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 Asherian Command wrote:
175$ Is abit pricey even for me. I don't think anyone can justify its price to me. Even with its 'quality' sculpts when we have three duplicate models in the same box. Then we have fewer things we are actually getting. The price increase is a bit inflammatory. No Thanks.

Canada has it rough. Dark Imperium was 220 after taxes (190 before +15%). If this is supposed to be more I'd rather get a Castellan

 Elbows wrote:


If...eBay returns to its form from last year of having eBay sales they're normally 15% (though we haven't seen a sale this year so maybe they've learned a lesson...), which would make this box $126.50 shipped.

Oh man those were so good. Even 10% is fabulous.

I will wait for Amazon Prices and then the Ebay Prices. Buying directly from GW is a terrible idea.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I will wait for Amazon Prices and then the Ebay Prices. Buying directly from GW is a terrible idea.

Lots of little FLGS are like buying direct - no discounts. I do my best to support my store. These prices make it a bit harder. Though my store has like 7 pre-orders at full price.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
A little of column A. A little of column B, which is the increase in quality.

Love the Archer reference.

So, I have built my fair share of Bandai kits over the past couple of years as part of my model hobby (Gundam and Star Wars), and it's amazing the lack of very fine detail in the vast majority of the kits when compared to GW kits. And only the very expensive Ver. Ka or P-Bandai kits come with water slide decals. The vast majority of the kits come with mostly just stickers... and a few come with some dry rub decals as well. Please don't get me wrong, I love building those kits. But, it brings me to my next point.

You're right. There are some units out there that are just crappy quality still... old metal sculpts that weren't even good in the '80s much less today, finecast, annoying resin models rather than plastic, and the whole IG line could use an update to make their proportions a little better. But, all that aside, the amount of detail in a 28mm scale that can be put into GW's models is insane! The models sculpted over the past couple of years have just been beautiful (both 40K and AoS). So, when you combine the quality of the models along with the fact that they *all* come with water slide decal sheets (which is by far the preferred decal for model builders)... GW's models are actually worth the money you pay for them.

But, the recent price hike has made me think twice about that. A $5 maximum increase on all Start Collecting boxes wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest. But, $95 just starts to get a little too high. Even though they are still good deals, they aren't anywhere as good anymore. Some paints like Retributor Armor have gotten a really big price hike (over $6 per pot, and the spray primer version is $28), and that is making me think of going away from the GW line of paints and maybe head toward Vallejo.

At one time, yes... I believe that GW's models were worth the price we were paying. The detail and water slide transfers made it worth it. Now, I'm starting to think twice. Will I stop buying forever? No. But, I probably will slow down A LOT.

Maybe I'm putting too much thought into it all.

Just my $0.02

SG

Yea, if this is a start of pricing tier it could very well be very problematic for GW.

It's not bad business sense per se - if they're making record sales then raising prices loses some customers, but also drops costs. It's just not very good for hobby growth or struggling FLGS.

I assumed it would have been proper multipart models and I assumed it would have been cheaper.

Then again, I'm probably still gonna buy it, so I guess they know what they're doing... *shrug*

I was really excited for the Shadowspear release. I hoped it would be $130 US as that would make it an easy buy. Even at $150 I could kinda justify it as I could have probably got a 15% (about -10% sales tax) pre-order from my FLGS. However, when I heard it might be as much as DI, I had to really go through the contents to decide it there was enough of what I actually wanted to justify the cost. There simply wasn't, and the fact that they were easy-to-build didn't help matters.

I don't play much proper 40k and mostly play Kill Team. So anything that could never really see use in Kill Team just didn't have a whole lot of value especially the loyalist side. I still have a bunch of Kill Team factions I want to put together this year which will see far more game time than anything daemonkin could.

Now if someone at my gaming store want to go halfsies, I could probably be convinced to get the Chaos Space Marine stuff. But the box set is just too expensive for me to get and support where I play.

So instead, I will just wait for there to be a separate CSM kit that hopefully isn't easy to build. There seems to be a whole lot of other Chaos Space Marine stuff coming down the pike, and I have limited time and money for it all. I am sure Abaddon is going to be crazy expensive and pretty much be a whole month of my hobby budget. Not to mention a month, maybe longer, of painting.

