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In Spain, DE have always been available for LGS. The problem is that most of times you needed to request them. And some blisters and boxes were not available, GW mail order (online shop) only. I guess that the official GW stores had the chance to sell the range, but that they didn't because they are always promoting the latest news. In the spanish online shop DE have always been on sale, as they are now.

I still have to nearest my local GW store to see if they have any DE now.

Hmm I'm remembering now, few months ago the DE (2ºed) Codex came back the official GW store here. It will be nice if they have something else to offer me

In the US they removed the DE from the store shelves in order to make room for the Lord of the Rings crap...uh...I mean stuff. They just did not have the wall space and someone had to lose. This may also be why they keep making more and more things direct which I think is a critical sales error. Many times I would have bought something if they had it on the shelf but by the time I got home and thought about it I realized I did not really need it heh. Its called impulse sales and in this hobby that is huge. Once you make it not so easy to buy, you sell less.

*sigh* so much misunderstanding of basic business acumen. . .

1- A facelifted a army means people want to buy it more
2- A new set of rules for an army means people want to buy it more.
3- On the weekend that the new IG were released the total sales were over 200% of average, and they didn't facelift the troop choices.
4- The DE moulds haven't changed since 3ed when they were released . . . a facelift is in order.
5- Common sense leads us to believe that DE will have a facelifted army to go with their new rules.

Dark Eldar . . . we're so bored of piratical action we will have civil wars to pass the time. . .

gorgon wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:The DE molds will only have paid for themselves if enough people bought DE models. Given that GW cut them when molds were expensive, and GW stopped production about 6 years ago due to lack of sales, it is questionable whether those molds have actually paid for themselves.

Plastic Easterlings aren't a niche product any more than any of the WFB armies are. I would love to see the detailed sales, but I wouldn't doubt that GW has sold more boxes of Easterlings in the past few years than DE Warrior squads sold over the past decade.

They've never been unavailable for purchase. In Canada they were still on GW store shelves, IIRC. Neither of us know the numbers, but I think it's reasonable to say they had a good chance of recouping mold costs over 12 years. Twelve years is a long time, and GW's margins are quite high on plastic kits.

Your stance seems to be that no one bought DE, but I never saw that to be the case. They were a niche army, but Tyranids were very much in the same boat before they got their 4th edition codex.

And were DE moved to MO only due to lack of sales? I've never heard confirmation of that from GW. On the other hand, I do know GW completely eliminated the Squat line and said on record that cancellation wasn't due to lack of sales. Without confirmation, you can't rule out other factors.

The DE were pulled from the store shelves 5 years ago, and given a special disclaimer in the GW Catalogs at that time. One reasonably concludes that GW (or any other retailer) doesn't pull product that sells well to make shelf space for other product. But who knows, maybe we've all been completely mistaken about how profit-hungry GW is, and GW actually pulled purely DE out of spite rather than poor sales. Given that GW clearly admits that most of their sales are impulse and to newbies, without shelf space, DE aren't going to sell to their target audience. Dark Eldar had an effective sales duration of 6 years (3rd Edition), and I know a bunch of players who bought a few DE when 3rd was new. But within the first couple years, DE were tagged as a failure, and that was that.

Regardless of margins, GW still had very high investment cost on metal molds when those DE molds were cut. GW had a more favorable discounting structure at that time. And GW hadn't yet started down the price increase march. I maintain that there's a good chance that GW is still trying to pay off those molds.

DE also suffered from poor concept and Fluff, and I won't argue against that point. Poor concept and bad Fluff simply gives even less reason for players to consider the army.

gorgon wrote:

I suspect that Easterlings sell in competitive volumes to any WFB army, and that if you weren't carrying a 40k/WFB bias against LotR/WotR, you'd accept that, too.

Yeah, I'm the biased one here, LOL. Especially compared to your even-handed approach to all things DE. No agenda there. No siree.

OK, then just show us how DE sold well. All reports that I've seen on WotR are positive, and Easterlings look great.

The DE were pulled from the store shelves 5 years ago, and given a special disclaimer in the GW Catalogs at that time. One reasonably concludes that GW (or any other retailer) doesn't pull product that sells well to make shelf space for other product

At the time they were pulled look at the most recent releases. Everything had newer versions and updates and was more playable with more recent models. Of course the DE sales were slow. What I do know is they were pulled to make room for the lord of the rings in the GW stores. Strangely in the same shelf space it did not do that well either hehe. Your going on assumptions as you typically do in most of your posts regarding DE for some reason. Too bad you dont like the race or rules but stop trying to squash any post that has any thing to do with them.

They're still on shelves here.

Still on the shelves here . . . haven't seen any sold in a long time, but that doesn't stop me from trying =p

and LOTR/WOTR sales are massively decreased after the LOTR film bubble burst, but I have seen more of each race sold than Dark Eldar in recent times . . . and that is why they need to be redone, to boost sales =]

Fishboy wrote:Too bad you dont like the race or rules but stop trying to squash any post that has any thing to do with them.

How am I "trying to squash any post"?

"Oh, noes, I don't think they're made of win" means something actually happens? Nonsense. GW couldn't care less what any of us think or say.

If GW didn't take into account the views of their customers then how would they be able to maintain such a large fan base, and such a large collection of gamers in their stores?

Sorry to say it, but you just seem to focus on the negatives of GW too much JohnHwangDD.

Oshova wrote:Sorry to say it, but you just seem to focus on the negatives of GW too much JohnHwangDD.

Heh, that's pretty funny, because I think I just call it like I see it.

