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I what’s thought that GW were quite expensive, certainly the cost of a 2k point army and the codex seems painful when you first enter the hobby, I think.

It I’ve been looking at expanding my horizons and compared to some other minis and games I’ve seen GW start to look fairly priced, especially when you look at the combat patrol boxes and other box sets that deliver real value.

Marvel crisis protocol seems to be 30-40 pounds for one mini, and some fallout minis I’ve seen are the same price for a 5 model unit.

I don’t think there’s another game out there that can beat 40K for scale but it looks like GW can’t be beaten in price either. Or am I looking at the wrong things? I suppose marvel and fallout are big brands that are used to charging a lot for their paraphernalia.

No, you aren't missing anything. GW's prices per model are pretty average and the only companies that beat them by a significant margin are the ones selling low-quality ripoffs of GW at bargain prices, where their only selling point is being cheap. The reason GW has a cost issue is the total price of the game, not the per-model cost. A single MCP model may be expensive but you only ever need a handful of models. 40k, on the other hand, is pretty much unplayable below 1500-2000 points and you need a ton of models to get to that level. The only real option to play a 40k game for less than $500-1000 is Kill Team and that's still a different game with completely different rules even if it uses the same models.

Eh. Price is one thing. Value is another.

Whilst the cost of a new army, from scratch, can be eye watering? As you said you can find somewhat cheaper ways to build it up if you don’t mind your overall options being more restricted.

But that’s merely the cost.

If like me, you’re still buying but haven’t actually played in years due to outside pressures? It can be hard to say you’re getting the same value as someone who gets in regular games.

As an example of what I’m wibbling about? And do keep in mind the following numbers are freshly plucked from my backside and for illustrative purposes.

Let’s say your army costs you £400. That’s a fair old wedge of money in just about anyones book.

But, if you’re painting it to play it? That’s a good few hours of entertainment right there.

Even if you’re a Tinboy (someone who doesn’t paint their armies)? Let’s say you play once a week, and your game takes around 2 hours.

Over the space of a year, that’s 104 hours.

We then take the £400 benchmark, presented solely for illustrative purposes and should not be taken as a solid, informed figure, and divide that by the Tinboy’s 104 hours of gaming,

£3.84 “hourly cost”. That’s…less than a pint. Less than seeing a movie. Way less than even a meal out at McDonalds, if you can really count their muck as food.

Hell, it’s not far off a Tesco Meal Deal these days.

And the more you play, or the longer the games (I went with possibly understated timings) the cheaper that sort-of hourly rate becomes.

Now of course, if you feel the need, compulsion, requirement, necessity etc of keeping on top of the meta, you’re of course going to be spending more. Either buying new units to swap in and out (also valid just for adding variety to your games and lists) or entirely fresh armies. So that will effect it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Hell, it’s not far off a Tesco Meal Deal these days.

The real crime here.

Hmm plastic historicals certainly offer more bang for your buck on value and Stargrave and Wargames Atlantic both offer reasonable prize miniatures at decent quality for far less than GW.

mrFickle wrote:
I what’s thought that GW were quite expensive, certainly the cost of a 2k point army and the codex seems painful when you first enter the hobby, I think.

It I’ve been looking at expanding my horizons and compared to some other minis and games I’ve seen GW start to look fairly priced, especially when you look at the combat patrol boxes and other box sets that deliver real value.

Marvel crisis protocol seems to be 30-40 pounds for one mini, and some fallout minis I’ve seen are the same price for a 5 model unit.

I don’t think there’s another game out there that can beat 40K for scale but it looks like GW can’t be beaten in price either. Or am I looking at the wrong things? I suppose marvel and fallout are big brands that are used to charging a lot for their paraphernalia.

Honestly it depends. Gw can cost you as much as you want to put in. AndThere are ways of approaching the hobby that are less burdensome than others. That's the hobbyb in general though, inclusive of gw.

There is cost.

And there is value.

To me, price paid isn't a fair metric. You have e to look at it in thr following ways:

Initial buy-in.
Scale-up.
Upkeep and maintenance.
Ancillaries.

Where gw has made marked improvements since the kirby era is the initial buy-in. Since 'betrayal at calth' they've made some excellent 'starter' sets and bundles. Especially with their new focus on skirmish games (necromunda, kill.team, warcry etc) the initial buy in is affordable and doesn't necessarily need huge additional spending afterwards.

