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I was over enthusiastic on the numbers (I'd love to edit a little Nota Bene on that, but post restrictions and what not, etc.) My proposal was quite impossible and over the top

That being said, a cut of a small margin (5-10%) might do wonders with bringing in more people.

Still though, Bundling/starter kits are things I'd recommend them try now, which wouldn't be hard to implement (i'd hope).

I also really like the idea mentioned above (by Bryllcreme I think?) of a "mini-rulebook"/"mini-codex" for half the price of the main thing, which doesn't have as much fluff or niceties but does contain the most necessary points values and rules.

Until GW realizes that its business model is unsustainable, that local retailers are not their enemies, that being the primary mover of its own product is costly, unnecessary, and not as beneficial in practice as it is on paper, we wont be seeing any price cuts anytime soon. Unfortunately GW seems to exist in an alternate reality where they are the only producer of toy soldiers and we have nothing better to do with our time or money than to give it to them.

They'll realize it eventually. They aren't going to wither away and die before they realize it either. It may take another 10 years though.

Hashbeth wrote:

I also really like the idea mentioned above (by Bryllcreme I think?) of a "mini-rulebook"/"mini-codex" for half the price of the main thing, which doesn't have as much fluff or niceties but does contain the most necessary points values and rules.

I think it sounds great too but that means no one would ever buy the full sized codex so they wont go for it. I have a real beef with the fact that the digital codex is the same freakin price as the real codex. Hell, you should get access to a digital codex for free or for a limited price considering that the digital one costs them almost nothing produce once its finished. And while i do know they have added a few digital goodies into the ipad issue, its still technically the publishers copy of the codex they already formatted plus a few hyperlinks, so its not like it too a whole lot of extra time to produce /end rant

chaos0xomega wrote:
And again I say false! Granted I dont know how big of a cut the OP is proposing because I didnt read it, but GW CAN make a sizeable cut if they also cut costs on their end... and they have a lot of room to make those cuts in.

Key point: if they cut costs. So far GW has shown a complete inability to cut costs in a sensible manner, and is in the process of expanding their retail stores, not getting rid of them. There is no sign at all that GW intends to cut the dead weight, or is even capable of making the kind of fundamental changes that are required to make significant price cuts. Another company might be able to make a profit selling the same products at lower prices, but GW under their current management is not that company.

Haha GW is a network monopoly, so don't ever expect a price decrease.....ever.

I was responding to a post that made reference to the physical cost of making plastic models i.e. a comment about gross profits. Context, my friend, context.

 Peregrine wrote:

Jack_Death wrote:
Gross Profit (50893) divided by Revenue (67457) = Gross Margin of ~75%. Compared to an industry giant like Hasbro (59%) or yesterday's sector leading stock, LeapFrog (42%) that is a pretty high number.

But gross profit is not the number we care about, it's only one step in figuring out the final profit. It does maybe hint that GW has some problems in other parts of their company (poor retail efficiency, etc), but it doesn't mean that GW can cut prices by 75% before they start losing money. To figure out the maximum price cut GW could survive you need to look at NET profit.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hmm, dead weight. Look at their operating margins by region. The U.S. generates revenue, but not profits. The U.S. is where they do business primarily through partners. This isn't proof that their strategy is correct in the long term, but clearly they are seeing the same thing I can see in a two minute review of their financials. It doesn't seem a stretch that they believe that the UK model is a better fit for them.

 Peregrine wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
And again I say false! Granted I dont know how big of a cut the OP is proposing because I didnt read it, but GW CAN make a sizeable cut if they also cut costs on their end... and they have a lot of room to make those cuts in.

Key point: if they cut costs. So far GW has shown a complete inability to cut costs in a sensible manner, and is in the process of expanding their retail stores, not getting rid of them. There is no sign at all that GW intends to cut the dead weight, or is even capable of making the kind of fundamental changes that are required to make significant price cuts. Another company might be able to make a profit selling the same products at lower prices, but GW under their current management is not that company.

@generalchaos34

I didn't know the digi-books were the same price (a foolish move on GW's part, imo). They should at least make it that, if you buy a codex/BRB you get a free digi copy or something.

