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Brick & Mortar stores do not have some right to exist regardless of the economic circumstances. If you play at one, buy at one. But how much you'll buy is something you'll have to work out. Some are quite comfortable getting everything online and then only buying hobby supplies at their shop as well as the occasional impulse buy.

As for GW caring about their customers. They only care about getting their money and the customers can piss off.

You may also notice that Captain Toad is the UK. In the UK, gaming can be a lot more club based and less store based. I actually think it's a superior model to the American retail-centric approach to hobby gaming. You order online and then put the savings into terrain and club dues to rent gaming rooms at community centres, churches or even condo/apartment multipurpose rooms.

That way your gaming is not beholden to the interest of yet another middle man.

frozenwastes wrote:Brick & Mortar stores do not have some right to exist regardless of the economic circumstances. If you play at one, buy at one. But how much you'll buy is something you'll have to work out. Some are quite comfortable getting everything online and then only buying hobby supplies at their shop as well as the occasional impulse buy.

As for GW caring about their customers. They only care about getting their money and the customers can piss off.

You may also notice that Captain Toad is the UK. In the UK, gaming can be a lot more club based and less store based. I actually think it's a superior model to the American retail-centric approach to hobby gaming. You order online and then put the savings into terrain and club dues to rent gaming rooms at community centres, churches or even condo/apartment multipurpose rooms.

That way your gaming is not beholden to the interest of yet another middle man.

What the retail venue does that some clubs don't do is draw the newer
players. Clubs often operate by word of mouth. It's like the Floating Market
in Neverwhere, if you don't know it exists you probably won't ever run into
it. A retail presence is (or should be) more public than a club is. I say this
because clubs control their membership whereas a retail based community
can be much easier to get into.

In this age of social media, the people have never had it easier to find like minded people with which to form clubs.

When I was a teenager, I lived an hour and a half drive from the closest gaming store. The internet was very, very new (this was the mid 1990s) and I still found enough people that I could play with at least every second week.

Locally, gaming clubs always show up at the tournaments and gaming days and advertise for new members. They post on craigslist/kijiji every month or so to make sure anyone searching for certain terms will see there's a club (they integrate their ads into for sale ads so that people searching for sale items will see a club is having a swap day or something).

If you can type the name of your city (or closest one) and 40k into Facebook and not find a group, start one.

Playing at shops is the US pattern.

In Europe and Australia, it's much more common for people to join clubs which are not beholden to the local shop, or play at home.

I don't know why this is so.

I think it's in part due to the fact that because of the insane retail rents and costs here in the UK, most GW stores or FLGS are invariably small affairs that simply don't have the floor space for tables. My local GW barely has room to swing a cat. They have a couple of tables but they are small 3x3 jobs.

I didn't start this hobby because of a friend or anything like that.

I started because a shop had stuff.

We had a massive battle bunker a few towns over until last year then gw downsized it so our shops are tiny now and your not certain to get a game.

With your mates at home you are.

Nom

Right, but like I said. Growing up I didn't know anybody who
played this stuff.

I only started cos my cousins got my into it. one of their dads ran the local lgs for a while here.

Nom

nomsheep wrote:I only started cos my cousins got my into it. one of their dads ran the local lgs for a while here.

Nom

Nice!

Even in my family, it was only ever really me. My one cousin is into league of legends and sc2

nkelsch wrote:

Captain Toad wrote: Buckle up people, by the end of the month we will be entering into the period where GW deliver their message of the Annual Price Hike, so it's all going to get even more expensive overnight.

I don't buy ANY GW models from GW.
I only buy them from eBay and then only when I can get a deal.

I hope you never game in public or at any FLGS with your 'I am smarter than you, I buy internet discounters and second hand only!" as that does NOTHING to help the brick and mortar stores who pay the rent on the air you breathe while gaming in their store.

