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I've already given up on purchasing things directly from GW, just too crazy expensive. Maybe because I'm stuck believing they are worth what they cost ten years ago. Occasionally finding steals on ebay, I think I limit my purchases to about 2 dollars a model.

The game isnt fun.

I have friends who dont have alot of money to spare, and alot of them stopped playing warhammer, and or dont play competitive lists because they cant afford it. This makes the hobby not fun for me when my friends cant play.

I think the poll is kinda missleading.

You don´t automaticly leave the (GW) hobby when stuff becomes to expensive. You stop buying from GW and branch out into other game systems, but you don´t throw away your existing armies, or stop playing the games with the stuff you have.

Entirely stopping the hobby is a different decision.

Anyway, I allready stopped buying GW stuff and started Warmachine/Hordes and I´m thinking about starting Infinity. And while my decision to consiously stop buying GW stuff for now came with the latest news, my last non-paint purchase with GW was nearly 7 or 8 months ago.

I'm leaving GW as a customer at the end of this month. 20% on a single kit isn't that much, but when you've got a 5000+pts apocalypse army planned out, with most of it to be bought gradually over the next 6-12 months, that's easily an extra £200+ I just can't justify. I'm finishing stage 1 of the army, as a painting project, then moving on to Mantic.

Im not leaving the hobbie but I'm not buying anymore. It's too expensive. I realise it can be difficult for GW as a "user" does not have to continually consume their products to carry on, but if its unable to come up with a solution they probably deserve to fail.

I've not actually bought any "new" GW products (other than a few pots of paint) for quite a while. My last model purchase from GW was a box of raptors I needed for a tournament about 6 months ago and before that it must be over a year since I bought any GW models.

I have now officially retired from buying GW products with the latest price increase.

I can continue on a fair while with the items I have traded and bought second/etc hand and don't intend to buy any more GW product. I think I will branch out into collecting models to paint/display as I have seen a fair few great companies I had not heard of before which make excellent display models.

SilverMK2 wrote:I've not actually bought any "new" GW products (other than a few pots of paint) for quite a while. My last model purchase from GW was a box of raptors I needed for a tournament about 6 months ago and before that it must be over a year since I bought any GW models.

I have now officially retired from buying GW products with the latest price increase.

I can continue on a fair while with the items I have traded and bought second/etc hand and don't intend to buy any more GW product. I think I will branch out into collecting models to paint/display as I have seen a fair few great companies I had not heard of before which make excellent display models.

You needed Raptors for a tournament? :0

I've recently 'finished' buying all I need for my 2 armies, so I'm done buying for the foreseeable future. If Tau and Sisters get redone I imagine I may buy some newer kits, but I'm not going to worry about that until they actually get a release.

I'm not done with the game/painting, I'm just not going to be buying or starting a new army.

I've been at this for more than 20 years so have quite a back log of minatures but if I want something then I get it, but not directly.

I went to Warhammer World for a tournament last year and am a great believer in pay where you play but even looking round at the full range of things I couldn't bring myself to buy. In my head a little voice just kept saying "you can get it for 25% less".

Compared to my other hobbies, 40k isn't actually that bad.

A good deer rifle could cost you anywhere from $500 with glass to well over $1,000. Hunting ammo is almost $.50/rnd, and you can easily spend $20 just zeroing your gun. Ammunition for handguns is expensive too, and if you aren't a member at a range, you get hosed. Let's see...

Assuming you have no membership, and you need to buy ammunition (even if you have your own guns):

$12-20 for range time. $12-20/50 round box of ammunition. And voila, less than an hour later, you've blown $25-40.


Meanwhile, I can take $25-40 and buy a box of infantry that'll keep me busy painting for a week, and I can game with them as much as I want. Basically, it's a big initial investment, but sustaining the hobby is optionally expensive.

As long as my income continues to allow me to buy GW products without adversely affecting my lifestyle in other ways, I will continue to buy GW.

When it does not - which has happened once or twice - I will stop buying GW and merely work on the backlog that I, and all other gamers I know, inevitably have.

But in my experience, I'll bounce back before too long, will be able to afford GW again, and will continue to buy.

At the moment, a five-man Strike Squad is £20.50. That buys me an hour or two building, 5-10 hours painting (if not more, based on how long the test model is taking), and many hours of gaming. And that's about as expensive as GW gets, frankly - the Grey Knights codex was £17.50 and is frankly one of the best purchases I have made in the last few months, considering how much enjoyment I have derived from reading the stories and considering different armies.

Compare this to, for example, going to the cinema three times - which is about £18-£20 at my local cinema. Or an evening down the pub, easily £15-£20 if you want to have any fun. Or a computer game. Or this, or that, or the other.

GW is very expensive if you persist in thinking about it as "little plastic men". If you consider the amount of appreciation you're getting compared to other ways of passing the time, it suddenly seems a lot more reasonable.