Jack_Death wrote:
Hmm, dead weight. Look at their operating margins by region. The U.S. generates revenue, but not profits. The U.S. is where they do business primarily through partners. This isn't proof that their strategy is correct in the long term, but clearly they are seeing the same thing I can see in a two minute review of their financials. It doesn't seem a stretch that they believe that the UK model is a better fit for them.

TBH, if they're just breaking even in the US they're doing something really wrong, beyond just selling to retailers instead of through their own stores. The US, being a much larger market than the UK, should be a bigger source of profit.

Also, there are still official GW stores in the US. Maybe that's the problem, GW keeps wasting money on opening retail stores in places that already have plenty of independent stores. Sales don't really go up because the market is already saturated, but GW's expenses in the area certainly do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hashbeth wrote:
I didn't know the digi-books were the same price (a foolish move on GW's part, imo). They should at least make it that, if you buy a codex/BRB you get a free digi copy or something.

Why should they? Remember that what is best for the customer is not necessarily what is best for the company, and giving you a free digital copy just to be nice is probably not going to make them much money.

Indeed, they need to ditch their stores. Or radically change how they operate.

If the idea is to drum up sales, its counter productive for them to be getting rid of playing space.

I think the biggest lesson that GW can learn from WotC is: Let other willing people sell your stuff for you! I feel kinda bad for suggesting it, because it would cost people their jobs, but realistically, they should just close down all but the biggest GW stores. Let FLGS sell your products. They can sell them along with all their other stuff(collectibles, other minis, comics, board games, MtG, TT RPGs such as D&D, ect) and not have the overhead per unit of GW stuff sold that GW incurs. Sure, maintain your online monopoly on your product, allowing you to get your sales at full retail, and then let FLGS foot the bill for rent and labor for the local/offline sales.

Without that overhead for their company, they could price their products more competatively. Other TT mini games, don't have the expense of running their own stores (at least not that I know of. Are their PP stores? Google time), and so can sell their products at a lower cost, closer to their production cost, and be more attractive to new and existing customers.

Look at PP for example. Do you think their manufacturing is on the scale that GW is? Probably not. It might be close, but GW probably has the larger, more capable, and more efficient manufacturing facilities. But by not having the overhead of running their own stores, they can sell at a lower markup.

Yes, there are other HR costs: developers, designers, artists, editors (do they even have them? ), legal team, web devs, manufacturing facilities, sales reps, shipping reps, the list goes on. But with probably around an average of half a dozen employees per GW store, there is some fat that can be trimmed.

Another benefit of allowing your FLGS to handle all your sales, is the free advertising. Lets face it, few people wander into a GW store with no prior knowledge of the hobby and say "wow this is neat, lets do this", although I'm sure it happens some times. But I've seen dozens, if not hundreds, of people come into a FLGS for something else (see list above) while others were playing a game, and get interested. And even if they don't buy it then, unlike the GW store, where they would likely not return, they will come back to their FLGS over and over with continued exposure to the hobby (if they go there for some recurring purpose), increasing their likeliness of getting into it.

I'm not going to try and look up, guess, or fabricate numbers. It stands to reason that if they did cut out their stores, and gave retailers more freedom to sell in store, they could reduce the cost on their products as they would no longer need to cover the overhead of store operation. Treating the independent retailers a little better(to help encourage them to actually promote your product), combined with lower prices, would promote sales to both new and existing customers.

If you sell ten items making 20% profit on it, or sell that same item twenty times making a 10% profit, you make the same money. HOWEVER, the most powerful advertising, word of mouth, allows for double the potential growth, then you have double the potential customers. Throw in some real advertising like: booths at cons and related events, commercials, or even the much cheaper and currently successful online ads, and you have a real potential for growth.

Yes I could get into things like product quality with things such as rules and fine cast. But I'll focus my point on the following: Reducing overhead by cutting store operation cost, then lowering your prices to the point where you make the same profit, combined with treating independent retailers with more respect, will result in greater medium and long term business growth.