Whoa right there texas Tim, I never said i was smarter than anyone, I simply pointed out that GW do not have any 're-sale' aspect built into ther retail prices.
The truth is GW want all their purchased miniatures to disappear into the trash once the kid has finished using them so there is NO 2nd hand market available to anyone.
That 2nd hand market is never good news for any figure manufacturer.
In the UK older blokes rarely play in stores, we play in clubs and occasionally at friends houses. The stores are small and generally have only 4x4 foot tables for intros to get kids into the hobby. They don't cater with gaming space so stores are not a desirable visiting point. I wouldn't mind if they disappeared. GW are not 'the hobby' they are only one manufacturer among hundreds and 'my hobby' wouldn't stop if they disappeared tomorrow because I play different rule systems with different miniatures from different manufacturers. I use some GW miniatures in those games as well.

nkelsch wrote:If you are just a model colector or play in your own house, then enjoy your access to cheap models and accept you are not and never were GWs customerbase and they simply don't care about you or what they do as GW doesn't care if that 18 month quitter sells his stuff on ebay to you or his mom simply throws it in the garbage when he goes off to college...

I play at clubs, 2 of them in London, and occasionally when work and family allows at friends houses.
I have no desire to play at a shop on a 4x4 foot table.
I do enjoy getting models cheap, but who doesn't.?
GW do care about what happens with the models after a teenager has finished with them, they want them in the rubbish bin, not on eBay where someone is using money to buy them that may well have instead gone into GW's coffers.;-)
This is not rocket science, it's basic commerce.

malfred wrote:

nomsheep wrote:I only started cos my cousins got my into it. one of their dads ran the local lgs for a while here.

Nom

Nice!

Even in my family, it was only ever really me. My one cousin is into league of legends and sc2

That sucks, did your cousin ever show an interest in 40k?

What made it even better is his dad had loads of surplus stuff (including 2nd ultras/Blood angels codex) so he had a 'spare' Tau army when i was starting so i got to jump straight in and play. I also get to raid his bitz box and paint box (both ancient and new) for my conversions.

And now i'm starting chaos and they have hordes of bitz for sm and csm. Damn i just realised how lucky a start i had in this game

Nom

No. It takes too much time/money.

(I never tried to get him into 40k...just warmachine hehehe)

I can't get my cousin to play that with me lol.

Apparantly it can't be balanced because it's in it's infancy compared to 40k. lol

Nom

I am making an Imperial Guard army entirely out of WWII model tanks and Wargame Terrain shock troops. I like them more than the current IG models, and at half the price I can afford to actually have a complete army of them. One example is the tanks. I got two Tamiya King Tigers for $20 each ... compared to $50 for a Leman Russ. The sad thing is that the King Tiger is a fantastic looking model with a die-cast hull and more detail than the GW kit ... for less than half the price!

I remember my brothers and I getting our first Warhammer order in the mail when I was very young. At the time there were no GWs yet in the US and the box had to come all the way from the UK. We alll picked out some stuff and spent about 50 dollars total. We got some tyranids, genestealer hybrids, zoats, squats, chaos renegades, space marines, terminators, a plastic Land Raider, a Predator and a box of plastic MK VI marines ... all for 50 bucks. Think about how much buying the same amount of models would cost today lol. I still love Warhammer ... but if I didn't aquire the majority of the models I still have in the late 80s early 90s I doubt I could afford it. That's my two bits.

nomsheep wrote:I can't get my cousin to play that with me lol.

Apparantly it can't be balanced because it's in it's infancy compared to 40k. lol

Nom

Silly. It's a balanced game.

malfred wrote:

nomsheep wrote:I can't get my cousin to play that with me lol.

Apparantly it can't be balanced because it's in it's infancy compared to 40k. lol

Nom

Silly. It's a balanced game.

Definately moreso than 40k. I've just got to convince him of that.

Nom

I honestly stopped putting a lot of money into Game-workshops miniatures, they are over priced, FAR over priced and I simply won't give a company that much money for their work (which as I say again, far over priced). Granted i have much to owe them for, their rules and the amazing lore they have given us, however, I will pay for the rule book now, and that alone.

