures company, if nothing else the cohesion and steadfast refuse to produce anything not tied in their lore clearly places them firmly in the wargame manufacturer category.
I understand where you come from, what i am trying to put in perspective is that no matter what they want to call them selves and what they produce, it is the very nature of this hobby (modelmaking and wargaming) that people do not buy their product as a whole. They might put it out there as a "packaged system", but people do not see it as that any more than GW considers them selves a games manufacturer. We pick what you like and or consider affordable, the rest you pick it from other sources (which now more than ever before are very abundant out there), it is in my opinion the failure to acknowledge this fact, that has gotten GW in this position.
Like the rules and VC as a fantasy army, but its too expensive, thats cool, ill play the game using models from mantic that are more affordable (just to name 1). I am still playing WHF and VC, i am simply not buying into "GW´s system". This can be seen across the board with their entire line, so cost, is very much so a factor. I would wager it weights much more, than buying "GW system" for the average wargamer.
I have yet to see anybody who buys GW models as "models to paint" and not "Models to play their wargames with" that could support the sales they need, Mantic could have been just a miniatures manufacturer making models to be played by other wargames, but they chose to be a wargames manufacturer and they sell a complete system, despite how some people may purchase their products, they will be judged as what they are.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I have yet to see anybody who buys GW models as "models to paint" and not "Models to play their wargames with" that could support the sales they need, Mantic could have been just a miniatures manufacturer making models to be played by other wargames, but they chose to be a wargames manufacturer and they sell a complete system, despite how some people may purchase their products, they will be judged as what they are.
I buy 90% of my miniatures for painting and modeling now. But only because unfortunately I get so few opportunities or time to play. When you buy to model your expenditure goes down yes but I probably buy more quality models, FW etc as I never need mass amounts of models.
If I play a game now with a friend we will decide what we want to play and if we don't own the unit we cut out a bit of paper write whatever the unit is on it and hey presto that's what it is. No way will I ever buy a unit just to only play. To make a full investment I need to love the look of a model.
I know some people would be aghast at this but I dont care. My bank account looks good and I still enjoy my hobby!
azreal13 wrote: No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.
You keep throwing around that "cherry-picking" argument, but it doesn't.
I picked a basic box from their currently most popular game, DreadBall (putting Deadzone into the "not-yet-released" part) and it is fething expensive as miniatures go (if you consider GW expensive that is, neither are up there in the DZC, Malifaux, KD spheres yet, admittedly).
You asked me to take a look at KoW (which I admittedly don't know anything about), and it's just as expensive - in the GW price-range or slightly below - with the exception of some very few of loss-leading army-deals/starter-bundles.
The only way I could cherry pick this is if I were to point to those starter-boxes that break their normal prices.
And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?
If those miniatures were good quality, and Kill Team was a distinct, Necromunda/Mordheim-esque game system? Yes. I've bought boutique resin miniatures to use in Mordheim or INQ28 warbands that cost the same or more than GW miniatures. Again though, you're comparing apples to zepplins; Kill Team is NOT a standalone small model-count game, you need the main 40K rules and the codex for any army you want to use, and the hardback rulebook alone costs the same or more than I paid for any of GW's old SG starter boxes that included everything you needed to play the game including full-size rulebooks, two factions of models, dice, whippy-sticks etc etc.
So what if I just buy stuff for painting? What if I buy a Box of Dark Eldar Wyches to convert to DreadBall? What if I buy Mantic's more expensive Deadzone stuff to play huge 40KApoc games? How do you "price" miniatures that don't even have a game to go with (Kingdom Death Pin-Ups, say, or some of GW's Games Day figures?)
There is no uniform benchmark to put a "game-relative" price on a miniature. A miniature is expensive or it isn't compared to similar miniatures from other manufacturers. Hitching the argument to the game is just opening up all sorts of personal biases.
Lets break this down easy for you: dwarf warrior box from GW vs Mantic. 16 dwarves from GW is $35. With Mantic you have two options: 10 for $15 or 20 for $25. Either are a better deal. You comparing 5 "dwarf berserkers" in metal to 16 dwarf warriors in plastic and seeing what you want to see is either ignorant or purposefully obtuse. And let's go with the dreadball stuff: it's restic. Compare that to PP prices of similar amounts for an accurate portrayal, as both companies use restic and GW doesn't. Once you compare accurate numbers, people might be interested in seeing your viewpoint as anything other than antagonistic.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I have yet to see anybody who buys GW models as "models to paint" and not "Models to play their wargames with" that could support the sales they need, Mantic could have been just a miniatures manufacturer making models to be played by other wargames, but they chose to be a wargames manufacturer and they sell a complete system, despite how some people may purchase their products, they will be judged as what they are.
I buy 90% of my miniatures for painting and modeling now. But only because unfortunately I get so few opportunities or time to play. When you buy to model your expenditure goes down yes but I probably buy more quality models, FW etc as I never need mass amounts of models.
If I play a game now with a friend we will decide what we want to play and if we don't own the unit we cut out a bit of paper write whatever the unit is on it and hey presto that's what it is. No way will I ever buy a unit just to only play. To make a full investment I need to love the look of a model.
I know some people would be aghast at this but I dont care. My bank account looks good and I still enjoy my hobby!
timetowaste85 wrote: Lets break this down easy for you: dwarf warrior box from GW vs Mantic. 16 dwarves from GW is $35. With Mantic you have two options: 10 for $15 or 20 for $25. Either are a better deal. You comparing 5 "dwarf berserkers" in metal to 16 dwarf warriors in plastic and seeing what you want to see is either ignorant or purposefully obtuse. And let's go with the dreadball stuff: it's restic. Compare that to PP prices of similar amounts for an accurate portrayal, as both companies use restic and GW doesn't. Once you compare accurate numbers, people might be interested in seeing your viewpoint as anything other than antagonistic.
Precisely. I priced out the Mantic undead boxed army (141 figures) for $175 versus the same number of figures from GW and it came to $588 when you counted the rules and army book; it could have been lowered a tiny bit by substituting a unit of Grave Guard for a normal Skeleton unit to correspond to Mantic's Skeleton Revenants. Mantic still wins hands down when you compare prices of units, mostly because GW charges for 10 when you typically need 20, so for nearly every Mantic box I had to count 2 GW boxes; it would be much closer if GW actually put decent numbers in the box, but still not anywhere near getting that many figures for under $200, especially since $120 is the rulebook and army book alone, and that's why Mantic IMO is a much better company, even with flaws of certain figures (which still don't look that bad to me). $175 buys me in; I can get an entire army for the same price as GW's rules and a single unit if I'm lucky. Not to mention the fact the rules are much more streamlined and reward actual tactics and strategy versus penalizing people for not picking certain OP units like WHFB and 40K do.
I could convince a lot more people to play a game if I told them $175 gets them an entire army to play versus a shopping list that comes out to $500 or more.
timetowaste85 wrote: Lets break this down easy for you: dwarf warrior box from GW vs Mantic. 16 dwarves from GW is $35. With Mantic you have two options: 10 for $15 or 20 for $25. Either are a better deal. You comparing 5 "dwarf berserkers" in metal to 16 dwarf warriors in plastic and seeing what you want to see is either ignorant or purposefully obtuse. And let's go with the dreadball stuff: it's restic. Compare that to PP prices of similar amounts for an accurate portrayal, as both companies use restic and GW doesn't. Once you compare accurate numbers, people might be interested in seeing your viewpoint as anything other than antagonistic.
Precisely. I priced out the Mantic undead boxed army (141 figures) for $175 versus the same number of figures from GW and it came to $588 when you counted the rules and army book; it could have been lowered a tiny bit by substituting a unit of Grave Guard for a normal Skeleton unit to correspond to Mantic's Skeleton Revenants. Mantic still wins hands down when you compare prices of units, mostly because GW charges for 10 when you typically need 20, so for nearly every Mantic box I had to count 2 GW boxes; it would be much closer if GW actually put decent numbers in the box, but still not anywhere near getting that many figures for under $200, especially since $120 is the rulebook and army book alone, and that's why Mantic IMO is a much better company, even with flaws of certain figures (which still don't look that bad to me). $175 buys me in; I can get an entire army for the same price as GW's rules and a single unit if I'm lucky. Not to mention the fact the rules are much more streamlined and reward actual tactics and strategy versus penalizing people for not picking certain OP units like WHFB and 40K do.
I could convince a lot more people to play a game if I told them $175 gets them an entire army to play versus a shopping list that comes out to $500 or more.
Whats funny is that GW is planing to reduce unit sizes (decreasing overal model count) and not prices, to make the game more accessible. How many of you want to bet this will put another nail in the coffin and we start seeing alternative armies (mainly mantic) sprout everywhere because they could build them with something like $80-100, so why the hell not make a fully sized army instead of getting 2-3 boxes of marines or what ever have you?.
timetowaste85 wrote: Lets break this down easy for you: dwarf warrior box from GW vs Mantic. 16 dwarves from GW is $35. With Mantic you have two options: 10 for $15 or 20 for $25. Either are a better deal. You comparing 5 "dwarf berserkers" in metal to 16 dwarf warriors in plastic and seeing what you want to see is either ignorant or purposefully obtuse. And let's go with the dreadball stuff: it's restic. Compare that to PP prices of similar amounts for an accurate portrayal, as both companies use restic and GW doesn't. Once you compare accurate numbers, people might be interested in seeing your viewpoint as anything other than antagonistic.
Precisely. I priced out the Mantic undead boxed army (141 figures) for $175 versus the same number of figures from GW and it came to $588 when you counted the rules and army book; it could have been lowered a tiny bit by substituting a unit of Grave Guard for a normal Skeleton unit to correspond to Mantic's Skeleton Revenants. Mantic still wins hands down when you compare prices of units, mostly because GW charges for 10 when you typically need 20, so for nearly every Mantic box I had to count 2 GW boxes; it would be much closer if GW actually put decent numbers in the box, but still not anywhere near getting that many figures for under $200, especially since $120 is the rulebook and army book alone, and that's why Mantic IMO is a much better company, even with flaws of certain figures (which still don't look that bad to me). $175 buys me in; I can get an entire army for the same price as GW's rules and a single unit if I'm lucky. Not to mention the fact the rules are much more streamlined and reward actual tactics and strategy versus penalizing people for not picking certain OP units like WHFB and 40K do.
I could convince a lot more people to play a game if I told them $175 gets them an entire army to play versus a shopping list that comes out to $500 or more.
Whats funny is that GW is planing to reduce unit sizes (decreasing overal model count) and not prices, to make the game more accessible. How many of you want to bet this will put another nail in the coffin and we start seeing alternative armies (mainly mantic) sprout everywhere because they could build them with something like $80-100, so why the hell not make a fully sized army instead of getting 2-3 boxes of marines or what ever have you?.
Personally, for 40k I'd rather go to smaller armies like in 2nd edition, so you need less figures to make a good-sized army. For Fantasy though, i think that will be a mistake. Fantasy has always been visually about the look of massed regiments of troops on the battlefield; reducing the unit size is going to reduce that visual.
It will cut the cost of Fantasy by half (roughly) but won't look as good, and they will likely raise prices again to compensate. I'd rather see for Fantasy them to just up the regiments to 20 for infantry or 10 for cavalry for the same price, so you still cut it in half but keep that feel of an army with regiments. A change like that won't affect 40k though because most of 40k you still use 10 guys and they are still overpriced.
There's no way smaller games are going to become anything more than an intro game variant. GW have gone too heavily into the other end of the scale when in 40k you have 3 riptides and a wraithknight running around as an army.
I just can't see GW relegating things like that, or the Storm Raven to near enough pure showcase models.
Compel wrote: There's no way smaller games are going to become anything more than an intro game variant. GW have gone too heavily into the other end of the scale when in 40k you have 3 riptides and a wraithknight running around as an army.
I just can't see GW relegating things like that, or the Storm Raven to near enough pure showcase models.
Not smaller per se, but rumor has it there is a mayor overhaul of the system coming this winter (along the new edition), it also has it that they are cutting back in unit sizes to something more akin to 7th or 6th, my guess with out having lesser units becoming yet again irrelevant (alas empire/skaven and so on).
My guess is we are looking at a hybrid 7th and 8th, with many 8th mechanics but in 7th sizes so to speak. Like may be you will get step up but only the front ranks will fight with flanking denying steadfast and no horde, this way busses still matter (for steadfast but only to a point), elites dont get much benefit past the 15-20 model mark (since they dont get extra attacks for additional ranks nor get horde).they are also likely doing away with wheeling as well.
Kroothawk wrote: Tom Kirby's response is to blame everyone that blindly followed his orders, like one-man shop staff and all foreign HQs. From now on all false decisions are made directly in Nottingham... like before actually.
Is the stock still falling in price? I'm just wondering how low it will go before it starts to bounce back. I'm sure shareholders are pretty upset but if it starts to go lower and lower it might entice gw to make even more drastic changes.
So far there isn't much change I have seen but that's pretty obvious because it hasn't been long enough. They might be thinking that the new revitalization of the white dwarf and the new warhammer visions will maybe bring some new buisness?
Although at the same time they are going to be 4.50 each so that's like 7 dollars a month more if you buy them every week so possibly another scheme.
I'm hoping that they lower the prices with maybe the next release (which will be dwarves in fantasy) if I see lower prices then it will be a great sign. Realistically though I think the changes will take a minimum of 6 months.
MWHistorian wrote: Does anyone think the GW management will actually make some competent moves to turn this situation around?
