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Was it £35 just for entry or did it include T-shirt and limited mini as some years ago?

 Kroothawk wrote:
Was it £35 just for entry or did it include T-shirt and limited mini as some years ago?

Just for entry. Mini was probably another £20 and I doubt there was any tshirts. There was a goodie bag though containing... a pen.

I heard about them stopping the participation games. Honestly though, I'm not that sad. I went in 2012 and it was just basically "you here! Roll some dice! You win/lose". Some of them were alright but most scenarios were just badly setup. I remember one where it was just CSM slaughtering Eldar. Another literally descended to "You here, pick a model. You there pick a model. Whoever rolls highest wins and gets a sticker."

That said, some were good. I remember one Fantasy one that Daemons in which was good fun. And all the boards were fantastic, easily the best bit about them. The good one I mentioned had real water flowing around it, complete with fountain and everything. It was very impressive.

Overall, what I enjoy most about Games Day is talking to the people behind Warhammer and Armies on Parade. As long as they keep that and don't raise the price too high, I'll consider going again.

Herzlos wrote:

 Kroothawk wrote:
Was it £35 just for entry or did it include T-shirt and limited mini as some years ago?

Just for entry. Mini was probably another £20 and I doubt there was any tshirts. There was a goodie bag though containing... a pen.

Wow, that's pretty bad. That is more expensive than a ticket for 4 (!) days of "Spiel Essen", the biggest games fair in Europe with 150,000 visitors in 5-6 big fair halls and more participation than you can manage in 4 days.

 Kroothawk wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

 Kroothawk wrote:
Was it £35 just for entry or did it include T-shirt and limited mini as some years ago?

Just for entry. Mini was probably another £20 and I doubt there was any tshirts. There was a goodie bag though containing... a pen.

Wow, that's pretty bad. That is more expensive than a ticket for 4 (!) days of "Spiel Essen", the biggest games fair in Europe with 150,000 visitors in 5-6 big fair halls and more participation than you can manage in 4 days.

A pen!
That's a good one! Games workshop suprises me.

Model was £18, t-shirts were £20.

 The Shadow wrote:
I heard about them stopping the participation games. Honestly though, I'm not that sad. I went in 2012 and it was just basically "you here! Roll some dice! You win/lose". Some of them were alright but most scenarios were just badly setup. I remember one where it was just CSM slaughtering Eldar. Another literally descended to "You here, pick a model. You there pick a model. Whoever rolls highest wins and gets a sticker."

That said, some were good. I remember one Fantasy one that Daemons in which was good fun. And all the boards were fantastic, easily the best bit about them. The good one I mentioned had real water flowing around it, complete with fountain and everything. It was very impressive.

Overall, what I enjoy most about Games Day is talking to the people behind Warhammer and Armies on Parade. As long as they keep that and don't raise the price too high, I'll consider going again.

Some of the tables last year were amazing; some multi-level mines of Moria, a space hulk that rotated (vertically) every half hour so you could play on any side as the mini's were all magnetized. If it fell off, the mini was out of the game. But then it was far too busy (being the only actual attraction in the venue) to get anywhere near most of them to play on.

The only thing that annoyed me was the fact they stuck the Forgeworld and black library seminars in a tiny little room. And hardly anyone got to go in. Why not do it on the stage they do Golden Demon on, its not being used for anything else. It was a joke.

I dont mined it being 50% forge world Que, If people are stupid enough to go to gamesday and pay £35 to get in for a forge world item, when they could go to WHW for free, and get the same item without any Que, that is on them. Granted this is also down to GW making it possible for people to buy items that arnt Games day Exclusive or Pre release. But i saw people coming out of the que with nurgle daemon princes and all sorts. makes no sence what so ever. thats what WHW is for.

There was hardly anyone at the forge world pre order. i walked straight in, picked up my box containing Massacre, and a few Lodge priests, walk straight over to Alan Bligh got Massacre sighned. and enjoyed the rest of my day looking at new Sculps and talking to the forge world staff.

