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First of all, I would like to say that this thread is not just here to complain about the high prices (As terrible as they are).

I just want to ask those of you that are more business-savvy than myself why they are getting so ludicrously expensive?

I understand that they would cost more per miniature than, say a mini from a box of infantry, because there is a lower markup on smaller molds/less plastic and they tend to have a lot more detail. But why should I be paying 20 quid for one Blood Angels Chaplain when I could get three bikes for the exact same price?

I'm just really curious because I can only see it driving people toward competitors.

There's no legitimate reason that I can think of. Going off of Australian prices, towards the start of 2015 we got a plastic Necron Overlord for $29, and he's quite a beefy model too. Latter stage of the year, we got a similarly sized Blood Angels Chaplain with a Jump Pack for $57. I noticed the price hike really take off when Age of Sigmar came out, specifically the individual Stormcast Eternal characters who ranged from $55 to $70.

I will say that the new characters do seem to be much nicer looking and detailed which is probably the justification GW has for it. It could also be that their financials are getting worse (just a guess, I don't actually know) and they feel the need to raise the prices on character models in particular to make up for it.

- Less demand = higher price
- GW decided to do characters in plastic, instead of a proper resin = more expensive for single/small sprues
- yearly price hikes

Not exactly sure why its the case but my thinking is that the older character models where made of metal and resin which is more expensive per model to sculpt, produce, package, stock, etc than your bulk produced plastic kits. Problem is GW has a phobia of lowering prices despite costs going down (see failcast being a cheaper material cost than metal and yet the price went up) so individual character kits can't lower prices or else it will cut the "value" of GW's product (I assume that's their BS logic they use to justify charging an arm and a leg for a single model). New releases have price creep to pad that bottom line so that's why a new plastic character cost like $30+ USD.

Why charge £25 for a 1 man tactical squad when they can charge 2/3 price for 1/10 of the material? And people will still buy them because they are characters, attractive detailed models that are needed to field CADs.

Actually an earlier post raises a good point, a plastic mold is very expensive to make initially but the costs of mass producing it are low; this isn't a problem for generic characters that every player for an army will get, but it doesn't work out for the more specialist types that you don't see very often. We only recently started getting plastic character clampacks in abundance which were priced somewhat higher than the finecast/metal ones, but now I'm guessing they've taken the veil off and hit us full force with the prices. Could very well be what they feel is necessary for return-on-investment.

It seems to me that GW used to charge more for characters because they were metal, a more expensive material.

Then they became finecast, a cheaper material but more expensive for some reason.

Then plastic, which has more expensive up front costs but is the cheapest material itself, and decided to make it even more expensive.

Then there was a single plastic character that used 2 sprues, not one, so he had to be much more expensive. Then his price seemed to become the standard even though the other models are not using two sprues.

In buissness there is this term called a monopoly (Its not just a board game) where a company controls almost 100% of a products production or a resources distribution which leads to something called artificial inflation, which involves a company deliberatly jacking up the prices and restricting its dustribution solely in the name of profit, there are two great examples of this, the HIV treatment pill that had a recent problems where the producer whom owned the rights to the pill jacked the price from a reasonable 15$ or so to over 200$, no particular reason, just profit. Same with the worthless and abundant diamond, a resource almost solely owned and distributed by 1 company that can charge around 1000$ for a gem worth less than 5$. Same with diamonds, same with plastic warhammer, GW has the sole rights to the GW products, and due to no one else legally able to sell them they control the resource, they have the monopoly. Don't even think for a second that what the product is made of changes anything, metal or not, mass production of plastic or metal would cost less than 1$ PER BOX of figurines including the box itself, alao the box itself that surrounds the plastic is probably worth more than the figurines due to the cost of ink and whatnot. Add maybe 5$ for manpower and shipping and BAM you have something worth less than 6$ sold for 70$, lol maybe even 150 if you bought a bloodthirster.

That all being said no need to complain, the shirt your wearing, phone your using and almost any product you have is worth 5% of its retail price its called captialism its just something thats part of our culture and society so no need to worry or complain.

Overall, there's a huge inconsistency in GW's pricing (other that it continually going up!).

If we take the SM Tac Squad as a baseline (a common unit that plenty of people will buy - sometimes more than one of - and of decently quality), it's £25 for 10 men plus options. So £2.50 per man.

Currently the 'standard' SM Captain is £18. So that's over 700% of the price of a single Tac marine. I totally accept that most SM players will buy at least one Tac unit, probably more, whereas not all will necessarily buy a captain (and there are currently 8 varieties of captain on the GW website), so they're selling fewer units. This means it's harder to cover the overheads (initial sculpt, making molds, and general overheads of production and distribution) so the unit price must go up. However, 700+% is not right. Double it, fine. Treble it and charge £7.50, I could accept. But 7 times the price of a standard marine. That's just nuts! You don't even get many options - no weapon options and two heads. That's it!