And it's never been easier to buy into the 40k stable of games. You often see '£100 buy-in' and it is fairly true if you consider games like kill-team and necromunda. Compared to other skirmishes it's not out of line.

The 'scale-up' is where it can get pricy. Getting to 2000pts will cost you a bit and when compared to the plethora of skirmish games out their (including gw's) its more pricey. That said bigger games cost more. When i played wmh properly Privateer presses (mk2 now...) format for tournaments was 50pts/ 2-lists. Now you could take the same units/Jacks and swap out a caster or two different builds. But then youre open to being hard-countered. Most golks took 2 lists that didnt nevessarily share a lit of conponents. I took vlad3's charge of the horselords theme list with cost me a few hundred alongside butcher3 and double black dragons (when they were metal). Yeah my lists cost a lot. And they're not unique though it must be noted that there were plenty 2-list builds that weren't as obnoxious to your wallet.

Upkeep and maintenance is where the 2000pt or gtfo approach falls down hard to the point where the 'scale-up' eventually gets dwarfed by upkeep. If youre chasing meta lists and buying new stuff every month to keep up, new codices/rulebooks etc even with selling old stuff it'll cost you a packet. Buying the frequent new codices and rulebooks itself is a not-insignificant price. While other games lists will change over time as well and force new purchases (very few people were playing the same lists at the start of wmh mk3 as they were at the end as well...) other companies like pp, corvus beli etc are a lot better at providing free rules, free updates or limiting the cost of rules. There is also the argument with 40k/mitigating approaches that you don't need to play at the highest churniest level that forces this nor do you need to keep abreast of the latest rules. play 4th ed if that's what makes you happy. We use 95cromunda. Or just play your 4th ed models in the current era.

Ancillary stuff can cost a bit too. But I'm not getting into paint and scalpels here.

It's not so much about cost as value. Your models might cost you pennies but leave your soul cold. £30 for ten plastic dudes sounds ridiculous but I spend a few hours painting each dude and I have my whole life to game with them. I've spent more on some video games that were done after a few hours and with zero replayability. And the models you like are the models you like. Since 2018 probably 80+% of the models I've painted and games played have been gw's (add some wmh and infinity models too). I just really enjoy them. And thereafter nothing wrong with that. So from my pov, yes thr cost is high but so is the value. Ymmv.

And other companies are certainly not better (though you can get great deals on historical kits like with victrix).

Looking at warmachine mk4 (kind of reboot/new edition) as an example, Privateer Press basically nuked their entire back catalogue in terms of legality (outside of a 'legacy' format the conpetitives are absolutely adamant won't get played ever). The starters for the 'new' factions are close to $200 for something like 2 dreads and 20-ish infantry. Factor in brexit and its about that in pounds. Its extraordinary. Absolutely eye watering. And it's not pp's first dalliance with ridiculous price points (looking at you everblight chosen) though in fairness the lousy exchange rate is a big part of it.

GW is good value, especially for troops. I commonly use GW models as alternative models for my Warmachine armies to save as much as 50% of the original (Privateer Press) price.

Characters are way too much, but I have rarely seen actual character models used for generic characters -it mostly has been kitbashed troopers.

mrFickle wrote:
Marvel crisis protocol seems to be 30-40 pounds for one mini, and some fallout minis I’ve seen are the same price for a 5 model unit.

Sci-fi/fantasy IPs tend to command similar prices to GW, it's true. The difference is that if you buy a pack of five models for Fallout, that's enough to field a small game or can be added to another box to have a complete force. In 40K, you buy a 30-40 pound box of troops and you're nowhere near being able to play the game. Meanwhile in historical-land some games also require large armies, but the models are generally cheap as chips.

So if you're just buying models to paint, yeah, GW gives you a decent value as far as minis go. Some things are not so great- GW's tanks and walkers can't hold a candle to historical tank kits or gunpla- but something like a Kill Team set is about the industry price for its level of quality.

It's the buy-in for a 'standard' 2K game that's pretty extreme, which GW seems to recognize, given the focus placed on smaller games and escalation systems (eg Crusade) in 8th and 9th.

 catbarf wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
Marvel crisis protocol seems to be 30-40 pounds for one mini, and some fallout minis I’ve seen are the same price for a 5 model unit.

Sci-fi/fantasy IPs tend to command similar prices to GW, it's true. The difference is that if you buy a pack of five models for Fallout, that's enough to field a small game or can be added to another box to have a complete force. In 40K, you buy a 30-40 pound box of troops and you're nowhere near being able to play the game. Meanwhile in historical-land some games also require large armies, but the models are generally cheap as chips.