I wanted Shadowspear, but there just wasn't enough there for the price. Maybe if I found it online for 20% and could avoid sales tax I would get it, but then I am not really supporting my local gaming store where I play. So the best I can hope for is that it has a pretty good mark down for Black Friday and I still want it.

 Crimson wrote:
I assumed it would have been proper multipart models and I assumed it would have been cheaper.

Then again, I'm probably still gonna buy it, so I guess they know what they're doing... *shrug*

This is, I think, where quite a few people are currently.

My brother was planning on buying 3 sets when he thought it was full multiparts and at $160. At $175? He's knocked it down to just two and saving for the full CSM release.

One thing, it’s not really fair to compare this to sets like Wrath & Rapture. Most of that set was made of old models, with just a few new ones thrown in. I mean the Bloodletters may be multipart, but they’ve been around forever, and are not a very good kit. GW has likely paid off its mold making and r&d on the Bloodletters years ago, so it’s not a big deal to include them in a set nowadays.

Shadowspear is 100% all new models, even if they are pushfit monopose. That is going to be pricier than a set that was 90% old models like Wrath & Rapture. No skin in the game for me; I’m not defending the $175 price by any means. I wasn’t buying regardless. But there certainly is a reason it costs more than some of the other box sets GW has done.

 totalfailure wrote:
One thing, it’s not really fair to compare this to sets like Wrath & Rapture. Most of that set was made of old models, with just a few new ones thrown in. I mean the Bloodletters may be multipart, but they’ve been around forever, and are not a very good kit. GW has likely paid off its mold making and r&d on the Bloodletters years ago, so it’s not a big deal to include them in a set nowadays.

Shadowspear is 100% all new models, even if they are pushfit monopose. That is going to be pricier than a set that was 90% old models like Wrath & Rapture. No skin in the game for me; I’m not defending the $175 price by any means. I wasn’t buying regardless. But there certainly is a reason it costs more than some of the other box sets GW has done.

I would be inclined to agree with you if GW didn't occasionally increase the price of their old stuff. Sure, outside the Start Collecting boxes they really haven't done this for a while, but the rate of price increase for new stuff is quite noticeable.

Everybody pretty much routinely raises the prices on their back catalog, too, not just GW. I’m saying that it’s not reasonable to expect a box of totally new designs is going to be the same price as stuff that has been out for awhile. You’re paying a premium for being part of the ‘cult of the new’. One of the oldest sales tactics in the book.

Gotta disagree heartily with the old classic "but we're paying the mold off!" bit. This is GW. Not a small four-person Kickstarter, or a tiny company that is really genuinely justifying covering the cost of a mold. GW has never once lost money on a mold (EDIT: Because someone may bring up Dark Fleet or whatever the feth it was called...that may have actually been a genuine loss!) , I can guarantee you. They're not going to now.

The age of the model doesn't matter at all to me, the consumer. The same way that I, as a consumer, don't care if a clam-pack character sells less, so GW increases its price. That's a company-side issue, and has nothing to do with me as a consumer and the value I see in what I'm purchasing. Miniatures aren't like automobiles or old technology. I'm not paying more because the new one is more advanced, has better reliability, battery life, or convenience. They're toy soldiers.

Now, GW can, of course, internally decide how they want to justify the pricing in their eyes, but none of that translates to me as the consumer.

I can't recall the last time I bought anything from GW directly, as I don't believe their prices are justified. Even at retailer discount with free shipping I seldom buy a new kit. I enjoy the larger boxed sets because they normally represent a much higher value than anything sold individually (honeslt the thought of buying an actual boxed kit from GW is almost insane to me).

I purchased 2-3 of the HH boxed sets (always at discount, on sale, with free shipping), and a couple halves from other sets with buddies, etc. I don't have any use for Shadowspear, but I understand the general balking of its price-tag.

 totalfailure wrote:
Everybody pretty much routinely raises the prices on their back catalog, too, not just GW. I’m saying that it’s not reasonable to expect a box of totally new designs is going to be the same price as stuff that has been out for awhile. You’re paying a premium for being part of the ‘cult of the new’. One of the oldest sales tactics in the book.

