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 Scott-S6 wrote:
They're also substantially more expensive. The point is, it was suggested that the price of a land raider is high for a tank model (and that military scale models are all cheaper) when it's actually more middle of the road.

Like for like a Land Raider is indeed high.

https://store.warlordgames.com/products/king-tiger-with-zimmerit

£28 for a 28mm (1/56) King Tiger, and thats resin and metal. Plastic BA tanks are £20 each.

Pseudomonas wrote:


On the other and their pricing is still ridiculous, WHFB is still needlessly dead and their fluff has continued its downward spiral.

And this is where I beg to differ and it's all subjective, because while I would not touch WHFB with a 10-foot pole, I am now finishing painting an army for the first time. An AoS one. Granted, the destruction of the WHFB was far too swift and brutal, but (anecdotal evidence warning) from 0 interest in WHFB in my LFGS, now there are regular AoS game each saturday, be it skirmish or matched play.

(Also, the fluff was brand spanking new, it needed time, and now it's pretty enjoyable with room to expand, unlike WHFB where everything was set in stone)

I was referring to the 40k fluff.

If you want to throw out AoS anecdotes: I have still not seen a single game played in the 2 clubs that I go to.

I have seen quite a lot of 9th age and Kings of War though.

Ah, my mistake, sorry, I thought you were talking about AoS fluff. 40k I can't give any opinion, I loved the Gathering Storm event but I haven't followed anything after it.

Pseudomonas wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
They're also substantially more expensive. The point is, it was suggested that the price of a land raider is high for a tank model (and that military scale models are all cheaper) when it's actually more middle of the road.

Like for like a Land Raider is indeed high.

https://store.warlordgames.com/products/king-tiger-with-zimmerit

£28 for a 28mm (1/56) King Tiger, and thats resin and metal. Plastic BA tanks are £20 each.

In all fairness the Land Raider is also much larger. It's still overpriced for what a simple (and surprisingly old!) kit it is but it's not far comparing it to a WW2 tank. WW2 tanks are actually quite small with a few exceptions.

Plus there is also this...

https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/german-army/products/panzer-viii-maus-super-heavy-tank

Which is actually more expensive than a Land Raider!

Pseudomonas wrote:
I was referring to the 40k fluff.

If you want to throw out AoS anecdotes: I have still not seen a single game played in the 2 clubs that I go to.

I have seen quite a lot of 9th age and Kings of War though.

Anytime I pop into stoke I never see aos played, and last couple of times I went to lenton with my mates I saw nothing but 30k and 40k, couple of blokes playing blood bowl in bugmans but zero aos.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/german-army/products/panzer-viii-maus-super-heavy-tank

Which is actually more expensive than a Land Raider!

Well it is resin and metal.

Pseudomonas wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/german-army/products/panzer-viii-maus-super-heavy-tank

Which is actually more expensive than a Land Raider!

Well it is resin and metal.

Which in a low volume item should make it cheaper.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Pseudomonas wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/german-army/products/panzer-viii-maus-super-heavy-tank

Which is actually more expensive than a Land Raider!

Well it is resin and metal.

Which in a low volume item should make it cheaper.

Startup cost for the mould/production yes but otherwise not really. It works for the company if you don't except a huge number in sales because then a mould for plastic production isn't worth it. Why pay (tens of) thousands for the mould when you expect sales in the hundreds? If I remember correctly plastic is also cheaper than both (or at least metal) when it comes to raw material.

That was supposed to be the benefit of plastic, that it allowed for cheaper miniatures on a per unit basis once you hit a certain number (like GW numbers). Look through a WD from the late 90s for those quotes.

^^ This.

Resin/metal production costs are evenly distributed on a per unit basis, plastic kits have the majority of their costs loaded up front. Consequently, the more plastic kits you sell, the cheaper each unit gets, this doesn't happen with metal or resin. Hence you get a line graph where the total amount of cash you spend on producing a model keeps increasing as you sell a resin or metal kit, and never falls as a per unit average, and keeps falling as a per unit average as you sell more plastics with a much smaller increase in total expenditure with greater volume.

Once those lines intersect, the plastic model is the cheaper option, despite requiring greater initial outlay.

Resin and metal casting is much more labor intensive, has greater ongoing costs in terms of replacing molds etc, and uses a more expensive raw material.

So there are lots of factors that determine whether a given model will be cheaper to produce in resin or plastic, and when you ignore those factors you get £85 Primarchs.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Which in a low volume item should make it cheaper.