 DarthOvious wrote:
Wasn't as good as last year. I still enjoyed myself but its different for me since I go down with my mates from the store, so we all have a bit of a laugh anyway. I did miss the participation games this year though and the food wasn't planned very well and very basic with not a lot on offer. Went to get food at 12:30, a normal lunch time, to find out that they've sold out of some stuff and they only had Pasties, Steak Pies and Sauage rolls left. They had ran out of pork baps and hot dogs. Considering I'm not a big fan of Pasties & Pies that annoyed me quite a bit but I just had to suck it up and eat a pastie.

Holy crap! I felt so American reading that. Pasties, steak pies, sold out of pork baps? I know what those are, but I have never seen them so casually referenced in a paragraph before.

American version:

I went to get food at 12:30, a normal lunch time, to find out that they've sold out of some stuff and only had corn dogs, Frito pies, and nachos left. They had run out of burgers and chili dogs. Considering I'm not a big fan of corn dogs and Fritos that annoyed me quite a bit, but I just had to suck it up and eat a corn dog.

Americans eat so terribly...




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
Its not been relevant in any other thread, and I didn't really think it important enough to start a thread by itself, but I did notice that the cheaper "accompanying parent or guardian" ticket didn't seem on offer this year either, meaning if your kid was too young to go unattended, you were looking at £70 for one child and one parent.

F-ing Comic-Con. I've run into similar problems there. There's just no good way to do the short version of one of those things. Want to stroll through for an hour with your kid, that'll be $140 dollars.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 PredaKhaine wrote:
And then hope that people were daft enough to go 'ermagerd!' and buy it at an inflated price on ebay when the last one was selling for £120ish for a week....and then FW released it the week after and it was worth £70 again.

But that's exactly what happens. People put stuff up on ebay at inflated prices, and people who don't want to wait are willing to pay those prices. After all, you don't need everyone in the community to think paying £50 extra to get a book a week early is a good deal, you just need one person to do it. And worst-case scenario you still have a £70 book to sell so all you've really lost is the cost of the GD ticket.

We had a guy swap an unassembled Warhound Titan with a friend of mine for the then unreleased Lord Zhufor fig.

True story.

I don't believe that. Did you beat him until he agreed or somehting?

 Largeblastmarker wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 PredaKhaine wrote:
And then hope that people were daft enough to go 'ermagerd!' and buy it at an inflated price on ebay when the last one was selling for £120ish for a week....and then FW released it the week after and it was worth £70 again.

But that's exactly what happens. People put stuff up on ebay at inflated prices, and people who don't want to wait are willing to pay those prices. After all, you don't need everyone in the community to think paying £50 extra to get a book a week early is a good deal, you just need one person to do it. And worst-case scenario you still have a £70 book to sell so all you've really lost is the cost of the GD ticket.

We had a guy swap an unassembled Warhound Titan with a friend of mine for the then unreleased Lord Zhufor fig.

True story.

I don't believe that. Did you beat him until he agreed or somehting?

Disbelieve it all you want. I was not involved in any way. The guy was a friend of a friend who is a huge FW nut. He was on the phone to him coming back from games day and asked him if anyone in our group had Zhufor. My friend simply said "Name your price". The guy apparently has several unassembled Titans.

I posted this in the other thread but thought it might be better here.sorry if that annoys anyone.
This year was my second Games Day,the first being 2010.To be honest both me and my mate were shocked at how crap it was.Thirty five quid thrown away imo.The golden demon and armies on parade was down in the bowels of the building and while a lot of minis got some good light a hell of a lot more didn't.That is not to say there werent any great minies to see as there were loads of fantastic paintjobs but not enough well lit cabinets in my humble opinion.When we came through the doors we were given a bag with a program,a pen and a Forge World catalogue.It was like hey here you are go spend.Now i am only judging by my previous Games day experience where we had a lifesize space marine and ork stomping around the place as well as a bigger more gamer friendly feel.I did hit Forge world and was pleased they had some good stuff on display even the odd unfinished piece.That was pretty much it to be honest,the computor games side was stuffed in an out of the way upstairs bit and to be honest after three hours we left feeling let down.I have probably sounded like a moany old fart from this but sadly that was our 2013 experience and i cant see us going again,which is a shame as we were looking forward to it.

basicaly Games Day was gak.