So if you're just buying models to paint, yeah, GW gives you a decent value as far as minis go. Some things are not so great- GW's tanks and walkers can't hold a candle to historical tank kits or gunpla- but something like a Kill Team set is about the industry price for its level of quality.

It's the buy-in for a 'standard' 2K game that's pretty extreme, which GW seems to recognize, given the focus placed on smaller games and escalation systems (eg Crusade) in 8th and 9th.

Is that not comparing apples to oranges in terms of game scale though?

There’s no dispute that 40K is a sprawling great beastie these days, having long exceeded the small skirmish scale of Rogue Trader.

Yet, of recent years we’ve seen GW expand their offerings to include smaller scale stuff like Kill Team and even Necromunda. Even Combat Patrol, which admittedly is just slimline 40K rather than a game unto itself.

I do agree the price per army if you stick with the game starts to get pretty manageable. Its the buy in that prevents new players joining though. I like going to movies and when you look at cost between a ticket, a beer/cider and maybe a pretzel if in the mood its like $25-35. going to see black adam this week at some point. $16, octoberfest 1 pint $9, pretzels if getting $7 so $32 for ~2 hours entertainment.


Even before the usual 15-20% discount compared to my situation of $32 for a movie a start collecting (combat patrol is a horrible name) box at $150 call it 5 trips to the movie for a playable force of most armies. assuming the 15-20% discount at most FLGS I imagine for that price you can probably also say that covers cost of a few points to get the models to tabletop standard. depending on your feeling on if painting is work vs fun then the time spent painting those models alone is more entertainment hours per $ than 5 trips to the movies (to me, your perspective may vary)

On a separate note here if you factor in 3d printing if you have a friend or acquaintance willing to print stuff the cost gets comically small. I have a few 3d printers and will never print a 1:1 gw model but will do counts as models for people. you can literally print a whole imperial guard counts as army for under $50. so if people are low on funds and want to try an army the barrier of entry can be even lower.

 catbarf wrote:

Sci-fi/fantasy IPs tend to command similar prices to GW, it's true. The difference is that if you buy a pack of five models for Fallout, that's enough to field a small game or can be added to another box to have a complete force. In 40K, you buy a 30-40 pound box of troops and you're nowhere near being able to play the game.

To be fair, while there is 40k the mass battle game, this is just one game among many under their umbrella. Unlike fallout, 40k isn't just a game, it's a whole ecosystem.

That lack of troops might not be enough for the mass battle but it is perfectly sufficient for kill-team etc which is a perfectly valid game in its own right, and if/when you expand your force you can use it there as well.

 catbarf wrote:

Meanwhile in historical-land some games also require large armies, but the models are generally cheap as chips.

Aye but while 'chainmail guy with a sword' does his duty in almost any setting, not everyone wants, likes or values your standard British redcoat or generic 100 years war pikemen. And roman legionairres are more common than space marines.
in fairness, when it comes to quality/value, my Hat goes off to victrix for excellent historical models and great value, 'Good quality models' isn't something that can be easily said for a lot of the historicals' offering. We were big fans of warlords test of honour game a few years ago but the minis' quality was borderline atrocious and I've seen plenty other utterly godawful pewter sculpts. I would not want hundreds of them on the board.

GW prices for an adult hobby are actually very reasonable. If you really want to get in cheaper you can also buy proxies or just 3D print proxies (the only downside is not being able to play in GW stores).

Overall though I still believe board games like 40k are some of the most reasonably priced hobbies you can get into even with official models

Asmodios wrote:
GW prices for an adult hobby are actually very reasonable. If you really want to get in cheaper you can also buy proxies or just 3D print proxies (the only downside is not being able to play in GW stores).

Overall though I still believe board games like 40k are some of the most reasonably priced hobbies you can get into even with official models

So you don’t think it’s for kids?

In the us gw prices are almost comical. Look at the currency exchange then look at how much they overcharge.

Honestly areican should boycott untill the price is equivlant.

mrFickle wrote:
I what’s thought that GW were quite expensive, certainly the cost of a 2k point army and the codex seems painful when you first enter the hobby, I think.

It I’ve been looking at expanding my horizons and compared to some other minis and games I’ve seen GW start to look fairly priced, especially when you look at the combat patrol boxes and other box sets that deliver real value.

Marvel crisis protocol seems to be 30-40 pounds for one mini, and some fallout minis I’ve seen are the same price for a 5 model unit.

