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I just got an e-mail from GW saying that prices will increase from the 6th of October this year. I don't know if there will be a post on Warhammer Community about this but I didn't see one when I just checked.

According to the e-mail it will be about 4%, with some products (namely paints and sprays) not increasing at all.

So yeah, there it is. I don't tend to follow GW price rises, though I guess they do them roughly every year. The way the e-mail is written they seem to be indicating an average of 4%, with some products being more and some being less. This is more or less in line with the rate of inflation in the UK, assuming they did something similar last year. Perhaps a bit higher than inflation, though of course GW's specific costs won't be exactly the same as the national average rate of inflation.

Apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place. Since it's news I figured it belonged here.

EDIT: I figured I might as well post the exact wording here:

A Quick Note on Prices
From 6 October 2025, some prices in Warhammer stores and on Warhammer.com will be changing.

On average, prices will rise by about 4%, but the exact amount will vary by product – some will change a little more, some a little less. The prices of many products, including paints, sprays, and paint sets, aren’t changing at all.

We’re sharing this now so you’ve got time to make any purchases you’ve been planning at today’s prices.

Praise be to Ebay rescue armies, your light has never shone brighter.

Gotta pay those shareholders.

Interesting that where they have actual competition - paints and sprays there's no rise.

Sounds about "average" for GW, to do it before the holiday blitz.

And as to that average, I'm sure it's true, as sure as I am that to reach that, there will be some stuff that will get raised very little to allow for what they actually want to raise very much.

As always.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DaveC wrote:
Gotta pay those shareholders.

Interesting that where they have actual competition - paints and sprays there's no rise.

Ah, there you have. If a fair number of codes don't get any raise at all...

Anyways, nothing out of the ordinary, just GW being GW.

Gotta eat those tariffs.

Other than still hoping for a Kislev & Dogs of War MTO run, I've kept up with the old world releases and other than one or two things I've either skipped or that were constantly out of stock, I now just don't feel the need to keep buying anything especially if kits are about to see another 4% increase. The old world kits increased in cost not so long ago as it was, and as a good percentage of them are 20+ years old as it is, the value just isn't there. This price rise would see standard infantry kits push past the €70 per set.

Plenty of people will still buy them at the new price and then ditch them on the 2nd hand stores 2 months later, so if I really feel I need some additional stuff I can pick them up at 50% off. And really, after 30+ years of collecting WFB stuff, I really don't care about 'supporting GW directly' to keep the game alive again. If they kill it off because of poor sales, its in my favour as lots of people will dump their collections on the cheap again like during the end times.

I think its good of GW to let me know its time again to give them another nice long break from the weekly FOMO ordering and start checking out some other games for a bit whilst I go back to painting backlog once again. Being able to buy regular old world kits from GW was always an expensive convenience and was never going to be a long term and financially rewarding part of the hobby.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Gotta eat those tariffs.

Gotta eat those ILLEGAL tariffs.

(Not a political statement but one of fact as of today)

Warhammer is already too expensive. 3D Printer go brrrrr

In other news, winter is cold, rain is wet, and doggos are lovely creatures.

Yeah that's sort of what I object to though - the idea that companies charging more for stuff just because of the passage of time is somehow as natural as winter being cold. It isn't, this never used to happen, if you wanted to charge more you made a new product and sold consumers on the benefits. A box of 10 intercessors is no more valuable than it was at launch, if anything less so, but it now costs a lot more because of reasons. It's bs

My issue is it can't be blamed on tarrifs, as the price increases are not applied equally across the entire product range.

I bought some Tyranids from a UK online store back in 2019. I finally got round to painting them. Out of curiousity I looked at the new kit and saw it was I think 31.50 for 10 gaunts and 1 ripper swarm. Sticker shock made me go check what I had paid for my brood back then and I had bought 24 gaunts and 2 ripper swarms for 32.00. I did buy from a discounter but nearly doubling in price in 6 years is pretty crazy imo and I can't think of anything else I buy that has done the same. My wages certainly haven't doubled! It's rare that I look at a GW kit and think 'that's worth buying' these days. But they seem to be raking in the cash so plenty of people must disagree with me!

Thats not necessarily true. Because GW is its own importer, the declared value on the goods is basically the cost of production rather than anything approaching or resembling the retail price. Retail prices are not a straight markup on those production costs, i.e. a bottle of paint might have a retail markup that is 12x its cost of production, whereas a plastic kit might only be 5x.

