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 Glasdir wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Are you kidding?

You need evidence that other companies are more affordable on a per mini basis? Outside of Kingdom Death, I can't even think of another company that charges what GW charges for a clampack. And GW's big kits are terrible value compared to similar plastic kits from other companies.

GW has a great aesthetic and some of the best miniature quality around, but I'll take Mantic's GCPS over Cadians for a fourth of the price any day.

You are aware that the other companies are cheaper because they don’t use such high quality CAD software or don’t even use it at all in cases like the perry brothers? Industry grade CAD software packages are extremely expensive, GW’s software will cost them even more because they are paying for exclusive rights to it. I know this because I’ve asked them about what they use at previous warhammer fests, they’re not actually allowed to tell you what it is because of the exclusive licensing agreement. An awful lot of the price they charge will go towards maintaining that licence, which will be costinging them probably between £5k-10k a year.

Man, I don't care about the costs on their end. I care that I can get tons of great plastic minis for a third of what GW charges.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@AndrewGPaul, when was the last time you heard anyone cheering for Warmachine?

fresus wrote:
Design and aesthetics are personal, but in terms of how crisps the details are, I haven't seen any mini come close to GW's newer kits. So comparing Perry Brothers' plastics with GW doesn't make much sense.
Of course if you look at the old plastic kits from GW, the quality isn't better than the competition, but the price is still very high. There's definitely a wide spread in terms of value in what GW offers.

Dreamforge, Kingdom Death, Malifaux, Gates of Antares, Mantic's GCPS and a few other kits, Frostgrave. They all have great casting, even if their aesthetics aren't necessarily as great.

GW prices aren't that high IMO, but FW is ridiculous. They are basically extorting players to buy crappy resin models that break incredibly easily. The only reason we continue to buy from them is that they hold onto some of the coolest looking models.

I'm going to have to give up on a DKoK, it's too expensive to make an army out of them when they are $70+ for a squad of infantry. So I'll just go with metal Steel Legion which is half the price and sturdier.

GW is expensive. Always has been. Most likely always will be. It's a "want" purchase, not a "need" purchase, so they can charge whatever brings the best return. I'd love them to cut prices: I'd buy more, but they might make less profit. What shareholder would ever support that?

Other hobbies by comparison? £50 for a new video game? Add on the DLC, the console itself, controllers and the rest of the gizmos.... or cycling.... my bikes are worth around £12K, and they are by no means top of the range.... and some of the cellphones for the "free" games are upwards of £1K themselves....

There will always be more expensive and cheaper hobbies, and there will always be more or less expensive ways to wargame. Options of WHICH models you "need" (given the game itself isn't a need) are pretty much only limited to GW models in a GW store, which doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I doubt commercial CAD is cheap. I also suspect that good CAD operators can command a not insignificant salary. From my own VERY limited early CAD "no problem" is an oversimplification: times may well have moved on.

As for market competition, ONE of the reasons I still play GW is ease of access. I can walk into a store (3 in easy drive, and WHW 40 minutes away on a good run) and pick up a game pretty easily. I preferred Starship Troopers, and AT-43. Locally, neither sold, and there was zero local interest. I played a handful of games of SST (with one friend and my son). AT-43 is still in its box.

Yes it's too expensive for what it is, but so are most leisure pursuits. £3.85 for a Costa coffee anyone when you can have a Greggs flat white for £2.10, or £2 if you have the bacon roll too!?

The solution to high miniature pricing is competition. Both video games and Rc cars have several major manufacturers. If you want lower prices, then it is imperative to have multiple major companies produce models. What we have seen is that competitors of GW are not doing well. Privateer Press, and Wyrd seem to be on a downturn. Battlefront is a shadow of what they used to be.

I put my money where my mouth is. I am a proud owner of kits from many games/manufacturers, including dakkas own maelstorm's edge.

Some people say, that you cannot find games using non gw minis. My response is if that is the case then you are not playing with the right people. If other people do not want to play the other games, or if they do not want to let you use proxy minis, or lend you their minis, then they are part of the problem.

