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I disagree. They've been like that for awhile.

Just tolerate it for now. I'm sure the employees will just get tired of talking to everyone and they'll stop.

I've experienced annoyance. It's not anyone in the stores fault really. It is not coming from them. They are obviously surveying you and its aweful. I'm at the wall looking through blisters and I get the same what army do you play after ive already been asked if I needed help. I cant even concentrate on what I came in for. We actually go up sometimes just so we can laugh our asses off . Ive actually turned the questions around so they would get creeped out like i am. GW stop being stupid learn some human nature. So weird.

studderingdave wrote:

terribletrygon wrote:What the feth is Wu-Tang Clan?

Wow, Seriously?

You better believe it son.

One of the better Hip Hop collectives from the 90's. I was on a horrendous Wu kick that weekend and the GW worker totally wasnt feeling it, so the encounter went sour from the get go.

studderingdave wrote:One of the better Hip Hop collectives from the 90's. I was on a horrendous Wu kick that weekend and the GW worker totally wasnt feeling it, so the encounter went sour from the get go.

I'll YouTube them and listen up.

terribletrygon wrote:

studderingdave wrote:

terribletrygon wrote:What the feth is Wu-Tang Clan?

Wow, Seriously?

You better believe it son.

I've never heard of them either, google says they are some hip-hop group apparently.

Alright, I had a listen. They were awful. Just awful. Burn all your Wu-Tango and listen to Iron Maiden forever. They created music you know.


Anyways; back on topic....


Most I've ever got from GW staff is primer reminders and the occasional 'You okay?'. Whenever I say I'm good, they have always left me alone.

Wu-tang Clan? Aren't they a terrorist orgainzation?

I do think that the prices are getting kind-of ridiculous... Seriously, 25$ for 10 guardsmen or 11 orks (which they only give you 10 basses.... -_-) Look how 'swarmy' swarm armies are becoming?
For the points-to-$$ value, its cheaper for me to just get tons of vehicles (and that is not how I play)
Sure, the modelers, artists, and all those other people need compensation for their time, but I think that I'ts getting to the point where small armies are becoming mainstream. This completely contradicts GW's 'ooh look apocalypse, you only need 3 super-heavies and a few titans to play!'
Ranting done, nuff said...

I think 25 bucks is fine for 10 models.
If you play marines, you're paying 37 for the same number. 25 is very reasonable for me.

One thing you have to remember, these guys want to expand and to make money. How do you do that when the thing you make last forever? How many of you still have your old models from years and years ago? 10 Guards men for $25 bucks....

$2.50 for a guardsman you ar gonna play with for years to come... or a Monster Energy drink you are pee'ing out in an hour?

How many hours do you play a year? Lest say you play twice a month at about 3 to 4 hours per game....

That is... let me see (takes off shoes) 3 carry the 4, multiply by 20 subtract 8.... divide by the square root of Q.... ummm....

72 - 94 hours of gaming, which we could all agree is very very low, most of us play in the 100 to 50 hours worth. but lets stick with the 72 hours.

Now divide that $2.50 per 72. that is 3 cents per hour.

even if you had 100 guys i your army that would be 3 dollars an hour. For something we LOVE!

Hello?!?!

You make the call.

Yes but since 10 cadians in the U.K are now £15 and I remember when I cam into the hobby that it was 20 for £18.
Thats why we complain about the price.

Plus points wise, a guardsman is 5pts... so $2.50 ($25 for 50pts...) is a little too much when I could just buy a LRBT for $50 and get at least 170pts out of it... But that's even a bit OP...
Also, I've dabbled in SW and for just $100 you can have a 1500 pt force EASY, but for IG you would have to spend about $250-$300... This is getting WAY off topic of the Original Post, so I'm just gonna say that GW products, be them very detailed, are a bit overpriced...