Popsicle wrote:You needed Raptors for a tournament? :0

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

SilverMK2 wrote:

Popsicle wrote:You needed Raptors for a tournament? :0

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tym0MObFpTI

Although to be accurate, I actually needed more Raptors. I run 2 squads of 5 and my stand in and rather battered Assault Marine cast offs were not cutting the mustard and needed replacing

Err....a tac squad already costs $62 over here.

NuggzTheNinja wrote:Compared to my other hobbies, 40k isn't actually that bad.

A good deer rifle could cost you anywhere from $500 with glass to well over $1,000. Hunting ammo is almost $.50/rnd, and you can easily spend $20 just zeroing your gun. Ammunition for handguns is expensive too, and if you aren't a member at a range, you get hosed. Let's see...

Assuming you have no membership, and you need to buy ammunition (even if you have your own guns):

$12-20 for range time. $12-20/50 round box of ammunition. And voila, less than an hour later, you've blown $25-40.


Meanwhile, I can take $25-40 and buy a box of infantry that'll keep me busy painting for a week, and I can game with them as much as I want. Basically, it's a big initial investment, but sustaining the hobby is optionally expensive.

I don't understand why people do this, you cannot compare to completely different hobbys and expect it to hold up
Especially when your comparing costs for hunting to plastic toy soldiers

I can get a 200 page colour book and that could keep me occupied for weeks on end, does that somehow justify me having to pay 300 dollars for it?

I can also smash ferraris on the weekend as my hobby, costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars, does that somehow allow GW toys to be as expensive as they are?

Of course not

Its not about what value you get from something, its about the realistic and fair cost of what is essentially a plastic toy soldier

Brunius wrote:Err....a tac squad already costs $62 over here.

Whoops! I forgot about GW's Aussie-rape. In that case... just vote "Higher!", I guess.

Asuron wrote:
I don't understand why people do this, you cannot compare to completely different hobbys and expect it to hold up
Especially when your comparing costs for hunting to plastic toy soldiers

What else is one supposed to draw comparisons to? Seems that comparing the costs of different hobbies is very appropriate in determining the "realistic and fair" cost.

What's more, it holds up even if you compare it to very similar hobbies. Model trains are more expensive. Plastic model kits range can be found cheaper (but look awful) to more expensive. Any name-brand toys at the local toy store are equally expensive; Lego just released their Pirates of the Caribbean sets and the ship, just plastic men and blocks, is $140.

What allows you to claim that the prices GW sets are not realistic and fair? Because they're more than you want to spend? Have you tracked the price of plastic recently? Their price increases aren't out-of-line with the market you know.

I don't plan to buy any more GW models new after the end of this month, even discounted, though I've decided that I'm going to try to avoid selling my armies.

What I will be doing is keeping my DE army small (couple of kits I have, plus what I can pre-order from Wayland before the price hike), selling my Hive Guard on eBay and converting Warriors instead (had bought 3 metal HG, and been proxying with Warriors; had planned to eventually buy 6-9 HG; no longer plan to do so), and buying non-GW vehicles as counts-as Chimeras for my mostly Henchmen GKs army. Also, giving Infinity a try.

My limit was reached with their latest price hike. I probably could afford a box of stuff a month, but paying £25 for a box of ten plastic miniatures just seems a bit daft.

I'll stay will the hooby, but I'm going to scale down my games. I've started putting together some Mordheim warbands from my existing miniature collection over the last couple of evenings. Great fun

What about comparing prices with other wargames?

Ancients & Mediaevals
Field of Glory Rules = £17.03
Field of Glory Campaign Book = £11 average
The campaign books cover an entire period such as the Graeco-Persian Wars, not just a single army.

Models
Wargames Foundry 28mm English Wars of the Roses Army Pack, 114 figures plus 14 horses = £155. (£1.21 per figure)
Perry Brothers WoTR Plastic 28mm Infantry, 40 figures = £18. (45p per figure)
15mm models are even cheaper.

Once your models are painted and based for FoG, they will also be compatible with the basing for DBA. DBM, DBMM, Warrior, Basic Impetus and Warmaster Ancients, if you want to change system.

In fact, almost every A&M rulebook on the market, except for WHAB, uses the same base sizes.

Most rules also allow the use of 12mm, 10mm, 6mm and even 2mm figures.

I'm a huge fan of the 40K universe, so GW would need to increase their prices a lot to stop me from buying their miniatures completely. I'm a huge sucker for FW models, so I buy a lot of expensive models anyway. A general GW price hike would probably (read: hopefully!) stop me from doing stupid impulse purchases, which would leave me all the better anyway. I try not to buy more stuff than I can paint properly and also play with, so I don't think I would ruin myself even if the price went all the way up to 30-35GBP for a tac squad. I don't play any other wargames except warhammer fantasy, and I still only purchase a few models every year since I'm a slow painter, so it won't be that much of an increase in money spent on wargaming.

What else is one supposed to draw comparisons to? Seems that comparing the costs of different hobbies is very appropriate in determining the "realistic and fair" cost.