In normal practice plastic miniatures are always cheaper than resin/metal per model as plastics are designed to be produced in sufficiently large quantities to make the use of that materiel worthwhile and as has been said production of plastic is far cheaper than metal/resin. This falls down for GW of course as their plastics appear to be made from freshly squeezed dinosaurs, angel tears and the cure for cancer.

The mark up for GW's plastics must be gigantic.

Each sprue costs 5p for them to produce the box costs more than the sprues.

Pseudomonas wrote:
Frozenwastes posted this earlier in the thread. Compare these army men to your favourite GW sculpt. Now imagine that the land raider is the army men and the 1/35 scale kits are the GW model.

Frozenwastes is local to me, so I was like "why did he post a picture of some painted army men?" So I had to go back and read it. I get what he was on about now. Just an tangent in response to the stupid idea that wargaming should be quit by anyone who can't afford GW.

I read more of the thread. As if price was the way you'd know if GW "learned their lesson." I think GW has been operating in two very different ways under the last CEO and the current one even if their prices are high in both cases. And their sales numbers on their investor relations website shows what they are doing now is working great.

Yeppers. GW should only lower their price for bundles and introductory products. Things like start collecting boxes are a good enough deal for the price conscious and the expensive primaris characters just aren't aimed at them.

As for plastic army men though, I've started a 54mm colonial wargaming project using the 19th century army men made by Armies in Plastic. I'll shoot you an email when the painting and terrain is done.

I guess the primaris characters aren't aimed at either of us then! Though I did spend $25 on bits from ebay to build my captain just the way I wanted him. Probably wouldn't have bothered with bits and just would have bought the new primaris captain instead if it came with a ton of options and parts. I would have totally paid the extra if it actually came with parts. And options in the rules. Though it is cool how flexible everyone is at the club days. Just pay the points for whatever weapons you have modeled regardless of what the entry says about primaris captains not having things like combi-plasmas.

I think one of the reasons we are okay with GW's prices is we don't buy much. Neither of us go to tournaments and we have a couple 500ish point skirmish forces for each of 40k and Sigmar each? Most of our stuff is Inquisimunda type games.

Urm... I guess 2x500 skirmish forces for 40k + 2x500 skirmish forces for Sigmar = 2000 points.

Never mind

Though I guess it is all start collecting boxes and splitting starter sets and the like.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I did a search on 54mm armies in plastic. very interesting. $12 for 20 infantry is really cheap, but they do look very "toy soldier." I guess that's part of the appeal.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/09/19/starting-a-gaming-club-sep-19gw-homepage-post-2/

A little background

James: Wellington has a strong traditional wargaming scene. It’s also currently the capital of Warhammer Age of Sigmar in New Zealand and has a strong community of all ages playing everything from Warhammer to historical & Napoleonic games.

GW having an article on their website that starts off acknowledging the larger hobby of wargaming? Even to the point of mentioning a popular historical era people wargame? This reminds me of the time White Dwarf had a picture of one's the Perry's historical scale models in it. I think that was during the LOTR years.

GW has certainly been doing a fantastic job in regards to models and interacting with their customer base.

Their once diamond standard customer service on the other hand has face planted straight into the mud. Very sad.

 oni wrote:

Their once diamond standard customer service on the other hand has face planted straight into the mud. Very sad.

Care to elaborate on this one??? this has not been my experience at all.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 oni wrote:

Their once diamond standard customer service on the other hand has face planted straight into the mud. Very sad.

Care to elaborate on this one??? this has not been my experience at all.

I'm not able to call them at a time in which they're phone lines are open so I have to rely on email. They're completely unresponsive. And yes, the address is correct.

Actually those hours are bad. 9:30 to 6pm means anyone who is doing a longer work day where they can't get to a phone is out of luck. And not open on Saturday at all.

They have a half an hour lunch break in which the, so it's either just one person or for some reason the people on the phones take lunch at the same time.

To answer the question in the OP: They are doing what the customers want, judging by their financials. So apparently, customers don't need lower prices on everything, they want what GW has given them: community interaction, an amazing release schedule and responsiveness. I am one of those customers. Price isn't super important to me because I buy far more than I can paint. When I can't do that then I'll start complaining about prices. What they are doing works, and therefore they have "learned their lesson", by which I mean that they have made the changes that their customers wanted, and they are voting with their wallets. Judging by this, prices aren't as important as you seem to think, or alternatively, customers are happy with getting the discounted bundles and then buying expensive characters and vehicles/monsters to complement them.

The prices are quite intriguing at the moment.

For AoS, Death are thoroughly spoiled in terms of discount boxes. We've got three 'Start Collecting', all featuring A Big Expensive, and three smaller expansion boxes.

