Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As a long time Necron player I have to say they priced me out of the silent king. 150 dollars for a single plastic kit (throne better be gold plated for that price) way to expensive in my mind. And this comes from someone who’s in mid life with a well paying career. I applaud them on the other kits though they are priced lower than I expected they would be with new price structure.

So do you think 150 dollars is fair? I understand he is the show piece of the army. The big leader if you will but what’s next 200 dollars for a main character?

Grimlineman wrote:
As a long time Necron player I have to say they priced me out of the silent king. 150 dollars for a single plastic kit (throne better be gold plated for that price) way to expensive in my mind. And this comes from someone who’s in mid life with a well paying career. I applaud them on the other kits though they are priced lower than I expected they would be with new price structure.

So do you think 150 dollars is fair? I understand he is the show piece of the army. The big leader if you will but what’s next 200 dollars for a main character?

It's not a new price point, it shares this place with Magnus and Mortarion, both are large complex plastic kits with massive in game potential and a huge chunk of the army, you also only ever want 1 of them if at all. Silent king shares this bracket both in terms of plastic, price, design scope, fluff intent and assumingly rules.

Whether it's good value or not is subjective, if you're asking if the pricing is out of line compared to the rest of GW's offerings, it's about right.

I don’t play those army’s so first time it’s been in my face. Thanks for sharing!

It's simply insane. But I can't stand those huge models and I wouldn't buy them anyway, even if they were 50-75% cheaper.

At some point I owned 20K+ of GW miniatures and never invested more than 60ish$ in a single model so far. Actually I only bought 3 models with such a price, anything else always under 45ish$.

For 150$ I can buy a 500-1000 points army from the second hand market.

 Blackie wrote:
It's simply insane. But I can't stand those huge models and I wouldn't buy them anyway, even if they were 50-75% cheaper.

At some point I owned 20K+ of GW miniatures and never invested more than 60ish$ in a single model so far. Actually I only bought 3 models with such a price, anything else always under 45ish$.

For 150$ I can buy a 500-1000 points army from the second hand market.

I literally could buy first hand all the conversion bits i'd need for a sideproject of mine for a full army for that money.

I would definitely never go with that. GW has pretty much priced me out of "super big thing tier" both in terms of box sets and huge models, I just generally don't like spending 150-250$ on one thing at one time. Particularly because if I bring a big 350-500 point model, that represents a solid 1/4 or more of my army dpeending on how much support it has, which just isnt what I usually like to bring to the table.

I also just generally dislike painting huge models. I have easily over 3000 miniatures, and I own one single knight sized model, which was a gift from an extremely cool former roommate who went home to china and found out one of his good friends was a recaster for that weird game his friend from the US played.

Assuming it's a 350+ point model the way magnus and morty are, it's actually not bad per point by GW's current pricing standards.

It's not even in the same bracket as stuff like mek gunz or beasts of nurgle.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Assuming it's a 350+ point model the way magnus and morty are, it's actually not bad per point by GW's current pricing standards.

It's not even in the same bracket as stuff like mek gunz or beasts of nurgle.

Oh absolutely, Pts / £$CHF etc, is probably not as bad as mek gunz, doesn't excuse the excessive pricing for plastic though.

Is it a good value? No.

Is it a reasonable price? Sure.

Should you buy it? That’s up to you.

So do you think 150 dollars is fair? I understand he is the show piece of the army. The big leader if you will but what’s next 200 dollars for a main character?

The problem here for me is that he is SUPPOSE to be the show piece, but from what I've seen, he's actually kind of lame. A rare miss IMO from the studio. The King himself doesn't look drastically different from a normal Lord, and the "throne" or dais or whatever it is he's on just looks kind of ... black? So it's a really unimpressive model at a really high price-point. I happily bought Mortarion for my DG even though he's only seen the table once or twice in the years I've had him because it's just an amazing model. This one though? Hard pass for me.

Not Online!!! wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Assuming it's a 350+ point model the way magnus and morty are, it's actually not bad per point by GW's current pricing standards.

It's not even in the same bracket as stuff like mek gunz or beasts of nurgle.

Oh absolutely, Pts / £$CHF etc, is probably not as bad as mek gunz, doesn't excuse the excessive pricing for plastic though.

^I will never not find the 'paying for plastic' argument stupid, though.

you're paying for the design of the thing, and the various people the company had to pay to develop its appearance and game rules.

The reason why recasters can so heavily undercut is because they steal the work of the concept artist, 3d modeler, sprue designer, and whoever was in charge of making the rules for the thing.

Not to mention the work the marketing team puts in to advertise the thing to you, any overhead from shelf space the thing takes up, the promotional photography and painting of the studio model...the material is a minuscule fraction of the cost of the end product.

Well its not exactly a new price for Necrons - its the same price as a Tesseract Vault/Obilisk.


So if its purely price shock then keep in mind its not a new price for the Necron range at all.