So far the only reactions we have seen have been to blame everyone but management and cut even more costs by closing more stores and regional HQs. Oh, and changing up white dwarf.
From the looks of it I'd say they are going for more of the same, shrink the business to cut expenses rather than look to get more sales. That kept the stock price up in the past but for a while it was clear it was leading to the current situation, sales have kept falling while GW are running out of ways to cut costs. This latest report shows that we've passed the point where cutting expenses can make the company look healthy on paper yet they seem to be continuing down that road.
The fact that the new white dwarf is ready for release so soon it can hardly be a response to the financial report and stock fall. A complete reboot like that would have at least 6 months lead time.
I could convince a lot more people to play a game if I told them $175 gets them an entire army to play versus a shopping list that comes out to $500 or more.
Actually playing KoW is way cheaper than that. That 40 man hoard unit can just be done with a few guys scattered across the 200mm x 160mm base. Since there aren't any casualties removed till the entire unit is gone, why get all 40 models? Seeing this being gripped about on other forums where some players are literally using only a single fig per unit.
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-Loki- wrote: The fact that the new white dwarf is ready for release so soon it can hardly be a response to the financial report and stock fall. A complete reboot like that would have at least 6 months lead time.
But that doesn't mean they didn't know that the numbers were going to be bad several months ago. The new format was very much in response to lower sales. They probably were seeing poor number already in the first half of last year, but the numbers were masked in the last financial report by the release of 6th Ed 40k.
-Loki- wrote: The fact that the new white dwarf is ready for release so soon it can hardly be a response to the financial report and stock fall. A complete reboot like that would have at least 6 months lead time.
I was under the impression GW knew about these numbers long ago and only now were forced to report them, maybe not six months but long enough that the timing of this WD thing is at least suspicious.
mikhaila wrote: As one point of data i will offer up my own sales. My 2 stores together sell an amount of GW product in the low six figures per year. GW dropped 33% in 2013 sales, vs. 2012. We had been having a slow decline in GW sales before that, but it's accelerating. I attribute this to:
- A lack of GW stock on the wall. They moved so many things (nearly all blisters, many plastic boxes) to mail order that i simply have less things to sell.
-Inability to actually sell a customer a full army due to lack of product. (WFB in particular)
-The complete lack of information and promotional support for new products before their release.
-Increase in price.
There are other factors, but these are the major ones affecting sales.
Thanks for the input Mikhaila. One of my FLGS owners commented the too saw a 25% drop in GW sales over the last year. So GW's claim of the drop being due to the switch to one man stores isn't true. Have other miniature games picked up the loss sales from GW or do you see an overall decline in the miniatures market? The same FLGS stated that while games like WMH are growing, they don't offset the lost GW sales. While the other games have lower entry points, he would need players to pick up multiple systems to offset the GW loss. In contrast, he did expand his MtG section vastly with a lot of used card displays.
As for everyone who praises Mantic and KoW, none of my local stores carry it. All the owners say they don't want to carry stock for a company that throws out sales and specials on a regular basis that undercut them so heavily. They will carry Dreadball, and the other boardgames, but not KoW itself.
Silver_skates wrote:Intangible assets have increased by £2m. I find this interesting because intangible assets are often ways of hiding costs on balance sheet as it is purely on the directors opinion that an intangible can be capitalised. Without detailed reports its impossible to know what has been capitalised or not. My assumption is the spead of producing codexes has led to an increase and an increase in intellectual property which has been capitalised to be written off over its "useful economic life". I would flag this as a red herring in my job. If not capitalised profits would reduce by £5m.
Didn't comment on this earlier, but we could have just seen the CHS legal costs revealed.
Other game companies were pretty much even last year over the year before, with a bit of sales added from Infinity andBolt Action, which we started into this year. Our big growth was in CCG's, predominantly Magic the Gathering. The other growth area was boardgames, with many good games coming out. Tabletop with Will Wheaton is an amazing help selling boardgames.
Mantic does nothing in my stores. I tried to sell it, ordered it all in, and was hoping to do good with it. I like the people in the company. Just could not get sales on the models and had to eventually quit ordering in the new stuff and eat the loss on existing stock.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I have yet to see anybody who buys GW models as "models to paint" and not "Models to play their wargames with" that could support the sales they need, Mantic could have been just a miniatures manufacturer making models to be played by other wargames, but they chose to be a wargames manufacturer and they sell a complete system, despite how some people may purchase their products, they will be judged as what they are.
I buy 90% of my miniatures for painting and modeling now. But only because unfortunately I get so few opportunities or time to play. When you buy to model your expenditure goes down yes but I probably buy more quality models, FW etc as I never need mass amounts of models.
If I play a game now with a friend we will decide what we want to play and if we don't own the unit we cut out a bit of paper write whatever the unit is on it and hey presto that's what it is. No way will I ever buy a unit just to only play. To make a full investment I need to love the look of a model.
I know some people would be aghast at this but I dont care. My bank account looks good and I still enjoy my hobby!
You enjoy it so who cares. Why buy models you dislike then spent a huge time investment in painting them if you don't have to.
I buy miniatures for modelling and painting now as well as I can't really go out to play games in stores atm. I still buy build and paint with the idea that I will use them for games at some point though.
Of course some people buy models just for painting and display.
There is a big historical military modelling scene, big enough to support a widely available newsstand magazine in the UK -- which you can’t say about White Dwarf anymore! I might get a copy to check out the huge GW section.
However if GW claim most of their kits are sold to those customers I think they are lying.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I have yet to see anybody who buys GW models as "models to paint" and not "Models to play their wargames with" that could support the sales they need, Mantic could have been just a miniatures manufacturer making models to be played by other wargames, but they chose to be a wargames manufacturer and they sell a complete system, despite how some people may purchase their products, they will be judged as what they are.
I buy 90% of my miniatures for painting and modeling now. But only because unfortunately I get so few opportunities or time to play. When you buy to model your expenditure goes down yes but I probably buy more quality models, FW etc as I never need mass amounts of models.
If I play a game now with a friend we will decide what we want to play and if we don't own the unit we cut out a bit of paper write whatever the unit is on it and hey presto that's what it is. No way will I ever buy a unit just to only play. To make a full investment I need to love the look of a model.
I know some people would be aghast at this but I dont care. My bank account looks good and I still enjoy my hobby!
You enjoy it so who cares. Why buy models you dislike then spent a huge time investment in painting them if you don't have to.
I buy miniatures for modelling and painting now as well as I can't really go out to play games in stores atm. I still buy build and paint with the idea that I will use them for games at some point though.
From an individuals perspective you are correct, who cares, the point is this is not the individuals perspective, but the companies perspective, If GW was a miniatures manufacturer their sales would be directed to individuals buying miniatures to paint and the use of their miniatures in other systems, clearly GW cannot be sustained by sales to the first group and the latter idea is an anathema to them, they manufacture miniatures to be played by their wargames, their rules are made constantly with an initiative to push for purchases of more models, not necessarily the ones the player would like, whatever GW might claim, they are a wargame manufacturer and the "we are first and foremost a miniatures company" in my eyes was always a bad excuse for the sore state their wargame rules were.
timetowaste85 wrote: Compare that to PP prices of similar amounts for an accurate portrayal, as both companies use restic and GW doesn't. Once you compare accurate numbers, people might be interested in seeing your viewpoint as anything other than antagonistic.
Well, PP is occasionally more expensive than GW. Their Colossals are ~10% to 20% more expensive than GW's similarly sized plastic kits, which come with far more options.
If simply being a sliver cheaper than a cherry-picked more expensive competitor is all it takes to be considered "keenly priced", than GW's offerings are keenly priced too.
timetowaste85 wrote: Compare that to PP prices of similar amounts for an accurate portrayal, as both companies use restic and GW doesn't. Once you compare accurate numbers, people might be interested in seeing your viewpoint as anything other than antagonistic.
Well, PP is occasionally more expensive than GW. Their Colossals are ~10% to 20% more expensive than GW's similarly sized plastic kits, which come with far more options.
If simply being a sliver cheaper than a cherry-picked more expensive competitor is all it takes to be considered "keenly priced", than GW's offerings are keenly priced too.
Is playing PP games, or CB, or mantic, or wyrd or whoever else, cheaper than playing a GW game? then all these companies are better priced from GW, individual model prices are largely irrelevant from a wargamers perspective.
timetowaste85 wrote: Compare that to PP prices of similar amounts for an accurate portrayal, as both companies use restic and GW doesn't. Once you compare accurate numbers, people might be interested in seeing your viewpoint as anything other than antagonistic.
Well, PP is occasionally more expensive than GW. Their Colossals are ~10% to 20% more expensive than GW's similarly sized plastic kits, which come with far more options.
If simply being a sliver cheaper than a cherry-picked more expensive competitor is all it takes to be considered "keenly priced", than GW's offerings are keenly priced too.
Is playing PP games, or CB, or mantic, or wyrd or whoever else, cheaper than playing a GW game? then all these companies are better priced from GW, individual model prices are largely irrelevant from a wargamers perspective.
Well, I was comparing games to games above, and was accused of "moving goalpost again".
What do you want? Miniatures vs. Miniatures or Games vs. Games?
I can probably find you 10.000 games in 10 minutes that are cheaper than the cheapest game from Mantic Games, half of them absolutely free. Hell, just go to Amazon into the "Toys & Games" category and look up all results under 30 US$. No miniature game is ever "cheap"; if you compare games vs. games, not miniatures vs. miniatures.
If we're going to compare miniatures, at least we should compare them via material. Resin/metal vs. resin/metal and plastic vs. plastic. Of course most of the time plastic models are going to be cheaper than resin and metal models. The question is is GW's plastics cheaper than other plastics on the market?
heartserenade wrote: If we're going to compare miniatures, at least we should compare them via material. Resin/metal vs. resin/metal and plastic vs. plastic. Of course most of the time plastic models are going to be cheaper than resin and metal models. The question is is GW's plastics cheaper than other plastics on the market?
Quite the opposite.
As long as you measure things "around" GW, Mantic will be appear to be "relatively" cheap. As said above, that is their schtick. They know they can "look cheap" to GW customers by shadowing their prices, yet still charge a fortune for things. Precisely because most people just take the biased and narrow vision of "GW vs..." in this hobby. They are "free-riding" on GW's pricing policy.
The question is, are Mantic products "cheap" across the board, by an objective measure that covers more than half a dozen companies (or just two, GW vs. Mantic)?
I would be highly ecstatic if we had 10,000 miniature wargames to chose from.
I will not speak of moving goalposts, it has been done to death I can assume, if you want to turn, twist and evade a subject to be on top, feel free.
But the subject is does other wargame companies offer an overall better system from GW at better prices? Yes, they do and they do it in its intended format.
But the subject is does other wargame companies offer an overall better system from GW at better prices? Yes, they do and they do it in its intended format.
No. That is not the subject.
Does Mantic offer better games, experience, etc.. than GW at "less-than-GW-prices"? Yes. They do. I agree wholeheartedly. I play a hell of a lot more Mantic games than GW games these days, and I gladly pay their prices for that experience.
But it is an experience you pay for. It's not cheap, just because it's cheaper than GW. The "Mantic-Hobby" is still an expensive hobby by any sane measure.
I could convince a lot more people to play a game if I told them $175 gets them an entire army to play versus a shopping list that comes out to $500 or more.
Actually playing KoW is way cheaper than that. That 40 man hoard unit can just be done with a few guys scattered across the 200mm x 160mm base. Since there aren't any casualties removed till the entire unit is gone, why get all 40 models? Seeing this being gripped about on other forums where some players are literally using only a single fig per unit.
There is a generally accepted thing with KoW unit basing that the footprint has to have at least half of the intended model count, otherwise it can look a bit silly.
It is still a viable method of making an army very, very cheaply though.
Nothing GW does comes close to Mantic's Undead Battalion set, at 110 minis for £50.
And they're good sculpts, too. I think almost everyone who is aware of the company and has an undead army these days has at least looked at or considered some of the Mantic line.
The best bundle deal GW offers is 36 for 75 minis:
What. Of course you base your price on the market leader. That's what competitive pricing is all about. So I don't get what your argument here is, really.
heartserenade wrote: What. Of course you base your price on the market leader. That's what competitive pricing is all about. So I don't get what your argument here is, really.
Games Workshop is not the market leader in toys & games. They are only the leader in a highly exclusive sub-niche of highly expensive games, and Mantic is slightly cheaper in that sub-niche. But the niche as a whole, GW & Mantic and all the rest, are still not "cheap". Both cater to a rather select customer base that will spend significant amounts of money on "gaming" compared to the average population.
It's like saying a Porsche is a "cheap car" because it is cheaper than a Ferrari. It's not. It might be a relatively cheaper in the sub-niche of premium sports cars. But ultimately, neither is a "cheap car".
I really didn't want to join in the mantic discussion, but... I don't think its right to treat the main mantic army boxes as loss leaders.
I'd argue that mantic don't expect people to go out and buy, say, 1 box of corporation marines. If they were basing their sales on that concept, they'd long be bankrupt.
People go to mantic and buy whole army bundles and deals and then only may buy a single unit of something else to round out their forces. For example, I have a force of corporation models made out of 2 1 player battle sets and a corporation army set.
Whereas with GW, I think they're concept WAS, buy 1 battle force to get you into the army, then its individual kits for everything else. However, to drag back to being on topic again, maybe GW is changing track on that now? As they've supposed got rid of battle forces and replaced them with the strike forces, which are very much like the aforementioned mantic army sets.
