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hey folks,

i was recently browsing through the new vampire counts models on the GW site, when i noticed the new army book is £25. Now im a 40K player, so i thought i'd check other WHFB army books. They were £20 (Same as 40k books). I cant compare the cost of models, like the price comparison between two basic box sets of 10 man troops, cause i dont play WHFB.

So do the Vampire Counts of 2012 mark yet another jump in GW prices?

What price hike? Don't know what you're talkin' bout.

I don't think so IIRC, I think that this price has been a feature on the new hardback army books. But I may stand corrected later on.

Nothing to see here... move along!

yeah, all the new fantasy army books are coming out in hardback, so far we have orcs and goblins, tomb kings, ogres and now vampire counts, each at £25, this will be the norm for fantasy army books from now on. rumours say that 40k codex's will become hardback books in 6th ed, but those are just the rumours I've heard, and this is neither the time nor the place to discuss this...

As noted, new hardback army books have all cost £25 since they started being released last year. Expect 40K Codexes to get the same treatment come 6th Edition.

Miniature wise, VC box sets are actually some of the better value ones relatively speaking, although Grave Guard only cost £15 when they were first released. Then GW decided to randomly add £10 to the cost of all Special/Rare box sets.

EDIT - That's not to say that the annual price hike isn't coming soon.

£25 for a slim hardback is a lot. My wife worked in printing and I can assure you that a hardback only costs marginally more than a paperback. They probably cost a little more to ship, but the costs of printing are not in the cover, yet as is common with all books the hardbacks from GW are significantly more expensive than their paperback equivalent.

Also you can get some pretty big hardbacks for £25, which does not make GW's army books look good value. I'm reading the Horus Heresy Collected visions book at the moment and it's an absolute beast of a book, and full colour throughout, priced £30.

Howard, GW would find your lack of faith disturbing. If they say it costs £5 more to produce a hardcopy, then by golly that's what it costs.

They shot themselves in the foot there really. I've bought pretty much every codex/army book since the mid 1990s purely to read them. Now I only buy the ones for armies I want to collect.

Muppets.

Flashman wrote:They shot themselves in the foot there really. I've bought pretty much every codex/army book since the mid 1990s purely to read them. Now I only buy the ones for armies I want to collect.

Muppets.

lose one customer, gain more from every other.

sounds like a good plan to me.

Well GW you did it again, you made people not want to buy your stuff.

Kouzuki wrote:

Flashman wrote:They shot themselves in the foot there really. I've bought pretty much every codex/army book since the mid 1990s purely to read them. Now I only buy the ones for armies I want to collect.

Muppets.

lose one customer, gain more from every other.

sounds like a good plan to me.

Yes, but atm, it's ever-decreasing circles...

Better keep fingers crossed to hold on until the Hobbit movies bring in more fresh blood.

ahh ok fair enough. they are hardback. i didn't know.

thanks for clearing that up

Yep I'm in the same boat. I would buy every army book/codex. I thought they were pushing it when they went up to £15 from £12 (only a few years ago) at £17.50 I stopped buying the ones I didnt need.

at £20/£25 I am not buying at all.

I play a game or 2 a year at most in a very relaxed informal way (my place over a few beers) so y'know what GW? My old books still work!

There's one every year anyway.
It'll be 25 in January, but come the annual rise around April it'll probably be something like 26-28ish.

I don't see this ending in any other way except badly. Did we ask for hardback codex books? Nope. The softcover ones did the job thankyou. Here's an idea GeeDub, offer us both options. Hard and Soft back. That way you are giving us, the customer, choice.

God forbid you ever do that though hey?

I'm currently playing 2nd Ed anyways. eBay is the shop of choice for that game. My lil bro picked up Codex Orks for the princely sum of £5 including postage.

I just can't figure out how the IG sentinel that has been sitting on the shelf at the local store was 25.00 US, and suddenly, it becam 30.00 over a weekend?

martin74 wrote:I just can't figure out how the IG sentinel that has been sitting on the shelf at the local store was 25.00 US, and suddenly, it becam 30.00 over a weekend?

You know that department stores have 'price changers' who go around the store every day and update prices both up and down for existing inventory, right? Why is it surprising that GW does the same?

I prefer the hardback. They are easiier to store on a shelf that way.
Know if only codexes/army books where avaiable in ebook form.
Also wouldnt it be nice if rather then a price increase this year they spend there time with revertng everything to finecast? So we can atleast understand WHY we are being sucked out of our money?

I have it from a 100% reliable source that GW has planned price hikes scheduled yearly for the forseable future. This is not related to cost to produce goods etc, its just how they drive their business model.

Chapterhouse wrote:I have it from a 100% reliable source that GW has planned price hikes scheduled yearly for the forseable future. This is not related to cost to produce goods etc, its just how they drive their business model.