Asides its clearly bigger than 3 old metal dreadnoughts; far better sculpted and more dynamic and yet costs about the same. And that's based on the £30 per dread from 20 years ago. (granted that's UK prices).


Sure its big and scary priced, but its also a one-army-purchase. You either get it first or early on because you love it or you get it later when you don't need/want to buy another bunch of warriors/troops or vehicles for the same cost.






And sure you can get a lot more secondhand for that price; but that's true if you compare any new, direct from GW priced models to the secondhand market *unless you're building a Slaanesh force with Diaz sculpted Seekers/Deamonettes.

Dudeface wrote:

Grimlineman wrote:
As a long time Necron player I have to say they priced me out of the silent king. 150 dollars for a single plastic kit (throne better be gold plated for that price) way to expensive in my mind. And this comes from someone who’s in mid life with a well paying career. I applaud them on the other kits though they are priced lower than I expected they would be with new price structure.

So do you think 150 dollars is fair? I understand he is the show piece of the army. The big leader if you will but what’s next 200 dollars for a main character?

It's not a new price point, it shares this place with Magnus and Mortarion, both are large complex plastic kits with massive in game potential and a huge chunk of the army, you also only ever want 1 of them if at all. Silent king shares this bracket both in terms of plastic, price, design scope, fluff intent and assumingly rules.

Whether it's good value or not is subjective, if you're asking if the pricing is out of line compared to the rest of GW's offerings, it's about right.

Yep, and don't forget that many online stores or LGS will sell it for around 15% off, so you can get it a little cheaper.

Not a fan of the model either, it's mostly just a normal lord on a hunk of boring plastic with some boring plastic pillars on either side, but I'm sure some people dig it.

the_scotsman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Assuming it's a 350+ point model the way magnus and morty are, it's actually not bad per point by GW's current pricing standards.

It's not even in the same bracket as stuff like mek gunz or beasts of nurgle.

Oh absolutely, Pts / £$CHF etc, is probably not as bad as mek gunz, doesn't excuse the excessive pricing for plastic though.

^I will never not find the 'paying for plastic' argument stupid, though.

you're paying for the design of the thing, and the various people the company had to pay to develop its appearance and game rules.

First off, Rude, secondly, yes i do pay the price for design, i also pay the price for the rest and the frankly ridicoulus GW markup .
HOWEVER: 3d design, improved mold technology, cheapper shipping, bigger productions facilities, cheaper material prices since some time now etc, are all things that happened. Which would and should lower the price of production.
Thirdly; no i don't pay for the rules through it, i pay the rules through the respective rules source and those are, to put it mildy also gifted with a rather extreme mark up for what can be deemed quite well as lackluster products.

The reason why recasters can so heavily undercut is because they steal the work of the concept artist, 3d modeler, sprue designer, and whoever was in charge of making the rules for the thing.

Not to mention the work the marketing team puts in to advertise the thing to you, any overhead from shelf space the thing takes up, the promotional photography and painting of the studio model...the material is a minuscule fraction of the cost of the end product.

The reason for recasters is indeed partially owed to be able to undercut through saved development cost, but one only needs to look at providers for 3rd party products that are indeed original in their content and see lower prices all over the shop. I wonder why,
As for the marketing team, i am sorry, not only is the job they are doing often shoddy, like faulty articles on the comunity side of things, but also heavily lackluster.

How would you propose we quantify the amount of the gap in price between a Games Workshop Chaplain on Bike model and a Whizzbanger Miniatures Space Knight War Priest on Space Big Wheel?

How much of that price undercut is Very Bad Unfair Games Workshop Markup and how much is the fact that coincidentally Whizzbanger Miniatures seems to have found a strange market niche where they barely have to advertise that product at all, and people just seem to be coincidentally extremely interested in their innovative line of Space Knight products?

I think its a fantastic model and would consider it if I were playing Necrons. Its no different to a knight in reality, and at least its not as expensive as Teclis..that is insane.

GW character models are all silly priced, but each person must decide if its worth it to them. I'm passing on the chaplain on bike for now as I'm not sure my RW will want or need one

Not even slightly. But GW has become quite adept at convincing people that their laughably high prices are actually reasonable.

 Blackie wrote:
It's simply insane. But I can't stand those huge models and I wouldn't buy them anyway, even if they were 50-75% cheaper.

Also this.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - you should not need to give a character an entire diorama in order to convey that he is important and/or powerful.

I don't like the model and I DEFINITELY don't like it at that price. I feel like the giant shields were added on to justify an inflated price to add gravitas to a model that looks like a normal overlord with a fancy hat and bigger cape.

This is the "have someone gift this to you"-tier.
My Mortarion has been given to me by my friends pooling money for my birthday present. I would never have bought him myself. He still was a great model to build and fun to paint - take that from someone who usually hates painting.

It’s your money, your time, your hobby. It’s value is whatever you perceive it as.

If you enjoy the model. Like painting it and playing it and having it as a display piece on your shelf then I would say it’s value is high.