When GW does something I like, I'm a fanboy. Now, I'm a hater.

Awesome.

Surely it's better to find the middle ground and have some consistency, sometimes you have to realise nothing is all good or all bad. There is an area inbetween good and bad.

Yes, there is.

It's called boring, and not worth commenting on.

This has to be one of the funniest conversations I've witnessed here. Go Oshova!

Shh, don't ruin it for him, the poor bastard is still trying to use logic and reason ;-)

When GW does something I like, I'm a fanboy. Now, I'm a hater.

Welcome to my world, same gak happens to me. Whenever I bitch about GW people jump my ass and call me a hater, and on the rare occasion I praise something they do, I get accused of secretly being a GW employee. Someone on another forum actually suggested I was an undercover GW employee because I thought the stompa model (and indeed most of the new Ork stuff, even the "weedy" battlewagon) was cool.

In any case though, I just think you're an donkey-cave for trying to keep DE down.

Then John all I can say is I have never seen the "fanboy"aspect of you in any posts.

Everyone has things they love and things they hate about GW . . . and for me Dark Eldar fit into both categories. I love them for their piraticalness, I love them for the sheer amount of vehicles you can have, I love them for their all round killyness . . . I hate them for their out of date models and rules . . . and that sums it up for me =]

Point is, eldar sell very well, the 'goody' elves in space sell well because the models look good, the codex has always been tidy and the background has evolved to be a rather well rounded one. So you want to make dark, segsah, murderous elves in space wearing skimpy costumes and torturing stuff.... Those should have sold well, if there had been some time taken and someone other than you-know-who had been allowed to design/sculpt them...

Dark Eldar? Personally I don't like em much, I think they were tagged on by GW in a rush, the background not a good 'fluff' fit. But mostly the models sucked, the army looked and still looks bad. If you resculpt them, if you go Hellraiser cenobite eldar and you let a skilled elven sculpter (ie JG) make them, then there is nothing to stop them selling like hotcakes.

If GW made an army and people bought them, if they introduced them, they hold an obligation to maintain them and not just pull yet another 'squats', or they will use that sales based justification to eliminate every army till it's just spacemarines of various colours.

Don't forget the other army in the starter box . . . they've got to be the 2nd biggest seller, just because so many kids get 'stuck' with them, because their brother or sister wanted to be the space marines . . .

You'd think the basic concept line of Dark Eldar would sell like cocaine laced cheetos to nerds. S&M Space Elves with Bondage Gear riding Jabba's Sail Barge into battle firing Goth Lasers of Pure Darkness who like Cutting Themselves? I'm sure theres a demographic out there somewhere these guys would sell to. It hits so many things!

Seriously though if Dark Elves work in Warhammer Fantasy than there is no reason they can't get some reasonable facsimile to work in 40k. They did it for everyone else but Skaven and Dwarves.

Cocaine laced cheetos, mmmmmmmmm!

Fishboy wrote:Then John all I can say is I have never seen the "fanboy"aspect of you in any posts.

I happen to like the current CSM Codex. Go fish.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
I happen to like the current CSM Codex. Go fish.

I just heard a stampede of Chaos players rush to /friend HMBC in protest of your statement...

I happen to like the current CSM Codex. Go fish.

Is that a smile I just saw there?

Oshova wrote:Don't forget the other army in the starter box . . . they've got to be the 2nd biggest seller, just because so many kids get 'stuck' with them, because their brother or sister wanted to be the space marines . . .

I remember when my brother and I got that box! He got the marines, I went out and bought some orks! To this day we still find little pieces of DE warrior in our old lego boxes. We didn't know or care to know anything about DE then, they weren't orks marines or anything that seemed remotely cool when we were kids. In a game that is powered by cool DE were insufficient.

8-10 years later I find myself collecting the odd and mysterious little buggers. Perhaps it has somthing to do with the fact that all evles are gay and I can field an all female DE army thus creating an all lesbian bdsm force, but whatever.

John/Oshava: You are both right about DE in a few ways. But even if GW took a loss on DE I think they are okay with calling the 12 year old incarnation of "not quite cool enough" a loss, and give it another shot. With the right model range and perhaps PG-15 fluff I think they will sell quite nicely.

And everyone should remember: Dark Eldar are piratical raiders! Just because they have not been seen in a few years does not mean that they are not about to rape your women and children!

Just a random tid bit....I may be insane but I was looking through the latest white dwarf and in the article about the new brushes they show an 'Eavy Metal painter at his station and I swear their is a new Dark Eldar model right there on his Desk. He's wearing red armour, really pale, slender weapons......it's gotta be a new Mini. I don't have the Mag or I would scan it and try to blow it up.

MUST. LOOK. MUST. LOOK. . . Well that's interesting . . . pg 92. for anyone who has it . . . it does look very eldary and not like a model I know . . . interesting indeed . . .

Fishboy wrote:

I happen to like the current CSM Codex. Go fish.

Is that a smile I just saw there?

Indeed it is.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:If GW made an army and people bought them, if they introduced them, they hold an obligation to maintain them and not just pull yet another 'squats', or they will use that sales based justification to eliminate every army till it's just spacemarines of various colours.

Indeed, "low sales" is such a bs argument for Squatting an army.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Dark Eldar? Personally I don't like em much, I think they were tagged on by GW in a rush, the background not a good 'fluff' fit. But mostly the models sucked, the army looked and still looks bad.

Maybe they were rushed, but I don't think tagged on is quite the term. They formed part of the 3rd Edition release push and were quite popular for a while. But then the codexes and miniatures for other races started to get better...