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 John Prins wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

#2 It is very much an expensive hobby, if you look past total dollars spent and examine the value for your dollar. GW games are atrocious value.

It's easily affordable by anyone making a living wage. You can talk about nebulous 'value' all you want, but people pay hundreds of dollars to go to sports venues for a couple hours of entertainment. Same with a music concert. A single night at the bar can go through a hundred bucks pretty easily. People throw their money away on tobacco all the time. I do none of these things because they don't represent 'value' to me either. I do get a lot of enjoyment from building and painting miniatures that I like. Games Workshop is the elephant in the room - it's the easiest to get in a game of 40k or AoS than anything else, and that's how they get away with the increased price compared to the rest of the market. I could buy lots of miniatures from cheaper alternatives like Mantic (and, in fact, I have), but my chances of actually playing those games is pretty low, so their 'value' is far lower, especially when I have to deal with inferior materials (like Mantic's restic, bleurgh).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of instances where GW has priced me out of stuff - especially single plastic HQ models - with their wonky pricing, but with Start Collecting and Battleforce Boxes I've managed to build armies at reasonable prices so that the odd big kit doesn't really bother me, and I'm not making big bucks, I'm well below average household income in my region.

I have been priced out, but even if that was not the case, GW prices would still be rip-offs. Regardless of budget. I can get more minis for far less from other, smaller companies. Sporting events and concerts are innately more expensive to put on (cost of production absolutely matters when discussing the value of goods and services) and are experiences, which are inherently more valuable. GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

They are building factories. I'm sure they can afford some shack in a middle of nowhere to store their stuff. Heck, even bigger companies have massive buildings with spacious rooms of dubious purposes. We have an entire swimming pool with everything which company had abandoned in our basement. We could fill it with thousands of stacked boxes. We are talking about supporting the hobby here, but when it comes to smallest of sacrifices, it is suddenly too expensive.


I do not know what is this pricing problem you are talking about. Do you know how much I earn by your standards? No more than 15,000 euros annually. I live in developing country and my wage is quite huge by comparison. Yet, I still pay same price as you who could get some worthless job at supermarket and within a day earn more than I do! Any cents that you have left over as disposable income will buy a lot more of GW products. I think it is more of a mentality problem. People hate to calculate how much they had spent on GW miniatures, but they do not try to count how much they spent on poisoning themselves via smoking.

Blastaar wrote:
GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

Measuring the value of a sculpture (even a mass-produced one) by the cost of the plastic makes about as much sense as measuring the value of a painting by the cost of the paint and canvas.

 greyknight12 wrote:
Two thoughts:
#1: GW should absolutely close most (if not all) of their brick and mortar stores, I understand in the UK it might make sense but in the US it is not only a waste of money but a direct competition with the FLGS that also sells the product AND in many cases does more to support the hobby through tournaments, etc and is way better advertising...only GW customers ever walk into a GW store, but a local store is going to have everything from die-hard Magic players to board gamers and model airplane builders visiting, walking right by a wall of prime GW advertising. And online sales work just fine for most people.

#2: GW hasn't yet bought onto the idea that lower prices increase sales volume and in turn, profits. They sell their product like a luxury item, which limits it's broader appeal. There is a price point at which a given customer suddenly is more likely to buy your product, and other companies do a fair bit of research to figure out exactly where that is.But even within the current customer base there are examples, like the Caladius Grav-Tank. You could buy them from FW for $138, or from a recaster for $50, and that was low enough that tons of people said "screw it I'll spend $150 on a winning 630 pt bolt-on to my army" and that was with BETA RULES, not even the finalized version. So if the price is low enough, you enable meta-chasing and can profit from changing rules.

I don't know how profitable or good GW stores are. There aren't any here and our local hobby shops are fundamental in building and maintaining communities around all games. It is right, in these shops they have to compete with other games, but Warhammer is a big boy now. Nearly everyone knows it. It has huge player base. It could compete with other games in other games, but would it be more effective. GW stores are form of marketing and marketing is inherently expensive, but important. Nobody can show any numbers here, but if GW stores are losing money, the first thing which happens during recession is trimming of fat. There is high chance that less popular stores would be closed and GW would shift towards more digital form of business.

Blastaar wrote:

I have been priced out, but even if that was not the case, GW prices would still be rip-offs. Regardless of budget. I can get more minis for far less from other, smaller companies. Sporting events and concerts are innately more expensive to put on (cost of production absolutely matters when discussing the value of goods and services) and are experiences, which are inherently more valuable. GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

But I'll definitely 'experience' more wargames having 40k and AoS armies than I would owning cheaper games that nobody in my area plays. Yes, it's a self fulfilling prophecy, but for most GW really is the only game in town. Even in more prolific gaming environments I'll have an easier time finding a game with GW product. I've bought into plenty of other, cheaper games because I liked the miniatures and/or rules. Very few of them did I ever find many opponents outside of conventions. A game I can't play is a bigger waste of money/time than a game with 'overpriced' miniatures.

referring to GW as not expensive and then comparing it to things like sporting venues i think is not the cleanest way to point out the cost. everything has a value, though said value is on some level subjective.