Will GW do this? I think probably. It's just a matter of time until their price hikes no longer support their current business model. Their inflation bubble will pop, probably in the next 3 to 5 years. Then it should only take a year or two before a major business restructuring becomes a necessity for business survival. After the first year (maybe even after the first few quarters) that GW runs red, they will probably bring in a whole new team to reevaluate the business model. Their is no way a corporation of this size would just price themselves completely out of business. I could see them taking a huge hit, having to scale back, and build up again. GW could end up very quite for a year or so, but they should bounce back. Once they do, with a more long term stable business model that would have to include lower prices for customers, we should see what I could envision being the new golden days of 40k.

I think a more fair comparison for this to WotC would be D&D. When they released 4th ed for a specific target customer base (new players mostly, not catering to existing players, the opposite of what GW is doing now, but equally devastating long run, their sales took a nose dive. WotC listened to what their customers wanted, and agjusted their model accordingly. I am hearing good things about the upcoming D&D edition "D&D Next". Their "beta testing" (or whatever you want to call it) is something GW could stand to try also, but lets not open that can of worms yet.

It's rather late, and I'm heading to bed. Sorry for the wall of text. Also forgive any typos/grammar errors, as I only had the energy to quickly proof this once (still think I did more than GW did with the DA codex... ZING).

For those of you TLDRers: Close the stores, lower the prices, and win GW!

@pwntallica

I was debating talking about this, but it's hard to compare magic (which has major retailers selling it) and GW. I do agree that losing shops might help lower cost, but the problem is that you need game tables to keep 40k going. Now I have essentially no GW stores near me (nearest is like an hour...without crippling traffic near DC), but the issue is gaming.

I do think that FLGS might be able to cover a lot, and hopefully I think they'll realize that fostering good relations with FLGSes is a good policy.

I've looked at D&D next, which is interesting (my fiancee loves D&D, I'm more of an Unknown armies guy), but it's hard to beta test 40k (model games just seem hard to beta test, though rulesets might be viable? Idk).

Nevertheless it's an interesting idea about moving to a more "FLGS" focus. Especially because, in my area at least, GW stores don't do much (but they aren't really in existence, so what can I say?) As well, the NoVa GW stores I've seen are all like, REALLY tiny. Like 2-3 tables tops.

The FLGS near me doesn't have many 40k players, but they do have a lot of room and tables that can be used for 40k. So maybe if they moved to the FLGS model you proposed, it really could help get play up (I definitely agree about word of mouth advertising, etc.)

Overall interesting stuff.

GW should move to selling their product primarily through their 3rd party retailers(many of whom do provide gaming space) while maintaining their online store.

I do think GW has made some missteps, particularly in the last 5 years or so when their growth has shrunk and their profits been basically stagnant, propped up by a lot of price increases.

That being said, armchair gamer CEOs have been condemning GW's business practices and pricing for at least as long as I've been in the hobby, and they've outlasted every direct competitor so far.

 Ailaros wrote:
The problem is that the only cost to wizards to make magic cards is to print pretty pictures onto pieces of paper. Games workshop, on the other hand, works with plastic, metal, and resin. It's also a LOT easier to come up with a new a pretty 2-D image than a 3-D model. Because their materials and manufacturing expenses are much higher, they automatically require higher entrance costs. That is, without losing a bunch of money on starter sets, which they don't seem to be in a position to do.

I mean, MTG is in such a way where you can easily do the online version. Definitely not so for a game like 40k. You instead wind up getting a rather different game.

The same is basically true for expansion costs. Expansion costs for MTG are extremely low because all you need to expand might be a few pieces of paper. Adding a new unit to your army made of plastic minis is necessarily going to cost more.

This means that the strategy you're calling for would require GW to take a loss to get people into the game, and then to keep taking a loss while people get deeper into it. Where exactly was GW supposed to be making their profit from?

Which really is the problem. A strategy of "cheaper prices now" is always better for the customer, but it really isn't always best for the business. Just having more people buying your product isn't necessarily better by itself.

Skipping how CCGs still need to pay artiest for those pretty pictures, let's get real when it comes to the minis. We have seen other companies sell little metal people cheaper. Not only that, go to any toy store, and a solid plastic toy...anything...will cost you way less that a box of 10 Marines. And unlike the toy, it is not put together or painted.
If they can make little gas station statues from plaster, and 12 inch tall plastic superhero that can repeat back a recording, then GW can lower it's prices by a little bit.