I don’t think there’s another game out there that can beat 40K for scale but it looks like GW can’t be beaten in price either. Or am I looking at the wrong things? I suppose marvel and fallout are big brands that are used to charging a lot for their paraphernalia.

You're looking at it from the wrong direction. Sure, a box of MCP can be 30+ bucks for one or two models, but you only need ten total models ever. You can buy JUST the core set and have a perfectly reasonable tournament army (Captain America, Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Baron Zemo, Ironman is STILL a very solid team)

Additionally, there's never a reason to buy doubles of the same box. So you can buy the core box, the card pack, and 2 kits and play at a very high level for...pretty much the life of the game so far for less than 200$ easily. One of the top placing lists at adepticon was basically 'core set + black panther' last year. Still a very good list a year later

Now look at 40k.

To build a standard 2000 point 'Bloody Rose goodstuff' list, you need 2-3 boxes of repentia, A box of Battle sisters, a box of novitiates, Morvenn Vahl, Celestine, a Canoness, A dogmata, FOUR boxes of retributors, 3-5 boxes of Zephyrim, most likely either Paragon Warsuits or Sacresants, your codex, chapter approved, and technically the bloody rose supplement book. That's roughly 950 dollars. It's ALSO only likely to be a valid setup until the next major balance patch, at which point you'll likely need to change out multiple units for multiple other units.

If you rate on a 'per model' basis, 40k IS actually much cheaper than many other miniatures games. The issue is that it only makes sense for painters and collectors. For people who actually play the game occasionally, 'per model' is completely irrelvant.

Let's do the MCP comparison again, this time let's look at it as Percent of total army size. Miles Morales and Spider Gwen are about 30 dollars on ebay. They're 6 'points' in MCP or about 35% of a standard 17 point list. A Sisters of Battle Dogmata is also about 30$ on ebay, or 3.25% of a 2000 point list. All MCP lists are 10 characters MAX, Miles and Spider Gwen represent 20% of that. A relatively small model count Sisters of battle list is about 60 models, even a novitiate box (which is twice as expensive as Miles and Gwen) is only 1/6th of that model count vs the other sides 1/5th.

TLDR: Dollars per model is a really bad way to judge value unless you're ONLY painting.

I will give my insight in to this as someone who went from being kid to teen durning 8th to 9th ed time. The pints, cinema etc examples are all good when you are an adult. When you are a kid your parents are paying for those or for equivalents. That is one thing. If they don't, then what matters is the end game price of an army. It doesn't matter that a cabalite per one model, maybe costs less then a infantry dude in other table top games, because those games often end, as far as costs goes, at the point where GW starts with its patrol boxs. Even if you are older and have some work on the side, I would rather invest my money in to a new PC or phone, then spend 250$ on AoS or especialy w40k stuff, that may get invalidated in 3-6 months, and that is if I am lucky.

A 1000$+ starting cost, just to get an army, without painting things and with chance that GW will just nerf your army in to the ground is not something a new player who isn't an adult with high income wants to hear. The extra stuff like books, painting etc which is suppose to give you extra fun , are all nice and good, if you have the money for them and you happen to like them. Painting 15 dudes for infinity, even if you hate painting is not fun, but doable. Spending time and money on painting 40+ infantry models, multiple vehicles or monsters is not the same thing. And GW made it so that things like painting isn't just an optional thing. It relates to the results of the game.

Then there is stuff like income difference, both different by class and country. a 200$ for a box is not the same in the US or Poland, although with the 17% inflation we are on our way to catch up to other countries price wise.
But yeah if someones other hobby is collecting yachts or cars, something like w40k is laughable in cost. It does rise the question though, how many non sheik or mob sons do people know who collect those at 13-14.
In the end it does, at least localy, show in who plays the games. AoS and w40k is mostly played by dudes in their end 20s to 30s+, while other systems have more "kids". Historicals, infinity, even warmahordes have a more healthier age distribution of players, at least in my opinion.

One thing that stands out to me is the prices of GW models compared to plastic model kits, either real or sci-fi subjects. The GW prices look pretty high compared to many of those. I recently bought a Terminator 2: Hunter Killer Tank kit ant it might have been 90 bucks. A comparably sized GW kit would have been twice the cost.

Oh yeah, and the prices for character kits are laughable.

I think, unfortunately, that many other gaming companie just look at GW prices and figure they can charge something similar in a lot of cases. Like the X-wing models seem stupidly priced for what you get, especially when you compare them to scale model kits.