I'm someone who tries to draw as much value per dollar as i possibly can out of anything. when I say GW is expensive, it is compared to anything id otherwise purchase, which is withi modeling, but also cheaper hobbies on the side, including to some gaming. inside it's own industry type, it absorbs that due to it's fanbase size and it's age despite how the larger games have a much bigger scale then most of the market. it has it's reasons, but it still asks money to high for my liking compared to where id spend the cash. when you can and often do squeeze a lot more potential enjoyment out of a lot less than a box of troops, it sours that exchange. for example, for a number of reasons, i do not think riptides or stormsurges are worth the expense. i would sooner use a bandai models to replicate them if i ever bothered, because of the differences stylistically provided along with the cost.

thing is, GW is well at the point where I know they will remain a bit to much for me to like based on how i value things. and when I see a new model coming and can call exactly the price, I know it'll stay that way. they've lined up their situation and for the majority of the base, they have the pricing that is going well for them. doesn't change the fact that I know folks who just won't look at it due to the way they value things, despite liking the setting, citing GW asks to much.

at this point i just wish GW would actually sell more of the models they make into these box sets. like the cultist sculpts they had, and not keep up with things that turn me away modeling wise.

 John Prins wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

#2 It is very much an expensive hobby, if you look past total dollars spent and examine the value for your dollar. GW games are atrocious value.

It's easily affordable by anyone making a living wage. You can talk about nebulous 'value' all you want, but people pay hundreds of dollars to go to sports venues for a couple hours of entertainment. Same with a music concert. A single night at the bar can go through a hundred bucks pretty easily. People throw their money away on tobacco all the time. I do none of these things because they don't represent 'value' to me either. I do get a lot of enjoyment from building and painting miniatures that I like. Games Workshop is the elephant in the room - it's the easiest to get in a game of 40k or AoS than anything else, and that's how they get away with the increased price compared to the rest of the market. I could buy lots of miniatures from cheaper alternatives like Mantic (and, in fact, I have), but my chances of actually playing those games is pretty low, so their 'value' is far lower, especially when I have to deal with inferior materials (like Mantic's restic, bleurgh).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of instances where GW has priced me out of stuff - especially single plastic HQ models - with their wonky pricing, but with Start Collecting and Battleforce Boxes I've managed to build armies at reasonable prices so that the odd big kit doesn't really bother me, and I'm not making big bucks, I'm well below average household income in my region.

This. It is my opinion that miniatures wargaming is actually a pretty inexpensive hobby on the scale of adult hobbies, and is really good value for your dollar.

My Imperial Guard army has a total cost of about $1000. My Sisters army costs more, but it's also Sisters of Battle, and my Space Wolves, Custodes, and Grey Knight armies costs appreciably less. I would average a competitive 40k army to be around $1k, that's like $5000 total for me on 40k and maybe another $300 on DZC and Flames of War.

For comparison with other things that one might do as an adult:
Ski as a hobby: The Ikon season ski pass is $800, the Epic season ski pass is $935. Then there's food and lodging on top of that, and ski resorts have very expensive food. Equipment isn't cheap either, but you can ski on it year after year so it's not so bad.
Go on a vacation: a round-trip airfare to HNL from the mainland costs between $500 and $800. If you can't stay with your family like I, a hotel will cost you like $200 a night. Then you've got to eat, and unless you eat L&L and McDonalds for every meal, that's going to add up a lot too.
Play Video Games: A gaming computer costs between like $500 and $1200. A big-name video game cost like $40-$60 up front, with more down the line as DLC's.
Drink: My friend spent an average of $50 a week being lonely at the bar. In the same vein as coffee, by the time you've spent $50 at a bar, are you really enjoying it any more just to pee it out in an hour? And I wonder why I avoid the bars.
Eat out: The average price of a starbucks coffee is $2.75. Lunch at a restaurant is like ~$10-$15. If you drink a coffee every morning [which you will proceed to pee back out in an hour], you could buy a box of miniatures every month. If you eat lunch out regularly [multiple times a week], you could buy a box of miniatures every week. I probably can't build and paint a box a week; I don't finish a box a month.

And miniatures will last you for years. I've been playing for 9 years now, and I know people who've been playing since RT days. Most of the costs above won't cover that activity for one year, much less the 9 I've got out of my IG army.



Basically, if you can afford to have a hobby at all as an adult, you can probably afford to play miniatures wargames. On the other hand, I agree the prices are too high, because it's not really adults who need to be able to afford the hobby IMO, it's high school and younger kids. If we want the hobby to survive, we need to have an influx of young people into the hobby, and the cost of a toy that is much harder to play with than LEGOs and doesn't have the instant gratification of a video game is definitely harder to stomach for people who don't get paid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blastaar wrote:


I have been priced out, but even if that was not the case, GW prices would still be rip-offs. Regardless of budget. I can get more minis for far less from other, smaller companies. Sporting events and concerts are innately more expensive to put on (cost of production absolutely matters when discussing the value of goods and services) and are experiences, which are inherently more valuable. GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

If you play video games, you're paying $60 for literally nothing. By that metric, getting literally anything physical is a good deal!

The cost of a miniature is in the development cost, the staffing for the factory and company, the dies, the floor space, machines, and operating costs of the factory, paying the "tail", the operating of stores, the staffing of stores, shipping product to stores, expanding the company, and absorbing the cost of products that aren't sold or don't sell as well.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

#2 It is very much an expensive hobby, if you look past total dollars spent and examine the value for your dollar. GW games are atrocious value.