I took my son and was just as excited as he was leading upto the event. When we got in we had a look round at the new stuff in glass cabinets. Went to have a look at the golden daemon entrys and armies on parade which was to small an area and rammed with ignorant prats.

Food was overpriced and horrific. £5 for 2 sausage rolls.............
The whole affair left a very bad taste in my mouth as Id promised my son a cool day out, and all he got was bored waiting in a queue for ages and nothign to actually participate in. I wont be going again thats a fact

A friend linked me this earlier, I think it should be posts here too.

http://masterminis.blogspot.de/2013/10/future-of-games-days-7.html

The tl;dr version:

Games Day UK gave me the chance to talk to all kinds of people from Games Workshop and Forge World and ask them one question: "How do you feel about Games Days being cut down in size significantly and how do you think that will impact the financial success of Games Days and Games Workshop?"
Surprisingly I got exactly one answer. Out of EVERYONE I asked. I did not get anyone's opinion, I got a response that the blue shirts seemed to have learned by heart or at least have been briefed on.

"We strive towards being more accessible and serve our fans better and limiting tickets is the best way of achieving that. We just have more time for each of you by doing so."

And a few of the questioned added: "We don't think that sales will be affected by this. We were able to save significant cost by limiting the amount of fans that can attend our events."

 jonolikespie wrote:
A friend linked me this earlier, I think it should be posts here too.

http://masterminis.blogspot.de/2013/10/future-of-games-days-7.html

The tl;dr version:

Games Day UK gave me the chance to talk to all kinds of people from Games Workshop and Forge World and ask them one question: "How do you feel about Games Days being cut down in size significantly and how do you think that will impact the financial success of Games Days and Games Workshop?"
Surprisingly I got exactly one answer. Out of EVERYONE I asked. I did not get anyone's opinion, I got a response that the blue shirts seemed to have learned by heart or at least have been briefed on.

"We strive towards being more accessible and serve our fans better and limiting tickets is the best way of achieving that. We just have more time for each of you by doing so."

And a few of the questioned added: "We don't think that sales will be affected by this. We were able to save significant cost by limiting the amount of fans that can attend our events."

Does anybody remember that scene from Spinal Tap when the manager is asked if he's worried that the band are no longer selling out 20,000 seat venues, but are instead, playing a gig in front of 3000 fans, and the manager replies we're just being more selective with our audience!

GW's response reminds me of that!

How does having less people at an event save money? Surely the set up costs are the same?

In general they seem to have reduced the setup costs by making it all smaller and less interesting.

Smaller, cheaper venue, fewer staff, no games on display = no stuff to build and cart around, etc.

Lots of cost savings.

It saves money in that you can get a smaller venue and need less staff and preparation. The cost per customer is probably the same.

I suspect the argument about not losing money with a smaller Sales Day is that there isn't really anything there that people can't buy get at their local store for the same price any other time. All the pre-release stuff is available to everyone else a couple of weeks later.

The only exception being the LE Fw/GW/BL stuff, but that's pretty small business. And available on eBay before games day closes, and still saves you a lot of money versus getting it yourself.

Actually my main issue with GD over the years is that it was too crowded. It was almost impossible to do anything without being crushed and holding conversation was near impossible.

Attended my last one in about 2002. These days I much prefer general gaming shows like Salute or Triples. It's just a better experience.

When you think about it, they saved a huge amount of money by not doing any games. Have you seen the price of GW models these days?

 LuciusAR wrote:
Actually my main issue with GD over the years is that it was too crowded. It was almost impossible to do anything without being crushed and holding conversation was near impossible.