I've been on hiatus and just stalking the forums for the past year but this thread made me feel like i should speak up again.

So there are a number of fallacies floating around whenever the discussion of price comes up.

First one is always "price per hour". You are not paying for a service here, so this is very subjective depending on the person. If you want to go to the extreme end, I can buy 10 lego bricks costing 5c a piece (not manufactured cost, actual cost for the consumer). If i get any amount of enjoyment out of them, it instantly blows any comparison out of the water (and this can simply be using them as targets while also flinging the same bricks at each other). That is to say nothing of discount lego sets or even cheaper construction sets.

Second one is "units sold", especially in application to stuff like unit commanders. Every company knows that people generally buys several of a product, even if they're only "suppose" to have one. Some products naturally sell better than others, and this doesn't just apply to line troopers. If they really did care about the startup cost of every clampack, they would have just made them multi-part plastic kits can can be interchangable for any of the "one time" models (good example is the current Chaos Terminator Lord, which can be built up as a sorceror lord, or any of the older WHFB dual-pack leaders like the Elven Prince, Empire Noble, Orc Warboss, and so forth). That would save on shelf space and manufacturing, but it would be less profitable.

Third is the general "but high quality!" thing. This would be true if GW kept a consistent pricing throughout it's range. The current CSM box is 70 CAD compared to the Thousand Sons 60CAD box. Or the normal tactical marine box (50CAD) vs a box of Blood Angel tacticals (55 CAD). Or just any of the clampacks. The truth of the matter is the pricing is the result of price creep; if you took the clampacks (which are released more often than boxed sets) and lined them up by release date, you'll see that they've slowly inched up from the 16 dollars they use to cost. There have been reductions in the past, but only because they realized a combined set would cause sticker shock, especially in something like baseline Stormcast Eternal troops (they use to cost 60 CAD for 5, now something like 70 CAD for 10, probably because asking 120 for a squad of 10 basic troopers would scare people away from the hobby entirely).

That said. some things I will also point out:

GW models have gone up in detail as of late, as well as components. This is good and bad; there is an absolute slew of parts for the Assault Marine set, but I managed to assemble two whole squads by just sourcing an extra pair of legs. Essentially, instead of giving me the option for ground marines or flying marines, they made me buy both and only let me use one set at any one time. so this is very much a YMMV moment, as some people like the massive amount of extras. However GW's sprues definitely have far more stuff on them now; compare the chaos Helbrute to the original boxnaut; the boxnaut is basically a twig with some pieces on it, while the helbrute has oodles of parts everywhere. Same with something like the Monolith VS the Obelisk; one is basically just enough parts to assemble the thing, while the other comes with almost enough pieces to assemble a second. Again, very much YMMV moment here, but there is some justification for the higher prices.

One more thing I should note for US and Canadians; GW does their US and Canadian prices based off of their British prices, but their British prices has the tax calculated in, but ours does not. This essentially means we're paying the british tax AND then our own domestic taxes. Some other companies also do this, other companies don't and have different set prices for north american markets, so it's up to you who you wanna blame for this (and I don't think we'll get much sympathy either considering AU and NZ are paying even more ludicrous prices). But this fact alone renders most conversion rates useless.

The long short of all this is GW charges whatever prices it likes because there are people willing to pay them, and there is really no justification for it other than "yes we can" and "they want to make money". And until there can be actual mainstream challenges to it's monopoly, it's gonna continue this way unfortunately. Which is why I swore if they ever reduced an army's cost by 50%, I would start a new army of said army. And I have done this once before; when Imperial Knights: renegade was first released, my friend pointed out that the army is now technically "halved" in it's price (the other type of knights didn't exist at the time). My response was to go out and buy two of them (I was gonna get 3, but my friend restrained me by taking away all my cards and money for a week).