It's easily affordable by anyone making a living wage. You can talk about nebulous 'value' all you want, but people pay hundreds of dollars to go to sports venues for a couple hours of entertainment. Same with a music concert. A single night at the bar can go through a hundred bucks pretty easily. People throw their money away on tobacco all the time. I do none of these things because they don't represent 'value' to me either. I do get a lot of enjoyment from building and painting miniatures that I like. Games Workshop is the elephant in the room - it's the easiest to get in a game of 40k or AoS than anything else, and that's how they get away with the increased price compared to the rest of the market. I could buy lots of miniatures from cheaper alternatives like Mantic (and, in fact, I have), but my chances of actually playing those games is pretty low, so their 'value' is far lower, especially when I have to deal with inferior materials (like Mantic's restic, bleurgh).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of instances where GW has priced me out of stuff - especially single plastic HQ models - with their wonky pricing, but with Start Collecting and Battleforce Boxes I've managed to build armies at reasonable prices so that the odd big kit doesn't really bother me, and I'm not making big bucks, I'm well below average household income in my region.

This. It is my opinion that miniatures wargaming is actually a pretty inexpensive hobby on the scale of adult hobbies, and is really good value for your dollar.

My Imperial Guard army has a total cost of about $1000. My Sisters army costs more, but it's also Sisters of Battle, and my Space Wolves, Custodes, and Grey Knight armies costs appreciably less. I would average a competitive 40k army to be around $1k, that's like $5000 total for me on 40k and maybe another $300 on DZC and Flames of War.

For comparison with other things that one might do as an adult:
Ski as a hobby: The Ikon season ski pass is $800, the Epic season ski pass is $935. Then there's food and lodging on top of that, and ski resorts have very expensive food. Equipment isn't cheap either, but you can ski on it year after year so it's not so bad.
Go on a vacation: a round-trip airfare to HNL from the mainland costs between $500 and $800. If you can't stay with your family like I, a hotel will cost you like $200 a night. Then you've got to eat, and unless you eat L&L and McDonalds for every meal, that's going to add up a lot too.
Play Video Games: A gaming computer costs between like $500 and $1200. A big-name video game cost like $40-$60 up front, with more down the line as DLC's.
Drink: My friend spent an average of $50 a week being lonely at the bar. In the same vein as coffee, by the time you've spent $50 at a bar, are you really enjoying it any more just to pee it out in an hour? And I wonder why I avoid the bars.
Eat out: The average price of a starbucks coffee is $2.75. Lunch at a restaurant is like ~$10-$15. If you drink a coffee every morning [which you will proceed to pee back out in an hour], you could buy a box of miniatures every month. If you eat lunch out regularly [multiple times a week], you could buy a box of miniatures every week. I probably can't build and paint a box a week; I don't finish a box a month.

And miniatures will last you for years. I've been playing for 9 years now, and I know people who've been playing since RT days. Most of the costs above won't cover that activity for one year, much less the 9 I've got out of my IG army.



Basically, if you can afford to have a hobby at all as an adult, you can probably afford to play miniatures wargames. On the other hand, I agree the prices are too high, because it's not really adults who need to be able to afford the hobby IMO, it's high school and younger kids. If we want the hobby to survive, we need to have an influx of young people into the hobby, and the cost of a toy that is much harder to play with than LEGOs and doesn't have the instant gratification of a video game is definitely harder to stomach for people who don't get paid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blastaar wrote:


I have been priced out, but even if that was not the case, GW prices would still be rip-offs. Regardless of budget. I can get more minis for far less from other, smaller companies. Sporting events and concerts are innately more expensive to put on (cost of production absolutely matters when discussing the value of goods and services) and are experiences, which are inherently more valuable. GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

If you play video games, you're paying $60 for literally nothing. By that metric, getting literally anything physical is a good deal!

The cost of a miniature is in the development cost, the staffing for the factory and company, the dies, the floor space, machines, and operating costs of the factory, paying the "tail", the operating of stores, the staffing of stores, shipping product to stores, expanding the company, and absorbing the cost of products that aren't sold or don't sell as well.

This x1000.

Very well put - have an exalt!

 Asmodai wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

Measuring the value of a sculpture (even a mass-produced one) by the cost of the plastic makes about as much sense as measuring the value of a painting by the cost of the paint and canvas.

That painting is unique, made by hand over many hours. A box of space marines is one of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of boxes, shot out of a mold that was cut to match a design made on a computer. The fact that our minis are mass-produced is the point. Mass-production was invented to be cheap. The cost of design, production, logistics, and staff is widely distributed across the many years and many, many sprues made by that single mold.

Blastaar wrote:

 Asmodai wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

Measuring the value of a sculpture (even a mass-produced one) by the cost of the plastic makes about as much sense as measuring the value of a painting by the cost of the paint and canvas.

That painting is unique, made by hand over many hours. A box of space marines is one of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of boxes, shot out of a mold that was cut to match a design made on a computer. The fact that our minis are mass-produced is the point. Mass-production was invented to be cheap. The cost of design, production, logistics, and staff is widely distributed across the many years and many, many sprues made by that single mold.

Whilst GW could lower their prices and still profit, its not as if they are buying islands at head office.