If one was to get one of each, you'd end up with a fairly large, but more importantly flexible, Undead army.

Just a shame we've only got the one Battletome so far of course....

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The prices are quite intriguing at the moment.

For AoS, Death are thoroughly spoiled in terms of discount boxes. We've got three 'Start Collecting', all featuring A Big Expensive, and three smaller expansion boxes.

If one was to get one of each, you'd end up with a fairly large, but more importantly flexible, Undead army.

Just a shame we've only got the one Battletome so far of course....

AoS is certainly in an interesting place. . . I mean, the Stormcast releases have slowed down. . .but there's still so much that's been ignored rules/lore/model wise. For me personally, it's pretty cool that Beastclaw Raiders are a thing. . . but what about the other half of my Ogres?? Then there's my Empire/ "Freeguild" stuff. I'm sure we'll never see it, but what about them? What about the elves in Order? What about Beastmen??

Other than the one boxed set and Generals handbook, AoS has had quite a break recently what with the insane release schedule for 40k.

 Mymearan wrote:
To answer the question in the OP: They are doing what the customers want, judging by their financials. So apparently, customers don't need lower prices on everything, they want what GW has given them: community interaction, an amazing release schedule and responsiveness. I am one of those customers. Price isn't super important to me because I buy far more than I can paint. When I can't do that then I'll start complaining about prices. What they are doing works, and therefore they have "learned their lesson", by which I mean that they have made the changes that their customers wanted, and they are voting with their wallets. Judging by this, prices aren't as important as you seem to think, or alternatively, customers are happy with getting the discounted bundles and then buying expensive characters and vehicles/monsters to complement them.

*Customers* may be "happy" with the price, but I can tell you that they have come close to losing me as a customer completely due to their prices. I only rarely buy official GW products now, preferring cheaper 3rd part products where I can find them or purchasing minimal amounts of official GW - in increasingly sparser doses.

I'll put it this way - when I have the choice to buy one box of minis for $60 (Kastellen robots) or an entire boardgame (Terror in Meeple city) for me and my family to play, GW is the one that loses out.

 Stormonu wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:
To answer the question in the OP: They are doing what the customers want, judging by their financials. So apparently, customers don't need lower prices on everything, they want what GW has given them: community interaction, an amazing release schedule and responsiveness. I am one of those customers. Price isn't super important to me because I buy far more than I can paint. When I can't do that then I'll start complaining about prices. What they are doing works, and therefore they have "learned their lesson", by which I mean that they have made the changes that their customers wanted, and they are voting with their wallets. Judging by this, prices aren't as important as you seem to think, or alternatively, customers are happy with getting the discounted bundles and then buying expensive characters and vehicles/monsters to complement them.

*Customers* may be "happy" with the price, but I can tell you that they have come close to losing me as a customer completely due to their prices. I only rarely buy official GW products now, preferring cheaper 3rd part products where I can find them or purchasing minimal amounts of official GW - in increasingly sparser doses.

I'll put it this way - when I have the choice to buy one box of minis for $60 (Kastellen robots) or an entire boardgame (Terror in Meeple city) for me and my family to play, GW is the one that loses out.

And you are free to do so. Personally, having a full-time job and two children, I have more money than time (and no, my job isn't fancy). This means that $60 on another board game we won't have time to play (we already have quite a few that rarely if ever get played) would be largely wasted, while $60 on a box of minis I would build, paint and play in my existing army, on my personal hobby time, is a better way to spend my money. Maybe you spend more time playing board games and thus that would be the best purchase for you. Different priorities!

Price isn't super important to me because I buy far more than I can paint.

while $60 on a box of minis I would build, paint and play in my existing army, on my personal hobby time, is a better way to spend my money

There's some sort of cognative dissonance going on here.

I've noticed that friends with small children actually have more hobbying time than many of those without. The child might go to bed at 7pm or whatever, but you're going to be home in the evening while they are sleeping. Put some laundry in the machine, find a podcast or an audio book and start painting.

What got me back into buying GW's stuff was their rules that work well with smaller forces. AoS Skirmish into Path to Glory into 1000 point games is an awesome thing to do.

GW has learned there are enough GW collectors who care little about actual game play or quality rules writing.
So GW can just appeal to this 'easy to please demographic,' and chug along nicely , without having to bother with pro active things to grow market share.

GW is still over priced with crap rules.IMO.So no real change from my perspective.

Have you seen their latest results?

Kind of looks like a growing market share to me?

In oder to determine that, you'd need to know the overall size of the market...