That could be a bit of a chicken or the egg kind of thing. Games Workshop has shown that despite increasing the price of the kit, players will still buy it even if the mold has long since paid off the up front costs. This in turn could embolden other manufacturers to do the same. Especially since they are almost certainly a smaller company with smaller production runs and can't absorb overhead like GW can. Only during the darkest of times in 7th edition did they somewhat freeze prices, and that seems to be thawing out now.

I will also concede that inflation is a thing a manufacturing costs do increase, but I kinda doubt that GW's price increases back when they would do it annually didn't earn them more per kit over those issues. Again, I understand things getting more expensive, but I do think that GW is starting to push beyond that once again.

As for the 'Cult of the New', I would be fine with that too, but these kits aren't like video games or electronics. They aren't going to be sold for cheaper by Games Workshop ever. The will likely get a price increase in the future however. That isn't a sales tactic. That is just how GW do.

First off, you don’t know the total prices involved in injection molding. Or how long it takes a mold to ‘pay off’ and be mostly profit. You also don’t know that GW has ‘never’ lost money on a product. Something doesn’t have to be a total flop to be a loss. If it sells poorly, it can be a bad investment if it takes a very long time to recover those costs. To the point it wasn’t worth doing, when something else could have been made. See ‘opportunity cost’.

Whether sound business practices matter to YOU is specious. GW needs to make good decisions for its employees, and investors. The bottom line is, cutting injection molds has a high up front cost. That is a FACT. GW, and pretty much every other company, is not a non profit philanthropic organization to benefit you solely. Sorry you don’t like that. You already have all the power you need by exercising the decision not to buy. While there is an element that whines on the Internet continuously, clearly, it is not the majority of consumer opinion - GW is still in business. And doing okay, by all accounts.

I’m suspecting this release will somewhat mirror the AoS release (Soul Wars?), in that a month afterwards, we’ll see some smaller sets ala Know No Fear and First Strike, with smaller price tags and fewer models.

I’m hoping that the suppressors will be available as a separate ez-build kit, as those are the only models I want, and It’s probably be cheaper than buying a broken-out box set of them.

You're out of your mind if you think GW has lost money on molds on more than a handful of items...if any.

What did I say, in any part of my response, that you believe I think GW should be giving stuff away? Oh right, I didn't say a single thing like that.

I also state, very clearly, that I do exercise my option to not purchase products from GW that I don't believe are priced reasonably.

I also state - VERY CLEARLY - that GW is entitled to price stuff however they wish. Did you actually even read my response? Doesn't seem like it...

If you read my post as whining...I'm not sure what to tell ya? Comprehension could use some work.

What I did state, very clearly is that I disagree entirely with your assumption that GW is failing to make money on these molds and that it somehow becomes the customers responsibility to pay more for something than they think is reasonable. That's asinine.

The cost is new because the February price hike, end of story.

And the February price hike is because the margins and return on capital in their last financial report have gone down. More revenue and profit in absolute terms, but as a percentage of the capital invested (or as a relationship between costs and profit) , it's gone down. So to get their margins back up they need to charge more on often purchased existing products (start collecting boxes) and new releases. I thought it would come sooner and Carrion Empire would be the first one priced higher, but I was one box set too early.

 totalfailure wrote:
One thing, it’s not really fair to compare this to sets like Wrath & Rapture. Most of that set was made of old models, with just a few new ones thrown in. I mean the Bloodletters may be multipart, but they’ve been around forever, and are not a very good kit. GW has likely paid off its mold making and r&d on the Bloodletters years ago, so it’s not a big deal to include them in a set nowadays.

Shadowspear is 100% all new models, even if they are pushfit monopose. That is going to be pricier than a set that was 90% old models like Wrath & Rapture. No skin in the game for me; I’m not defending the $175 price by any means. I wasn’t buying regardless. But there certainly is a reason it costs more than some of the other box sets GW has done.

But it is fair to compare it to Dark Imperium, which were also all new sculpts with a rulebook. Now maybe that one is a loss leader and this one isn't, but the point stands.


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 Stormonu wrote:
I’m suspecting this release will somewhat mirror the AoS release (Soul Wars?), in that a month afterwards, we’ll see some smaller sets ala Know No Fear and First Strike, with smaller price tags and fewer models.

I’m hoping that the suppressors will be available as a separate ez-build kit, as those are the only models I want, and It’s probably be cheaper than buying a broken-out box set of them.