Waagh!Balzsmasha! wrote:I've experienced annoyance. It's not anyone in the stores fault really. It is not coming from them. They are obviously surveying you and its aweful. I'm at the wall looking through blisters and I get the same what army do you play after ive already been asked if I needed help. I cant even concentrate on what I came in for. We actually go up sometimes just so we can laugh our asses off . Ive actually turned the questions around so they would get creeped out like i am. GW stop being stupid learn some human nature. So weird.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I heard that they keep talking to you and following you around to prevent shoplifting w/o being too creepy by just following you around. Blisters are tiny, and easy to steal. Shoplifting is rampant in GW and independent stores because of this.

The GW in my city is fine. I dont go there to play as we have a clubroom but when i need paint or something its nice to buy there.

I just want to know, for the people who are saying GW minis are overpriced, can they point me to equivalent quality plastic unpainted minis from another company for less? I've looked, I have found resin, I have found metal, but not the plastic. And I've found a lot of companies that charge more per mini.

SmackCakes wrote:I said 'IF'... I don't need to be a management accountant to know that a company with with no new customers and no old customers, has no customers. You can figure that out yourself.

No, but you do need to have access to GW's pricing models to know their expected customer levels at differing price points. You aren't, so you're just guessing that GW is doing it wrong.

I'm not either, so I won't comment on if GW is pricing correctly or not, but I'm happy to think they probably know a little more about their pricing than some guys on the internet.

Games Workshop is not above making mistakes or becoming out of touch with their customers. It's something all businesses a susceptible to.

No, they're not. People and companies do make mistakes, often big ones. But the point remains that you simply do not have the information needed to know if GW is pricing correctly or not. You can't speculate that something is a mistake because other companies have made mistakes and you think the price is too high.

I did not at any time declare they were doomed.

Wings of Light in the OP said GW were dooming themselves. I'm guessing you agree that comment was silly?

But I really don't think they are that smart. All they've done is taken something that sold for 50p 25 years ago, and slowly hiked it up to £12... And amazingly got away with it too (despite all the customers they lost on the way). So far so good, I'm sure all the real sales managers at GW must think they're geniuses. But you can't just keep raising prices above inflation indefinitely and not expect it to effect sales... Everyone has their limit.

If you honestly believe GW's core business for 25 years has been taking the same old stuff and jacking up the price then you'd be right... but that'd be a particularly poor understanding of what GW's been trying to do. GW has set about giving themselves a mainstreet presence in an industry defined by obscure products sold in smelly basement level shops in the strange part of town. Now, that may be a bad idea, that ultimately all those mainstreet stores might create more overhead than the stores could ever produce... but good idea or bad it is a significantly greater undertaking than just selling the same stuff and increasing the price every once in a while.

Well that's not true, GW print White Dwarf every month, and they don't charge £17.50 for it. So I put it to you that GW can in fact prints a 15+ page document and sell it for less than 17.50.

What? Why have you assumed that a codex costs £17.50 because that's somewhere near what it costs to make it. I don't know why you've made that assumption. A codex doesn't cost anywhere near £17.50 to make. The cost of publication at 15 pages is not significantly different to the cost of a publication at 60 pages, and both are a fairly small relative to the retail price.

One thing I think a lot of people fail to understand is that very little of GW's costs are variable costs related to production. What really costs money is all those mainstreet stores.


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SmackCakes wrote:No I have a private Ltd company. And I don't feel I missed anything. GW have been steadily inflating their prices for as long as I can remember regardless of whether the economy is up or down, GW is always up!. Lego also make plastic injection moulded kits. 18 odd years ago I remember the big Lego technics model was £99 in Argos. Now a similarly big model is £139 in Argos. About the same time; 3 tac squads of plastic marines cost £10. Now they cost £60.

Now I realise that Lego is a different company with different issues. But I can't help but find it odd that Lego can sell a model for only 40% more, when apparently the cost of fuel, and injection moulding etc... over the last 18 years means you need to raise prices 600% just to break even.

Note that you point out the Lego kit is in Argos. Because Lego are selling a product with a sufficiently broad customer base that they can put their goods into a major retailer. GW is not, and so operates a totally different business model.