Plus don't forget GW doesn't take out loans - every step of their expansion has been through profits generated by the company and re-invested into the company. This likely puts their costs up because instead of taking out a low repayment loan over 20 years that trickles along; they have to build up their own capital and pay out in one go (or at least in payment stages themselves). Of course the benefit for them is that the economy having a downturn doesn't hurt them as much as other firms since GW doesn't have any loans to keep paying off; the flipside is expansion is somewhat slower than some other major highstreet brands have done over the years. Of course many of those brands are now having to abandon shops and are suffering quite a bit as sales/profits might be down but they still have all the huge loans they took out to repay.


Also you're forgetting that logistics, staff, shop, rent, tax etc... are all ongoing costs not one-off. They are shared by every product; but GW isn't 5 guys in a basement. It's not even 20 guys in a small out of town single building warehouse factory.

Mass production makes things cheaper, up to a point. It's not a simple "everything gets cheaper now". Heck for GW they've some risks with characters and big models like kinghts when making them in injection mould plastic because of the super high cost of the moulds for models that are high price and/or limited in potential sales per customer (characters might sell once per customer of that army).

You can get some rough idea of how much profit GW makes on plastic kits by looking at things like Conquest.
Ordinarily GW sell Chaos Spawn for £25. In Conquest they're £7.99, with hachette taking a cut, and GW still making a presumably healthy profit.
Now, in that case GW is saving on store overheads, and possibly some distribution costs, but still...

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

#2 It is very much an expensive hobby, if you look past total dollars spent and examine the value for your dollar. GW games are atrocious value.

It's easily affordable by anyone making a living wage. You can talk about nebulous 'value' all you want, but people pay hundreds of dollars to go to sports venues for a couple hours of entertainment. Same with a music concert. A single night at the bar can go through a hundred bucks pretty easily. People throw their money away on tobacco all the time. I do none of these things because they don't represent 'value' to me either. I do get a lot of enjoyment from building and painting miniatures that I like. Games Workshop is the elephant in the room - it's the easiest to get in a game of 40k or AoS than anything else, and that's how they get away with the increased price compared to the rest of the market. I could buy lots of miniatures from cheaper alternatives like Mantic (and, in fact, I have), but my chances of actually playing those games is pretty low, so their 'value' is far lower, especially when I have to deal with inferior materials (like Mantic's restic, bleurgh).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of instances where GW has priced me out of stuff - especially single plastic HQ models - with their wonky pricing, but with Start Collecting and Battleforce Boxes I've managed to build armies at reasonable prices so that the odd big kit doesn't really bother me, and I'm not making big bucks, I'm well below average household income in my region.

This. It is my opinion that miniatures wargaming is actually a pretty inexpensive hobby on the scale of adult hobbies, and is really good value for your dollar.

My Imperial Guard army has a total cost of about $1000. My Sisters army costs more, but it's also Sisters of Battle, and my Space Wolves, Custodes, and Grey Knight armies costs appreciably less. I would average a competitive 40k army to be around $1k, that's like $5000 total for me on 40k and maybe another $300 on DZC and Flames of War.

For comparison with other things that one might do as an adult:
Ski as a hobby: The Ikon season ski pass is $800, the Epic season ski pass is $935. Then there's food and lodging on top of that, and ski resorts have very expensive food. Equipment isn't cheap either, but you can ski on it year after year so it's not so bad.
Go on a vacation: a round-trip airfare to HNL from the mainland costs between $500 and $800. If you can't stay with your family like I, a hotel will cost you like $200 a night. Then you've got to eat, and unless you eat L&L and McDonalds for every meal, that's going to add up a lot too.
Play Video Games: A gaming computer costs between like $500 and $1200. A big-name video game cost like $40-$60 up front, with more down the line as DLC's.
Drink: My friend spent an average of $50 a week being lonely at the bar. In the same vein as coffee, by the time you've spent $50 at a bar, are you really enjoying it any more just to pee it out in an hour? And I wonder why I avoid the bars.
Eat out: The average price of a starbucks coffee is $2.75. Lunch at a restaurant is like ~$10-$15. If you drink a coffee every morning [which you will proceed to pee back out in an hour], you could buy a box of miniatures every month. If you eat lunch out regularly [multiple times a week], you could buy a box of miniatures every week. I probably can't build and paint a box a week; I don't finish a box a month.

Apples and oranges. Skiing is expensive because the resort can only accommodate so many people at once, and to pay for maintenance, machinery and so forth. Video games cost what they do partly because the software and computers used to make them are also expensive, and partly because they sell at $60. Casting is cheaper by the day, plastic is cheap, design is done by salaried staff using a library of assets to copy/paste as much as sculpt, and that mold will be in service for a very long time.

And miniatures will last you for years. I've been playing for 9 years now, and I know people who've been playing since RT days. Most of the costs above won't cover that activity for one year, much less the 9 I've got out of my IG army.

So do my Magic cards- they even keep some value on the secondary market, too! Although the cost to play Magic is exploding, as well. But I can play Commander for little money, I can play pauper competitively with $20-$30 decks- with far deeper gameplay than a GW game to boot!

Instead of piddling my money away on KT and GW minis, I can play Zone Raiders with whatever minis I fancy, and have a far richer experience.

My books last forever, too. Should novels be $70 a pop because they are physical goods?

I can play PS1 games, GameCube games, watch movies over and over.........