I think those CSM kits are coming way faster, but don't expect any ETB to be broken out for a bit.

I think Dark Imperium was intentionally at a steeper cost to the company with the rulebook inside as a means of getting people into the hobby. I know they sold in the dozens at our local store, and still sell to this day.

Wayniac wrote:
I'm really not happy that it's mysteriously $15 more than the norm for boxes ($160) while also being largely monopose (they claim there are extra bits to let you do headswaps and such, which is good but it's still monopose) while Dark Imperium was $160 with about the same number of figures AND the rulebook. As usual, people are making excuses and justifying it by gushing over the quality of the models or the supposed "real" cost of buying the models individually and using that to shout down anyone not happy about the price increase, which is par for the course whenever GW does something like this.

"Excuses"? Maybe they are just realists and see even after price hike this is excellent deal compared to buying the parts separately. I don't think you'd be able to buy even one side separately. But yeah, not a fan of price hike of both this and SC, especially after last few campaign boxes were actually priced pretty decently...

This will hit for around $280 AUD. I'm going halves with my brother though so much easier to buy.

Seems like they're set on producing a new battle box every 3-4 months and this sort of pricing I'd expect to become the norm for 2 armies around 500-600 points a piece.

It is a shame about the price increase for sure but I think it was to be expected. Even so I still think it's good value from a personal perspective and obviously less so if you're only after one side or a unit/mini or two but it's fairly easy to swap or ebay stuff these days. The major downside is the one off lump payment, not the value per mini.

For me I break it down by cost per model. So Shadowspear has 35 minis which works out as £3 per model in UK terms. If you get a 20% discount then it works out at about £2.60 per mini after postage. Which is insane value when you compare it to how much they'd sell the equivalent kits - albeit with extra bits/unit choices/more customisation options. It still works out cheaper than their 'entry' ETB kits per mini.

There's also the hobby time to consider when it comes to value which I don't think is often thought about with minis. Even if you spent one hour building and painting each mini from start to finish then that's 35 hours of hobby time right there - not including gaming time.

I feel for you guys overseas though, GW's pricing remains insane on a lot of levels.

Saying that painting or assembly adds to the value is a big stretch. Ton of people don't like to paint their models.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Irbis wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
I'm really not happy that it's mysteriously $15 more than the norm for boxes ($160) while also being largely monopose (they claim there are extra bits to let you do headswaps and such, which is good but it's still monopose) while Dark Imperium was $160 with about the same number of figures AND the rulebook. As usual, people are making excuses and justifying it by gushing over the quality of the models or the supposed "real" cost of buying the models individually and using that to shout down anyone not happy about the price increase, which is par for the course whenever GW does something like this.

"Excuses"? Maybe they are just realists and see even after price hike this is excellent deal compared to buying the parts separately. I don't think you'd be able to buy even one side separately. But yeah, not a fan of price hike of both this and SC, especially after last few campaign boxes were actually priced pretty decently...

But aren't their prices for single boxs over priced too? There are whole games you can get for less then two mono pose characters. The Start Collecting box in other games gets you a real working army, you can play, while the SCE is more often then not not very useful to play with.

Their prices are all overpriced. It's just that I don't buy "see the retail value" as an excuse for it since those are already overpriced, and they've already shown that they are willing to sell boxed sets at a loss regardless of the retail price.

Karol wrote:
Saying that painting or assembly adds to the value is a big stretch. Ton of people don't like to paint their models.

Then they're really in the wrong hobby. There are tons of miniature games that are pre-painted and fun like X-Wing.

I'm not gatekeeping. Just stating that they should re-evaluate the hobby.

Now as a yute I didn't enjoy painting much, either, but then I grew to see the value and enjoyment of creating something with your hands. Something to have pride in.


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 vaklor4 wrote:
I think Dark Imperium was intentionally at a steeper cost to the company with the rulebook inside as a means of getting people into the hobby. I know they sold in the dozens at our local store, and still sell to this day.

Dark Imperium
20 light infantry
29 medium infantry (7 characters)
3 heavy infantry (inceptors)
1 light vehicle
big ass-book

Shadowspear
5 heavy infantry (greater possessed & suppressors)
2 centurion level infantry (oblits)
27 medium infantry (3 characters-ish?)
1 medium vehicle

Centurions are $26 per model.
Inceptors are ~$17 pm.
Primaris are $6 pm.
Venom is about twice a centurion, so $52.