You can't make everything cheap and expect the amount of people that end up buying it to make you a great profit. You may sell a lot but the costs to produce the amount of items to meet demand would start cutting into your profits. The reason CCGs can be practically given away for free is that it doesn't cost much to make them while the costs for GW products are probably high. They have to pay wages, upkeep for the machines, the raw materials, the designers and their crappy stores. From a business standpoint, I can completely understand why they are pricing their models the way they do. They make a good amount of money, they don't have to produce as much (You generally want to get the right amount of demand, not the most) and demand is rather inelastic. Of course, if they reduced their costs (Slashing their stupid stores would be a start) they would make a lot more.

 Peregrine wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hashbeth wrote:
I didn't know the digi-books were the same price (a foolish move on GW's part, imo). They should at least make it that, if you buy a codex/BRB you get a free digi copy or something.

Why should they? Remember that what is best for the customer is not necessarily what is best for the company, and giving you a free digital copy just to be nice is probably not going to make them much money.

Im not arguing what is best for the customer is that nature of any business, as they are in business to make money, but in a business that is not a commodity your entire business model should be designed around pleasing your customer base, as a satisfied customer is a happy customer, and happy customers always come back for more. Why do you think there are rabid Apple fanatics? Their stuff is expensive and you can't do much to alter its functionality, and sometimes its just plain bad. But the people come back because the company gives them what they want, then they give them a little extra, even if that extra isnt really extra in the first place and all with a smile on their face. "oh, the iphone 4S is almost the same except it has a program that lets me talk to it? AND I have to buy a whole new phone to get it instead of just downloading the program? TAKE MY MONEY" That is the minimum of what GW should be aspiring to instead of sitting in their towers mute to the world and their customers. At least companies like Apple pretend to listen. And as was previously stated in the case of Dungeons and Dragons, they have done a complete 180 after they released their Essentials line, which fizzled for various reasons, but mostly because it altered the functionality of the game to bring back lapsed customers without at all inferring to what their current and very devoted fan base had wanted, which was more fluff and content and less reworking previous products. Now its all about customer input and trying to find out what the customer wants, how they want to play, and how DnD can be made to make you happy and enjoy it. Which of course means, SALES. This is a very positive sign and I very much look forward to parting with my money to buy their next edition of DnD, even though I already own every single 4th edition books, because I like new content, and I like things that are catered to me, the customer.

In the case of warhammer, GW wont even try to pretend to give us the "extra". There are still fanboys out there, im one of them, but even with the pile of armies i own ive begun to stick to 2nd hand purchases because the company has lost sight of its most important goal as an entertainment/hobby enterprise, which is to entertain the customer and give them something that is pleasing and that can be considered of value. They can still dish out the entertainment, as the game and its rules have shown, but the value has gone by the wayside because few of us can convincingly buy any thing from them directly and say "I think this is completely worth the money im paying for it" instead of muttering curses under your breath as you lighten your wallet. Im no different than the rest of us, I openly despise GWs poor customer service and yet I yearn to throw money at them. I cannot explain it other than it seems to be a form of masochistic glee that I have against my own finances, or that I am already in too deep to go anywhere else.

But i digress, the main point of this rant is that in a business that is solely based on a customer coming to purchase a superfluous item that they do not need to live or to be successful in life (food, clothing, fuel, technology,and housing) your most important goal as a company beyond making money is to make sure your customer is so pleased with your service he or she will happily return once they have earned more to buy more and more things. Its that simple.

I think I just want GW to make me feel special, instead of like Im some sort of diseased leper made of money.

 Peregrine wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
And again I say false! Granted I dont know how big of a cut the OP is proposing because I didnt read it, but GW CAN make a sizeable cut if they also cut costs on their end... and they have a lot of room to make those cuts in.

Key point: if they cut costs. So far GW has shown a complete inability to cut costs in a sensible manner, and is in the process of expanding their retail stores, not getting rid of them. There is no sign at all that GW intends to cut the dead weight, or is even capable of making the kind of fundamental changes that are required to make significant price cuts. Another company might be able to make a profit selling the same products at lower prices, but GW under their current management is not that company.