Plus, you gave things like the tyranid swarm set just released (probably as a direct reaction to those account figures), that genuinely do offer a real saving and, amazingly wouldn't hurt for someone to buy 2.
Of course, being GW, the new tyranid codex is supposedly pants and so the set probably won't be sold in great numbers.
Em sorry, no, we are in a wargames forum and speak about wargames, the fact that you can get a piece of paper a pen and play tic tac toe for free or for a really small price (how much is a piece of paper and a pen?) does not mean we should compare this to a wargame and find the wargame an horrendously expensive thing.
Things must be compared in their own category, in your example I can really say X car is cheap in the luxury cars category, the fact that cheaper cars exist in the mainstream category or more expensive in the military category is irrelevant.
Plus, you gave things like the tyranid swarm set just released (probably as a direct reaction to those account figures), that genuinely do offer a real saving and, amazingly wouldn't hurt for someone to buy 2.
Of course, being GW, the new tyranid codex is supposedly pants and so the set probably won't be sold in great numbers.
A good question is what percentage of an army this deal gives, another interesting comparison is the fact that the marines deal they did along with it saves you nothing.
PsychoticStorm wrote: Em sorry, no, we are in a wargames forum and speak about wargames,
Actually, it's a miniatures game forum, so we talk miniatures, and miniature vs. miniature is still the way I personally would compare things.
I am merely responding with my thoughts on the "miniature vs. miniature is pointless" responses I got, as it is an interesting point, but one that will never be resolved, as people will always arbitrarily "draw the line" in ways that support their personal bias of what is "cheap" and what is "expensive".
There are no objective benchmarks to be found there.
There is because trying to compare something in a way its not intended to be compared is plainly wrong, when a manufacturer makes wargames instead of figures, his business model and pricing is centered on the complete package not the individual parts of it.
PsychoticStorm wrote: There is because trying to compare something in a way its not intended to be compared is plainly wrong, when a manufacturer makes wargames instead of figures, his business model and pricing is centered on the complete package not the individual parts of it.
Correct. That's why a company explicitly branding itself as making "the best *cough* miniatures in the world" needs to be compared with competitors on a miniature vs. miniature footing (price, quality, options, etc..) at the end of the day.
The advertising they have to shift more miniatures (e.g. the games) aren't part of the package in GW's business model. They are just the commercial (for good or ill).
And companies making "games" (such as Mantic's DreadBall, which is a board game at the end of the day). needs to be compared in price, quality, etc.. with other games of its kind.
Well, Dreadball kickoff is priced competitively with modern boardgames, like Settlers of Catan or Battlestar Galactica. Same for things like Project Pandora, or dwarf kings hold. Mantic even have deals on all 3 right now.
Maybe this is worth having its own discussion thread though?
Compel wrote: Well, Dreadball kickoff is priced competitively with modern boardgames, like Settlers of Catan or Battlestar Galactica. Same for things like Project Pandora, or dwarf kings hold. Mantic even have deals on all 3 right now.
Agreed. They sit fairly in the middle with other comparable products. But certainly not at the "cheap" end of things.
Mantic's undead are decent, zombies are actually better than (very old) GW zombie kit. However, that is an exception, most of their models are utterly horrid. It really doesn't matter what they cost, if the quality is such that I wouldn't take them for free. I know some people who play Kings of War, but all of them use GW models to do it, as no one wants to touch the misshapen lumps of restic Mantic sells as models.
As for price comparison, I think that if you want to compare whether product is 'fairly priced' you should compare model to model. However, from marketing perspective the price of an entire game still matters a lot, and GW is foolish for not having a low-model-count entry level product.
I know some people would be aghast at this but I dont care. My bank account looks good and I still enjoy my hobby!
You enjoy it so who cares. Why buy models you dislike then spent a huge time investment in painting them if you don't have to.
I buy miniatures for modelling and painting now as well as I can't really go out to play games in stores atm. I still buy build and paint with the idea that I will use them for games at some point though.
From an individuals perspective you are correct, who cares, the point is this is not the individuals perspective, but the companies perspective, If GW was a miniatures manufacturer their sales would be directed to individuals buying miniatures to paint and the use of their miniatures in other systems, clearly GW cannot be sustained by sales to the first group and the latter idea is an anathema to them, they manufacture miniatures to be played by their wargames, their rules are made constantly with an initiative to push for purchases of more models, not necessarily the ones the player would like, whatever GW might claim, they are a wargame manufacturer and the "we are first and foremost a miniatures company" in my eyes was always a bad excuse for the sore state their wargame rules were.
My who cares comment was only in regards to him saying that some people would be aghast at the way he plays. Nothing else.
I agree with you that their excuse that they are a miniatures company not a wargames/rules company is utter bs but that wasn't what I was replying too. When you charge £50 ish for a rule book then another £20 for a codex you are a rules company as well as a minitures one no matter what you say.
The conversation about mantic is going no where and is now so far off topic its worthless. The goalposts have been moved so much how about we move them to a different thread where they will be relevant?
carlos13th wrote: The goalposts have been moved so much how about we move them to a different thread where they will be relevant?
The thing is, you need to move the "goalpost" in some way to have a viable comparsion.
The simplistic GW vs. Mantic comparison IS the fallacy Mantic is exploiting to sell you overpriced plastic at the illusion of "cheap". That was the point.
You keep refusing to move to any kind of objective non-GW benchmark. Fine, just proves my point (and vindicates Mantic's business model).
Crimson wrote: Mantic's undead are decent, zombies are actually better than (very old) GW zombie kit. However, that is an exception, most of their models are utterly horrid. It really doesn't matter what they cost, if the quality is such that I wouldn't take them for free. I know some people who play Kings of War, but all of them use GW models to do it, as no one wants to touch the misshapen lumps of restic Mantic sells as models.
As for price comparison, I think that if you want to compare whether product is 'fairly priced' you should compare model to model. However, from marketing perspective the price of an entire game still matters a lot, and GW is foolish for not having a low-model-count entry level product.
I'm not a huge fan of the Mantic undead aesthetic to be honest. The Skellies and Zombies might technically be "better", but the aesthetic doesn't appeal to me and so for the most part they hold no value to me, even though I have a (WIP) vampire counts army.
Actually, very little in Mantic's line up appeals to me aesthetically. A few models here and there that I like, overall not a lot though.
So basically, we have an arbitrary level of 'cheap' which Zwei is largely keeping to himself for now, then, if 'cheap' comes under too much pressure, we have the even more vague 'keen' which is equally hush hush.
Then, if the comparison is favourable, we are operating in the wargame market, unless that doesn't serve the purpose, in which case we're taking anything from all toys and games right up to noughts and crosses and rock, paper, scissors.
All in an effort to somehow prove a company that offers a demonstrably lower buy-in, and significantly lower cost-per-miniature across the majority of it's range when compared in a rational, like-for-like basis is somehow almost as expensive as GW?
Seriously people, if you don't stop feeding him, he will keep bothering you!
azreal13 wrote: So basically, we have an arbitrary level of 'cheap' which Zwei is largely keeping to himself for now, then, if 'cheap' comes under too much pressure, we have the even more vague 'keen' which is equally hush hush.
Then, if the comparison is favourable, we are operating in the wargame market, unless that doesn't serve the purpose, in which case we're taking anything from all toys and games right up to noughts and crosses and rock, paper, scissors.
All in an effort to somehow prove a company that offers a demonstrably lower buy-in, and significantly lower cost-per-miniature across the majority of it's range when compared in a rational, like-for-like basis is somehow almost as expensive as GW?
Seriously people, if you don't stop feeding him, he will keep bothering you!
I didn't come up with the concept of keen. I agree, it is ridiculous.
I didn't come up with the concept of game vs. game comparisons. I agree, it is ridiculous.
I didn't come up with the concept of a wargame market, I agree, it is ridiculous.
I have never contested that Mantic is cheaper than GW, quite the opposite. I said it is the foundation of Mantic's business model.
I am not sure what your beef is? Are you actually complaining that I responded to people bringing flawed concepts to this discussion?
All I said is that if X is relatively cheaper than Y, that doesn't preclude the possibility that X is still expensive (just less expensive than Y).
It's a popular business concept to exploit the "price-blindness" of customers accustomed expensive products to seem "relatively cheaper", even if they are still expensive in absolute terms. Plenty of Starbucks competitors sell coffee "cheaper than Starbucks", while still charging an arm and a leg for a cup of coffee.
heartserenade wrote: Yeah, I think he's arguing a point that he himself said there's no answer to. Just move on topic.
When will be the next financial report?
Six months time, and I believe that one will be far more detailed being the annual report while this one was a mid year report (despite it coming out at the beginning of the year).
Generally speaking the smaller game players don't want to end up sniping at each other, I imagine. As all that's doing is hurting the games they enjoy playing as opposed to helping them all grow to take on GW.
For example, at the recent Mantic Open Day, Hawk Wargames, creators of Dropzone Commander were invited along. As I was picking up my Deadzone box, which was a lot of Mantic stuff, the only things I ended up actually buying at the day was Dropzone models. Warlord Games, with Bolt Action was also there.
As was the sellers of the Judge Dredd miniatures game, which, one would argue, would be a direct competitor to Deadzone.
However, if someone really wants to make some comparisons.
Deadzone starters come in at £16.99 on Wayland Games. These give you 12 minis, plus the faction deck, which is the equivalent of a codex / army book.
As far as I can see, Infinity's equivalent, such as the Yu-Jing Starter Pack comes in at £27 for 6 models. Although their rules can be downloaded for free.... I think?
GW's latest troop mini's for their skirmish game come in at a stonking £5 per model in the Lake Town Swordsmen. And it looks like Wayland aren't even allowed to discount those.
Deadzone is currently priced £8 cheaper than Sedition Wars. and is on a par with the Dropzone Commander starter set. They both match the 50k and fantasy starter sets... But more on that...
Deadzone, generally speaking, has around 130% of the 'points' you'd need for a typical game, more if you're playing as Enforcers.
Dropzone Commander matches more with Dark Vengeance and Island of Blood, in that you get around 30% of the models you need for a typical / standard game. It's worth noting, that you'd probably going to use nearly all the DZC models (not the extra APC, and probably maybe use 1 less dropship) in the starter set in your army.
The GW games... Maybe 2 units? Although, the Skaven do have an edge in usability there. Your Griffin, Ellyrion Reavers, either the terminators or the bikers, Helbrute and any Chosen you're not using as sergeants aren't going to be used. And that's making the assumption that you want lots of cultists in your army.
Of course most other sci-fi / fantasy mini companies are going to try to run cheaper than GW.
I didn't come up with the concept of keen. I agree, it is ridiculous.
I think you did... we said 'lean' you said 'keen' and stuck to it. (I dont really know what you mean by keen pricing tbh)
As for a 'fair' comparison lets see; Across the board Mantics kits are pretty much cheaper. They are using metal, which GW axed recently, stopped producing because of a high raw material expense. So right off the bat any Mantic kits being produced with metal components are not comparable to any GW kits. We could compare a plastic only kit, or resin only, or plastic/resin mixes where they match up across the brands. This is ofcourse if you want to compare miniature vs miniature, like you advocate.
Then you have game vs game (or system vs system) comparison where you can now compare a mismatched material kit of arbitrary units brand to brand; e.g mantic goblin spearmen with metal arms to GW all plastics. You can compare like this because your buying the game piece, not the miniature.
Unfortunately Zwei you are inconsistent with your approach tot he argument, hence you come across the same way the WAAC players do, and are being rejected by others here (just my 2cents)
I didn't come up with the concept of game vs. game comparisons. I agree, it is ridiculous.
I didn't come up with the concept of a wargame market, I agree, it is ridiculous.
I have never contested that Mantic is cheaper than GW, quite the opposite. I said it is the foundation of Mantic's business model.
Explain to me why these are ridiculous?
Well, game vs. game isn't ridiculous by default, it only becomes so if arbitrarily exclude games that don't fit your argument. The only way I see it working "unbiased" is to use all games, but that seems significantly less informative than miniature vs. miniature.
The "wargaming market" is pointless, because neither Mantic nor GW are in it. Mantic is doing mostly board games these days. The one wargame they have is their smallest money-maker (judging from KS). GW is explicitly selling miniatures, not games. The "wargaming market" comparison can only be construed by "assuming" what either company says about themselves is BS and defining the market by the personal, biased approach of how a single customer/hobbyist (i.e. the poster) approaches their hobby.
It also excludes other shopping behaviours (random example, a mother looking to buy a box for her 2 sons, Island of Blood vs. 2 Mantic starter boxes). In other words, the "wargaming market" is again rife with personal bias that skew comparisons to favour the argument people want to make.
The "wargaming market" is pointless, because neither Mantic nor GW are in it.
What utter BS! Both companies are actively selling a wargame on the market right now, in direct competition with each other. You sir are just trolling I'm off for my sunday dinner, hope to see some real on topic debate later
The "wargaming market" is pointless, because neither Mantic nor GW are in it.
What utter BS! Both companies are actively selling a wargame on the market right now, in direct competition with each other. You sir are just trolling I'm off for my sunday dinner, hope to see some real on topic debate later
Both are also selling miniatures, yet people keep saying that a comparison of miniatures vs. miniatures is misleading?
Okay, Zweischneid, just for you as you seem to have all mods on ignore:
azreal13 wrote:Ok, so now we've established what practically everyone knew already (you get more Mantic minis per £ spent than the equivalent ranges from GW, by and large) is it time to steer this thread back towards the distant, exotic lands of the original topic?