If you leave it in the box and never assemble it then probably not.

Even a $30 box of space marines holds no significant value to someone who doesn’t like marines or doesn’t play the game.

 Jidmah wrote:
This is the "have someone gift this to you"-tier.
My Mortarion has been given to me by my friends pooling money for my birthday present. I would never have bought him myself. He still was a great model to build and fun to paint - take that from someone who usually hates painting.

I'd be annoyed by anyone who wasted money on that kind of gift.

the_scotsman wrote:
How would you propose we quantify the amount of the gap in price between a Games Workshop Chaplain on Bike model and a Whizzbanger Miniatures Space Knight War Priest on Space Big Wheel?

1: 1

How much of that price undercut is Very Bad Unfair Games Workshop Markup and how much is the fact that coincidentally Whizzbanger Miniatures seems to have found a strange market niche where they barely have to advertise that product at all, and people just seem to be coincidentally extremely interested in their innovative line of Space Knight products?

So , marketing?
Sadly GW has the sole rights to the IP except Malal, and by extension also sells the IP as lore to make both the Chaplain and the substitute interesting. However, GW also makes bank of their marketing / IP via the release of book content for their IP or licenscing, so technically you can even argue against that to a degree. Certainly it doesn't lend itself to the extreme Markup associated for the GW tm . Especially because development and production are comparable respecitvely for the 3rd party probably more expensive due to missing economies of scale effects.

Voss wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
This is the "have someone gift this to you"-tier.
My Mortarion has been given to me by my friends pooling money for my birthday present. I would never have bought him myself. He still was a great model to build and fun to paint - take that from someone who usually hates painting.

I'd be annoyed by anyone who wasted money on that kind of gift.

That's a great tactic for making sure to never receive such gifts ever again

 Jidmah wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
This is the "have someone gift this to you"-tier.
My Mortarion has been given to me by my friends pooling money for my birthday present. I would never have bought him myself. He still was a great model to build and fun to paint - take that from someone who usually hates painting.

I'd be annoyed by anyone who wasted money on that kind of gift.

That's a great tactic for making sure to never receive such gifts ever again

Good. I dislike the guilt, obligation and sense of waste attached to gifts, so if being annoyed that friends or family wasted money on an overpriced toy for me ensures they don't do it again, being annoyed serves a useful purpose.

Something meaningful can be very touching, but 'Here's $150 in toy form' is just... tacky.

Voss wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
This is the "have someone gift this to you"-tier.
My Mortarion has been given to me by my friends pooling money for my birthday present. I would never have bought him myself. He still was a great model to build and fun to paint - take that from someone who usually hates painting.

I'd be annoyed by anyone who wasted money on that kind of gift.

That's a great tactic for making sure to never receive such gifts ever again

Good. I dislike the guilt, obligation and sense of waste attached to gifts, so if being annoyed that friends or family wasted money on an overpriced toy for me ensures they don't do it again, being annoyed serves a useful purpose.

Something meaningful can be very touching, but 'Here's $150 in toy form' is just... tacky.

I mean I get that value has different meaning to different people. But are you sure you're on the right forum if you hate miniatures as gifts that much? Just seems an odd response from someone on a wargaming forum that is built around wargames and models and miniatures and such.

I can get the whole "not liking gifts in general" angle, but surely a gift related to your hobby would be a good thing (this assumes that your friends/family would pool together to put money toward or buy something you wanted of course, not necessarily just the Silent King etc...)

Grimlineman wrote:
So do you think 150 dollars is fair?

Of course not. Nothing GW sells is "good value". It's all about 1/3rd - 1/2 more expensive than it should be.

Not Online!!! wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
How would you propose we quantify the amount of the gap in price between a Games Workshop Chaplain on Bike model and a Whizzbanger Miniatures Space Knight War Priest on Space Big Wheel?

1: 1

Oh god, you're serious, aren't you.

 Overread wrote:

Voss wrote:
Good. I dislike the guilt, obligation and sense of waste attached to gifts, so if being annoyed that friends or family wasted money on an overpriced toy for me ensures they don't do it again, being annoyed serves a useful purpose.

Something meaningful can be very touching, but 'Here's $150 in toy form' is just... tacky.

I mean I get that value has different meaning to different people. But are you sure you're on the right forum if you hate miniatures as gifts that much? Just seems an odd response from someone on a wargaming forum that is built around wargames and models and miniatures and such.

I can get the whole "not liking gifts in general" angle, but surely a gift related to your hobby would be a good thing (this assumes that your friends/family would pool together to put money toward or buy something you wanted of course, not necessarily just the Silent King etc...)

I agree. They went through the trouble of collecting money to buy something for a hobby I clearly enjoy. That totally beats each of them getting 10x10€ worth of random crap from a gift store or a bottle of fancy liquor I'd eventually have to toss out.

I personally would rather have the $150 so I can spend it on second hand GW stuff and get twice as many models.