Peregrine, you make good points in some of your posts, but honestly, you and a lot of others say things in an authoritative manner about what GW should do or could do, and about if a particular practice is profitable or not, that you just have zero data to back up your claims. Its kind of annoying and tiresome.

You freakin hate GW, we get that. You dont have access to GW internal financial data or reliable details of how well products are selling, what may or may not be feasible for them to do, profit margins, store profitability etc etc, you dont get that.

For example, and there are many more, you say that GW doesnt cut dead weight. How do you know that the Specialist Games were not dead weight? I know for an indisputable fact that GW has closed many stores over the years, how do you know those were not dead weight. They cut back on a lot of employees at their stores, how do you know that was not dead weight?

There are quite a few points about GW that I agree with you on, crappy rules development, prices, finecast, failure to support tournaments etc. But you and a few others come off like GW is tormenting your soul in hell and they have cast you into a pit of burning sulphur and brimstone. You drown out any reasonable message you have with anti-GW spin on EVERY single fething issue no matter how great or how small.

There was a thread up in Dakka Discussions that laid out the most recent employee numbers for GW. They had fired close to 50% of their total staff over a period of several years and never rehired for those positions again. Also of note, a rather large chunk of the current employees were "management personnel." In fact, most of the remaining employees were a part of that chunk. So they can absolutely cut costs, but they don't do it where it matters. The upper levels of GW are bloated as all get out.

I think another problem that GW has is that they don't promote their game nearly as well as Privateer Press. The Press Ganger system has worked wonders for my local gaming store. A few months ago no one had even heard of warmachine. Then the Press Ganger arrived and negotiated with the owner to start stocking the battle box starter sets for warmachine. He started running demo games, and when enough people had the battle box, he ran tournaments and leagues based around them. Every event the Press Ganger ran (Painting days, tournaments, etc) all earned him points (essentially dollars, redeemable only through PP) which allowed him to add prize support to his tournaments. They also sent him cool iron on patches, military style medals, and detailed coin counters for people who would participate in leagues. The local store owner eventually devoted a wing of the store to Warmachine/Hordes and his business has certainly not been hurting.

By creating this atmosphere of dedicated and sustained interest, the Press Ganger, who's basically doing it cause he loves the game, managed to net a feth ton of sales for PP and the FLGS. Even if you take out the money that PP forked over for prize support, they made a pretty penny.

And I think that's more or less what Peregrine said about tournament support but on a broader, more holistic level.

chaos0xomega wrote:

In reality GW is making a large profit on every box sold (and the more boxes it sells the larger its profit margin becomes as a result of dividing up the mold costs among a greater number of boxes), the real cost is the cost of GWs retail outlets which generally dont operate in the black (iirc, there was a leaked report a few years ago about how only a handful of GW hobby centers are actually operating at a profit).

Again, to reiterate, plastic is RIDICULOUSLY cheap. The $.75 USD figure is actually high (though admittedly packaging probably costs another $1.00) relative the volume of plastic in a space marine kit. When I was looking into plastic proudction some time back for one of my own projects (coming soon to a kickstarterbnear you one day maybe), I could actually get about 4 marine kits worth of plastic for slightly less than that.

If you were correct in your estimates, there should be companies selling equivalent products to GW at order-of-magnitude cheaper prices. Sure enough, some companies do sell plastic kits at somewhat cheaper cost than GW, but not order-of-magnitude cheaper. So I suspect you are wrong.

Also if you were right, plastic model kit makers should be able to manufacture their kits nearly as cheaply in 1st World as they do in 3rd World: however, since majority of the manufacturers have moved their production to China, and they enjoy signifant price advantage compared to manufacturers who have remained in Europe or US: again this seems to suggest that you are wrong, and personnel costs involved in production are considerably larger than you claim.

Market leading brands tend to be most expensive, it's a fact of life. Evian is most expensive bottled water, Mercedes has most expensive cars, Apple has most expensive phones etc. If you think GW plastic prices are outrageous, check out how much Lego kits cost these days...

chaos0xomega wrote:All of these costs are being transferred to the consumer by way of product prices, but just like how GW can raise prices on its products, it can also cut costs and make a leaner business.