After finding Mantic Games, I was extremely happy to know that where I pay $25 bucks for 10 guys over at Games workshop, I can pay $50 for 100 miniatures with just as good quality.

lord_blackfang wrote:

BuFFo wrote:
All I know is that Privateer Press sells certain large all pewter models at roughly 35 - 50 bucks. Been doing so for many years. Then, they started to move their line to a plastic/resin instead from all pewter.

They have come out with large model plastic kits that combine, usually, three of the pewter kits into one kit, and in every case, the three in one plastic kit (which you can magnetize and have essentially three variants of a model instead of the single pewter one) the price has DROPPED. So

PP has essentially went from selling three models at roughly 45 bucks each, to selling a single model at 39 bucks which can be used as three separate models (since in the PP game, you don't normally use doubles of a large model anyway).

Other companies DO drop their prices at times. So how come the world you say affects only GW prices, yet other companies can actually LOWER their prices? I guess GW must live in a world of their own....

Funnily enough, GW dropped the price of their Dreadnoughts when they went to plastic, and included a boatload of options.

Funnily enough, PP raised the cost of plastic Cryx jacks 25% compared to their metals.

Do you have proof about the dread price drop? All I ever see in the GW line is price increases across the board.

There will be another price hike at the end of the month. ;-(

Barksdale wrote:

Captain Toad wrote:
Secondly, you are grasping at straws if you think that GW have a cost of resale built into their commodities.
They don't.
They have an initial price they make money from and after that all GW's control over pricing is gone. Same for almost any other retailer.

Your mistaken sorry mate. The resale price is built in to that initial retail price. It works very well with their current business model of targetting new customers for a year or so. Anyway,this is an extremely common practise for retailers in a variety of markets. Just look at the textbook industry. Its exactly the same process. It's the reason why textbooks are so expensive. And you can be sure its a contributing factor to the (relatively) high cost of GW minis.

I'm going to stop reading the rest of this and just pitch in here.

First, you mentioned that 100 Euros is not a lot of money. How much do you make? Because to your average consumer that's a fair chunk of a paycheck your talking about there.

I have in the past bought entire armies for 100 US dollars. I am talking 1500-2000 pt armies, and I thought I was getting a bargain, but when you are saying you are willing to buy a single model for 100 euros I have to stop you for a sec. How many models do you buy for 100 euros each month?

Secondly, you don't understand industry at all if you think the book industry and the model industry work the same. I've seen the book industry first hand, and yes the cost of resale is calculated into the initial cost. The reason for this is because the book industry knows it's going to get (a small amount) of money from that resale, yet lose the big bucks of selling for new. GW will not get money from a resale, they will lose it. Big difference.

Also, with the book industry you have new versions of a book coming out every year, making the old versions obsolete. GW explicitly states that old models may be used in their games.

Now, I made a post earlier showing the cost of a new army, if you are new to the hobby. It's around 600-700 bucks for both fantasy and 40k. I don't know about you, but thats a big chunk of change.

I got into this hobby in the 90's. Back then I thought the prices were quite reasonable. 50 bucks for a landraider? Yeah I can see that, actually, even back then. But now it's 66 dollars, and about to get even more expensive with the new price hike. It doesn't sound like a big deal at first, but suddenly that army that I wanted to buy years ago for 400 bucks has jumped to around 1000. The price hikes aren't even, things that have been turned to finecast are the worst in terms of price hikes.

These price hikes HAVE to stop. I say let them keep the prices where they are and let inflation catch up already. Better, yet, change the business model to keep your customers, rather than ditch them.

Excellent post Spectral.
I don't know Barksdale well but he seems like he is more interested in initiating arguments for the sake of arguing rather than debating the points and assessing what other contributors write before replying.
There is no question that he has got it completely wrong in this case.
GW will get no money at all from a resale of their product.
Any money from a resale via eBay or Amazon or a car boot sale is money lost from their products.
There is a reason GW have tried hard to have power ofver the sale of their products on ebay, and there is a reason that GW bring ouyt new races and one offs like Space Hulk and Dreadfleet, because there is no recent earlier edition to compete with it on the 2nd hand market.
Same reason they destroy anything that is overstock so it cannot resurface on the 2nd hand market.
The 2nd hand market hurts new miniature sales.