Alpharius wrote:That's probably a really good idea - onward and upward everyone!
All I know is that even if it's not actually cheaper, Mantic certainly is priced where I can afford to buy an army without spending a few hundred dollars plus $120 just for the rules, and that's HUGE. I've wanted to get back into 40k for about two months now and just given up on it entirely when I look at pricing out even a modest 1,000 or so point force because it's getting into the $400-500 dollar range, and I can't justify that kind of spending on a game, and I'm not going to buy it piecemeal and continually put off actually playing because nobody wants to play silly little demo games, they want to play real games.
GW needs to offer a starting army that's actually viable (i.e. not their garbage battleforces) for about $150. It doesn't have to be the best army ever, but it needs to have 1 HQ, 2 Troops and a few extras (or WHFB equivalent) and be a solid starting point. The rules are still an issue, but that's the first problem that springs to my mind whenever I look at 40K - "Wow it's going to cost me $300 just to get the basic units". The Space Marine Strikeforce/Tyranid Swarm are steps in the right direction but IMO not enough.
And now I will drop that part as it's not really relevant to the topic and is a heated discussion.
--------------------
RE: GW Financials. The current rumors seem to be that they want to lower the number of figures used, but as I said earlier I don't see how that's going to help anything other than giving an illusion. It won't help 40K at all where for the most part outside of specialty units boxes still contain 10 guys, and except for cavalry Fantasy has never looked right with less than 15-20 guys in a regiment.
What they need to do first of all, before anything else, is make the rules so that you aren't screwed over by wanting to play something fun/characterful in a world where most players seem to just pick the uber units. I'm sorry but when I look at advice for building let's say a CSM army and I'm told that CSM squads suck and shouldn't be taken, take a special character (who should be opponent's permission anyways) and a horde of cheap zombies, and then three of an OP flyer if I want to win, no thanks that's rubbish I want to play Chaos Space Marines, not horde of zombies with three hellturkeys. GW has done nothing to actually make it so balanced armies are the norm and outlier armies are the exception, up to and including this nonsense where you can actually purchase fortifications/terrain for your army (that Aegis gunline thing that everyone seems to take), in fact they actively discourage it with the OPness of some units and their fingers-in-ears garbage about how they aren't concerned about balance.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if anything can save them now. Outside of HUGE price cuts, which really is unrealistic, people like me are never going to bother with them again because they've shown they just don't care. As long as you buy their stuff, they could care less about anything else. I actually asked my brother, who used to play 12 years ago with me, if he'd ever get back into GW if they lowered prices (which is the major reason he quit as well, having a low-paying job). His answer was a flat out no way in heck would he ever go back because he doesn't want to put money towards an army that is actually balanced and fits the background, and then get steamrolled every game simply for not having the OP army or the OP units.
I know a best selling author who wanted to get into wargaming but was put off by GW's business and legal decisions and started Warmachine. He posted on their forums and because Warmachine actually talks to their fans said, "Hey, isn't this New York Times best selling author? And he likes our games?" So they asked Mr. Correia if he would write something for them and Correia said "Heck yes! I love your games" So, PP got themselves a best selling author just from not being douche bags.
GW's, I love ya bro, but you gotta get in touch with the real world, yo. There's this thing called "PR," you may have heard of it. The basic premise is; you kind of have to be liked or at least tolerated to be successful...or put out a product so freaking awesome people don't care. One or the other, bro.
MWHistorian wrote: GW's, I love ya bro, but you gotta get in touch with the real world, yo. There's this thing called "PR," you may have heard of it. The basic premise is; you kind of have to be liked or at least tolerated to be successful...or put out a product so freaking awesome people don't care. One or the other, bro.
Well according to a rumor posted by someone who spoke to a GW rep, they don't have a PR department at all, so it's not surprising they don't know this
MWHistorian wrote: GW not in the wargaming market? Wait...huh? But they make and sell a war game...I'm confused.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
Apparently making wargames does not make you automatically in the wargaming industry.
Zwei, a hint: the games they make are called w-a-r-g-a-m-e-s.
And I'm very much anticipating the next round of financial report.
Guys, I'm going to say this. This may be based not on reality but on fantasy but.... I'm still hoping that GW will turn around, fix their prices and rules and acknowledge the comumnity and stop alienating it. This decrease should be a wake up call!
MWHistorian wrote: GW not in the wargaming market? Wait...huh? But they make and sell a war game...I'm confused.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
No... they CLAIM they are in the miniatures market, yet I'd wager that the vast majority of people only buy their miniatures due to the games. I don't know much about just painting/modeling but I'd have to imagine if you weren't interested in the game you'd buy figures that actually A) Look different (what are you going to do with 10 Space Marines that look almost identical?) or B) Aren't going to cost you an arm and a leg except maybe the really big looking models. And, if they aren't a game company then remind me again why the rules alone is $75 and the book to use the figures that they sell is $50?
So yeah. They might say they sell miniatures and make a game to facilitate the figures, but that just proves how out of touch and clueless they are. In reality they make a game and produce figures to support said game. Their name is GAMES Workshop, not Hobby Workshop or Miniatures Workshop. They can tell us any line of BS they want, but the truth is always there.
Made of:
2 boxes of plastic infantry (£40) 24 archers and 6 bill left over.
1 blister metal men at arms (£8)
2 blister metal scurrers (£16)
1 blister metal command (£8) 5 minis left over.
1 metal cannon (£8)
So that's £80, with a LOAD of stuff left over.
Quality is extremely high- actually the same sculptors as GW (Perry) Empire. So... someone wanna do the math for a similar build from GW?
No... they CLAIM they are in the miniatures market, yet I'd wager that the vast majority of people only buy their miniatures due to the games. .
Again, personal bias. You claim their entire published business-strategy is a fraud, only so your apples-and-oranges comparsion cherry-picked to put GW into a bad light holds.
I am not saying GW's priorities are smart or what I'd want to see. But they are what they are. You cannot simply base your comparisons on something totally different from what they, explicitly, want to do, just because you personally disagree with that direction. Why? Because you're once again bringing your personal bias into it.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
We did, you did not. Please follow your own advice. You are the one comparing metal minis to plastic ones and saying that you compared miniatures and not game systems?! Look honestly be coherent or stfu!
We did, you did not. Please follow your own advice. You are the one comparing metal minis to plastic ones and saying that you compared miniatures and not game systems?! Look honestly be coherent or stfu!
Yes. And I said GW makes the superior miniatures from a better material for a higher price, while Mantic makes inferior miniatures from inferior materials for a lesser (but still high) price, benefiting from the acclimatization of GW customers to high prices. What's wrong with that?
Yes. And I said GW makes the superior miniatures from a better material for a higher price, while Mantic makes inferior miniatures for a lesser (but still high) price, benefiting from the acclimatization of GW customers to high prices. What's wrong with that?
Superiour and better material are subjective, your opinions and not fact. Anyone is entitled to prefer one or the other based upon any reason they choose.
The price point however is FACT, Mantic is cheaper than GW across the board. the only exceptions might actually be Twighlight kin vs Dark Elves? (metal vs plastics again)
Superiour and better material are subjective, your opinions and not fact. Anyone is entitled to prefer one or the other based upon any reason they choose.
The price point however is FACT, Mantic is cheaper than GW across the board. the only exceptions might actually be Twighlight kin vs Dark Elves? (metal vs plastics again)
Again, I never contested the fact that Mantic was cheaper than GW. I contested the fact that Mantic was cheap, in absolute terms, outside of the "GW-comparison" that Mantic has build their business on.
Made of:
2 boxes of plastic infantry (£40) 24 archers and 6 bill left over.
1 blister metal men at arms (£8)
2 blister metal scurrers (£16)
1 blister metal command (£8) 5 minis left over.
1 metal cannon (£8)
So that's £80, with a LOAD of stuff left over.
Quality is extremely high- actually the same sculptors as GW (Perry) Empire. So... someone wanna do the math for a similar build from GW?
Let's see. Going off the assumption that you are a regular joe who buys things at a GW store or FLGS without using ebay or whatnot (all prices USD):
Archers: $70.00 ($35.00 x2) - 2 boxes of Bretonnian (Empire doesn't have Archers that I can tell) Peasant Bowman; 16 models each so you have 8 archers left over
Men at Arms: $49.50 ($24.75 x2) - 2 boxes of Empire State Troops w/Halberds; 10 models each so 2 left over (I counted 18 in the picture); could actually use Bretonnian Men at Arms which look closer to the figures you have above, but this would be $35.00 for 16 so you would need two boxes again and it would cost you $70.00 so let's assume you don't care about historical accuracy.
Scurrers: $24.50 ($12.25 x2) - Two packs of Bretonnian Mounted Yeomen (no standard bearer) which are likely going OOP soon as they are metal.
Cannon: $25.00 - One box Empire Great Cannon
Command: $59.50 ($29.75 x2) - 2 Empire General boxes (one for a commander on foot, one for a standard bearer)
Heavy Infantry: $41.25 - One box of Reiksguard Knights
Again, that's assuming somebody who isn't going to scour eBay or online retailers for deals or to get extra bitz. Came to ~$269.75, or just around 2x the price (80 pounds converts to about $133)
Superiour and better material are subjective, your opinions and not fact. Anyone is entitled to prefer one or the other based upon any reason they choose.
The price point however is FACT, Mantic is cheaper than GW across the board. the only exceptions might actually be Twighlight kin vs Dark Elves? (metal vs plastics again)
Again, I never contested the fact that Mantic was cheaper than GW. I contested the fact that Mantic was cheap, in absolute terms, outside of the "GW-comparison" that Mantic has build their business on.
Where are the cheaper products? based on whichever you like game vs game or mini vs mini - but be consistent throughout please.
I'm specifically talking tabletop miniatures wargames here. These are not card games, board games or any other toy/game. Both kings of war and Warhammer Fantasy are fantasy wargames based on tabletops using minatures. It doesnt get much more similar than this without actually being the same thing.
Unlike Mantic Games, Perry Miniatures probably have a decent claim to actually producing "cheap/keen/lean-priced" miniatures, including considerations of quality, materials, options, etc.. ,
Made of:
2 boxes of plastic infantry (£40) 24 archers and 6 bill left over.
1 blister metal men at arms (£8)
2 blister metal scurrers (£16)
1 blister metal command (£8) 5 minis left over.
1 metal cannon (£8)
So that's £80, with a LOAD of stuff left over.
Quality is extremely high- actually the same sculptors as GW (Perry) Empire. So... someone wanna do the math for a similar build from GW?
Note that this not include the extra figures that weren't in the photo. And it should be cheaper because I substituted plastics for metals.
20 Empire Archers (40 euros) compared to 24 archers
20 Empire State Troops (40 Euros) compared to 18 Men at Arms
6 Empire Pistoliers (23 Euros) compared to 6 metal scurrers
Empire Plastic Captain (11.5 Euros) compared to metal command blister
Empire Hellblaster (20 euros) compared to 1 metal cannon
Total: 134.5 Euros (or roughly £111.5). So £31 more expensive in plastic, with less bodies (didn't count the extras).
Made of:
2 boxes of plastic infantry (£40) 24 archers and 6 bill left over.
1 blister metal men at arms (£8)
2 blister metal scurrers (£16)
1 blister metal command (£8) 5 minis left over.
1 metal cannon (£8)
So that's £80, with a LOAD of stuff left over.
Quality is extremely high- actually the same sculptors as GW (Perry) Empire. So... someone wanna do the math for a similar build from GW?
Let's see. Going off the assumption that you are a regular joe who buys things at a GW store or FLGS without using ebay or whatnot (all prices USD):
Archers: $70.00 ($35.00 x2) - 2 boxes of Bretonnian (Empire doesn't have Archers that I can tell) Peasant Bowman; 16 models each so you have 8 archers left over
Men at Arms: $49.50 ($24.75 x2) - 2 boxes of Empire State Troops w/Halberds; 10 models each so 2 left over (I counted 18 in the picture); could actually use Bretonnian Men at Arms which look closer to the figures you have above, but this would be $35.00 for 16 so you would need two boxes again and it would cost you $70.00 so let's assume you don't care about historical accuracy.
Scurrers: $24.50 ($12.25 x2) - Two packs of Bretonnian Mounted Yeomen (no standard bearer) which are likely going OOP soon as they are metal.
Cannon: $25.00 - One box Empire Great Cannon
Command: $59.50 ($29.75 x2) - 2 Empire General boxes (one for a commander on foot, one for a standard bearer)
Heavy Infantry: $41.25 - One box of Reiksguard Knights
Again, that's assuming somebody who isn't going to scour eBay or online retailers for deals or to get extra bitz. Came to ~$269.75, or just around 2x the price (80 pounds converts to about $133)
Wow.
I went for the conservative route just to give GW aslight advantage but if you compute it like that, that's.. whew.
Where are the cheaper products? based on whichever you like game vs game or mini vs mini - but be consistent throughout please.
I'm specifically talking tabletop miniatures wargames here. These are not card games, board games or any other toy/game. Both kings of war and Warhammer Fantasy are fantasy wargames based on tabletops using minatures. It doesnt get much more similar than this without actually being the same thing.
Warlord Games? Perry Miniatures? Etc..
But that is the problem. The focus you have there is so incredibly narrow, it is a) not a market and b) virtually identical with comparing just these two companies, where, again, I specifically said that Mantic's business model is to "shadow" GW prices, benefiting from the high prices GW introduced.