Well, once you're made CEO of Games Workshop and have an intimate understanding of their balance sheet, let us know just how many millions you're able to cut.

Mannahnin wrote:That being said, armchair gamer CEOs have been condemning GW's business practices and pricing for at least as long as I've been in the hobby, and they've outlasted every direct competitor so far.

In case people are missing it, this is a list of miniature wargames. How many of them have you heard of? Probably only a few. How many of them do more than a handful of people still play? Only slightly more.

GW has carried on at full power while several games that were slated to overtake GW have collapsed and been plowed into the huge cemetery of failed game companies.

generalchaos34 wrote:I think I just want GW to make me feel special, instead of like Im some sort of diseased leper made of money.

Well, how much of that is your fault, though? GW already gives you a lot of benefits (fluff, hobby stuff, contiguity, large player base, etc. etc.). Perhaps it's a case of you taking things for granted.

The fact is, GW is not going to change its business model because it has been working for them for a long time. Currently GW gives its employees 50% off the retail price. You know that they are not taking a loss on their employees, so that means that their profit margin is huge on the retail price. For many years now GW has continued with the same plan raise prices, retail costs and makes profit. They lose a small percentage of customers each time they raise prices, but it is never as many as the net would have you believe. That lose is more than made up for the fact that they have raised prices on a huge profit margin. They will also continue to cut retail costs by reducing staff and move away from mall stores to smaller stores that only need one staff member. So between money they save from retail costs and price increases they don’t care about customers leaving.

A large part of their business model is built around the new player. I know it seems unlikely in this market but there are plenty of parents out there that will drop a bank roll for what they think is their child’s love. There are also plenty of people out there that have no other hobbies or interest to occupy their time and money so they will buy everything new that comes out. With all this in mind they don’t care that the veteran who player leaves or somebody who stops buying after a few years they already consider that person tapped out and is not built into the model. It’s all about the new player that is getting started, the big bucks $$.
So in a nut shell, we can complain, we can compare with other companies, but it is not really productive because they don’t care they are already making money hand over fist.

The new player churn and burn is a proven strategy for success in numerous other commercial enterprises. In health clubs its all about signing up new members.

In martial art nursery schools it is also about signing up kids that are 11-13 years old for a couple of years because soon as they hit puberty its good bye to the martial art school 90% of the time, or more.

 BryllCream wrote:
I think you're being a bit unreasonable in asking GW to esentailly give away codexes with battle boxes, *and* lowering the price. They can stick a rulebook (I don't know why people say it's cut-down when it's not...it's a rulebook. It contains all the rules you need to play, and omits none), because it gets people into the game. There'd be no point to giving away codexes with the battle boxes.

Though I do think they should be available to *buy*. Normal codexes cost £30 in the UK, I think mini-dexes would be reasonably costed at £15.

Also the starter sets need to be a lot friendlier. GW need to stop kidding newcomers and say exactly what you need to get your gak up and running - clippers, a file, a paintbrush and paint. If you were to buy all these from GW you'd be paying a fortune.

I think GW could have more starter boxes, though. They could have "start an army" -deals which would have nucleus of an army (similar to Battalion/Battleforce) plus a mini-version, but playable, codex. This sold at modest discount. Don't have to make them for all armies - just some of the most signifant. For 40k, say, Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Orks/Eldar and Tyranids. That would do. Even GW realizes that once you hook them in, they will buy more stuff even at premium prices. Starter set is of course already doing that, but it has just two armies and no codices. Army starter boxes would complement the starter set by offering a choice for those who want to start the game but don't like Starter set armies, and those who want to "kick-start" a new army. Since Codex cycle is like 4-5 years even for the most popular armies, these boxes would not get obsoleted any more quickly than the starter set. And they would require little new design work from GW, since they would not have purpose-built minis like current Starter sets: just standard sprues.

If they used standard sprues I could forsee people buying them instead of normal boxes if the deal is god enough.

 Blaggard wrote:
If they used standard sprues I could forsee people buying them instead of normal boxes if the deal is god enough.