Basically, if you can afford to have a hobby at all as an adult, you can probably afford to play miniatures wargames. On the other hand, I agree the prices are too high, because it's not really adults who need to be able to afford the hobby IMO, it's high school and younger kids. If we want the hobby to survive, we need to have an influx of young people into the hobby, and the cost of a toy that is much harder to play with than LEGOs and doesn't have the instant gratification of a video game is definitely harder to stomach for people who don't get paid.

It isn't just that prices are high, it's that they're roughly twice what they could be while remaining profitable, especially if GW would stop pretending their minis are on the same level as a Bugatti.

A GW box of 10 Tactical Marines is $45. I can get 12 Karist Troopers for MEDGe, for $28. That's 4 3-man squads, 2 full 6-man squads, or anything in between. Yes, their plastics are made in china, but GW's customer base is how large? GW has far more resources than Spiral Arm Studios, yet they sell great kits for much less and have written a superb ruleset. What is GW's excuse?

The biggest issue with GW and their pricing is that their kits are such poor gameplay value for your dollar. I don't mean only points-dollar ratio, or raw power, but what one kit adds to the experience of playing. Which isn't very much, on average. Much of this is GW's shallow rules. But 40k, AOS, Necro, BB, etc. are games aren't they? And the minis game pieces?

If you play video games, you're paying $60 for literally nothing. By that metric, getting literally anything physical is a good deal!

Literally incorrect. A video game is a complex sequence of code that was programmed, and rendered, with audio written and recorded, to provide an experience to the player.

The cost of a miniature is in the development cost, the staffing for the factory and company, the dies, the floor space, machines, and operating costs of the factory, paying the "tail", the operating of stores, the staffing of stores, shipping product to stores, expanding the company, and absorbing the cost of products that aren't sold or don't sell as well.

Yes. And that cost is more than paid back across the many years and many sprues made. Most of the cost is design and making the mold, which is recouped severalfold the weekend the new kit is on sale. Then it remains in production for 5, 10, or more years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

 Asmodai wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
GW sells a few pennies' worth of plastic for $50+. You are overpaying. You may not mind that, but you are overpaying.

Measuring the value of a sculpture (even a mass-produced one) by the cost of the plastic makes about as much sense as measuring the value of a painting by the cost of the paint and canvas.

That painting is unique, made by hand over many hours. A box of space marines is one of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of boxes, shot out of a mold that was cut to match a design made on a computer. The fact that our minis are mass-produced is the point. Mass-production was invented to be cheap. The cost of design, production, logistics, and staff is widely distributed across the many years and many, many sprues made by that single mold.

Whilst GW could lower their prices and still profit, its not as if they are buying islands at head office.

Plus don't forget GW doesn't take out loans - every step of their expansion has been through profits generated by the company and re-invested into the company. This likely puts their costs up because instead of taking out a low repayment loan over 20 years that trickles along; they have to build up their own capital and pay out in one go (or at least in payment stages themselves). Of course the benefit for them is that the economy having a downturn doesn't hurt them as much as other firms since GW doesn't have any loans to keep paying off; the flipside is expansion is somewhat slower than some other major highstreet brands have done over the years. Of course many of those brands are now having to abandon shops and are suffering quite a bit as sales/profits might be down but they still have all the huge loans they took out to repay.


Also you're forgetting that logistics, staff, shop, rent, tax etc... are all ongoing costs not one-off. They are shared by every product; but GW isn't 5 guys in a basement. It's not even 20 guys in a small out of town single building warehouse factory.

Mass production makes things cheaper, up to a point. It's not a simple "everything gets cheaper now". Heck for GW they've some risks with characters and big models like kinghts when making them in injection mould plastic because of the super high cost of the moulds for models that are high price and/or limited in potential sales per customer (characters might sell once per customer of that army).

Right, GW doesn't take out loans because they make so much money that they can pay for everything, including a new factory, out of pocket.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


If you play video games, you're paying $60 for literally nothing. By that metric, getting literally anything physical is a good deal!

The cost of a miniature is in the development cost, the staffing for the factory and company, the dies, the floor space, machines, and operating costs of the factory, paying the "tail", the operating of stores, the staffing of stores, shipping product to stores, expanding the company, and absorbing the cost of products that aren't sold or don't sell as well.

The issue i have with comparing this stuff to "adult" hobbies like vacations or skiiing is directly because GW is trying to also compete with the Games market, thus i feel the better comparison is to look at it in light of movies, various gaming things, and so on. long term value, if you like what you get the system doesn't die off somehow (speaking more of miniatures there, not just GW), it does add up, ill grant you that. but it's also more open to the whims of the local area, part of why video games get so much attention due to being usable much more often. some times you get a bustling wargame area, other times it falls off fast and your left holding the remnants.

but on video games in specific, I feel i need to point out that there's a lot in gaming at the "free" to 30 dollar range. some folks can mine a games for hundreds of hours of enjoyable content out whenever they wish for it, folk like me included. the intro to gaming isn't always even 500 dollars anymore, often dipping lower and lower dependent on whether or not the person is mobile gaming or otherwise as an absorbed cost. that said, the cost of a game is also development, staffing and so on as you've listed, albeit not in exactly the same way, and it is something prospective players GW wants to court likely compare to.

but at least miniatures are better than a fair few other options. personally id definitely get some over a comic or a movie ticket, given the choice.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
You can get some rough idea of how much profit GW makes on plastic kits by looking at things like Conquest.
Ordinarily GW sell Chaos Spawn for £25. In Conquest they're £7.99, with hachette taking a cut, and GW still making a presumably healthy profit.
Now, in that case GW is saving on store overheads, and possibly some distribution costs, but still...