To be more objective, you need to widen the scope.. get to the point where you get at least 100, better 1000 games, even better 10.000 games and see in which ... dunno ... quintile or decile Mantic Games ends up to see if they are truly cheap "in absolute terms" (and not just in the relative GW comparison).
I think it's easier to get a large enough "comparison sample" by comparing miniatures vs. miniatures, rather than "games vs. games" (though there are always imperfections, of course).
I went for the conservative route just to give GW aslight advantage but if you compute it like that, that's.. whew.
That was my intent; to match it as closely as possible from the perspective of somebody who saw that pic somewhere and was like "Oh that'd look cool for my Empire army" and wanted to buy it without knowing how to scrounge around for deals (not even sure if you can legally field all those options, but let's assume you could).
There's no such thing as "absolute terms." Everything is relative.
A candy bar can be expensive compared to another candybar of the same kind. What's your definition of cheap and expensive?
Relative to GW, Mantic is cheaper. Relative to a candybar, its expensive.
GW is cheap compared to my other hobby, buy a long ways too. So, how about you define "Absolute terms" (which I don't think even exists) and we'll go from there.
I did a whole bunch of comparisons between Infinity, Mantic, Dropzone Commander and GW in the last page. Several others have done comparisons earlier in the thread with War Machine.
But yes, the Perry miniatures are truly remarkable and are no doubt the reason why Mantic goes out and says, "we're not going to be making a Kingdoms of Men army." They probably even point you towards the Perry Miniatures models too.
MWHistorian wrote: If you make wargames and sell them, you're in the wargaming market.
Why do I have to clarify that?
My head hurts.
If you make miniatures and sell them, you're in the miniatures market.
Why do I have to clarify that?
My head hurts.
Do Games Workshop also make rules for wargames and sell them and are the miniatures they sell all used in those self same wargames?
Do Games Workshop make and release miniatures to a schedule reflected in their release of their wargames rules or just release miniatures as it suits them, without consideration to the wargames they make?
After answering these two questions, are you still prepared to say that Games Workshop are not in the 'wargames market'?
MWHistorian wrote: There's no such thing as "absolute terms." Everything is relative.
A candy bar can be expensive compared to another candybar of the same kind. What's your definition of cheap and expensive?
Relative to GW, Mantic is cheaper. Relative to a candybar, its expensive.
GW is cheap compared to my other hobby, buy a long ways too. So, how about you define "Absolute terms" (which I don't think even exists) and we'll go from there.
I would approximate absolute by a sufficiently large sample of comparable products. Just 2, maybe 3, 4 or 5 comparison products is a very small number, but in that small sample (which many people default to), Mantic Games is relatively cheap, and that is the core of their business. And it's a proven business-strategy, similar to "shadowing" Starbucks with not-quite-as-expensive coffee.
The further you throw the net (whether it be "games" or "miniatures" or even "´hobby supplies" or whatever else they are selling), the more expensive Mantic games becomes (relative to an ever-larger control group).
Where are the cheaper products? based on whichever you like game vs game or mini vs mini - but be consistent throughout please.
I'm specifically talking tabletop miniatures wargames here. These are not card games, board games or any other toy/game. Both kings of war and Warhammer Fantasy are fantasy wargames based on tabletops using minatures. It doesnt get much more similar than this without actually being the same thing.
Warlord Games? Perry Miniatures? Etc..
But that is the problem. The focus you have there is so incredibly narrow, it is a) not a market and b) virtually identical with comparing just these two companies, where, again, I specifically said that Mantic's business model is to "shadow" GW prices, benefiting from the high prices GW introduced.
To be more objective, you need to widen the scope.. get to the point where you get at least 100, better 1000 games, even better 10.000 games and see in which ... dunno ... quintile or decile Mantic Games ends up to see if they are truly cheap "in absolute terms" (and not just in the relative GW comparison).
I think it's easier to get a large enough "comparison sample" by comparing miniatures vs. miniatures, rather than "games vs. games" (though there are always imperfections, of course).
Thats all well and good, but this thread is about GW financials first and formost :/ so excluding GW from the comparison seems a bit strange...... I only ever brought up Mantic in the first place (if you go back and look i also mentioned Warmachine and Hordes and left it open to others)
You are the only person here attempting to de-rail the thread from talking about GW, I will however go and look into warlord games, Perry miniatures, while nice mini's arent the Fantasy genre I'm after atm
Edit; oh that didnt take long, warlord games arent Fantasy either. Not up my street. So your telling me that I have to look for people not producing Fantasy for my Fantasy figures ? hehe
MWHistorian wrote: There's no such thing as "absolute terms." Everything is relative.
A candy bar can be expensive compared to another candybar of the same kind. What's your definition of cheap and expensive?
Relative to GW, Mantic is cheaper. Relative to a candybar, its expensive.
GW is cheap compared to my other hobby, buy a long ways too. So, how about you define "Absolute terms" (which I don't think even exists) and we'll go from there.
I would approximate absolute by a sufficiently large sample of comparable products. Just 2, maybe 3, 4 or 5 comparison products is a very small number, but in that small sample (which many people default to), Mantic Games is relatively cheap, and that is the core of their business. And it's a proven business-strategy, similar to "shadowing" Starbucks with not-quite-as-expensive coffee.
The further you throw the net (whether it be "games" or "miniatures" or even "´hobby supplies" or whatever else they are selling), the more expensive Mantic games becomes (relative to an ever-larger control group).
Soo....its relative and not absolute. You wanted an absolute and by mine and now your definition, there is no such thing. Okay, so we have to deal with relative. We've proven that relative to Mantic, GW is more expensive. Others have posted about other companies such as Warmachine.
Thats all well and good, but this thread is about GW financials first and formost :/ so excluding GW from the comparison seems a bit strange...... I only ever brought up Mantic in the first place (if you go back and look i also mentioned Warmachine and Hordes and left it open to others)
Well, the whole thing matters for the GW thread, because Mantic is benefiting from the market that GW created in the first place.
To go back to the (of course always imperfect) example I used before, Starbucks pretty much created the market for US$ 5+ cups of coffee. Nobody in their right mind would've paid that kind of money for a cup of coffee and foamed milk before Starbucks. The competitors coming after Starbucks benefit from the market Starbucks created.
The same is true for the GW-Mantic relationship. Mantic can only charge what they charge, because the customers they target, are acclimatized to GW prices. Thus pointing to Mantic as a "how GW should do it" is a bit problematic, because Mantic can only exist (in its current form) in a world where GW acts and prices stuff as they do now (though Mantic sure knows this and tries to diversify out of it).
Mantic can charge "premium-B" prices for their miniatures, because GW charges "premium-A" prices.
Soo....its relative and not absolute. You wanted an absolute and by mine and now your definition, there is no such thing. Okay, so we have to deal with relative. We've proven that relative to Mantic, GW is more expensive. Others have posted about other companies such as Warmachine.
And all I said is that Mantic's business model is to be relatively cheaper than GW, exploiting fat margins on their product thanks to an customer base nursed on GW prices. That business model would be impossible without GW.
Again, here's the original post that people found so offensive as to spend half-a-dozen "derailed" pages trying to prove it wrong.
But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point. .
There is nothing lean about Mantic's prices.
They shadow GW to be just under them and relatively cheaper, but a company that charges you 15 GBP / 25 USD for a box of 8 no-options, restic, several-repeat sculpts DreadBall miniatures isn't doing any "lean". pricing.
MWHistorian wrote: I know a best selling author who wanted to get into wargaming but was put off by GW's business and legal decisions and started Warmachine. He posted on their forums and because Warmachine actually talks to their fans said, "Hey, isn't this New York Times best selling author? And he likes our games?" So they asked Mr. Correia if he would write something for them and Correia said "Heck yes! I love your games" So, PP got themselves a best selling author just from not being douche bags.
GW's, I love ya bro, but you gotta get in touch with the real world, yo. There's this thing called "PR," you may have heard of it. The basic premise is; you kind of have to be liked or at least tolerated to be successful...or put out a product so freaking awesome people don't care. One or the other, bro.
Bingo. GW's relationship with its customers is simply antagonistic, its relationship with independent retailers is abusive, exploitative, and antagonistic, and its relationship with the market is antagonistic.
The financial cost of that antagonism is hidden, but staggering. GW's decision to attack M C A Hogarth got Privateer Press a best selling author. If that was the only fallout, it would be an extreme net loss for the company, but it surely wasn't the only fallout. Just imagine what might happen if GW gets slapped down in the GW v CHS appeal.
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winterdyne wrote: Made of:
2 boxes of plastic infantry (£40) 24 archers and 6 bill left over.
1 blister metal men at arms (£8)
2 blister metal scurrers (£16)
1 blister metal command (£8) 5 minis left over.
1 metal cannon (£8)
So that's £80, with a LOAD of stuff left over.
Quality is extremely high- actually the same sculptors as GW (Perry) Empire. So... someone wanna do the math for a similar build from GW?
Perry models beat GW like a rented mule. Most Perry plastic infantry are less than a dollar per model with a slew of options. Hands down, Perry plastic box sets are THE best plastic models I have ever put together. Clean casts, minimal mold lines, well laid out sprues, very consistent scale across all ranges (makes for very easy kitbashing and converting), excellent price, lots of extra bits. The more plastic box sets the Perrys put out the better.
MWHistorian wrote: GW not in the wargaming market? Wait...huh? But they make and sell a war game...I'm confused.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
The wargaming market is the buying and selling of miniatures and the rules to accompany them, in relation to the hobby of miniature wargaming.
Games Workshop, via it's selling of both miniatures and accompanying rules for tabletop wargames, falls into the definition of a company within the wargaming market.
Well, the whole thing matters for the GW thread, because Mantic is benefiting from the market that GW created in the first place.
To go back to the (of course always imperfect) example I used before, Starbucks pretty much created the market for US$ 5+ cups of coffee. Nobody in their right mind would've paid that kind of money for a cup of coffee and foamed milk before Starbucks. The competitors coming after Starbucks benefit from the market Starbucks created.
The same is true for the GW-Mantic relationship. Mantic can only charge what they charge, because the customers they target, are acclimatized to GW prices. Thus pointing to Mantic as a "how GW should do it" is a bit problematic, because Mantic can only exist (in its current form) in a world where GW acts and prices stuff as they do now (though Mantic sure knows this and tries to diversify out of it).
Mantic can charge "premium-B" prices for their miniatures, because GW charges "premium-A" prices.
If that is the case, GW did it to themselves and deserve every last loss generated from it.
Its no secret that GW consider themselves a premium product, It's a little amusing that the people running the show at Mantic used to run the show at GW. I think you'l find most of the people complaining about GW and promoting Mantic were fans of GW back when the Mantic staff were there, and seemingly had influence over the way things were ran.
Now we see scores of unhappy people basically bitching about GW's policies and practises all the time, and Mantic step up and behave mostly the way everyone remembers from the GW of old.
In reality GW could kick up legal fuss about predatory pricing if Mantic were to drastically undercut - especially knowing that GW can produce cheaper than Mantic should be able to. (predatory pricing requires retail prices to be lower than cost of manufacture+distribution and all included cost and is illegal and is also often a really dumb bussiness move anyways)
Knowing that GW possess the manufacturing advantage, one must assume that Mantic are enjoying lower margins per product? And having to work harder for their £ (even more so if as people say GW is more popular)
This seemingly is leading to the lazy releases from GW, cus they can.
I'd love to see Mantic really step the game up and be real direct competition to GW because it would only end up in better products for us, the consumers. GW can only ever get away with lazy rules and reboxing of mini's if they domminate the market, if someone else can produce minis, or rules that can make GW have to work at it, only good things can happen.
The Mantic vs GW discussion could be considered more valid than any other company vs GW purely on the basis that they are made up of largely ex-GW staff. Are you suprised that theres a good similarity in the products when the same guys worked on both?
MWHistorian wrote: GW not in the wargaming market? Wait...huh? But they make and sell a war game...I'm confused.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
The wargaming market is the buying and selling of miniatures and the rules to accompany them, in relation to the hobby of miniature wargaming.
Games Workshop, via it's selling of both miniatures and accompanying rules for tabletop wargames, falls into the definition of a company within the wargaming market.
But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point. .
There is nothing lean about Mantic's prices.
They shadow GW to be just under them and relatively cheaper, but a company that charges you 15 GBP / 25 USD for a box of 8 no-options, restic, several-repeat sculpts DreadBall miniatures isn't doing any "lean". pricing.
I agree on the customer experience though.
All things are relative within their field. To use your Porsche analogy, for example, it is a cheap top end sports car, when compared with the aforementioned Ferrari, it is therefore cheaper. We can therefore say, when comparing it to the Ferrari, that it's 'cheap', in financial terms and not necessarily in terms of quality, as that would require more significant comparisons on a like for like basis and testing.
MWHistorian wrote: GW not in the wargaming market? Wait...huh? But they make and sell a war game...I'm confused.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
The wargaming market is the buying and selling of miniatures and the rules to accompany them, in relation to the hobby of miniature wargaming.
Games Workshop, via it's selling of both miniatures and accompanying rules for tabletop wargames, falls into the definition of a company within the wargaming market.
By a casual glance, I'd guess that Mantic Games is easily in the top 20% of those price-wise.
Likely, but from the perspective of a GW customer seeking a cheaper alternative, for say the rank and file of a warhammer army, or to jump ship entirely from GW products and try something similar, it retails cheaper.