As for GW's prices... well, why do you think so many people are using online discounters to buy GW products?
Why are so many people turning to eBay and Amazon?
GW are pricing themselves out of the regular market and steadily heading into becoming a middle class game for those families who can afford it.

Captain Toad wrote:
GW are pricing themselves out of the regular market and steadily heading into becoming a middle class game for those families who can afford it.

GW was never in the 'regular market' (whatver that is supposed to mean)... It has always been a 'middle class' (whatever that is supposed to mean game.)

What do you know about RC cars? People literally spend thousands of dollars on these cars and race them. Every hobby shop which sells mini games also sells these things. One near me has a indoor racetrack and every weekend a hundred people are there each with a car which costs a grand. Do you think that someone can go to the kiosk at the mall and get that 25$ RC car and play with these guys? The answer is no.

Wargaming looks downright cheap compared to that hobby. GW has never attempted to be an everyman hobby and even 10 years ago when a LR was 50 bucks it never was. It has high cost of entry and it is designed to be 'too costly' for many to participate. That is why there are TCGs which can be entered and played for a booster and a few expansion packs.

^ Only thing is, with GW's games, I can turn up with my $25 car and still play.

My Mantic dwarf army cost me £0.25/model, about 2000 points of warhammer for £60 /$100.

Competitive army build, too.

Same thing goes for my Perry Miniatures Empire. I want to own a 10k-20k+ point army, and their plastics allow me to do that for less than a quarter of the cost of GW.

I get a bigger, more impressive collection than the GW buyer.. who gets... well, the ability to use their army in GW stores and tournaments. That is the only advantage.

scarletsquig wrote:^ Only thing is, with GW's games, I can turn up with my $25 car and still play.

My Mantic dwarf army cost me £0.25/model, about 2000 points of warhammer for £60 /$100.

Competitive army build, too.

Same thing goes for my Perry Miniatures Empire. I want to own a 10k-20k+ point army, and their plastics allow me to do that for less than a quarter of the cost of GW.

I get a bigger, more impressive collection than the GW buyer.. who gets... well, the ability to use their army in GW stores and tournaments. That is the only advantage.

Salespitch for mantic aside... Even Mantic prices make Wargaming anything but an 'everyman' hobby. There is still terrain to buy and the overwall cost of entry is still amazingly high compared to loads of other hobbies which can be cheaply bought and played anywhere. You still need terrain and paint which means even with cheap terrain and paint it is expensive compared to other stuff.

Even wargamers on the cheap are still barley entering the hobby and are still participating in a very expensive hobby. And as a modeling and painting hobby game removed, many models are expensive on their own.

The idea that even mantic makes wargaming an everyman hobby is absurd as even an entry level mantic army entering wargaming is still expensive for the evryman, and doesn't change the fact that people are still mostly buying space marines which mantic models simply don't help with as people want their plastic crack which still makes this a GW centric discussion as much as someone wants to inject mantic into it.

The mentioning of alternatives that fill the same need is exactly relevant to the discussion. For the same reason people pricing or buying a house look at comparables.

GW has fought tooth and nail against the internet and has largely lost. Now when people who are interested in their product go to hobby related web pages like Dakka Dakka, they hear about other manufacturers. Take a look at the news section. GW news is in the minority.

Why is there even room in the market for these other companies?

GW priced themselves out of their own near-monopoly. Dakka is full of talk of other companies precisely because GW lost the market share to them with their pricing policies (among other things).

nkelsch wrote:

Captain Toad wrote:

What do you know about RC cars? People literally spend thousands of dollars on these cars and race them. Every hobby shop which sells mini games also sells these things. One near me has a indoor racetrack and every weekend a hundred people are there each with a car which costs a grand. Do you think that someone can go to the kiosk at the mall and get that 25$ RC car and play with these guys? The answer is no.