These days it's not even the cost of GW war dollys that puts me off.

The constant rules churn (tin foil suspects that's by design) and the eternal paper chase of codex, supplement, mission books with the wilful bloodyminded refusal to embrace digital yes it can be pirated but you really only need to nudge the googletron for PFDs of scanned books to fall out

And yes the prices of say Xwing or MCP are on par but least there you get all the cards and wotnots in the box, doesn't quite excuse the prices but its a start

A couple of great posts here on the cost/value distinction, which largely meshes with my feelings about what I spend on the hobby.

I see we're also getting the usual tiresome nonsense from the usual suspects about 2K matched play being the only way anyone can play 40K.

After getting back into Airfix I've noticed their prices have seemed to shot up dramatically since I last had a look around 10 years ago. I had a 1/48 EE Lightning which at the time cost me around £20 (bargain as 1/48 Lightnings are so rare these days), a similar size kit would cost around £50 these days, which is a little confusing when they're all mass-produced in China. It doesn't excuse GW entirely but I can understand the prices a little when considering everything's made in Nottingham.

It doesn't sound like too much a price increase but other companies such as Eduard produce just as good (in some cases much better) at less than that, and are still able to put out much more numerous and varied kits each year, whereas Airfix just puts out the same Spitfires and Mustangs year after year after year.

GWs older plastic troop boxes are on par with others on the market. You get a good number of miniatures and a load of Bits for 2-3 € / Mini.

Historicals and Fantasy miniatures will be much cheaper at a comparable quality (Bolt Action, perry miniatures, Northstar, Wargames Atlantic and others), but their scale is more classical 28mm so they appear a bit smaller.
GW falls back if you look at some of their newer kits, where you pay 4-5 € / Mini and get hardly any Bits or options. (new Ork Boyz are a popular example for that).

GW's Failcast miniatures are also the worst quality on the market for a premium price, but most of them have been replaced fortunately.
Character models for up to 35€ are also pretty insane, even when they're plastic. If all of them were of a quality like the CSM Termilord it would be easier to swallow, but since most of these are monopose you'd really have to like them. Even GW knows that that's why you'll see most chars in a limited release Box at some point

There's several comments I agree with here. Rules being connected to models and refreshed or replaces or edited for other reasons beyond a misprint really hurts my enthusiasm to buy anything from Gw now. Or more so killed my enjoyment of the hobby. I don't play now and so I don't buy models anymore. I can't trust the company who makes both to provide a product I will enjoy or continue to enjoy. It's no longer worth the money as that end of the value has tanked for me. At best I would go full 3rd party for my future projects as I already have for my AM/IG army. I am a hobbyist first so if I value the project it is worth my energy. As I have no expectations of really putting my IG army on the table I can tinker with it as I see fit and it costs me significantly less than buying a GW army which I will regret having put energy into.
The new GW models do look nice but their is so much less I can do with them out side of building them exactly as GW intended. There's not as much creativity expected now outside of what color paint you plop onto these models. I find it very dull at best.
If that's all you care about then I'm sure they are worth the cost to you.

For me, what makes GW expensive is the way the game rewards homogeny. A unit isn't terribly expensive; honestly, an army isn't THAT expensive either; but the contents of an army aren't very diverse. A lot of the time its 400-600 points repeated 3-5 times and that means when the meta changes, the whole army tends to need to be swapped out.

In a lot of ways I was a lot happier with 8th edition's soup. Armies were made of more diverse elements and when I cool new release came out, you could purchase 500-1000 points of it and incorporate it into your army without having to essentially start over. It felt a lot more fun to purchase sub-optimal things that were fun and cool where 9th has been a steady cycle of regret as GW keeps releasing bulk demands that get burned a month or two later.

First off...

mrFickle wrote:
I don’t think there’s another game out there that can beat 40K for scale but it looks like GW can’t be beaten in price either. Or am I looking at the wrong things?

There are cheaper games, larger games, and games that are cheaper and larger. Kings of War for starters but that's just the tip of the iceberg...

mrFickle wrote:
I what’s thought that GW were quite expensive, certainly the cost of a 2k point army and the codex seems painful when you first enter the hobby, I think.

It I’ve been looking at expanding my horizons and compared to some other minis and games I’ve seen GW start to look fairly priced, especially when you look at the combat patrol boxes and other box sets that deliver real value.

Marvel crisis protocol seems to be 30-40 pounds for one mini, and some fallout minis I’ve seen are the same price for a 5 model unit.