Yup, I believe it I can think of two reasons
1: To be total jerks
2: They do this to compensate for eventual production cost hikes. So rather then a ten doller price hike every couple of years its 2 dllers for the next 5.
Or they just know we will buy it.

I think it’s pretty obvious how GW’s business model works in that it’s heavily reliant on price increases and regional pricing to keep itself afloat (rather than consumer analysis, marketing strategies etc).

I’ve always felt that the core issue is that GW underestimates the price elasticity of their products and pretty soon they’ll need to do something other than price increases to mitigate their costs. As it stands now, Master of Ravenwing costs $80AUD and single figure SCs like Abaddon cost $40AUD. Imagine how much they’ll cost in a few years time? *shudder*.

They’ve been able to get away with it up until now because they were the only big player in the market (thus could call the shots) and they had a very large fanatical fanbase (who buy their bodyweight in plastic crack). The current pattern in the financial reports suggests an increasing steady decline in sales (which is often disguised via dividends and cost cutting) as well as a big increase in rival companies like PP and Corvus Belli. This suggests that GW will have to change up their business model (and how they deal with things) if they wish to maintain their stature.

The vamp book is justifiably more expensive than the other books, it is hardbacked. The orc and ogre books are the same..
My empire book is cheaper than the vamp book, for example.

Scipio Africanus wrote:The vamp book is justifiably more expensive than the other books.

In comparison to other WFB army books? Sure.

In comparison to other hardback books of the same size? Nope.

Well, I suppose it'll be easier to bludgeon out any sense of betrayal you get from GW with a hardcover....

Chapterhouse wrote:I have it from a 100% reliable source that GW has planned price hikes scheduled yearly for the forseable future. This is not related to cost to produce goods etc, its just how they drive their business model.

To be fair, a blind, deaf and mute man, who has been so since birth and so has no concept of light and sound, living in a cave hidden deep in the Amazon jungle, would also be aware that this is the case.

My 100% reliable source that GW will continue to increases the prices far beyond that of their actual production cost is GW itself.

They don't hide this fact.

H.B.M.C. wrote:My 100% reliable source that GW will continue to increases the prices far beyond that of their actual production cost is GW itself.

They don't hide this fact.

Kinda sad. that just enocurages people to buy second hand. from places like thewarstore.
Or to buy bulk deals.
Also, where did they get this idea from. I have never heard of any other company doing this.

Howard A Treesong wrote:£25 for a slim hardback is a lot. My wife worked in printing and I can assure you that a hardback only costs marginally more than a paperback. They probably cost a little more to ship, but the costs of printing are not in the cover, yet as is common with all books the hardbacks from GW are significantly more expensive than their paperback equivalent.

Also you can get some pretty big hardbacks for £25, which does not make GW's army books look good value. I'm reading the Horus Heresy Collected visions book at the moment and it's an absolute beast of a book, and full colour throughout, priced £30.

Hardback books come with a perception of quality, much like resin. For better or worse, I think customers have attached value to those mediums, and Games Workshop is capitalizing on that perception of value.

Having started wargaming a scant five years or so ago, I personally detest working with metal miniatures. I find it very annoying, but that is primarily because a metal model is oftentimes the odd man out, and thus I have less experience with cleaning, assembling, converting, painting, and handling metal miniatures. My personal frustration with a metal miniature is why I attach a measure of added value to a resin model.

Forget hardbacks though. I'm not a terribly huge fan of hardback books, except when it comes to gaming and books that I would prefer to preserve for an extended period of time. Even so, I am not especially fond of the added price that is attached to hardback books, especially novels. From the perspective of a customer and an avid reader, I think there's a good reason why hard cover editions of serialized novels are released first. The suckers that want to read the book will shell out for the hardback because they've been waiting for the darn book to come out (one can generally determine at what point I caught up with a series by looking at where on the shelf the books start appearing in hardback editions). If it came out in paperback at the same time, my guess would be that many readers would simply chose the less expensive option.

However, gaming books are firmly, for me, in the category of books that I would like to preserve for an extended period of time. Thus I prefer my gaming books to be in hardcover. I applaud GW's move to hardback army books, but at the same time I deplore what seems to be an unreasonable bump in price. At the price the army books were already at, they should have been hardback.

weeble1000 wrote:
However, gaming books are firmly, for me, in the category of books that I would like to preserve for an extended period of time. Thus I prefer my gaming books to be in hardcover. I applaud GW's move to hardback army books, but at the same time I deplore what seems to be an unreasonable bump in price. At the price the army books were already at, they should have been hardback.

Why?

Any gaming company will usually put out a newer version of any given book within 5 years so all your old books will be replaced in that (aproximate), timeframe.

And having a hardback book just makes it all that much harder to transport and use during games, IMO.

Notice that GW isn't the only games company guilty of this, BF has started to release their campaign books only in hardback format, wich I particularly find imensely annoying!