I also take issue with your earlier comparisons on the 'dwarf unit' as a more informed comparison would be 'number of X figures made in white metals or resin or hard plastic' rather than 'dwarf' or 'goblin' or such, these terms are meaningless to the business manufacture costs to retail price markup.
Perry's are without a doubt my favourite miniatures company. Their metal models and plastics are great. I would love them to bring out a plastic Samurai set, if they did I would get rid of my WGF Samurai and just get all Perry's.
carlos13th wrote: Perry's are without a doubt my favourite miniatures company. Their metal models and plastics are great. I would love them to bring out a plastic Samurai set, if they did I would get rid of my WGF Samurai and just get all Perry's.
I would love it if they make plastics out of every time period they produce, and maybe then some. Like Fantasy figures (realistically proportioned Empire!).
I've grown up being taught that it's impolite to ignore people.
Thats in the real world, where it is also impolite to be needlessly contrary and antagonistic. Ignore is a wonderful function for forums.
I also do most of my forum activities in debating forums, where putting someone on "Ignore" could get you banned (and trolls are generally reported and handled by mods).
MWHistorian wrote: GW not in the wargaming market? Wait...huh? But they make and sell a war game...I'm confused.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
MWHistorian wrote: GW not in the wargaming market? Wait...huh? But they make and sell a war game...I'm confused.
They are making and selling miniatures (most of all) and games (as a means to promote the former). They are in the miniatures market and in the games market.
Make your comparisons in one or the other, or give me a definition of "wargaming market".
A companies enters the 'wargaming market' when they make wargames.
A wargaming company; in the content acceptable on this forum (not to be confused with wargames where people wear armours and fake guns shooting at each other in the field) consists of 2 conponents; Minitures and game rules that is meant to be played on a table. It does not matter if it is your core business or a side project. You are part of the wargaming market when you produce a wargame.
Games Workshop IS a wargaming company. They produce models and have rules that accomply them; they make money from both minitures and rules; although if you argue minitures takes the major portion of the revenue; it does not exclude them from the wargaming market.
Mantic Games IS a wargaming company. They produce models and have rules that accomply them; Recently their focus has been more on BOARDGAMES (Dreadball, Deadzone, Mars Attack) it does not exclude the fact they make wargames.
Games Workshop and Mantic Games can be compared because both make a wargaming product.
If you compare GW to Bandai, maker of popular Gundam Model Kits, It will not be a fair compairson becuase although Bandai makes better plastic kits at cheaper prices then GW, Bandai doesn't make wargaming rules for their model Kits. Bandai make video games and card games that uses gundam characters, but nothing for tabletop gaming so Bandai is NOT a wargaming company, and would be unfair to compare GW to Bandai.
By a casual glance, I'd guess that Mantic Games is easily in the top 20% of those price-wise.
looking at that list closely, some of the games are listed way back in the 1970's. I wonder if they are still selling rules and models at my FLGS. I know some newer games such as AT-43 are already gone.
I guess I should add to be in the wargaming market, you also have to be IN the market, meaning you currently still running the business and selling models and rules at channels where I can buy them.
How necessary would a reboot of their two main games be for the continued survival of GW?
It seems to me, as a thoroughly biased outsider, that the current editions of those games has hurt GW, both through what I see as ridiculous pricing and through the rules themselves being rather poorly conceived.
Locally it led to an upsurge in Kings of War (which I consider a Good ThingTM) but the continued failure of GW might have serious repercussions in the fantasy wargaming industry as a whole.
If GW were to vanish today then I would shed nary a tear, but their doing so would also damage Victoria Lamb, Kromlech, Puppets War, and other companies that I do respect.
TheAuldGrump wrote: How necessary would a reboot of their two main games be for the continued survival of GW?
I think they have no choice, but I also think the damage might have been done. They aren't going to drop prices, so you're still left with high startup costs for anyone wanting to get into the game, and veterans who want to play high points so they can use all their cool toys. They need to revamp the rules first and decide exactly what their game wants to be, and make solid rules that encourage balanced play without resorting to "Well you can decide with your opponent" type of lazy hand-waving.
Dakka Dakka also has a wonderful IGNORE feature - if more people used it, more people might find the site more enjoyable!
Excellent advice Alph. I was going to be suggesting the same thing once I was finally able to get out of work/done driving. I suggest everyone else feeling the same way use the ignore function too. Maybe he'll get the hint and move on...
The question if they reboot their rules: how many players would they lose? Objectively and logically it's better for both the casual and tourney scene crowd, but from what I've seen so far GW games has a unique, let's call them "Fun Crowd", that especially cherish the lack of well-written rules as they believe it makes their game better somehow. I say "unique" because from my limited experience with games in both CCG, RPG and wargaming variants, it seems that this is only present in GW Games (which also highlights the possiblity that it's because GW is the only one that produces crappy rules).
Because GW can't afford to lose customers at this point, I think. And some moves (like changing the rules), while in my opinion will make the game and their product better, would make them lose customers whether we like it or not.
Surprised this hasn't been posted here yet, but via Scoodeta over at Warseer:
With all the news surrounding Games Workshop over the last couple of weeks I think that it lines up fairly well. I was able to grab lunch with an old friend about a month ago who works for GW (not a local store croney). We talked everything GW and of course my drug of choice Warhammer Fantasy. He said that over the next coupel of months there would be drastic changes to the way GW does business...this was just in general. He didn't give me too many specifics, but now that the White Dwarf changes have hit the street openly and the news of a revamped website with FW product offerings and all it lines up. Once again he didnt come out and say that GW was going to be taking a hit with the earnings, but he stated that many of the changes had to do with new strategies to increase revenue and such. He has been traveling non-stop for new training and meetings, so it was easy to see something was coming down the pipe.
So on to my main point. I have always been a fantasy fanatic...game of choice hands down. He stated that there would be a new release which would change the way fantasy is currently played. Currently, the idea is to have huge blocks of infantry and high priced special characters and beasts which makes for higher costs to players and conceptually more revenue for GW. However this did not work fo rone reason or another. So it was obvious some changes were needed. The new approach will aim at bringing more people back into the game by making it smaller and more affordable. The new rule set would focus on making warhammer more of a small block and skirmish based game with fewer miniatures needed. The new box set would have less miniatures, but would basically set people up to get in the game and playing at a much reduced cost.
So he didnt give me the finer deatails that I would have liked, but he did say this would happen this summer for sure...not next year. He basically said that GW is being forced to make some changes due to some cash flow issues...which has become evident since we had lunch several weeks ago. It seems like he was pretty spot on so far with his vague statements...haha...take it as you will. But I have faith in this for many reasons. It seems with everything going on that it would line up well and make sense. GW needs a way to bring more people back intothe game while also doing soemthing to help bring fanatsy back up to strength.
Perhaps my terminology was distorted a bit in my OP. I do not believe my friend was indicating that this would be a "skirmish" game similar to Hordes or infinity. What he had stated was that it would head back in the direction of some older editions where smaller blocks were more viable. Seems people missed the smaller block protion and just focused on the skirmish portion of my OP. I am have no idea if he was saying this would be a new edition or a supplement. But my feeling was that this would be a replacement of the current ruleset. And it does line up with the smaller boxes (10 minis per). People could by a box or two and have a whole unit...instead of having to spend $200 on just one unit at 40 strong. This would allow GW to maintain the current price point while not scaring people away with the overall price of an army as they would now inherently be smaller.
There are some good things in this rumor that GW is apparently trying to address the entry level cost issue. How good this new rule set will be depend on how much the design team is willing to slaughter sacred cows. I believe that there are talent designers on the GW Design Team, but they are held back by existing philosophies that dominate design department. The whole "Pancake Edition" felt like the team could put out a good rule set, but there are those that want to hold them back or cling to outdated design ideas.
I don't think a reboot is necessary at all, but I do think a 6.5 would be helpful and a slight nerfing of Tau and Eldar and some help for the Nids and Chaos.
GW would be able to spin it easily enough. - Plus, it genuinely did work for 3rd edition.
However, considering they are just getting all the codices out, I can't exactly see it happening. The whole 6.5 edition seems far more likely. In my view, that's just a stubborn continuation of their plod further downwards..
Compel wrote: GW would be able to spin it easily enough. - Plus, it genuinely did work for 3rd edition.
However, considering they are just getting all the codices out, I can't exactly see it happening. The whole 6.5 edition seems far more likely. In my view, that's just a stubborn continuation of their plod further downwards..
I have zero confidence that GW will be able to pivot with any grace. GW is acting out of desparation, and we know that GW makes poor decisions when stressed. Plus, GW is clearly looking to find some way to boost revenue NOW, rather than address fundamental problems with an eye towards long-term success. Trying to address cost of entry is a good idea, but GW very well could try to do that and wind up crapping all over the game rules with really shortsighted tweaks and kill the system, for example.
GW's difficulties are caused by systemic problems that you can't put a band-aid on in a 6 month time frame and expect everything to be candy and rainbows. That GW even thinks it is a good idea to try to do that is, to me, an indication that management is on track to feth things up even more than they already are in an effort to make the next balance sheet look...not-so-terrible.
I have many friends that love working on my models with me, and even make excellent paint slaves. They want very badly to get into the game, but are entirely turned off by the price. Recently, I find myself agreeing, though. There's no reason a starter set should be so highly costed, and there's completely no reason that it shouldn't come with the mini rulebook and codex. It's $120 USD for a very bad CSM battleforce, and it doesn't even come with a rulebook or codex. What is the logic behind that? I started a few years ago, and was lucky enough to find a store that had a lot of old stock and got the old battleforce for 70$, which still feels like I paid too much, as I had to fork out another 75 for the codex and rulebook, and then buy HQ models and paints. Now the main rulebook alone cost more than the battleforce. GW makes good models, but there is a limit as to how much people are willing to spend. If you let people start out at a lower price point they will slowly expand and build up their armies.
Making the game smaller might make it slightly cheaper, but it won't do jack gak about sticker shock. You'll still have people walking into a store and seeing $85+ monsters and $60+ boxes of 5-10 infantry, then walking back out again saying "lol, nope." And most people won't sit and listen to you explain "No, really, it's not that bad! Trust me, I'm a salesman."
Harriticus wrote: I remember those Vampire Lords box that was $100. 4 Infantry on horses. All Finecast (i.e. low quality material). I still lol about that
TheAuldGrump wrote: How necessary would a reboot of their two main games be for the continued survival of GW?
It seems to me, as a thoroughly biased outsider, that the current editions of those games has hurt GW, both through what I see as ridiculous pricing and through the rules themselves being rather poorly conceived.
Yes, a thousand times this. I left GW products (and the games I loved) for many reasons, but money and the accelerated release schedule were just two of the smaller reasons. The two larger reasons were Finecast and the way that 6th was handled. Now, I am not going to go into Finecast because we all know what a debacle that was. And I am not saying that some people do not enjoy 6th Edition - I know people that love it.
But I for one, having played since 2nd Edition and having owned nearly every army, loved the direction that GW was moving in. It seemed that, with every edition, they were getting more streamlined - making the game easier to understand, easier to play and thus, easier to teach. It seemed like they were doing their best to make the game less complex. Granted, no rules system this elaborate would be perfect, but every edition seemed to be boiled down once again and reduced once more to its finer points. Then 6th came out. It almost seemed like 2nd Edition again. It seemed like the rules team took a step back in time and just decided to throw whatever they wanted into the rulebook. In my opinion it has a very sloppy feel to it - sort of "eh, that seems cool, let's do it." And now with the introduction of dataslates and allies, it seems that the game is getting less and less organized. For some gamers, that is an immediate turn off. Some people like structure - they like their games to have a degree of certainty (even in a dice game) from whom they may be facing to charge ranges to random psychic powers.
I am always looking for a reason to get back into 40K. I love the game. I love the miniatures and I love the atmosphere, but I have tried to get into 6th and I just can't do it. If the rules were to take a step back to 5.5, then I would be back in a heartbeat. Since I know that is not going to happen, I am hopeful that a reboot to 6.5 would streamline some of the rules, rein in the Apocalypse feel of the game now and get back on the path it was on formerly.
silent25 wrote: Surprised this hasn't been posted here yet, but via Scoodeta over at Warseer:
Spoiler:
With all the news surrounding Games Workshop over the last couple of weeks I think that it lines up fairly well. I was able to grab lunch with an old friend about a month ago who works for GW (not a local store croney). We talked everything GW and of course my drug of choice Warhammer Fantasy. He said that over the next coupel of months there would be drastic changes to the way GW does business...this was just in general. He didn't give me too many specifics, but now that the White Dwarf changes have hit the street openly and the news of a revamped website with FW product offerings and all it lines up. Once again he didnt come out and say that GW was going to be taking a hit with the earnings, but he stated that many of the changes had to do with new strategies to increase revenue and such. He has been traveling non-stop for new training and meetings, so it was easy to see something was coming down the pipe.
So on to my main point. I have always been a fantasy fanatic...game of choice hands down. He stated that there would be a new release which would change the way fantasy is currently played. Currently, the idea is to have huge blocks of infantry and high priced special characters and beasts which makes for higher costs to players and conceptually more revenue for GW. However this did not work fo rone reason or another. So it was obvious some changes were needed. The new approach will aim at bringing more people back into the game by making it smaller and more affordable. The new rule set would focus on making warhammer more of a small block and skirmish based game with fewer miniatures needed. The new box set would have less miniatures, but would basically set people up to get in the game and playing at a much reduced cost.