If you're looking at GW games compared to other top-brand wargames, yes, there's ways to justify the idea that they're either cheaper (per-figure) or that all the games cost about the same to play, or that some are a better bargain than others...

It's all hogwash.

If you're making those calculations, you're probably doing so within the mental playing field that GW has already built using the ever-shifting goal-posts they set up. If you want to pay GW prices the only things you get from them that you can't get elsewhere is ubiquity, and an incredible volume of shiny printed material (which might actually be a negative in terms of rules bloat). Of those, ubiquity is the only one I'd ever even consider as a reason to come back. I can't deny that every GW product basically comes with a free coupon inside that allows the user to find a game quickly and easily across many cities and even countries.

So is it worth it? I don't think so, but its easy to say that having a group of gamers who are not tied to GW at all. If I lived somewhere where GW was the only game in town, I might play 40k. I'd swallow my pride and buy the books to run my armies but I certainly wouldn't be paying for many new GW models as there are just too many more affordable options.

I am not saying I'm entirely separate from the 40k universe. I love the setting and the aesthetic, the pulp sci-fantasy feel and I quite like the GW models I do have. It's just that I currently get my 40k fix with old books for fluff, mostly-old armies and Grimdark Future for rules. All the fun with none of the heartache and at a fraction of the cost.

I'll leave you with this. In 2014 I wrote a blog post (spurred on by a Dakka thread) praising what I thought the good points of 40k were even though I didn't play anymore.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2014/06/in-praise-of-warhammer-40000-and-games/
8 years later, I still agree with nearly all of it.
And I still don't play official "40k".

I've argued on both sides of the fence on the matter of GW's prices, i have slightly muddled feelings over the issue.
i think their printed material is a waste of money considering how quick it becomes amended and then invalidated, absolutely will not buy any rule book or codex. I know you can stick with an older edition but then you struggle to get games.
The models themselves are expensive but once you have them they can always be used (pretty much) and from what I can see most other manufacturers are increasing their prices to close to GW levels or have inferior models

I don’t think any game here quite rivals GW rules for money investment.
It also depends a lot on specifics, are 20 zombies equal to a premium figure of large size?
How much of something is needed and quality.
It’s not uncommon for the model cost of GW to be reasonable but to use them to spike up a lot.
Character and single model packs are though the roof here. With the necromunda and warcry sets being cheaper boxes for what you get out of them.

 LunarSol wrote:
For me, what makes GW expensive is the way the game rewards homogeny. A unit isn't terribly expensive; honestly, an army isn't THAT expensive either; but the contents of an army aren't very diverse. A lot of the time its 400-600 points repeated 3-5 times and that means when the meta changes, the whole army tends to need to be swapped out.

I mean "I insist on playing the game in the most expensive way possible" sounds kinda like a you problem.

 Nazrak wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
For me, what makes GW expensive is the way the game rewards homogeny. A unit isn't terribly expensive; honestly, an army isn't THAT expensive either; but the contents of an army aren't very diverse. A lot of the time its 400-600 points repeated 3-5 times and that means when the meta changes, the whole army tends to need to be swapped out.

I mean "I insist on playing the game in the most expensive way possible" sounds kinda like a you problem.

I mean... I don't.... because I don't really play enough to justify it, but that is sort of a me problem.

That doesn't change the fact that there's little in the way the game is designed or played that rewards much diversity in what you take. It's very gear checky by nature, though Strategems have helped with that somewhat (until they went a bit overboard with them at least)

 Nazrak wrote:
I mean "I insist on playing the game in the most expensive way possible" sounds kinda like a you problem.

I mean, "I insist on playing the game in a way that gives me a chance to win against the people who also use the optimal strategy" sounds kinda like a game problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mrFickle wrote:
So you don’t think it’s for kids?

It's not, and that's a good thing for the community. Adult players would rather play in a community with other adults, not be the lone adult in a room of obnoxious 14 year olds. So yes, if you're a 14 year old with $50 in birthday money as your entire budget for the year 40k is not really accessible. But if you're in the ideal target market for GW, adults with decent careers, 40k is dirt cheap compared to a lot of other hobbies people regularly engage in.

I got into 40K when I was about 13. Granted build no armies was slow but I managed a decent sized ork and tyranids over the years.

Just cos kids get into the game it doesn’t mean you have to play with them.

I expect most kids that get into it, these days, so so through a parent with a decent collection so cost wouldn’t be such an issue