It's the same for Eldar - 3 jetbikes are £25 (with gun options), so a little over £8 each. One farseer skyrunner is £20 - 2.5 times as much and fewer options.

Even if we accept that character models are more detailed, lower volume and thus are massively more expensive, there are still inconsistencies. I've just searched the GW website for 'chaplain'. There are 7 single models listed, 2 @ £9.50, 2 @ £11, 1 @ £13, 1 @ £18 and 1 @ £20. So GW, explain to me how the "BA Chaplain with Jump Pack" @ £20 is worth twice as much to me as a "Chaplain with Jump Pack" @ £11!! And the terminator one, which is presumably bigger, is £13

We all know 40k is all about roll dice, and sometimes about rolling dice to decide how many dice to roll - maybe that's how GW do their pricing...

If I was running a business, I'd want some kind of formula for setting prices. So at the very least, all single model characters would be the same price. Every box of ten infantry (of 'standard' size) would be the same price. A box of 5 marines (I'm looking at you Sternguard) wouldn't cost more than a box of 10 (Tacs). And since when were Sternguards £30? I was expecting £28. Is this another under the radar rise, or have I just mis-remembered the price?

I'm not particularly happy with the prices overall, but that's because I'm pretty tight, but if they're going to be expensive, at least be consistent with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reavas wrote:
In buissness there is this term called a monopoly (Its not just a board game) where a company controls almost 100% of a products production or a resources distribution which leads to something called artificial inflation, which involves a company deliberatly jacking up the prices and restricting its dustribution solely in the name of profit, there are two great examples of this, the HIV treatment pill that had a recent problems where the producer whom owned the rights to the pill jacked the price from a reasonable 15$ or so to over 200$, no particular reason, just profit. Same with the worthless and abundant diamond, a resource almost solely owned and distributed by 1 company that can charge around 1000$ for a gem worth less than 5$. Same with diamonds, same with plastic warhammer, GW has the sole rights to the GW products, and due to no one else legally able to sell them they control the resource, they have the monopoly. Don't even think for a second that what the product is made of changes anything, metal or not, mass production of plastic or metal would cost less than 1$ PER BOX of figurines including the box itself, alao the box itself that surrounds the plastic is probably worth more than the figurines due to the cost of ink and whatnot. Add maybe 5$ for manpower and shipping and BAM you have something worth less than 6$ sold for 70$, lol maybe even 150 if you bought a bloodthirster.

That all being said no need to complain, the shirt your wearing, phone your using and almost any product you have is worth 5% of its retail price its called captialism its just something thats part of our culture and society so no need to worry or complain.

This explains high prices, but not the random prices. Taking just the monopoly/capitalism argument, if a SM Captain is £18, than a box of 10 marines would be £180, not £25.

So what you're saying does explain the overall high prices, but it doesn't explain the OP's question about why one Chaplain costs the same as 3 bikes.

Value isn't just based off materials, perceived worth is much more important, despite costing less or the same its reasonable to assume we would buy a captain for more than troops, kinda like sticking a "delux edition" sticker on damn near anything "Buy our new delux sponge, because... ... its delux!"

Also something to note, try and picture all models costing the same, the plastic is worthless despite how much you use, its shipping and manpower, that being said bigger models that take up more space will cost more to ship so there is that. But the rest of it is kind of arbitrary, prices are random as can be I assume its just how much they think they can sell the things for is what drives them, but its just a guess.

GW prices are based on expected sales + insanity tax.

Not making enough revenue. The only good deals are the start collecting boxes and even then that's not for every army.

Ok, this is actually easy to explain and makes sense from a business perspective:

Take projected sales by need for the product and price for maximum profitability.

So you have 4 "sets" we can look at to show this in evidence:

Set 1; that "baseline" tactical squad: most players only need/want 3-4 boxes with a few going for 6. This set is $35 or $40 usd currently(and a good kit with all the specials and some other awesome bits)

Set 2; guardsmen( and other high-model count armies): while many plauers can get away with just a few squads the platoons require multiple sets per choice and charging the same as tactical boxes would cause quite a fuss amongst the customer base(a platoon based guard army costing the same as a marine army in a 2-slots vs 4 slots issue). These kits are $29.

Set 3; generic hq sets: usually have more detail and are much more expensive per model, but the average player isn't going to buy more than maybe 2 of them.

Set 4; special characters: every player is going to buy troops, every player is going to buy at least an hq. Not every player is going to buy a special character; and even they are likely to only buy 1. This is why these single models can cost as much as a 10-man squad.

GW prices have nothing to do with manufacturing costs, they charge you kind of based on points.