Attended my last one in about 2002. These days I much prefer general gaming shows like Salute or Triples. It's just a better experience.

Must admit the last few GD I have been to, were ruined by kids and their damn camera phones.

Im tempted to go to Salute next year instead also, but im not sure there are enough things there to keep me interested.

Read up some of the show reports on previous Salute's and Colours, etc.

Even though they are general wargaming, rather than just GW, there is lots of stuff to look at and try out.

 jonolikespie wrote:
A friend linked me this earlier, I think it should be posts here too.

http://masterminis.blogspot.de/2013/10/future-of-games-days-7.html

The tl;dr version:

Games Day UK gave me the chance to talk to all kinds of people from Games Workshop and Forge World and ask them one question: "How do you feel about Games Days being cut down in size significantly and how do you think that will impact the financial success of Games Days and Games Workshop?"
Surprisingly I got exactly one answer. Out of EVERYONE I asked. I did not get anyone's opinion, I got a response that the blue shirts seemed to have learned by heart or at least have been briefed on.

"We strive towards being more accessible and serve our fans better and limiting tickets is the best way of achieving that. We just have more time for each of you by doing so."

And a few of the questioned added: "We don't think that sales will be affected by this. We were able to save significant cost by limiting the amount of fans that can attend our events."

HA! This is Great News!

 oni wrote:


WOW! That picture is rather depressing. It makes it seem as though GW is withering and dying on the vine.

Perhaps I should sell all my stuff before it's to late and I have no one to sell it too. :(

Pretty much is.

I remember the 3rd Ed grand tournaments having 120 players for 40k alone and were held in big halls, and Games day was massive. Now GW doesn't even run tournaments and they have games days with no games.

 Ravenous D wrote:

 oni wrote:


WOW! That picture is rather depressing. It makes it seem as though GW is withering and dying on the vine.

Perhaps I should sell all my stuff before it's to late and I have no one to sell it too. :(

Pretty much is.

I remember the 3rd Ed grand tournaments having 120 players for 40k alone and were held in big halls, and Games day was massive. Now GW doesn't even run tournaments and they have games days with no games.

throne of skulls was a tournament wasn't it?

Was, I don't think they are even doing that anymore. Even if they are it was kids football, you get more points for your opponent liking you then winning games. Not to mention if you played sisters of battle you were almost guaranteed a trophy.

 Ravenous D wrote:
Was, I don't think they are even doing that anymore. Even if they are it was kids football, you get more points for your opponent liking you then winning games. Not to mention if you played sisters of battle you were almost guaranteed a trophy.

SOmeone I knwo who went mentioned this summer's THrone of Skulls was packed. You do get a trophy for best army of your type (or rather, a certificate I believe), so if youre' the only SoB player you'll get a certificate, but you'd have to win all your games to get the big trophy. All the "fave game" blah is more or less a tie-breaker.

WE went to the kids' one (one-day) and it was really, really well-organised. I was impressed. Most of the staff were smart & helpful... we will prob go to the grown-up one, which is 2 days, next time.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Read up some of the show reports on previous Salute's and Colours, etc.

Even though they are general wargaming, rather than just GW, there is lots of stuff to look at and try out.

I think am am going to try Salute instead next year even though I only really buy GW stuff at the moment, I have been looking at some of the stuff on the previous ones and it looks like the sort of thing I would like.
I have played a lot of other games with my friends, They just never really grabbed me, but maybe Salute can change my mind, it looks like more of a day out that the sales day has become and even if I dont take to any of the different games systems I am sure that I will enjoy the event and the social side of things.

Forge World usually go to Salute, I think.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
In general they seem to have reduced the setup costs by making it all smaller and less interesting.
Smaller, cheaper venue, fewer staff, no games on display = no stuff to build and cart around, etc.
Lots of cost savings.

Next year, GW will do it even better:
One big warehouse, one staff at the door selling tickets for 50 GBP (handing out a free pen), one table in the corner of the warehouse with one staff selling the limited event only miniature for 30 GBP. Sounds like great fun!