This. Now, perhaps Conquest is a loss leader. But what about the Christmas Red Gobbo? The yearly White Dwarf mini? The anniversary/store birthday minis? If the molds, design, distribution, etc. are as expensive as people claim, how does GW make a profit on minis that they sell in small quantities for such a brief period of time?

Blastaar wrote:

If you play video games, you're paying $60 for literally nothing. By that metric, getting literally anything physical is a good deal!

Literally incorrect. A video game is a complex sequence of code that was programmed, and rendered, with audio written and recorded, to provide an experience to the player.

The cost of a miniature is in the development cost, the staffing for the factory and company, the dies, the floor space, machines, and operating costs of the factory, paying the "tail", the operating of stores, the staffing of stores, shipping product to stores, expanding the company, and absorbing the cost of products that aren't sold or don't sell as well.

Yes. And that cost is more than paid back across the many years and many sprues made. Most of the cost is design nd making the mold, which is recouped severalfold the weekend the new kit is on sale. Then it remains in production for 5, 10, or more years.

And the development cost of a video game isn't paid made across the years it's sold for in exactly the same manner?

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Blastaar wrote:

If you play video games, you're paying $60 for literally nothing. By that metric, getting literally anything physical is a good deal!

Literally incorrect. A video game is a complex sequence of code that was programmed, and rendered, with audio written and recorded, to provide an experience to the player.

The cost of a miniature is in the development cost, the staffing for the factory and company, the dies, the floor space, machines, and operating costs of the factory, paying the "tail", the operating of stores, the staffing of stores, shipping product to stores, expanding the company, and absorbing the cost of products that aren't sold or don't sell as well.

Yes. And that cost is more than paid back across the many years and many sprues made. Most of the cost is design nd making the mold, which is recouped severalfold the weekend the new kit is on sale. Then it remains in production for 5, 10, or more years.

And the development cost of a video game isn't paid made across the years it's sold for in exactly the same manner?

Of course it is. The big difference? A video game is a more-or-less complete experience, (yes yes, EA dllc blah blah blah) a box of Boyz is not. Cuphead, on the computer I already owned out of necessity for modern life, cost me around thirty bucks. A full game.

Wyrd can get away with selling 3-5 minis for ~$30 because you only ever need to buy one of those boxes. A full crew is much cheaper than a 1500 point 40k army. And using those minis is much more interesting than move-roll to hit-roll to wound- roll saves.

Why it is not? I had paid around 150 euros for my Warmachine 25 point army. It is complete list which is completely playable without any further additions for many years. I also have some variety with two heroes and slightly different army composition for those heroes. Same is and for Warhammer. Not everyone plays with 2000 point lists. Nor collecting everything is the point of this hobby. It is like needing to collect every video game for a sake of completeness. Playing Mtg competitively costs several hundred euros + all the stuff you have to buy in general. That is also only if you play one deck and are conservative with your money. Person who plays Mtg on competitive level had confessed to me that over 2 years he had spent 2500 euros on a game! As for more casual play, each play of draft costs you money. You also will buy boosters, decks, card binders. That also costs a lot of money. MtG is not cheap and it has potential in getting to ridiculous heights of tens of thousands of dollars. Playing Commander is not cheap. For a starter deck I paid 35 euros and that price stung.

https://mtgdecks.net/Standard/decklists

Apples to oranges. You are comparing Bugatti models who costs hundreds of euros and only provide a single kit. Model lines are not directly comparable to miniatures. They have more parts, detail by comparison, but they also a lot bigger models and they look worse when finished. You have to purchase really expensive kits for them to look any good. This is where you could complain that Forge World needs to bring its prices to actually reasonable level. We all know that they use highly detailed resin. That they are a brand and thus you expect things from them, but still, a lot of their models are ridiculously priced. They got partial price cut recently, but that is far from enough.

Ultimately the value of GW games is, like anything else, in the eye of the beholder. you eaither play it, and buy in, or you don't. I think the people who'd spend 50-100 bucks on a single MTG card are nuts, but apparently some people are willing to do so.

BrianDavion wrote:
Ultimately the value of GW games is, like anything else, in the eye of the beholder. you eaither play it, and buy in, or you don't. I think the people who'd spend 50-100 bucks on a single MTG card are nuts, but apparently some people are willing to do so.

Very true. I try to assess my entertainment expenses on a dollar per hour basis. Miniature wargaming compares pretty well to a lot of hobbies or pastimes out there on that basis. Games Workshop being more expensive doesn't shift the calculation that much. I balk at the $45 CAD character models when I could convert a $7 CAD model to work just fine, but that 7 dollar model still takes me a couple hours to build and paint, and the more games I play with it, the better MY tail end on the investment in the hobby. A $2 model I never game with was definitely cheaper, but I'll get far less enjoyment from it in the long term. A lot of the cheaper alternatives aren't real alternatives, at least on the wargaming side. If I just wanted to paint cool minis, I could very well say bye-bye to Games Workshop. But I do rather enjoy actually playing games, and the price of admission isn't breaking my back, though it does color my choices (you won't see 3 Riptides in my Tau army, for example).