Nothing about a bloodthirster requires them to charge you £70 it costs them pennies to make the sprue they could sell at £30 and still be making a big profit per sale.

Now points are going out the window they'll charge based on relative power.

hobojebus wrote:
GW prices have nothing to do with manufacturing costs, they charge you kind of based on points.

Nothing about a bloodthirster requires them to charge you £70 it costs them pennies to make the sprue they could sell at £30 and still be making a big profit per sale.

Now points are going out the window they'll charge based on relative power.

Problem with GW's business model is that their retail chain is a huge expense that doesn't have a big return on investment when compared to the returns they get from trade accounts (FLGS and Online sellers) and the webstore. The cost of the sprue is tiny compared to the cost of their retail locations. Points honestly though have little to do with the price of a model as Orks for example have the Mek Gun and Mek character with is more than a dollar a point (US) while the MegaNobz kit (released at the same time) is roughly fifty cents a point. Killa Kanz (older kit) cost even less and have more points. Orkanaut kit compared to a Stompa is an even more extreme example of the difference in points to dollars.

Material-wise, the size of the sprue that a clam-pack HQ model comes on is probably 1/8 the size of a vehicle sprue.
If they can sell a 2-sprue vehicle for less than £40, that HQ would be 1/16 of £40.
Or not.

And, being able to make 8 at a time (split the sprues up first), I expect would be easy to do.

hobojebus wrote:
Now points are going out the window they'll charge based on relative power.

Are you roleplaying as a flagellant from the cult of AoS on dakka at the moment?

All your posts are about the inevitable AoS-ification of 40k and it is pretty ridiculous atm. Oh well it is a bit entertaining.

Hobbies are expensive. They are not a necessity like food.

This is ultimate capitalism. The prices are based on what the market will bare. If people pay the price in droves, the price will climb, because the bean counters figure that maybe the price is too low. As people get more ingrained the the hobby, they spend more regardless of actual cost.

Because this hobby has more than one target group, the price can climb because there are multiple reasons to own the more expensive models. They look cool, they play a vital role in the game, they look cool, etc.

Believe it or not, this hobby isn't that pricey. Try flying (crashing) RC Helicopters. It's all relative. The bottom line is that this should be for people that have disposable income. If you aren't eating or paying your rent/mortgage to fund your hobby, you have a serious problem.

It's cuz GW knows they can't just do yearly price hikes, so they're inching the price up with each new release.

Look at the clampacks in order of release and you'll notice that, with very little exceptions (but there are exceptions) they've slowly risen by a buck or two on each release regardless of what kind of model it was.

Most people claim it's because "the model is new" but I find it hard to believe that GW's sculptors are charging incrementally more for each sculpt on a nearly week-by-week basis, and even moreso since they've started releasing previously released characters at higher pricepoints. There's no way the sculptors could be charging GW extra for a character they already sculpted.

I am not sure myself why they are so. Companies do tend to charge slightly more per model for characters - Warmahordes Deneghara costs £7 and the Coven of Garlghast cost £11 for all four models - but only GW seem to put such a high price on their own kits.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Material-wise, the size of the sprue that a clam-pack HQ model comes on is probably 1/8 the size of a vehicle sprue.
If they can sell a 2-sprue vehicle for less than £40, that HQ would be 1/16 of £40.
Or not.

And, being able to make 8 at a time (split the sprues up first), I expect would be easy to do.

I believe they make the sprues in such a way that if the HQ is 1/8th the size of a vehicle sprue they make 8 HQs from one mould and break them down for sale.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Material-wise, the size of the sprue that a clam-pack HQ model comes on is probably 1/8 the size of a vehicle sprue.
If they can sell a 2-sprue vehicle for less than £40, that HQ would be 1/16 of £40.
Or not.

And, being able to make 8 at a time (split the sprues up first), I expect would be easy to do.

I believe they make the sprues in such a way that if the HQ is 1/8th the size of a vehicle sprue they make 8 HQs from one mould and break them down for sale.

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case as usually when they have large sprues that can be broken down, there are tabs on the side showing where the break would be (see the space marine sprues). For Clampacks, they don't have these tabs, so they're probably all single-cast molds. I have no explanation why they do this, cuz it's definitely cutting into their bottom line as well since it means each individual character needs a mold set up and they can only cast 1 at a time rather than 8 at once.

I think the newest models are the most expensive.

For example, this Tau Ethereal was first produced in 2001 as a single piece metal figure and cost £2.50 when I bought one in 2004. He now costs £9.50 as a Finecast figure.

http://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/600x620/99800113015_TauEtherealNEW01.jpg

This AdMech Dominus is a plastic multi-piece single pose figure that came out about a year ago and costs £22. There is a lot more detail on the Dominus.

http://www.games-workshop.com/resources/catalog/product/600x620/99070116001_AdMechTechPriestDominus01.jpg

From an engineering standpoint, plastic requires far higher precision tooling than pewter or resin.

