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Comparing 40k minis with AT-43?

Because prepainted plastic compares directly with multipose DIY?

What do you mean by relative value?

JohnHwangDD wrote:Comparing 40k minis with AT-43?

Because prepainted plastic compares directly with multipose DIY?

It is a fair comparison. There are several folks that don't like to do more then play and would be happy to play with it out of the box. That the extra expense of glues, paints, brushes interferes with their enjoyment of the game. The extra time for assembly takes away from gaming.

The new AT43 boxes are quite reasonable but priced a la AoBR.
$70 is the target retail price.
20 grunts
6 Elite
2 Heros
1 Combat Strider (walker)
1 Large Vehicle (tank)
6 low walls and 1 container
Intro rules
1 "game poster"
1 Ruler
1 template
12 dice

The new AT-43 army boxes seem like fantastic deals. I get tempted to shift my budget
to accommodate a box or two.

I am not educated in business directly, so I am not sure what the actual word for "relative value would be. Their is something to describe, though I am not sure what that is .

Anyway, what I mean is if a gallon of milk cost 5$ from one company, and 7$ from another, there is usually a "reason". Sometimes it is so called "extra vitamins" or higher quality in general. It still raises the question, why should I not be buying the other milk? Does this 7$ milk really last longer, or is it all a marketing scheme meant to make me think one is actually better than the other. I think it comes down to paying the overhead for the original company.

By relative value I also mean, does the fact that my plastic toys will last 20 years (maybe... just maybe) factor seriously into my thoughts when I buy them? Am I planning on actually using the same army over and over for that long? Perhaps the models themselves may be of different sculpted qualities, but all of them are made of cheap plastic and therefore always look extremely overpriced to me.

The statement about Hasbro thinking about buying GW was interesting, it makes me think that GW has god-awful management. I have actually heard a few stories to confirm this, and it would appear to be a relatively common thing for many corporations at least on occasion. Hmm... I can't find this now... did I imagine it? This is not a confirmed statement.

Now to the codices, which quite frankly annoy me. I think it is preposterous to expect people to actually own all of the fancy codices. At 25$ each I hesitate to buy one, because I can simply memorize what I need to know for friendly games, and I have friends who have them anyway. I actually own my armies codex, and I honestly say that I could have done w/o it. I HATE the fact that the games changes so erratically, so I tend to focus on the models and gaming experience themselves so I won't end up cursing GW on a second by second basis. There just seems to be no solidified plan as to how the codices will develop along with the rulebook besides "Lets make money people!". If I wanted to be competitive in WH40k... , never mind. Who cares that my little plastic toys are dying in droves, they look cool as hell doing it !!! = "OH NO, My little toys stats are not holding up under the immense creep codex pressure!!!"

It is a fair comparison. There are several folks that don't like to do more then play and would be happy to play with it out of the box. That the extra expense of glues, paints, brushes interferes with their enjoyment of the game. The extra time for assembly takes away from gaming.

I agree, they are just two different types of the same hobby. Some people actually repaint their AT-43 models, so they can be used in pretty much the exact same way. At roughly the same price/plastic - your freed up modeling time means you save money overall. AT-43 seems a bit expensive as well, but they are pre-painted and modeled, so it will save a lot of people that stress.

"Note"
Gotta love those cigar smoking space apes man .

Hi folks.
GW charge what they think they can get away with.
GW is in the buisness of 'selling toy soldiers to kiddies.'According to Mr Kirby.(Chairman.)
The main priority is short term sales of GW product at the highest price up the market will stand.

So the 'development ' methods used are driven by aiding marketing directly.

If we look at Thanes Games 'Armies of Arcana' .
It is a fully finished rule set with points allocation system and force organisation THAT ACTUALY WORK!
It has 14 sample army lists and can be used for ancient historicals and fantasy battles.
This took 8 years to achive.
No army books , just pick what army you want, (using the force organisation,) and cost it!

GWs team of proffesional game developers , (working in a multinational multimillion pound corperation) have been 'developing ' WHFB/40k for over 20 years.
Can not get anywhere near this level of balance , beause it not a priority .They have no clear development direction , just making the latest releases look and sound kewl so they will sell well on release.

I think Games Workshop should change its name to Citadel Minatures.At least this would make it obvious to thier customers that game play is secondary to thier minatures.

GW target nieve gamers who are not aware of other companies cheaper products.
And they become dependant on GW to spoon feed them everything , and get annoyed when GW fail them.

IF you are going to include PV in a rule book , at least have a fixed method of allocating them .(Apart from GW rules all other rule books I own that allocate PV ,have the formulae for PV allocation in the rule book.)

As GW have high fixed costs, all logic points to taking advantage of the economies of scale thay are in a prime position to expliot.
Selling plastic at much lower price but much higher turn over.

EG if SM tac squad box costs £4 to manufacture.
Now if GW sell 10, 000 at £18 to make 140,000 per year.
Or they could sell 50,000 at £8 to make 200,000 per year.

I suppose gamers think rules and game play are more important than minatures.
And collectors think minature sculpt quality is more important than the game play and rules.


TTFN
Lanrak.

Thank you Lanrak, very eye-opening.

JohnHwangDD wrote:GW however has higher overhead costs due to being international. For whatever reason, they also do German, Spanish, French, and Japanese translations. Plus, they have their own international distribution and footprint.

I'm pretty sure that PP doesn't have those costs.

And Rackham only does English & French.

Where are you getting all this information, John? I'm just asking, because it's wrong. Privateer Press does German translations, including the stat cards that come with minis. I don't know what other languages Rackham does, but they certainly do German translations, as well as English and French. I've got an Ogre Mercenary for Confrontation right here with a German stat card.

There are also a significant number of Battletech resources translated into German.

Most gaming companies don't just do German translations and nothing else. I'm not so sure about Rackham, but I'm guessing Privateer Press also does Spanish and French translations, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did Japanese and other languages too. But the idea that Privateer Press and Rackham don't have international costs, including translation into other languages is flat out incorrect.

And in case anyone was wondering, Battlefront (the makers of Flames of War) also have significant international costs. I'm sure it doesn't help that they're based in New Zealand. I can't remember for sure if they have German-language books or not (I'll check next time I'm in the FLGS), but they've certainly got significant European and American distribution.

Claiming that GW is the only company that has to deal with significant international costs is ridiculous.

Keep the conversation going, I can do a bit more research, but at this point consider me uninformed.