Blastaar wrote:


It isn't just that prices are high, it's that they're roughly twice what they could be while remaining profitable, especially if GW would stop pretending their minis are on the same level as a Bugatti.

A GW box of 10 Tactical Marines is $45. I can get 12 Karist Troopers for MEDGe, for $28. That's 4 3-man squads, 2 full 6-man squads, or anything in between. Yes, their plastics are made in china, but GW's customer base is how large? GW has far more resources than Spiral Arm Studios, yet they sell great kits for much less and have written a superb ruleset. What is GW's excuse?

It's not twice as much. Their profit margin is about 25% (and it was only about 12% 4 years ago). That's of course incredibly healthy, but not at the point where they could halve the costs of their sets.

I don't know what it's like in the US but here in the UK I can get 20% off online, so it's less $45 and more $36. Looking at the sprues for them them and the maelstromes edge models, and then taking into the fact that they are made in the UK, I'd rather pay the extra $8

I do think some things are too much (i.e. new character models) but most of the squads seem a fair price to me. Biggest annoyance by far though is the cost of rules that are constantly errated and updated, if you collected a specific space marine chapter, in the last 2.5 years you would have had to buy (in order to stay up todate) Imperium Index 1, the first 8th ed Codex Space Marines, the second 8th Codex Space Marines, and the book for your individual chapter. That's an awful lot on rules.

 Shooter wrote:

Blastaar wrote:


It isn't just that prices are high, it's that they're roughly twice what they could be while remaining profitable, especially if GW would stop pretending their minis are on the same level as a Bugatti.

A GW box of 10 Tactical Marines is $45. I can get 12 Karist Troopers for MEDGe, for $28. That's 4 3-man squads, 2 full 6-man squads, or anything in between. Yes, their plastics are made in china, but GW's customer base is how large? GW has far more resources than Spiral Arm Studios, yet they sell great kits for much less and have written a superb ruleset. What is GW's excuse?

It's not twice as much. Their profit margin is about 25% (and it was only about 12% 4 years ago). That's of course incredibly healthy, but not at the point where they could halve the costs of their sets.

I don't know what it's like in the US but here in the UK I can get 20% off online, so it's less $45 and more $36. Looking at the sprues for them them and the maelstromes edge models, and then taking into the fact that they are made in the UK, I'd rather pay the extra $8

I do think some things are too much (i.e. new character models) but most of the squads seem a fair price to me. Biggest annoyance by far though is the cost of rules that are constantly errated and updated, if you collected a specific space marine chapter, in the last 2.5 years you would have had to buy (in order to stay up todate) Imperium Index 1, the first 8th ed Codex Space Marines, the second 8th Codex Space Marines, and the book for your individual chapter. That's an awful lot on rules.

You missed the Vigilus book and Faith and Fury to get the other rules you might need for your chapter especially if you play IF with centurions and librarians/techmarines/apo/chaplains.

What I find weird about people making the argument that "if [Company X] can sell figures for less than GW and write better rules and come round my house and give me a handy then why don't GW do it?" is why those people don't just go out and buy the other company's stuff instead, rather than incessantly complaining about GW on the internet.

 Nazrak wrote:
What I find weird about people making the argument that "if [Company X] can sell figures for less than GW and write better rules and come round my house and give me a handy then why don't GW do it?" is why those people don't just go out and buy the other company's stuff instead, rather than incessantly complaining about GW on the internet.

What I find weird about people is that they tend to assume that a person doesn't buy minis and rules from [Company X] but only complains about [Company Z] on the internet.

I mean, there's not anything being said in this thread that doesn't get said literally every time the GW pricing question comes up, but one thing that came up in that Big Painting Argument thread that hadn't occurred to me (sorry, can't remember who said it) is that maybe the perception of value ties to how much hobby time you get out of the figures, and time spent on painting can certainly add to that time.

To me, thirty-odd quid (disregarding the sunk cost of paints, brushes etc) on a new box of models will easily keep me amused for like a month of hobby time building and painting them. I could easily spend that on an afternoon out in the pub watching the footy (something I do a lot less now the bulk of my pals have kids), so yeah, it's an extravagance, but it's a pretty small extravagance in the grand scheme of things.

I think the "cost as barrier to entry for new/younger hobbyists" point is a decent one, but I think GW are actually doing pretty well with that these days, with the various levels of starter set, the partworks, and the Start Collecting boxes etc


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blastaar wrote:

 Nazrak wrote:
What I find weird about people making the argument that "if [Company X] can sell figures for less than GW and write better rules and come round my house and give me a handy then why don't GW do it?" is why those people don't just go out and buy the other company's stuff instead, rather than incessantly complaining about GW on the internet.

What I find weird about people is that they tend to assume that a person doesn't buy minis and rules from [Company X] but only complains about [Company Z] on the internet.

i mean, my exact point is "why do the latter bit at all?"

 Nazrak wrote:
What I find weird about people making the argument that "if [Company X] can sell figures for less than GW and write better rules and come round my house and give me a handy then why don't GW do it?" is why those people don't just go out and buy the other company's stuff instead, rather than incessantly complaining about GW on the internet.