If GW does it again, I will do so again with no regrets (although the criteria has to be ALL models within the faction being reduced by 50%; a battleforce does not count but an army box with all unit choices do. The imperial knights was unique in that at the time the army only had 2 choices, discounting FW). If they went back to charging 30-40 CAD for a box of 10 basic troops, 40-50 for a tank (and not just transports), I will also start a new army (of a minimum 1500 point size, so it's not like I'm just going getting a start collecting box).

In the meantime, I think I have more than enough GW models to get me through till at least christmas. And I will be dealhunting for any new minis; I'll pay the price I feel comfortable with.

I think mostly the single figures are overpriced. But bundles, boxed games, squads, vehicles are alright.

The addiction of stacking unopened and unused boxes on your shelfs, that's expensive.

Games Workshop is in a position almost no other game company is in. They can, at least currently, charge whatever they want and people will be buying it. Between marketing to "young dumb kids with too much money" (i.e. 16-25 year olds who often are less financially responsible and are less likely to have families, etc.) and having a strong fan base from 20-30 years of gaming for those who are now of means, they have the market covered.

Add to that the fact that they've been capitalizing more on the tournament/meta scene where people are genuinely spending money to compete...it's just gravy for GW.

 spaceelf wrote:
There were a bunch of comments in the forge world thread regarding the price of the sanguinis model. It has been a while since there was a price thread, so I thought that I would start one.

On average GWs prices for minis have been increasing faster than inflation. When the individual price for a mini is combined with the number of minis needed to play 40k or AOS, their prices are outrageous.

It is constructive to contrast this with a comparison to other hobbies such as the price of a video game or that of a radio controlled car. Prices for console games have been relatively stagnate since the release of Super Mario 2 in the 1980s. Moreover, I can now play high quality games on my cellphone very inexpensively. RC cars have risen in price since the 80s. However, they have not risen nearly as much as miniatures. You can obtain a rereleased Tamiya kit for less that it would have cost if you in 1985 if you factor in inflation. Both the cars and the minis require precision cast parts, and in that sense are comparable.

The cost of producing minis should be lower than in the distant past now that minis are digitally sculpted. Need a Space Marine head, just copy and paste. Want to edit a weapon, no problem.

The solution to high miniature pricing is competition. Both video games and Rc cars have several major manufacturers. If you want lower prices, then it is imperative to have multiple major companies produce models. What we have seen is that competitors of GW are not doing well. Privateer Press, and Wyrd seem to be on a downturn. Battlefront is a shadow of what they used to be.

I put my money where my mouth is. I am a proud owner of kits from many games/manufacturers, including dakkas own maelstorm's edge.

Some people say, that you cannot find games using non gw minis. My response is if that is the case then you are not playing with the right people. If other people do not want to play the other games, or if they do not want to let you use proxy minis, or lend you their minis, then they are part of the problem.

The word you are looking for is Sophism- a fallacious argument, especially one used deliberately to deceive.

If the prices are too high for you, don't buy the product.

It's as simple as that. There's no need to go into the 'what ifs' or the 'whys' or try to pretend like we know more about their business practices and the materials or manufacturing industries than we really do.

The bottom line is that a lot of this comes down to people complaining about not being able to afford a hobby. Sucks, but, you gotta look after your bills and finances first and plastic luxury army men last.

 wallygator wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
If the paint rubs off metal models, that's your fault, not the material it's made of. You've not primed it properly.

ah, that I didn't know. I just used the same primer i use on my plastic models. Could be Vallejo black primer or GW chaos black, not sure.

If it's GW chaos black...well gw sprays aren't even primers. There's difference between colour spray and primer. One is designed to work as primer, one is not.

 Grot 6 wrote:

 spaceelf wrote:
There were a bunch of comments in the forge world thread regarding the price of the sanguinis model. It has been a while since there was a price thread, so I thought that I would start one.

On average GWs prices for minis have been increasing faster than inflation. When the individual price for a mini is combined with the number of minis needed to play 40k or AOS, their prices are outrageous.