Between the possessed, suppressors, oblits, and venom it's $189 (for kits that are not ETB). The ETB blight hauler is half the price of a plague drone, so $95. And then $162 for the primaris sized stuff, which as ETB is $81. And that total comes to...$176.

For DI it's $174 for primaris halved to $87. $50 for the Pox, which are already priced at $2.50 ETB. $51 for inceptors halved to $26. And the drone of $50 at $25 ETB. Total is $188. Then you add in the book.

It's clear that DI has more value, but I wonder if it has to do with Shadowspear having the separate sprues for characters where DI didn't have any, did it?

 totalfailure wrote:
One thing, it’s not really fair to compare this to sets like Wrath & Rapture. Most of that set was made of old models, with just a few new ones thrown in. I mean the Bloodletters may be multipart, but they’ve been around forever, and are not a very good kit. GW has likely paid off its mold making and r&d on the Bloodletters years ago, so it’s not a big deal to include them in a set nowadays.

Shadowspear is 100% all new models, even if they are pushfit monopose. That is going to be pricier than a set that was 90% old models like Wrath & Rapture. No skin in the game for me; I’m not defending the $175 price by any means. I wasn’t buying regardless. But there certainly is a reason it costs more than some of the other box sets GW has done.

To play devil's advocate - Tooth and Claw had many of the newest GW models for 40K, yet was priced the same. If last battleforces were all like W&R, or Rats vs Hobos, swallowing price hike would be easier but Claw and Wake the Dead both had comparable primaris armies making the comparison particularly sour.

Also, yeah, I agree price was pushed up by new molds, but I don't get why GW even bothered. Why they didn't just make one set of moulds, that of multipose units, and put it in the box to leverage economy of scale? I can't see Spear being in production that long so it's basically limited edition monopose that won't be around for long and has to be priced way up to actually make a return on investment...

Karol wrote:
But aren't their prices for single boxs over priced too? There are whole games you can get for less then two mono pose characters. The Start Collecting box in other games gets you a real working army, you can play, while the SCE is more often then not not very useful to play with.

Like what, if I may ask? Because the biggest competitors to 40K, the Star Wars games by FFW, cost same if not more as GW products. See this model for example that makes 40K look cheap (and in fact costs 25% more than Shadowspear all by itself)...

Will go halves if I can find a Chaos player with a set from Darksphere for 25% off. Saying that even £40 for the marines (19 models) or the chaos (16) isn't that hot if they are mono-pose.

 Irbis wrote:

Like what, if I may ask? Because the biggest competitors to 40K, the Star Wars games by FFW, cost same if not more as GW products. See this model for example that makes 40K look cheap (and in fact costs 25% more than Shadowspear all by itself)...

Comparing a prepainted model for a game where royalties have to be paid to another company for the license isn't the greatest comparison.

If the mold/tool cost was even a concern to GW then they wouldn't be making 'throw away kits'. All the units would be on separate sprues ready to be boxed in unit sets later. As it is, they have so much market power and money that the £10-25k it costs to make a sprue tool doesn't phase them in the slightest. Trying to argue that the price is anything other than 'becaise they can' is silly. GW can cut their costs if consumers weren't buying what they are selling, but the fact of the matter is GW keep selling loads of really expensive sets, and untill people stop buying them they have no reason to stop!

Karol wrote:
Saying that painting or assembly adds to the value is a big stretch. Ton of people don't like to paint their models.

Just because they choose not to make use of that aspect doesn't mean that, when looked at overall, part of the general value of a kit isn't from that aspect.

 Irbis wrote:

Karol wrote:
But aren't their prices for single boxs over priced too? There are whole games you can get for less then two mono pose characters. The Start Collecting box in other games gets you a real working army, you can play, while the SCE is more often then not not very useful to play with.

Like what, if I may ask? Because the biggest competitors to 40K, the Star Wars games by FFW, cost same if not more as GW products. See this model for example that makes 40K look cheap (and in fact costs 25% more than Shadowspear all by itself)...

Dude, that model is two feet long - it's bigger than a freaking Castellan. Definitely not a standard model for Armada. We're practically talking Titan territory.