So he didnt give me the finer deatails that I would have liked, but he did say this would happen this summer for sure...not next year. He basically said that GW is being forced to make some changes due to some cash flow issues...which has become evident since we had lunch several weeks ago. It seems like he was pretty spot on so far with his vague statements...haha...take it as you will. But I have faith in this for many reasons. It seems with everything going on that it would line up well and make sense. GW needs a way to bring more people back intothe game while also doing soemthing to help bring fanatsy back up to strength.
Perhaps my terminology was distorted a bit in my OP. I do not believe my friend was indicating that this would be a "skirmish" game similar to Hordes or infinity. What he had stated was that it would head back in the direction of some older editions where smaller blocks were more viable. Seems people missed the smaller block protion and just focused on the skirmish portion of my OP. I am have no idea if he was saying this would be a new edition or a supplement. But my feeling was that this would be a replacement of the current ruleset. And it does line up with the smaller boxes (10 minis per). People could by a box or two and have a whole unit...instead of having to spend $200 on just one unit at 40 strong. This would allow GW to maintain the current price point while not scaring people away with the overall price of an army as they would now inherently be smaller.
There are some good things in this rumor that GW is apparently trying to address the entry level cost issue. How good this new rule set will be depend on how much the design team is willing to slaughter sacred cows. I believe that there are talent designers on the GW Design Team, but they are held back by existing philosophies that dominate design department. The whole "Pancake Edition" felt like the team could put out a good rule set, but there are those that want to hold them back or cling to outdated design ideas.
That sounds pretty promising. I can see me getting back into Warhammer Fantasy if the game size drops to the point where I can get a decent game with a battalion box or a a couple of unit boxes, and build up a large army over time. I'm sure it'd lure in a lot of ex-players, even if it's just to check out the new rules.
The talk of a smaller box-set sounds great too, if it still comes with a full set of rules for the cut down game.
Sidstyler wrote: Making the game smaller might make it slightly cheaper, but it won't do jack gak about sticker shock. You'll still have people walking into a store and seeing $85+ monsters and $60+ boxes of 5-10 infantry, then walking back out again saying "lol, nope." And most people won't sit and listen to you explain "No, really, it's not that bad! Trust me, I'm a salesman."
This is a very good point. Even people who are willing to pay 20 for 10-16 standard troops are going to shirk at the prices of some other stuff. I have seen people considering getting into it turn tail when looking at the price of the rulebook. I have a bunch of Dark Angels I am getting rid of not because I dislike them but because I refuse to invest the extra money in them to make them a playable force once you factor in the prices of other models, books etc.
I would rather paint up a bunch of Samurai Historical's for use in both Kings of War and Ronin. Especially when I consider that you can get a playable force for ronin from north star for about the same price as a single warhammer 40k box those models are in metal and are on the more expensive end of metal Samurai Models. Steel Fist do Samurai models that some people consider pricey that work out about £3 a model and they are some of the nicest well researched models I have ever set eyes upon.
Even already pot committed, sunk cost fallacy whatever you wan't to call it its still cheaper for me to call it a day with GW and go elsewhere for gaming.
That sounds pretty promising. I can see me getting back into Warhammer Fantasy if the game size drops to the point where I can get a decent game with a battalion box or a a couple of unit boxes, and build up a large army over time. I'm sure it'd lure in a lot of ex-players, even if it's just to check out the new rules.
The talk of a smaller box-set sounds great too, if it still comes with a full set of rules for the cut down game.
Hope so. If the new strike force boxes serve as the size of games forward, things shouldn't be to bad. If you are looking at ~$200 to get into an army, that should hopefully make the game far more accessible. As for what they could do for the rules to make the games smaller, I guess remove the hoard rule for starters, probably the support attack rule as well, and either remove or nerf steadfast. That would reduce the need for large blocks. Additional troops would go back to providing only rank bonus and death stars would become far rarer.
silent25 wrote: Surprised this hasn't been posted here yet, but via Scoodeta over at Warseer:
Spoiler:
With all the news surrounding Games Workshop over the last couple of weeks I think that it lines up fairly well. I was able to grab lunch with an old friend about a month ago who works for GW (not a local store croney). We talked everything GW and of course my drug of choice Warhammer Fantasy. He said that over the next coupel of months there would be drastic changes to the way GW does business...this was just in general. He didn't give me too many specifics, but now that the White Dwarf changes have hit the street openly and the news of a revamped website with FW product offerings and all it lines up. Once again he didnt come out and say that GW was going to be taking a hit with the earnings, but he stated that many of the changes had to do with new strategies to increase revenue and such. He has been traveling non-stop for new training and meetings, so it was easy to see something was coming down the pipe.
So on to my main point. I have always been a fantasy fanatic...game of choice hands down. He stated that there would be a new release which would change the way fantasy is currently played. Currently, the idea is to have huge blocks of infantry and high priced special characters and beasts which makes for higher costs to players and conceptually more revenue for GW. However this did not work fo rone reason or another. So it was obvious some changes were needed. The new approach will aim at bringing more people back into the game by making it smaller and more affordable. The new rule set would focus on making warhammer more of a small block and skirmish based game with fewer miniatures needed. The new box set would have less miniatures, but would basically set people up to get in the game and playing at a much reduced cost.
So he didnt give me the finer deatails that I would have liked, but he did say this would happen this summer for sure...not next year. He basically said that GW is being forced to make some changes due to some cash flow issues...which has become evident since we had lunch several weeks ago. It seems like he was pretty spot on so far with his vague statements...haha...take it as you will. But I have faith in this for many reasons. It seems with everything going on that it would line up well and make sense. GW needs a way to bring more people back intothe game while also doing soemthing to help bring fanatsy back up to strength.
Perhaps my terminology was distorted a bit in my OP. I do not believe my friend was indicating that this would be a "skirmish" game similar to Hordes or infinity. What he had stated was that it would head back in the direction of some older editions where smaller blocks were more viable. Seems people missed the smaller block protion and just focused on the skirmish portion of my OP. I am have no idea if he was saying this would be a new edition or a supplement. But my feeling was that this would be a replacement of the current ruleset. And it does line up with the smaller boxes (10 minis per). People could by a box or two and have a whole unit...instead of having to spend $200 on just one unit at 40 strong. This would allow GW to maintain the current price point while not scaring people away with the overall price of an army as they would now inherently be smaller.
There are some good things in this rumor that GW is apparently trying to address the entry level cost issue. How good this new rule set will be depend on how much the design team is willing to slaughter sacred cows. I believe that there are talent designers on the GW Design Team, but they are held back by existing philosophies that dominate design department. The whole "Pancake Edition" felt like the team could put out a good rule set, but there are those that want to hold them back or cling to outdated design ideas.
That sounds pretty promising. I can see me getting back into Warhammer Fantasy if the game size drops to the point where I can get a decent game with a battalion box or a a couple of unit boxes, and build up a large army over time. I'm sure it'd lure in a lot of ex-players, even if it's just to check out the new rules.
The talk of a smaller box-set sounds great too, if it still comes with a full set of rules for the cut down game.
Thing is you know the smaller box set is gonna cost more than the current one does.
Sidstyler wrote: Making the game smaller might make it slightly cheaper, but it won't do jack gak about sticker shock. You'll still have people walking into a store and seeing $85+ monsters and $60+ boxes of 5-10 infantry, then walking back out again saying "lol, nope." And most people won't sit and listen to you explain "No, really, it's not that bad! Trust me, I'm a salesman."
This is a very good point. Even people who are willing to pay 20 for 10-16 standard troops are going to shirk at the prices of some other stuff. I have seen people considering getting into it turn tail when looking at the price of the rulebook. I have a bunch of Dark Angels I am getting rid of not because I dislike them but because I refuse to invest the extra money in them to make them a playable force once you factor in the prices of other models, books etc.
I would rather paint up a bunch of Samurai Historical's for use in both Kings of War and Ronin. Especially when I consider that you can get a playable force for ronin from north star for about the same price as a single warhammer 40k box those models are in metal and are on the more expensive end of metal Samurai Models. Steel Fist do Samurai models that some people consider pricey that work out about £3 a model and they are some of the nicest well researched models I have ever set eyes upon.
Even already pot committed, sunk cost fallacy whatever you wan't to call it its still cheaper for me to call it a day with GW and go elsewhere for gaming.
Well PP seems to be doing fine with game and figs having similar cost to GW to figs. Whenever that is brought up, people always point, it has a smaller troop requirement. So it's cheaper to get into. How is that any different?
if they can't lower the price of their figures, then they HAVE to lower the price of the Codex and rule book. Go back to smaller paper back ones, leave the fluff for supplements, but make codex's balanced and affordable.
I think PP prices are also based on GW prices, since it would be daft to ignore the market leader's prices. They know that people will buy miniatures despite those prices so they can put their own prices near GW's. If the market leader will suddenly drop their prices into half, I'd expect everyone else to follow suit if they want to stay as a competing product.
This is why fastfood restaurants usually have more or less the same prices on food items. If Mcdonald's suddenly drop all their prices by 1/4 of what they usually cost, people will flock to them so the other fastfood chains need to followsuit or else they'll lose customers. So IF GW will lower their prices by a significant margin, it won't come as a surprise if PP suddenly do a price drop as well.
frozenwastes wrote: Rich at Wayland confirmed that in the last year, the sales of Wayland Games went up 15% and GW sales made up no part of that. Given Wayland's direct relationship with hobby distribution and their generalist approach to supplying the UK and Europe, it might be a fair corallary to the ICV2 numbers from the US reporting around the same level of growth.
Did Wayland say what did made up that 15%? The ICV2 articles only mention CCG's and boardgames driving growth. No mention of miniatures collectible or non-collectible being part of the growth over the last year. They even mention game stores abandoning all non-CCG gaming in favor of only carrying collectible card games. None of the articles or economic data I have seen is showing the miniature games market is growing. The growth from the other companies appears to be from income that use to go to GW and is now going elsewhere.
You could have asked directly
I should have been more specific... GW sales have definitely dropped back. Out total sales grew approx 15% last year in spite of that drop. We didn't really see a big growth in our CCG sales, as we have not really implemented our CCG strategy as yet. All of the growth has come from a wide breadth of increases in lots of ranges. No one entity has seized the vacuum being left. There are lots of issues in the supply chain of this industry at the moment, until those issues get resolved no one will be able to move to the next level to offer any challenge.
silent25 wrote: Surprised this hasn't been posted here yet, but via Scoodeta over at Warseer:
Spoiler:
With all the news surrounding Games Workshop over the last couple of weeks I think that it lines up fairly well. I was able to grab lunch with an old friend about a month ago who works for GW (not a local store croney). We talked everything GW and of course my drug of choice Warhammer Fantasy. He said that over the next coupel of months there would be drastic changes to the way GW does business...this was just in general. He didn't give me too many specifics, but now that the White Dwarf changes have hit the street openly and the news of a revamped website with FW product offerings and all it lines up. Once again he didnt come out and say that GW was going to be taking a hit with the earnings, but he stated that many of the changes had to do with new strategies to increase revenue and such. He has been traveling non-stop for new training and meetings, so it was easy to see something was coming down the pipe.
So on to my main point. I have always been a fantasy fanatic...game of choice hands down. He stated that there would be a new release which would change the way fantasy is currently played. Currently, the idea is to have huge blocks of infantry and high priced special characters and beasts which makes for higher costs to players and conceptually more revenue for GW. However this did not work fo rone reason or another. So it was obvious some changes were needed. The new approach will aim at bringing more people back into the game by making it smaller and more affordable. The new rule set would focus on making warhammer more of a small block and skirmish based game with fewer miniatures needed. The new box set would have less miniatures, but would basically set people up to get in the game and playing at a much reduced cost.
So he didnt give me the finer deatails that I would have liked, but he did say this would happen this summer for sure...not next year. He basically said that GW is being forced to make some changes due to some cash flow issues...which has become evident since we had lunch several weeks ago. It seems like he was pretty spot on so far with his vague statements...haha...take it as you will. But I have faith in this for many reasons. It seems with everything going on that it would line up well and make sense. GW needs a way to bring more people back intothe game while also doing soemthing to help bring fanatsy back up to strength.
Perhaps my terminology was distorted a bit in my OP. I do not believe my friend was indicating that this would be a "skirmish" game similar to Hordes or infinity. What he had stated was that it would head back in the direction of some older editions where smaller blocks were more viable. Seems people missed the smaller block protion and just focused on the skirmish portion of my OP. I am have no idea if he was saying this would be a new edition or a supplement. But my feeling was that this would be a replacement of the current ruleset. And it does line up with the smaller boxes (10 minis per). People could by a box or two and have a whole unit...instead of having to spend $200 on just one unit at 40 strong. This would allow GW to maintain the current price point while not scaring people away with the overall price of an army as they would now inherently be smaller.
There are some good things in this rumor that GW is apparently trying to address the entry level cost issue. How good this new rule set will be depend on how much the design team is willing to slaughter sacred cows. I believe that there are talent designers on the GW Design Team, but they are held back by existing philosophies that dominate design department. The whole "Pancake Edition" felt like the team could put out a good rule set, but there are those that want to hold them back or cling to outdated design ideas.
That sounds pretty promising. I can see me getting back into Warhammer Fantasy if the game size drops to the point where I can get a decent game with a battalion box or a a couple of unit boxes, and build up a large army over time. I'm sure it'd lure in a lot of ex-players, even if it's just to check out the new rules.