Is your privately ltd company in retail?


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keezus wrote:To me, as an veteran gamer, price isn't the problem - it is the preception of value. If one is paying a high price, the customer likes to think they are getting quality. In general, I think that the GW miniature lines have mostly improved in quality as have the base rulesets. However, to me, this perception ends at the army books. The quality control on these are streaky, and the codex/armybook release model suffers heavily every time there is a shift in design philosophy at the game studio. Considering that the core systems don't function without the armybooks and require ever huger quantities of models to play, to me, not getting these books right is inexcusable. This problem really lowers the value of their product line to me as a whole.

Yeah, this would be my complaint as well. I would criticise the miniature ranges... not the quality of individual pieces which are generally excellent, but the number of units that haven't been updated for a decade. A quality price for a quality product is fine, but they do need to be held to that standard of quality.

I would agree, somewhat, on the quality of the rules, they could stand to be considerably improved, but I'm hesitant to agree entirely because the rules have improved markedly. I'd probably just extend my complaint above... too many army books have gone too long without being updated.


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hemingway wrote:It's very poor because that figure is totally incorrect. According to their 2009 End of Year reports they posted:

Revenue £125.7m,(a huge increase over their 2008 report of £110.3m)

So yes, GW does price gouge, and they make enormous markup profits on their products.

Actual sales only rose £3.6m from 2008 to 2009, the greater sales growth was due to significant shift in the Euro and USD. This is spelled out on pages 1 and 10.


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hemingway wrote:yep. i won't be running my mouth about finance again any time soon. suffice it to say i have enough win in my life to not let an internet fail take the wind out of my sails =D

Well said, brother.

Gotta remember what contributes to GW's overheads.

They generally release a few plastic kits every month. The molds can cost a fair bit. I was told (dunno how accurate) that the baneblade kit was a 3 piece mold and was somewhere in the range of $800k AUD.

The new daemon prince only came out recently because someone when it was originally slated to be out - back when the WoC army book was redone, someone or something dropped the mold and it broke. (Wasn't it late 08-09?)

Then also for places like Aus; unlike the US or EU where there exists a production facility, or cheap transport of goods between members (respectively) Aus and many other countries have to pay exorbitant shipping costs. Afaik GW in Aus receive all the sprues unboxed and in massive palletes, and boxes made in Aus and then box them at their warehouse here. Solely to reduce overheads that are incurred from shipping.

Sile wrote:Then also for places like Aus; unlike the US or EU where there exists a production facility, or cheap transport of goods between members (respectively) Aus and many other countries have to pay exorbitant shipping costs. Afaik GW in Aus receive all the sprues unboxed and in massive palletes, and boxes made in Aus and then box them at their warehouse here. Solely to reduce overheads that are incurred from shipping.

This cost of shipping is exaggerated (which should be obvious since UK retailers can send a small package of stuff to Australia and still have it be significantly cheaper than buying it locally). Seafreight rates have been incredibly low for the last few years. If they shipped stuff boxed then a battleforce box would cost approx £0.18 = AUD0.31 to transport. If they're shipping sprues then it'll be dramatically lower. (spent about 10years negotiating seafreight contracts)

ETA, just looked up your tariff schedules - duty is 5% (of the cost price, not the sales price) and GST is 10% (of sales price).

The cost of shipping it within the country will be considerable but even with that it comes nowhere near justifying the 50% extra that you guys get charged.

I remember the free painting session they gave me when i first started (dont know if they still do that)
It Was a Lizzard man that i still have on my desk to remind me of the day i found GW.

Its very tuff these days for GW, with the Economy as it is people are buying less of their hobby's because the average price of living has gone up, which is why GW need's to raise the prices to keep themselves from losing as much.
For the vets its no problem but for the noobies its hard to get started and keep going.

Like some said, it depends on where you go, I suppose.
I mean, my local there is one guy that always tries to force you stuff, but there's another one who doesn't, but always tries to help (he showed me how to play fantasy and didn't suggest anything I might need).