I'm not one of those people, but I'm sure there are companies whose figures are cheaper and rules are better - but I like the warhammer universe, I'm not interested in playing War Machine for instance because I have no attachment to it. The only non-GW miniatures game I'm interested in is the star wars one and I've no idea how good the rules are or what cost the minis are, I just want to play it because it's star wars. I don't think there is anything inherently bad about comparing GW with other companies - the issue is whether those criticisms have genuine merit, and often people are so eager to hit out at GW that they make arguments that don't or ignore fundamental differences (quality of minis etc)

 Nazrak wrote:
I mean, there's not anything being said in this thread that doesn't get said literally every time the GW pricing question comes up, but one thing that came up in that Big Painting Argument thread that hadn't occurred to me (sorry, can't remember who said it) is that maybe the perception of value ties to how much hobby time you get out of the figures, and time spent on painting can certainly add to that time.

To me, thirty-odd quid (disregarding the sunk cost of paints, brushes etc) on a new box of models will easily keep me amused for like a month of hobby time building and painting them. I could easily spend that on an afternoon out in the pub watching the footy (something I do a lot less now the bulk of my pals have kids), so yeah, it's an extravagance, but it's a pretty small extravagance in the grand scheme of things.

I think the "cost as barrier to entry for new/younger hobbyists" point is a decent one, but I think GW are actually doing pretty well with that these days, with the various levels of starter set, the partworks, and the Start Collecting boxes etc


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blastaar wrote:

 Nazrak wrote:
What I find weird about people making the argument that "if [Company X] can sell figures for less than GW and write better rules and come round my house and give me a handy then why don't GW do it?" is why those people don't just go out and buy the other company's stuff instead, rather than incessantly complaining about GW on the internet.

What I find weird about people is that they tend to assume that a person doesn't buy minis and rules from [Company X] but only complains about [Company Z] on the internet.

i mean, my exact point is "why do the latter bit at all?"

Because I still care about 40k. I want to play, I want to buy the minis, but there many things I dislike at present. I still want to talk about the game and minis.

 Nazrak wrote:

i mean, my exact point is "why do the latter bit at all?"

Generally those folks would like to buy GW stuff but think the price tag is too steep. If they had no legit interest they'd probably say nothing.

Many people in my hobby store like warhammer universe and consider their miniatures to be really sweet. That is more of an anecdotal evidence, but this is how I feel when I talk about warhammer there. Quite few people use this as an excuse of why they are not playing W40k. They love a lot of stuff about it, but dislike base game. I played one demo for w40k and AoS and I was naturally more drawn to Warmachine. While Warmachine is not cheaper than GW production and has lower quality minis and their models are more hit and miss, factions lacking inspiration and lore, I simply love their gameplay far more. It feels a lot more skewed towards personal skill than dice rolls. It feels more balanced and fair. I think that W40k needs AoS 2.0 treatment and game needs to be remade. It gets pretty bloated up with endless special rules who does not do anything. Every unit has long list of minor buffs which doesn't really make or break them and it leaves me thinking, what is the point?

If we are comparing costs, I got starter pack for one faction from Warmachine. It costs around 32 euros. In order to make this starter pack into minimum playable force of 25 points with an theme army (75 points is equal to 2000 points warhammer game), I'm looking now at the online shop 132,56 + 32 € = 162,56 euros price tag. It is all also with 20% discount which you find with online retailers. It of course depends on what army you are building, some are cheaper, others more expensive. Also, high points game have more costly, bigger and powerful units who are equivalent to Lords of Wars. A single unit like this costs around 100 euros and is worth 33 ish points, so it is very comparable to a price which GW asks for their own Lord of War units. I'm also shocked that there isn't second hand market, one guy have silly ebay business and is hoarding all the offerings and while they are cheaper, it is not much. Half broken, unpainted collection of random models cost from 90 to 200 euros (with shipping).

I play X,Y,Z games and I have strong tendency to play almost every game. My logic is that getting in is quite cheap with starter packs and you won't know what you like or not without actually playing game. Tabletop had completely replaced my gaming as a hobby and I do not see it as an expensive hobby. All those starter packs will keep me busy for many months until I will be done with them. Just assembling a single box takes me an entire evening after work, never mind painting them! I love that you have something to show off when you are done. You have all those cool looking miniatures and know more about various games even if you did not liked playing them.

Blastaar wrote:

Because I still care about 40k. I want to play, I want to buy the minis, but there many things I dislike at present. I still want to talk about the game and minis.

I'd look heavily into eBay/Kijiji/swap meets for warhammer on the cheap(er). Unless you want to chase the new hawtness there are always bargains to be found. An ultrasound cleaner could pay for itself in no time. It's not much extra work, often less given the assembly is generally already done.

I guess the problem I have with people who like the GW designs, background etc, then draw comparisons with others offering cheaper models, is that they seem to be kinda ignoring the fact that *you're also paying for those designs/background etc* – the people creating those things aren't working for free, y'know.

Ultimately, sure, it'd be nice if *everything* was cheaper, but then I think we're getting into a situation where people's underlying beef is with capitalism, and I'm pretty sure this forum is not the place for that discussion.

In the end, you have to decide if what you get out of buying into the hobby is worth it *to you*, and spend your money, or not, accordingly. All the arguing/complaining on forums in the world isn't gonna make GW drop their prices when they're going absolutely gangbusters as a business with the current pricing structure.