It is constructive to contrast this with a comparison to other hobbies such as the price of a video game or that of a radio controlled car. Prices for console games have been relatively stagnate since the release of Super Mario 2 in the 1980s. Moreover, I can now play high quality games on my cellphone very inexpensively. RC cars have risen in price since the 80s. However, they have not risen nearly as much as miniatures. You can obtain a rereleased Tamiya kit for less that it would have cost if you in 1985 if you factor in inflation. Both the cars and the minis require precision cast parts, and in that sense are comparable.

The cost of producing minis should be lower than in the distant past now that minis are digitally sculpted. Need a Space Marine head, just copy and paste. Want to edit a weapon, no problem.

The solution to high miniature pricing is competition. Both video games and Rc cars have several major manufacturers. If you want lower prices, then it is imperative to have multiple major companies produce models. What we have seen is that competitors of GW are not doing well. Privateer Press, and Wyrd seem to be on a downturn. Battlefront is a shadow of what they used to be.

I put my money where my mouth is. I am a proud owner of kits from many games/manufacturers, including dakkas own maelstorm's edge.

Some people say, that you cannot find games using non gw minis. My response is if that is the case then you are not playing with the right people. If other people do not want to play the other games, or if they do not want to let you use proxy minis, or lend you their minis, then they are part of the problem.

The word you are looking for is Sophism- a fallacious argument, especially one used deliberately to deceive.

You may criticise my statements, but do you agree that competition is beneficial to the miniature industry? Is that just sophistry?

I think that GW for the last years has changed considerably, for the best, in therms of giving fans what they want… as such competitors are struggling a lot. IMO.

Individual characters clampacks are expensive but starter deals etc have good prices. In the end Its about what you really want. I just like good quality shiny new minis in general.

drbored wrote:
If the prices are too high for you, don't buy the product.

It's as simple as that. There's no need to go into the 'what ifs' or the 'whys' or try to pretend like we know more about their business practices and the materials or manufacturing industries than we really do.

The bottom line is that a lot of this comes down to people complaining about not being able to afford a hobby. Sucks, but, you gotta look after your bills and finances first and plastic luxury army men last.

This is a response which indicates you haven't read most of what people have written. By making statements like "not being able to afford the hobby", you're missing the point. I support any company pricing their products as they wish. For people like me it's not about being able to afford the hobby. It's cheap as hell compared to my other hobbies, but the products themselves don't warrant the cost. Any working adult could easily afford GW products, it might be a financial issue for younger buyers or people who are on a real budget....but let's not kid ourselves. Compared to bills, etc. it's still relatively cheap.

But that doesn't mean I find enough value in their product to purchase it at their prices. Just because you can afford something (without going broke, hungry or getting into financial trouble) doesn't mean that you buy it without question. To me a single plastic monopose figure will never be worth $35. I've paid $12-15 for old out-of-production metal figures because I found value in those. I'm fortunate that I've built my two main 40K armies on the cheap (finding good deals and building off rescued older minis). The money I could spend on GW prices is spent on other hobbies where I find more value.

Do you all think 3d printing will ruin Games Workshop eventually?

Miniature Wargaming as a hobby itself is going to have a reckoning with 3d printing eventually. Printers are going to continue to become cheaper even as they get better resolution and more people produce content.

Games workshop is benefiting of the new technologies also.
Their production and quality keeps increasing thanks to 3d design and printing.
I feel like they will always keep one step ahead.
I think they can coexist for a long time. With people printing conversion parts and such.

The quality of 3D prints isn't the issue. It's the time. How long does it take to print, for example, ten Space Marines? I can drive to GW, buy the models, come home and have them assembled in two hours. If it takes longer than that to print them, I'll probably keep buying them.

 _SeeD_ wrote:
Do you all think 3d printing will ruin Games Workshop eventually?

Nope. They'll simply license their renders to customers for a fee as an alternate revenue stream. This will be marginally cheaper for customers - look at how GW prices their PDF products for a price comparison - and probably more profitable for GW, as it removes part of their warehousing, shipping and retail requirements. 3D printing can't replace injection molding on a cost or volume basis, however, and it's a creative hobby where people actually LIKE assembling and painting miniatures, so that part of the hobby isn't going away.