Back where my Girlfriend lives, they asked if I needed anything, I told him politely no, and they said okay, but kept checking to see if I was OK and generally asked questions about what I collected and if I wanted a game.
During the night it got better, especially one of the Vets nights - they were playing matchmaker and didn't try to sell one person anything.

A very fair point Jerico. Personally I think the price of miniatures should keep going up and up and up until my massive army of old school miniatures is worth a cool Million. But I'm just being selfish - Its like first time homeowners verses people high on the property ladder in a way. But yeah

Sile wrote:Gotta remember what contributes to GW's overheads.

They generally release a few plastic kits every month. The molds can cost a fair bit. I was told (dunno how accurate) that the baneblade kit was a 3 piece mold and was somewhere in the range of $800k AUD.

Really? I don't know man, I've not worked in plastics manufacture or anything but that sure does seem like a lot. Considering the low cost of other moulded plastics it seems a little off to me.

Then also for places like Aus; unlike the US or EU where there exists a production facility, or cheap transport of goods between members (respectively) Aus and many other countries have to pay exorbitant shipping costs. Afaik GW in Aus receive all the sprues unboxed and in massive palletes, and boxes made in Aus and then box them at their warehouse here. Solely to reduce overheads that are incurred from shipping.

As Scott-S6 pointed out, shipping is pretty cheap, and a very small part of the cost of production. It's really all in those retail stores.


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Scott-S6 wrote:Is there a really high import duty being imposed? That's the only way I can the prices you guys get making sense.

The dollar cost per square foot of retail space is really high here.

sebster wrote:

Sile wrote:Gotta remember what contributes to GW's overheads.

They generally release a few plastic kits every month. The molds can cost a fair bit. I was told (dunno how accurate) that the baneblade kit was a 3 piece mold and was somewhere in the range of $800k AUD.

Really? I don't know man, I've not worked in plastics manufacture or anything but that sure does seem like a lot. Considering the low cost of other moulded plastics it seems a little off to me.

Then also for places like Aus; unlike the US or EU where there exists a production facility, or cheap transport of goods between members (respectively) Aus and many other countries have to pay exorbitant shipping costs. Afaik GW in Aus receive all the sprues unboxed and in massive palletes, and boxes made in Aus and then box them at their warehouse here. Solely to reduce overheads that are incurred from shipping.

As Scott-S6 pointed out, shipping is pretty cheap, and a very small part of the cost of production. It's really all in those retail stores.


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Scott-S6 wrote:Is there a really high import duty being imposed? That's the only way I can the prices you guys get making sense.

The dollar cost per square foot of retail space is really high here.

Cheap one of moulds for injection on things like letter plates are a few grand from what I found on Google. So if the mould is expected to be producing for x runs over y years at the detail required for models it wouldn't surprise me that realistically the moulds are 10k+. I've just been told that the baneblade mould was some super intricate 3 piece, and thus worth a ton - like I said, I don't know how accurate.

As for shipping; it was the reason I labelled it as; I know when you mail something to Aus from an international location it costs a bucket; even by ship, but shipping =/= mail.

Jericho wrote:I remember the free painting session they gave me when i first started (dont know if they still do that)
It Was a Lizzard man that i still have on my desk to remind me of the day i found GW.

Its very tuff these days for GW, with the Economy as it is people are buying less of their hobby's because the average price of living has gone up, which is why GW need's to raise the prices to keep themselves from losing as much.
For the vets its no problem but for the noobies its hard to get started and keep going.

Oddly, Hobbies tend to do well in a recession, as people see the better return on investment. It's other Luxuries (big old Tellies, kick ass Stereos etc) that suffer. It would appear in the minds of the public, there are luxury goods, and then there is stuff you're going to make good use of. Hobbies fall into the latter.

I do agree - Today I paid £15 for some flaggelents... I dont play empire.

