Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I have some news on GW's Games Day 2012.

Some good, but some I feel will upset many of you (and no doubt start furious debate!)

So here goes;

The general release date for tickets this year is 26th May, WD Subscribers will be able to get theirs 7 weeks early.
6500 tickets available, plus 1000 parents tickets.

Tickets will cost £30, £6 for a parent ticket.

The above cost DOES NOT include a Games Day Minature (The Blood Angels 2nd Ed Captain model) which will be available to BUY at the event. I believe this is the first time that you won't get a model included in the ticket price, and that you have to buy separately. This won't be a popular decision. Don't know if you will be limited to 1 per person or not, and have no info on the price of the model as yet.

There will NOT be ANY White Dwarf Seminars at this years Games Day. The Designers, Sculptors, Eavy Metal painters etc will all be in the main studio area and will focus on demonstrating and talking about their roles here instead.

GW are hiring an extra hall creating 4-6 times the amount of space than in previous years. They will be utilising this extra space to accommodate a bigger Sales area to attempt to solve the issues of previous years with queues and time. There will be more payment desks, along with lots of Cash Only tills and more staff manning the section.

Apparently GW decide the ticket price and offer on a event by event basis. So with the increase in size of the event and other factors have taken the decision to keep the ticket price the same as last year but not offering the GD model as part of this.

So that's all I have for now, and I'm sure you guys will have plenty to say on this information. As I said though, some good news and some bad.

Will endeavour to update as more information becomes available.

Apparently GW decide the ticket price and offer on a event by event basis. So with the increase in size of the event and other factors have taken the decision to keep the ticket price the same as last year but not offering the GD model as part of this.

"We can charge whatever we want - $1000 a day, $10000 a day - and people will pay it!" - Donald Generro, Jurassic Park.

Thanks for posting this, was hoping to hear more from you after the Daemon Engine rumor turned out spot on

In the US, when GamesDay was still in Baltimore (until last year), they had already separated the ticket price from the GD model price. I guess that wasn't true in the UK.

It was a blast, I wish they hadn't moved it to Chicago... where it competes with Adepticon, which is where I'm headed this year!

I don't want to pay $75 to stand in line for Forgeworld again...

Of course you could spend hundreds of dollars and hours preparing an armies on parade display and hopefully get free admission, either way GW gets money.

if this turns out to be true, then i wont hesitate in my decision this year, I will NOT be going, last year was abysmal, I had a seminar ticket, but missed that because of the queues at the sales pen, when i found out that this years model was gonna be in fine cast (though not entirely surprised) I decided I didn't want a miscast piece of resin that I had no use for, and now i don't even get said chunk of resin free with my ticket, are they having a laugh, I suppose at least they're trying to rectify last years horrific retail problem, but that would of been easy enough to do if they just gave FW their tills back. Oh, and look now theirs EVEN LESS incentive to get a WD subscription, look kids you can get your ticket for GD (also known officialy as wait in line for 2 hours to by your overpriced miniatures day and then enjoy the rest of your lackluster day as we force feed you the spare (read: 99%) dreadfleet stock-day.)

rant over

So the event basically is that you pay £30 for being able to buy GW products while mute GW designers watch?
I'd rather go to Madame Tussauds or the Lenin Mausoleum

Yep. £30 gets you access to the same miniatures you can buy anyway (with the added bonus of having to wait in line!!!), and no previews of any upcoming releases***.

GW sure knows how to run a trade show... into the ground...




***BL and FW are of course the exception here. They seem to understand "previews" and "generating excitement" and "fostering relationships with the customer base", concepts utterly foreign to GW proper.

Another screw up by GW. Man if it aint one thing with them its another

H.B.M.C. wrote:...GW sure knows how to run a trade show... into the ground...

Small font makes me LoL.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Apparently GW decide the ticket price and offer on a event by event basis. So with the increase in size of the event and other factors have taken the decision to keep the ticket price the same as last year but not offering the GD model as part of this.

"We can charge whatever we want - $1000 a day, $10000 a day - and people will pay it!" - Donald Generro, Jurassic Park.

And we saw what happened to him!

I wonder if the miniature being available on the day has anything to do with avoiding a pre Games Day backlash when people get miscast ones?

Donald Generro from Jurassic Park wrote:We can charge whatever we want - $1000 a day, $10000 a day - and people will pay it!

This is absolutely spot on.

I honestly don’t see the appeal or reason in attending that event.

Well gak.

I was going to buy a ticket for the model, then bin the ticket.

save your money ...anything interesting will be posted on here with in the hr anyway.

So... who cares about games day anymore? Oh great, I can buy crap I don't need in a convention center filled with smelly guys, maybe play a game and risk damaging or losing my army?

Maybe my anti-40k attitude is bleeding over a little bit, but really, I don't see what the purpose of Games Day is, especially if they're putting so much effort into the 'sales' part of it (which I don't understand, considering everything they sell at GD is stuff that they sell in stores. It's nothing unique or new, and if I wanted something, I would buy it online, not at games day). For US games days, I can see why they would need the extra space, because people don't want to pay out the nose for shipping, but you're right around the corner at UKGD

Plus, GD models aren't even metal anymore, which basically means they're almost worthless after they've been painted. They probably don't include it in the ticket price because they would run out of the decent casts after about three minutes, lol

George Spiggott wrote:I wonder if the miniature being available on the day has anything to do with avoiding a pre Games Day backlash when people get miscast ones?