The latter have a far higher materials cost-hence why you never see pewter models really cracking below the 10$ per model range, but the molds are pretty simple to make (that's why recasters universally use some kind of resin).

Plastic requires industrial precision machining to make the molds and requires a much bigger operation to pump them out but once you have the molds you can make your investment back by selling tons of the same thing.

But where volume of sales isn't there (specialist squads and ICs) there's almost no money in plastic.

That's also why the new stuff seems bonkers compared to the old. When you buy a box of guardsmen for 30$ GW has long since paid off those molds so their cost is just the 1$ it takes to make and package. When you pay 50$ for new fire warriors it's because GW is in the hole from the molds.

To give an alternate perspective on the prices, GWs range would be goofily cheap in the industries I design parts for.

Mdlbuildr wrote:
Believe it or not, this hobby isn't that pricey. Try flying (crashing) RC Helicopters. It's all relative. The bottom line is that this should be for people that have disposable income. If you aren't eating or paying your rent/mortgage to fund your hobby, you have a serious problem.

if you want a pricey hobby, play magic.
perhaps the increasing prices are GW's recognition of the secondhand market? I mean, even my most recent acquisition (Stormsurge) was secondhand. My last actual purchase was the tau start collecting box, the last before that was the new tau commander, and before that, longstrike. everything else I have acquired was through trades or purchases through this site, another like it, and ebay. (and before people say, 'Oh Carl, you aren't supporting your FLGS.' I'm perfectly willing to pay for table time those few times I ever play a game anymore)

If you think that that space marine captain is a bit pricey for you, I have a challenge for you - buy a Sternguard (plastic) and Death Company (plastic). It will, I freely admit, be quite a bit more expensive than buying the captain. take the 2 boxes and a tactical, and MAKE one. (and you'll have enough bits (I'm certain) for a number of other Captains, Librarians, or Chaplains)

It's pricey by miniature war gaming standards that's for sure.

 Vankraken wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
GW prices have nothing to do with manufacturing costs, they charge you kind of based on points.

Nothing about a bloodthirster requires them to charge you £70 it costs them pennies to make the sprue they could sell at £30 and still be making a big profit per sale.

Now points are going out the window they'll charge based on relative power.

Problem with GW's business model is that their retail chain is a huge expense that doesn't have a big return on investment when compared to the returns they get from trade accounts (FLGS and Online sellers) and the webstore. The cost of the sprue is tiny compared to the cost of their retail locations. Points honestly though have little to do with the price of a model as Orks for example have the Mek Gun and Mek character with is more than a dollar a point (US) while the MegaNobz kit (released at the same time) is roughly fifty cents a point. Killa Kanz (older kit) cost even less and have more points. Orkanaut kit compared to a Stompa is an even more extreme example of the difference in points to dollars.

They lost money on the retail stores in the most recent financial report. We're paying higher prices so they can continue to use a failing, outdated business strategy. I hope they realize those 1 man closets in the middle of nowhere that are open 30 hours a week are a failure before individual characters reach the $100 mark.

There are plenty of pewter figures on the market for about $2.

http://www.essexminiatures.co.uk/collections/25mm-ancient-arab/products/abr1a

£1.20 per infantry.

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_28_55&products_id=1656&osCsid=8e1o109ogfrk1gc5usia0sdc35

£8.50 for a pack of three mounted individual characters. Note that GW individual characters are a minimum of £9 for a single infantry figure.

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/pike-and-shot/seadogs-and-swashbucklers/

Pack of character infantry that work out at £2 each.

Bloody hell! Looking at these reminds me once again how very expensive GW figures are.

 jonolikespie wrote:
It seems to me that GW used to charge more for characters because they were metal, a more expensive material.

Material costs, according to comments from GW's financials in the past, account for around 2% of the price of the miniature. So casting in metal vs plastic isn't going to have a huge impact on the cost of production, just on the material alone.

I would expect that the cost of tooling and the work required to actually cast the model would have a bigger impact - although in that situation, metal is castly cheaper to produce a mould, but more labour-intensive to cast. Swings and roundabouts.


'Fine'cast was more expensive partly because of the extra work involved in production, and partly because it was supposedly the best thing since Betty White, and GW felt it deserved a premium price tag as a result.


Characters in GWs range have always been more expensive in large part simply because you don't generally buy as many of them. If every Space Marine army contains (as an easy example) three Tactical Squads but only a single character, then the character needs to be considerably more expensive on a per-model basis than a Tactical Marine in order to make the kit as viable, because you're essentially selling 30 times fewer of them. Or so the thinking goes.

I don't think you can apply logic or rationality to anything GW does. Trying to understand GW's pricing policies leads to madness.