Thats why the core combination needs to be something that is either very basic (tact squad + commander + termie + Dread/devastator) and/or it needs to be some thing that is also extremely basic in how it is constructed, much like the snap tight marines and cadians you can buy currently for $10. They look decent but theres zero customization, maybe they might even be a little less detailed, but not to the point that it detracts from the product. So the incentive for someone to keep buying them would be low since even though they will have models on the table, they will all look the same and will be a little lame. If the combination of units is just right it will make it some that you would be better off buying the one item you wanted separately instead of a whole box, that way you arent drowning in tact squads or dreads or something. Also weapon loadouts would be extremely limited and/or non optimal. I.E. Tact squads would come with Heavy Bolters, IG Platoons would have missile launchers, HWS squad would be bolters or mortars.

However, it would be a start, and a start for a decent price would be a better way of getting someone hooked. The only reason im in so deep is because my parents bought myself and my brother the old SM/DE starter kit and i took the DE. All my other friends who were also playing had also gotten the same box in the years prior and their DE were gathering dust because SM = AWESOMES so i managed to collect quite the arsenal of basic Kabalites for a very low price. After I had a sub optimal but fieldable army in which i got my butt kicked i started getting wyches, raiders, and ravagers. Thats when i started being able to compete, which made be only want to buy more!

I dont think anyone would start IG with your starter sets , if it had heavy bolters and mortars. But you people are right the entry cost to start playing w40k is huge. I bought most of my stuff from people and not shops and it still took me over 8 months to get an army I could play with. If I wasnt playing against a lot of people from school I probably wouldnt have even bothered 8 months is a very long time , not to mention the cash could go in to other stuff like a consol or new PC.

@generalchaos 34

Yeah, this is more in line with what I envisioned a starter kit to be. Models similar to those you find in AoBR or DV. They aren't super customizable, may not have your preferred load out, and wouldn't make a super competitive army. However, once a player starts playing, they'll want to add things.

I only know Space Marines well, but the example starter kit for 'Nilla marines, in my mind, would be "10x Tac squad (flamer/ML [or HB]), 5x Scout squad (w/hb and bolters), 5x termies (no heavy weapons, straight like the AoBR termies), and maybe 1 basic captain. Maybe with that there'd be a mini-codex thing that covered the rules for the models you have (no mini BRB...probably too much to ask from GW). And voila.

It's very close to the cost of the Battleforce and gets the player a table ready army. Not the most competitive table ready army, but an army nonetheless.

Makumba wrote:
I dont think anyone would start IG with your starter sets , if it had heavy bolters and mortars. But you people are right the entry cost to start playing w40k is huge. I bought most of my stuff from people and not shops and it still took me over 8 months to get an army I could play with. If I wasnt playing against a lot of people from school I probably wouldnt have even bothered 8 months is a very long time , not to mention the cash could go in to other stuff like a consol or new PC.

I was just thinking of stuff off the top of my head. Naturally starting out the majority of people wont WYSIWYG anyways "today these are lascannons!" I was just thinking of a way you could conceivably do a nice cheap starter set that wouldnt also be what vet players will just buy 10 of to get a cheap army. Naturally this would come down to optimal units (because thats why no one ever bought some of those crummy battle boxes with a single sentinel that barely even made up a troop choice, its the only one without a proper vehicle!) with sub-optimal gear choices that is also super cheap, and would come with a crummy printout codex with just the army list, or maybe just the army list for the unit entries you bought (but with the full description of gear they COULD take). That way you can field an army with decent composition as a starter but may not look that great on paper unless you are proxying, which is something you will be doing anyways as a beginner. If the hook is properly set like it was for me, once you have those units that can work, you will naturally want to buy items that look like how you want to play them, or buy all new units to try them out (much like my dusty Mandrakes).

Step 3: Profit!

PS @ Hasbeth, you beat me to it!

Well, if they wanted to produce Vanilla Marines and Ork starter sets, they could always take some of the AOBR sprue back in production - though probably in somewhat redone format, since the starter set sprues have Orks and Marines all mixed up. But nothing wrong with the models, they'd still be very much usable.