 John Prins wrote:

 _SeeD_ wrote:
Do you all think 3d printing will ruin Games Workshop eventually?

Nope. They'll simply license their renders to customers for a fee as an alternate revenue stream. This will be marginally cheaper for customers - look at how GW prices their PDF products for a price comparison - and probably more profitable for GW, as it removes part of their warehousing, shipping and retail requirements. 3D printing can't replace injection molding on a cost or volume basis, however, and it's a creative hobby where people actually LIKE assembling and painting miniatures, so that part of the hobby isn't going away.

The amount of time it took them to put their books out digitally, and the stranglehold they keep on their IP, I doubt they will go anywhere near licensing for users to use.
Printing at a store for collection later on, that might happen. They get to keep control of the files, and get people into the store.
At-home printing though, GW will never allow that.

Fan-made STL files for home printing, that happens already. They look to come out quite well, and if you mix a few printed models in with official ones, you'll probably get away with it.
Home-grade printers (£300-£1000 or so) are better at scenery and such. Infantry-type models can be good, but vehicles and models with larger detail do better.

By the time 3D printing has ruined GW, they'll have had a lot of other things to worry about first.

I always read that other companies have way cheaper miniatures but whenever I try to find them I get disappointed.
If I like them (i.e. Victoria), they are not really cheaper, with postage often even more expensive then GW (sometimes even if you compare it to RRP without discount). Others I just find butt ugly and many are simply not of any use for me.

I mean it's fine and dandy that the Perrys have cheap and good looking plastic historicals. But honestly I wouldn't even take them for free as I have no Idea what to do with them.

And GW has way higher overhead costs than the smaller manufacturers. They have their own big warehouses on different continents, way more office staff and buildings to be maintained and staffed. I also bet that the WD doesn't pay for itself without any ads.

Do I wish they would be cheaper? Sure. Will I pay 30 € for a character? No, maybe with 20% off but even then only rarely. Could I buy a nice car with the money I spent on GW in the last 25 years? Surely.

But could I have cheaper hobbies? I don't really think so. I'm always getting big eyes when I hear what my friends and colleagues spend (RC car racing, music making, fishing, bicycles, car tuning, going out and even just running). And none of them still have use for purchases made 25 years ago like I do....

I guess it also depends on how you are doing your hobby. I know tournament guys that get complete new armies at least twice a year to chase the meta and even have them professionally painted. Together with the travel costs to at least 1 or 2 tournamnets a month, they really spend big.

But thats the same for every hobby. A gamer could buy a PS4 and use it for 6 or more years, or he could buy a 2000 Euro PC every 2 years.

I think for me the interesting thing about the miniature game market is the huge differential between the "consumer satisfaction index" - the amount of enjoyment people get out of miniatures is HEAVILY dependent on what they choose to do with it, which will affect the price people are happy to pay.

For myself, when I purchase a box of miniatures, I assemble them, paint them for at least probably 5 hours per box, and I play 40k (though not always the same faction) once per week.

I know plenty of people who don't paint, and play once a month.

I'm pretty happy in terms of the consumer index. I get more leisure time/enjoyment from a box of miniatures than I do from a AAA video game title, sports equipment, or going out for drinks with my friends, pretty much the only "for fun" activity I regularly do that's more value for the money is watching TV/movies with subscription services. The consumer happiness index is pretty great for the miniatures to me.

For the books...yeah, different story. I don't get nearly the value i like out of the rules books. So, i tend not to buy them as much, or I grumble when I do, and I definitely use any workarounds I can when possible - I modified my Index for deathwatch, Harlequins and Admech rather than buying the codex because so few unit rules changed, and just bought the datacards for the stratagems.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 _SeeD_ wrote:
Do you all think 3d printing will ruin Games Workshop eventually?

Nope. They'll simply license their renders to customers for a fee as an alternate revenue stream.