The talk of a smaller box-set sounds great too, if it still comes with a full set of rules for the cut down game.
Thing is you know the smaller box set is gonna cost more than the current one does.
I really hope not, unless it comes with something like 3 or 4 factions instead of 2. If it's a cut-down starter with reasonable armies the size of the current starter I'll be happy paying the going rate + inflation (so, say, £70 [which is £63 from a discounter]), or If it's a lower figure count game for £50 or less, then I'll buy it straight off. If not I'll probably leave it.
For comparison, I nearly bought the Judge Dredd starter yesterday (£80 RRP), which has less figures (metal) and the full rule book, but passed until I could find out more about the game. GW need to beat that for me to buy in.
Sidstyler wrote: Making the game smaller might make it slightly cheaper, but it won't do jack gak about sticker shock. You'll still have people walking into a store and seeing $85+ monsters and $60+ boxes of 5-10 infantry, then walking back out again saying "lol, nope." And most people won't sit and listen to you explain "No, really, it's not that bad! Trust me, I'm a salesman."
This is a very good point. Even people who are willing to pay 20 for 10-16 standard troops are going to shirk at the prices of some other stuff. I have seen people considering getting into it turn tail when looking at the price of the rulebook. I have a bunch of Dark Angels I am getting rid of not because I dislike them but because I refuse to invest the extra money in them to make them a playable force once you factor in the prices of other models, books etc.
I would rather paint up a bunch of Samurai Historical's for use in both Kings of War and Ronin. Especially when I consider that you can get a playable force for ronin from north star for about the same price as a single warhammer 40k box those models are in metal and are on the more expensive end of metal Samurai Models. Steel Fist do Samurai models that some people consider pricey that work out about £3 a model and they are some of the nicest well researched models I have ever set eyes upon.
Even already pot committed, sunk cost fallacy whatever you wan't to call it its still cheaper for me to call it a day with GW and go elsewhere for gaming.
Well PP seems to be doing fine with game and figs having similar cost to GW to figs. Whenever that is brought up, people always point, it has a smaller troop requirement. So it's cheaper to get into. How is that any different?
I don't play PP games or buy their models so I cant say.
I imagine its because people can play with less of a price investment and can expand their force with a lower over all cost than with GW. You would have to ask someone who plays PP for a real insight into that though.
I get the impression (from reading on here, not playing) that you can change your main caster/jack and that totally changes the playing style of your force. So you can vary your force significantly with minimal spend.
If you want a different play style with WHF/40K you need to either start a new army or buy a stack of new units.
Its quite easy actually, the overall price of the wargame is cheaper, even if the individual prices may seem similar, when you play a wargame the price per model is not really relevant, what is relevant is the price of the whole package.
if as an extreme example I had a wargame company that made models that was 1 euro per model it seems cheap, but if I bundled them in boxes of 50 its still 50 euro the box, now if my wargame rules forced you to field around 300 models the wargame cost would be 300 euro, now if another company made models of 5 euro each and sold them in bundles of 3 its 15 euro per box and if you really wanted lets say 15 of them, its a 75 euro investment, as a whole the wargame is cheaper despite individual models having 5 times the price.
Sidstyler wrote: Making the game smaller might make it slightly cheaper, but it won't do jack gak about sticker shock. You'll still have people walking into a store and seeing $85+ monsters and $60+ boxes of 5-10 infantry, then walking back out again saying "lol, nope." And most people won't sit and listen to you explain "No, really, it's not that bad! Trust me, I'm a salesman."
This is a very good point. Even people who are willing to pay 20 for 10-16 standard troops are going to shirk at the prices of some other stuff. I have seen people considering getting into it turn tail when looking at the price of the rulebook. I have a bunch of Dark Angels I am getting rid of not because I dislike them but because I refuse to invest the extra money in them to make them a playable force once you factor in the prices of other models, books etc.
I would rather paint up a bunch of Samurai Historical's for use in both Kings of War and Ronin. Especially when I consider that you can get a playable force for ronin from north star for about the same price as a single warhammer 40k box those models are in metal and are on the more expensive end of metal Samurai Models. Steel Fist do Samurai models that some people consider pricey that work out about £3 a model and they are some of the nicest well researched models I have ever set eyes upon.
Even already pot committed, sunk cost fallacy whatever you wan't to call it its still cheaper for me to call it a day with GW and go elsewhere for gaming.
Well PP seems to be doing fine with game and figs having similar cost to GW to figs. Whenever that is brought up, people always point, it has a smaller troop requirement. So it's cheaper to get into. How is that any different?
I don't play PP games or buy their models so I cant say.
I imagine its because people can play with less of a price investment and can expand their force with a lower over all cost than with GW. You would have to ask someone who plays PP for a real insight into that though.
I've been looking into PP as a "social" game to play, and from what I can tell, the same amount that gets you a low-point starting force from GW gets you a decent "normal" sized force for WM/H and can likely get you additional units that you can switch out, so you aren't limited to playing the same force every battle because that's all you have. That's the appeal - I can either spend upwards of $500 for a rigid Warhammer army, or spend $500 and get enough variety in my WM/H force that I can play multiple ways and have fewer models to transport/paint.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Herzlos wrote: I get the impression (from reading on here, not playing) that you can change your main caster/jack and that totally changes the playing style of your force. So you can vary your force significantly with minimal spend.
If you want a different play style with WHF/40K you need to either start a new army or buy a stack of new units.
Also this as well. With WM/H if I want to do something new, I buy a new commander ($10 or so depending on the figure) and it gives me a new way to play, and I can bolster my force as necessary depending on the units I need, so it's more like old Warhammer where you could easily budget some money to get a new figure as outside of the big guys they are about $49.99, so it's a matter of having a small budget and saying "Hey you know, this Warjack looks cool, I'm going to buy him and see what I can do" on a whim versus "Let's see I need to buy three boxes of these guys, and I'll need 5 of these flying guys, and that tank looks sweet, and oh I'll need another squad of thse..." and you're at a couple of hundred dollars.
Yeah price per model matters to people who are only in it for painting and modelling more so than war gamers I imagine.
That said there is probably a certain point where someone will go "That price for a single model? feth off" even if its the only one you need to play the game.
You are right though if you are in it for gaming the over all cost matters more than the price per model.
That said I am eyeing up the Metal Gear Rex model kit (for the very distant future) which I have no intention of ever playing with and thats about £50 for a single model.
But I for one, having played since 2nd Edition and having owned nearly every army, loved the direction that GW was moving in. It seemed that, with every edition, they were getting more streamlined - making the game easier to understand, easier to play and thus, easier to teach. It seemed like they were doing their best to make the game less complex. Granted, no rules system this elaborate would be perfect, but every edition seemed to be boiled down once again and reduced once more to its finer points. Then 6th came out. It almost seemed like 2nd Edition again.
I have also played since 2nd ed and I dislike the direction that GW took with 3rd onwards. Simplifying the rules is fine but only if the game is kept interesting and scope for varied tactics is retained within the core rules and without the need for vast quantities of special rules. The ideal wargame would have simple (but not nessicarily 'streamlined') rules and allow for tactical depth and flexability on the table, GW falls short on both counts.
I'm also not convinced that 2nd ed was more complex than more modern editions. The 2nd ed rulebook has 96 pages while the hard back 6th ed book has 131 (up to the fluff section) and the soft back 5th ed rulebook has 95. The mechanics of modern 40k is extremely simple, in my mind too simple, so why on earth do they need so many pages of rules?
Now that GW have made standard 40k games into what used to be the preserve of Apocalypse games I thiknk that they have boxed themselves in. The ideal solution would be to split the 40k rules in two. Keep one set as they are now (but obviously massively cleaned up) to allow for the large games that GW and some players want and develope a new skirmish system, ideally from scratch, to cater for players who want smaller but much more indepth games.
How do you feel about Kings of War Palindrome? Lots of people cite that as a very simplified rule set that doesn't sacrifice tactical depth for simplicity. Would you agree?
Something like Bolt Action or Hail Caesar would be good examples of what I mean. In fact one of the best examples is Epic Armageddon which GW so helpfully killed off.
I think the main problem with 6th ed is that while it tried to regain some of the more interesting 2nd ed rules, although pale shadows of their former selves, it also embraced the looseness of 2nd ed which was designed as a completely different type of game and it just dones't work, its simply not 'competative'.
WHFB has devolved into dice rolls for everything and list writing is more important that tactical acumen, in fairness this is also a serious flaw in 40k as well. I used to love fantasy, it has always had its problems but it was a game that genuinely rewarded player skill, particulary in the movement phase. Nowadays its all about static infantry blocks, massive monsters and overpowered magic which is something that I personally have little to no interest in.
I think a serious reboot of both core games is a nessecity if GW is to have a hope of long term survival.
The all time low is much lower than that, actually, however share price is not always an accurate reflection of the value of the company as a going concern. Profits and cash flow are more important.
If someone decided to buy a lot of shares to take over the company, the price would go up.
There's a way to go before they hit a 5 year low (disregarding the odd spike) but I'm surprised we haven't seen some more bullish investors picking up some stock and causing the price to rally at least a bit by now.
I've played Warmachine and 40K quite a bit. Let's assume the cost between the games is the same because people have debated that enough. Here is the primary reasons I would recommend Warmachine over 40K:
- Takes less models and thus less models to paint and keep up with in the game.
- Switching the warcaster model can cause the army to play very differently. Basically, you can have multiple styles of army with a couple different warcasters. In 40K, you need to usually swap out large sections of the army to get it to play differently.
- The rules are well written. See the "you make the call" forums for Warmachine and 40K and the difference is mind blowing.
- PP interacts with the customers. They actually host forums and are fairly active on them.
Something like Bolt Action or Hail Caesar would be good examples of what I mean. In fact one of the best examples is Epic Armageddon which GW so helpfully killed off.
I think the main problem with 6th ed is that while it tried to regain some of the more interesting 2nd ed rules, although pale shadows of their former selves, it also embraced the looseness of 2nd ed which was designed as a completely different type of game and it just dones't work, its simply not 'competative'.
WHFB has devolved into dice rolls for everything and list writing is more important that tactical acumen, in fairness this is also a serious flaw in 40k as well. I used to love fantasy, it has always had its problems but it was a game that genuinely rewarded player skill, particulary in the movement phase. Nowadays its all about static infantry blocks, massive monsters and overpowered magic which is something that I personally have little to no interest in.
I think a serious reboot of both core games is a nessecity if GW is to have a hope of long term survival.
I think you'll really, really like Kings of War. The rules are here and you can use your existing WHFB armies to play. I'm on the same page as you in that Bolt Action and Epic Armageddon (not played Hail Caesar) really appeal to me on their simplicity of rules but depth of play. Kings of War is the same. Very simple rules (deceptively so) but very tactical and rewarding. Warmachine by comparison has complex rules (well written, complex rules) and a huge depth of play.
Something like Bolt Action or Hail Caesar would be good examples of what I mean. In fact one of the best examples is Epic Armageddon which GW so helpfully killed off.
I think the main problem with 6th ed is that while it tried to regain some of the more interesting 2nd ed rules, although pale shadows of their former selves, it also embraced the looseness of 2nd ed which was designed as a completely different type of game and it just dones't work, its simply not 'competative'.
WHFB has devolved into dice rolls for everything and list writing is more important that tactical acumen, in fairness this is also a serious flaw in 40k as well. I used to love fantasy, it has always had its problems but it was a game that genuinely rewarded player skill, particulary in the movement phase. Nowadays its all about static infantry blocks, massive monsters and overpowered magic which is something that I personally have little to no interest in.
I think a serious reboot of both core games is a nessecity if GW is to have a hope of long term survival.
I think you'll really, really like Kings of War. The rules are here and you can use your existing WHFB armies to play. I'm on the same page as you in that Bolt Action and Epic Armageddon (not played Hail Caesar) really appeal to me on their simplicity of rules but depth of play. Kings of War is the same. Very simple rules (deceptively so) but very tactical and rewarding. Warmachine by comparison has complex rules (well written, complex rules) and a huge depth of play.
I just wanted to add this is the reason why I'm planning to start Kings of War and hopefully convince some WHFB players to change sides; I love the fact that the game is based around tactics and the superior general can win instead of whomever has the biggest/baddest/most expensive units. Warpath (their 40k version) didn't feel quite right for some reason and isn't as polished, but KoW looks great as I've always liked Fantasy more than 40K.
I do want to get into Warmachine as well but the price is a little steep at the moment for a game that not many people play, although I know one person at my FLGS is trying to drum up interest.
I think with warpath they tried to apply kings of war to Sci Fi without really highlighting the differences between the two settings enough.
I am currently working on a Samurai Army for Kings of War using models from a Variety of manufacturers. I will also be using the same models for ronin.
I may be one of the few people but I'd be irritated by a move away from large units in Warhammer. I like the feel of bigger battles with lots of men on the battlefied marching into combat. I suppose I could start playing 10,000 point games but if the rules changes what am I going to do with:
40 Dwarf Hammerers
40 Dwarf warriors with two handed weapons
40 Dwarf warriors with shield and hand weapon
40 Empire Halberdiers
Also, when people compare warmahordes with Warhammer although the cost of playing a game is lower, collecting is not. No PP fan complains about paying £50-ish on ten banes but will say that GW are priced too highly when a unit of 10 Dark Elf witches cost £30. I think the scale of the game means that you shouldn't compare.
Yes.. there is always that. hehe clearly if 
Workshop, so we know that 