Well to me thats 5 priests for SoB, a 'Captured' Chaos Sorcorer (using the stocks dude and a headswap etc) and possibly an inquisitor and ecclisarchy dudes. Now I will spend A few hours converting each of them, let alone painting them.

Today I also went to the cinema paying £10 for a ticket and some overpriced sweets that lasted 1.5 hours... do the maths..

Edit : I was also asked TWICE about plastic glue... grrr

Phototoxin wrote:I do agree - Today I paid £15 for some flaggelents... I dont play empire.

Well to me thats 5 priests for SoB, a 'Captured' Chaos Sorcorer (using the stocks dude and a headswap etc) and possibly an inquisitor and ecclisarchy dudes. Now I will spend A few hours converting each of them, let alone painting them.

Today I also went to the cinema paying £10 for a ticket and some overpriced sweets that lasted 1.5 hours... do the maths..

Edit : I was also asked TWICE about plastic glue... grrr

What kind of film where you watching if they asked you if you wanted glue? Twice!

Generally I think that some of the over the top GW sales are largely overblown, Between 7 years at 2 separate stores in the area, and visiting probably 10 more stores in 10 years I can count only maybe two or three times that I felt that I was getting steered into something or being almost forced to listen to a red shirt try and sell me something I wasn't interested in. I'm not a Huge fan of Warhammer Fantasy so whenever some new army came out (At the time it was Wood Elves or Brentonnian) I felt that they would go above and beyond of just saying 'hey this new army came out' they would start picking up stuff and tell me how cool it was. It would be akin to that guy who posted in this thread going to a bike store and knowing what he wanted, only to be shown the latest and greatest 1 speed dirt bike.

I would gather this over enthusiasm comes from the amount of employees GW tends to burn through, The stores by me (Which are no longer there) tended to have a pretty standard core of guys who worked there and always had 1 or 2 new guys who were young and just couldn't read peoples body language when enough was enough. The majority of the time you would get decent service and none of the pushy horror stories I keep hearing about, but I'm sure case by case and store by store everything is different, but as a whole no major complaints. You guys have to imagine that at least in the states, the majority of these shops are in malls, that get a lot of Parents and kid foot traffic that have no idea about miniature gaming in general and I'm sure some of the upbeatness comes with trying to show how fun something is, where as the common gamer already has an idea what is going on, and only interested in specifics.

It also usually takes a lot to get me upset, so if someone would get overly pushy I'd just tell them I wasn't interested or let them prattle on while I looked at stuff I was interested in. There's no reason to be mad at the employees for enthusiasm just let them know your looking for some stuff and if you need help you'll let them know. Though I do believe one of my buddies who worked at one said that they were having a huge problem with people snagging blisters and minor theft all the time, so I guess it would make sense to shadow someone like that.

Sile wrote:Cheap one of moulds for injection on things like letter plates are a few grand from what I found on Google. So if the mould is expected to be producing for x runs over y years at the detail required for models it wouldn't surprise me that realistically the moulds are 10k+. I've just been told that the baneblade mould was some super intricate 3 piece, and thus worth a ton - like I said, I don't know how accurate.

Fair enough, I've never worked in plastic manufacturing so I couldn't really argue otherwise. I was just going off a general impression of moulds costing a lot less, if something was particularly sophisticated and built for a lot of operations over multiple years, it might be reasonable, I guess.

As for shipping; it was the reason I labelled it as; I know when you mail something to Aus from an international location it costs a bucket; even by ship, but shipping =/= mail.

Yeah, thing with single products is that most of the cost is in tracking and processing the individual item. Actually moving the object from one place to another is pretty cheap. When you're transporting a full shipping crate worth of stuff those costs drop away massively.


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Elmodiddly wrote:What kind of film where you watching if they asked you if you wanted glue? Twice!

Piranha 3D would probably be a lot more enjoyable if you were sniffing glue while watching it.

I find the staff members nice when they ask you if you need anything,I dont get frustrated with that...
But if they treat you bad just because you messed up the game tables a little bit or not buying something or not buying enoguh,I say screw them