The amount of time it took them to put their books out digitally, and the stranglehold they keep on their IP, I doubt they will go anywhere near licensing for users to use.
Printing at a store for collection later on, that might happen. They get to keep control of the files, and get people into the store.
At-home printing though, GW will never allow that.

They may not get a choice if home printing gets fast/cheap/easy enough. Someone with a 3D laser scanner can simply dupe their sprues and release it into the wilds of the internet. It really depends on the technology. For example, some laser printer brands may make accommodation for limited use printing of licensed materials.

I agree that keeping the printing in-house would be the easiest for GW to control, and allow each store to restock independently (add a print-on demand system and they no longer need warehouses). Order something and pick it up later the same day, regardless of stock levels.

 John Prins wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 _SeeD_ wrote:
Do you all think 3d printing will ruin Games Workshop eventually?

Nope. They'll simply license their renders to customers for a fee as an alternate revenue stream.

The amount of time it took them to put their books out digitally, and the stranglehold they keep on their IP, I doubt they will go anywhere near licensing for users to use.
Printing at a store for collection later on, that might happen. They get to keep control of the files, and get people into the store.
At-home printing though, GW will never allow that.

They may not get a choice if home printing gets fast/cheap/easy enough. Someone with a 3D laser scanner can simply dupe their sprues and release it into the wilds of the internet. It really depends on the technology. For example, some laser printer brands may make accommodation for limited use printing of licensed materials.

I agree that keeping the printing in-house would be the easiest for GW to control, and allow each store to restock independently (add a print-on demand system and they no longer need warehouses). Order something and pick it up later the same day, regardless of stock levels.

Please, someone invent a 3D scanner that doesn't require expert clean up to get something useable.

I think the problem with most 3d scanners is they aren't 3d.

They simply map surfaces, they should scan through the surface to be true 3d, more akin to mri or sonic imaging scans. That would make 3d scans better.

Feel free to steal my idea without guilt .

You only need something like an MRI scanner if the internal structure of whatever you're scanning is important. In the case of miniatures, there is no internal structure - all you need is the external shape.

Not true, a surface scanner is less good at picking up overhangs and is more prone to glitching the surface details.

Maybe in the future 3d printing will come down in price. At this point, casting is far less expensive.

I am always interested in hearing about inexpensive minis. It seems that in the past year or two there has been a slowdown in the creation of new inexpensive minis. If there are any that have not been mentioned in the thread, please add them.

It really comes down to value rather actual cost

The miniatures I buy for other games are either only slightly cheaper or on a par with GW, but I don't really mind, obviously cheap would be nicer, as I enjoy those games, not something I can say about 40k which currently has no idea what its meant to be other than a IP to shift models

Oddly enough, some of my favorite minis actually cost MORE than the equivalent in Games Workshop (I'm a fan of nice resin, and Kingdom Death plastic).


GW used to have a lot of issues with the pricing on their books (at the worst, you'd have to spend $180 just to get the rules for the game/force/subforce that you want to play). That has improved.

One of GW's biggest problems is that the prices look terrible when compared to themselves. Troops are relatively cheap, while elites cost at least double that, and characters are usually 5x or 6x the price of troops.

I mean, you can get one character for $25, or 10 troopers for $50, something doesn't feel like it is lining up right.

Other companies also have price hikes on minis sold singly, but it is never quite so big a jump as with GW.

If you think GW's prices are high, you should look at PP's.

Thankfully the 2nd hand market is a buyers market. Even for NIB.

With 3D printing people usually don't figure in the time, effort, material cost and power that printing uses. It'll never become mainstream because it's too niche. It's proponents fail to realise this.

It's like how the niche competitive scene thinks it's the be all and end all of GW gaming and websites fall over themselves to tell readers how rubbish most new units and releases are. Same thing with PP, they listened and believed their niche within a niche that wanted CID. Don't notice GW dumping stock at cost price to customers, but PP ended up doing that , along with retailer after retailer dropping them.