I was at Tankfest at Bovington Tank Museum last week and they had a whole bunch of guys there with Armourcast RC Tiger tanks... no way were they for non-'middle class' users lol

nkelsch wrote:

Salespitch for mantic aside... Even Mantic prices make Wargaming anything but an 'everyman' hobby. There is still terrain to buy and the overwall cost of entry is still amazingly high compared to loads of other hobbies which can be cheaply bought and played anywhere. You still need terrain and paint which means even with cheap terrain and paint it is expensive compared to other stuff.

Even wargamers on the cheap are still barley entering the hobby and are still participating in a very expensive hobby. And as a modeling and painting hobby game removed, many models are expensive on their own.

The idea that even mantic makes wargaming an everyman hobby is absurd as even an entry level mantic army entering wargaming is still expensive for the evryman, and doesn't change the fact that people are still mostly buying space marines which mantic models simply don't help with as people want their plastic crack which still makes this a GW centric discussion as much as someone wants to inject mantic into it.

Surely making your own terrain is a better example of 'entering the hobby' than buying terrain? You could get enough Plasticard to build a whole town with what you pay for just one GW plastic Warhammer building. It's not exactly hard to make a big cube out of plasticard 'n' work on adding details to that... I actually intend to try build a Warhammer Fantasy townhouse using plasticard... I'm just going to make a rough box shape, then add a big chimney on the outside and a flat roof. I'll make slates for the roof using cut up (and thicker) plasticard that I'll put over the top of rods on the roof to make 'em jut a bit. I'll cover the chimney in old sprue bits to look like uneven brick work. Making windows is easy as pie; just cut a rectangle and then add some thin bits of plasticard to make a frame and sill. I'm going to do some Tudor-style woodwork too with... you guessed it, more plasticard. Finally I got some awesomely smooth sand from Weymouth beach; I'll add that on the remaining bare plasticard on the walls and voila... I'll hopefully have a house (pics to come when I get around to it). If I am successful that'll be a bit of Terrain that will not only be unique, but also give me the immense satisfaction of having built it myself - again, I'd consider that more immersed in the hobby. Furthermore, it'll have cost me less than £5 - what GW-buyers can say that? I'd wager that the cost of the Vallejo paints I needed if I went bare minimum (let's say - blue for the roof slats, brown for the wood, desert yellow for the walls, white to lighten colours by mixing and black to do the inverse) is around a tenner... and naturally usable on more terrain.

Wargaming *can* be done on the cheap. I'd just never wanted to do it before. Likewise a lot of people deny GW their custom by using eBay to get their plastic crack spayss mahns.

The Mantic bundles are great value, even if, having used them, I am not a huge fan of the models.

40K has aways been expensive, I've been i and out since 2nd edition and its always been the same. A day out or buy some models. The cost of both has gone up as well as my income.
However, I think its more noticeable now as everything else is fighting to get cheaper, especially things like cothes and food. A few years ago, we didnt have all the budget brands, so I expect, in the UK at least, the perceived cost of GW products is much higher.
I havent played since getting back into 40K for like the fourth time, but the game seems to have changed, its all about having competitive builds with specific models, rather than relying on tactics and lucky dice. When I used to play a lot, every army had its own character and was built from whatever models the player liked\could afford and I think its alot of these people that have gone on to become modellers rather than gamers.

Maybe I'm a bit older than some of you guys but i had a copy of warhammer 1st edition when it came out and up until 3rd edition warhammer was a very reasonably priced game. The miniatures were cheap and plentiful. From 4th edition onwards the price started to skyrocket. It hasn't stopped since, but there was a time... for quite a few years when warhammer was readily accessible and affordable.

I cant comment a great deal, i didnt buy much between like 99 and 05, just reworked what i had.
Back then though, a pint was about £1.50 and a single blister pack character was between £3 and £5.
Now a pint is like £3.50 and a single blister pack being between like £9 and £12.
We only got a small discount from the retailer and since minimum wage was introduced in 99 at £3.60, its nearly doubled.
But then my pint analogy works where I live, 20 miles outside London, we have expensive pints