Wow, I hadn't even thought of FineCast miscasts. Geez can you imagine all the staffers that are going to be walking around with kite shields to guard against the flying miscasts??? Srsly tho, I think QC on the GD mini is going to have to be through the roof or there'll be riots and looting!

So the event sounds pretty fun, not having been to one. You get to
1. See the painting competition, or enter it if you're that good.
2. Play in a tourney of Fantasy or 40K should you have an army. (Is the tourney covered in the ticket cost or is it a sur fee?)
3. Have access to ForgeWorld and Black Library to buy stuff direct. (Do they have stuff there, or is it place an order and get it in the mail? Same question for the GD mini I guess.) Having FW around in a US Games Day event has got to be nice if you're saving on that shipping! Almost worth the price of admission (almost).
4. Meet fellow enthusiasts, drink the seminar Kool Aid. (Do they ever show any advance order prototypes?)

Sounds like fun for a two day event. I'm thinking they'd also have demo set ups of like dreadfleet and spacehulk to walk up and play on too. Maybe a little networked set of Xbox stations to play some Space Marine on...

The Decapitator wrote:The above cost DOES NOT include a Games Day Minature (The Blood Angels 2nd Ed Captain model) which will be available to BUY at the event. I believe this is the first time that you won't get a model included in the ticket price, and that you have to buy separately.

Was like this last year, at least in Chicago.

The Decapitator wrote:Apparently GW decide the ticket price and offer on a event by event basis. So with the increase in size of the event and other factors have taken the decision to keep the ticket price the same as last year but not offering the GD model as part of this.

I don't think the two things are actually related.

MightyGodzilla wrote:Srsly tho, I think QC on the GD mini is going to have to be through the roof or there'll be riots and looting!

If they didn't do it for the 25th Marine, what makes you think they will for the GD Marine?

CURNOW wrote:save your money ...anything interesting will be posted on here with in the hr anyway.

Hopefully that includes a recast GD model in metal. Give me a metal one or a re-cast one in resin. I won't touch finecast.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

MightyGodzilla wrote:Srsly tho, I think QC on the GD mini is going to have to be through the roof or there'll be riots and looting!

If they didn't do it for the 25th Marine, what makes you think they will for the GD Marine?

Mainly because the ordeal is face to face. It's just as easy to ignore issues over the phone or long distance, but when things are face to face it's a little harder. If a customer has enough balls to set up and say he's dissatisfied then it's a little harder to brush away.

I'm kinda meh on this. I always go for the trip itself. Sure, I could take an army, but I just prefer to see it as a day out with mates.
Plus I always make my money back
Last year I got two fulcrums out of the building competition, and a mage out of the mage-building competition.
Just about adds up to £40. I'm happy with that
Ah well, hopefully this time the local GW manager won't go on holidy the week before GD and Feth everything up

Aquaterry

Every year GW vindicates my decision not to go to Games Day

Reading stuff on here, its a surprised anyone actually plays GW games now....

protomane0 wrote:if this turns out to be true....

It is.

Yeah ive never seen a point to go to a games day they just seem pointless

People that participates at this games day get to have the privileged of buying the new ThunderHawk first.

It frankly amazes me that so many people still choose to pay the money to go to Games Day. Still, I guess they must enjoy it otherwise they wouldn't keep going.

filbert wrote:It frankly amazes me that so many people still choose to pay the money to go to Games Day. Still, I guess they must enjoy it otherwise they wouldn't keep going.

Yeah, I don't get it either, but ho hum, let them have their erm... fun.

The only reason I used to go to Games day was to look at Golden Demon.

However since UK Games day moved a few years ago, and they stuck the Golden Daemon cabinets in what is essentially an aircraft hangar with barriers about 8 feet from the cabinets, I stopped going.

It used to be downstairs and numbers were limited to view the cabinets, but at least you could get a good view of the cabinets even if you had to queue.

Now however it seems to me like a rugby scrum to get to the front, where you are too far away to appreciate anything and miss half the cabinets as nobody moves in a polite or logical way.

And why do all Games day attendees insist on wearing huge rucksacs and Terry Pratchett hats, which means they block twice as much of the view!

Essentially the last couple of Games Days I have attended I ended up looking at Golden Daemon entries on the big screen, but those tend to be only the ones that make first cut, but I used to like to be able to see all the entries.

And there always used to be interesting display boards, but now everybody has to use Realm of Battle boards these too have got boring.

I would only now go to see the Ammo Bunker table now, but I can see that at their Open Bash so I doubt i will be going either.

It seems crazy that Black Library, Forge World and GW all have seperate events, surely there must be a way to combine these into one big day out like it used to be.

I'll never understand why anyone goes to gamesday to shop.. FW stuff is generally MORE expensive cause they use some wacky exchange rate during live US events

Its not like there are different items for purchase.. what a waste of a ticket and gas to go shop for products you could just buy online before the event