You certainly don't draw comparisons to hunting, or better yet, my example of smashing ferraris as a hobby
You can't compare entirely unrelated things, the factors for both those things would be entirely different to churning out plastic models

What's more, it holds up even if you compare it to very similar hobbies. Model trains are more expensive. Plastic model kits range can be found cheaper (but look awful) to more expensive. Any name-brand toys at the local toy store are equally expensive; Lego just released their Pirates of the Caribbean sets and the ship, just plastic men and blocks, is $140.

I'm not saying don't compare it to similar hobbys.
Those hobbies you listed? They are similar to wargaming, not exactly like it, but I'd assume and don't quote me here, that they would have similar production costs.
Besides that, we shouldn't look at other hobbies and say, well because they do it, its alright
We should be looking at the actual costs of production and judging whether or not the price being given is a fair one

What allows you to claim that the prices GW sets are not realistic and fair? Because they're more than you want to spend? Have you tracked the price of plastic recently? Their price increases aren't out-of-line with the market you know

.

I have not tracked the price of plastic, I don't know it
But yes at the end of the day this thread was about whether is it to expensive
In my opinion it is, I also think the same for things like the lego models you listed, I look at them and just shake my head

Who would buy that I always wonder, there is no way it should cost that much, its just a plastic toy
Does that make my opinion right and based soley in fact? No it doesn't, but I honestly ask myself and I hope you do as well, is it worth spending that much on plastic toy soldiers, despite how much mileage you may get out of them

Sometimes its yes for me, sometimes I can't justify it ever, no matter how many times I turn it over in my mind

Figured I'd add a write in: I put "I already have" but I do have a couple boxes more to pick up that are not being affected by the price increase. I won't say what ones, because if GW reads this they might add a surprise price increase to what I want to piss me off. Either way, I'm looking at getting into Warmachine or Hordes, since the two systems are interchangeable and I like the idea that it's a more involved game of chess. Yes, I know the individual model cost is higher, but the overall price for an army is quite a bit cheaper, and that works for me. Plus it'll be nice to have a change of playstyle and i appreciate the openness and honesty of PP that GW simply does not have.

poipo32 wrote:When they announced I couldn't buy from oversea, therefore making a tactical squad 45$, they lost me.

I'd suggest either ebay or somebody you know (via the net or otherwise) with a paypal account who can buy stuff for you. I sent computer parts from the US to a friend in africa cause they are often twice as much there vs me buying off newegg and shipping to him

I have to say Higher as downunder here in Australia a tactical squad is already $62.00 a bit silly really isn't it!

Kilkrazy wrote:What about comparing prices with other wargames?

Ancients & Mediaevals
Field of Glory Rules = £17.03
Field of Glory Campaign Book = £11 average
The campaign books cover an entire period such as the Graeco-Persian Wars, not just a single army.

Models
Wargames Foundry 28mm English Wars of the Roses Army Pack, 114 figures plus 14 horses = £155. (£1.21 per figure)
Perry Brothers WoTR Plastic 28mm Infantry, 40 figures = £18. (45p per figure)
15mm models are even cheaper.

Once your models are painted and based for FoG, they will also be compatible with the basing for DBA. DBM, DBMM, Warrior, Basic Impetus and Warmaster Ancients, if you want to change system.

In fact, almost every A&M rulebook on the market, except for WHAB, uses the same base sizes.

Most rules also allow the use of 12mm, 10mm, 6mm and even 2mm figures.

Fantastic! Someone else who plays Field of Glory. If you're really looking for some cheap miniatures, Baccus 6mm does, well, 6mm armies! You can pick up a good sized force for $50. I was thinking of picking up the Legions triumphant book, getting a early roman empire army, and a celts army.

I think that Tactical Squad is a poor benchmark. They are somewhat affordable at the current price. Its the premium price of elite units and armored vehicles that make the overall armybuilding process unaffordable. For me, this threshold has already been passed.

Never. They are allready WAY over priced. But.. that is why God invented Ebay, Vassal, And the Internet! Those all help ease the pocketbook pain in my booty.

Well as prices rise they tend to have more ground to make up due to tranfering into the next range of affordability.

Using standard deviation of income for the Uk as a base.(Assuming average wage of £25k)

25% earn less than 12,5 K(1)

40% earn 12,5 to 25 K(2)

20% earn 25 to 37K(3)

10% earn 37 to 50K(4)

5 % earn over 50k.(5)

I would speculate GW used to target group 2 affordability and had a 75% of the available market.(Many minature companies still target this affordability level.)

Now GW are targeting the level 3 affordability group, and only 35% of the available market.(The have doubled prices but have lost significant amount of sales volume.)

When GW price for group 4 affordability they will only be targeting 15% of the available market and need to triple prices to allow for the reduction in customer interest.

When GW price for group 5 affordability GW will have to quadruple the prices again, to allow for the reduction in customer interest.

Group 5 affordability would put a SM tac squad box at about £300 each!

Will £300 for a box of 10 plastic soldiers be too expencive for you?