Because GW is pricing against (in)elasticity considerations and other factors and dynamics of the broader hobby marketplace, there is not a straight correlation between the cost of production (and by extension cost of tariffs) to retail pricing. So those tariffs are a 10% increase to the cost of production, but wont necessarily translate to a 10% hike on the retail price because the cost of the hikes aren't passing through to retail in a linear manner. I.E. If it costs them $5 to produce a kit, and thats the items declared value, then the tariffs are hitting them for $0.50 - but because they are selling that same item for say, $35, they don't need to apply a 10% markup on the MSRP to level it out, it only takes a roughly 1.45% increase to cover the cost. Now lets say you have another kit that costs them $6 to produce, tariffs bring it up to $6.60 - but that item retails for $20 instead. In that case, it takes a 3% hike in order to cancel out the tariff impact.

This doesn't sound like the Games Workshop I know. The GW I know always lowers their prices every year.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
My issue is it can't be blamed on tarrifs, as the price increases are not applied equally across the entire product range.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Because GW is pricing against (in)elasticity considerations and other factors and dynamics of the broader hobby marketplace, there is not a straight correlation between the cost of production (and by extension cost of tariffs) to retail pricing. So those tariffs are a 10% increase to the cost of production, but wont necessarily translate to a 10% hike on the retail price ...

It's worth adding that tariffs aren't applied equally across all goods.

For example whatever HTS code is used for plastic sprues will get one rate while many codes for printed books are zero-rated and not subject to tariffs. Paints may get an entirely different rate to both of those, depending how they are sourced & distributed.

I object, there is no proof! This is incredible! We recommend a commission be sent to Nottingham to ascertain the truth!

Billicus wrote:
Yeah that's sort of what I object to though - the idea that companies charging more for stuff just because of the passage of time is somehow as natural as winter being cold. It isn't, this never used to happen, if you wanted to charge more you made a new product and sold consumers on the benefits. A box of 10 intercessors is no more valuable than it was at launch, if anything less so, but it now costs a lot more because of reasons. It's bs

Yeah, that's not how that's ever worked. For any product.

 xttz wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
My issue is it can't be blamed on tarrifs, as the price increases are not applied equally across the entire product range.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Because GW is pricing against (in)elasticity considerations and other factors and dynamics of the broader hobby marketplace, there is not a straight correlation between the cost of production (and by extension cost of tariffs) to retail pricing. So those tariffs are a 10% increase to the cost of production, but wont necessarily translate to a 10% hike on the retail price ...

It's worth adding that tariffs aren't applied equally across all goods.

For example whatever HTS code is used for plastic sprues will get one rate while many codes for printed books are zero-rated and not subject to tariffs. Paints may get an entirely different rate to both of those, depending how they are sourced & distributed.

while true, I believe the current status of American trade policy roulette has almost all relevant goods from the UK tariffed at 10%. The only exception to be found in GWs product line would be anything that indicates "Made in China" on the packaging.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

Billicus wrote:
Yeah that's sort of what I object to though - the idea that companies charging more for stuff just because of the passage of time is somehow as natural as winter being cold. It isn't, this never used to happen, if you wanted to charge more you made a new product and sold consumers on the benefits. A box of 10 intercessors is no more valuable than it was at launch, if anything less so, but it now costs a lot more because of reasons. It's bs

Yeah, that's not how that's ever worked. For any product.

Yeah, wow - I missed Billicus post and thats umm.. yeah, thats something. A crazy point of view that completely fails to understand economic reality. Things aren't getting more expensive "because of the passage of time", they are getting more expensive for a whole host of reasons that are fundamentally intrinsic to the realities of modern life:

1. Labor costs increase every year because people expect to be paid more every year, commensurate with the growth of their skill and experience. If you dont pay them more, they leave and you struggle to attract comparable talent unless you're willing to pay even more to recruit them from competitors. If your entire workforce averages a 3% increase in wages every year, well guess what - your labor costs are going to increase and that needs to be offset by growth in your revenue and/or profit margins somehow.

2. Resource extraction costs increase every year. Modern life is largely built on mostly finite and irreplaceable raw materials. The more of it you extract, the more expensive it becomes to continue extracting it - resources are generally (overwhelmingly) extracted in a progressive manner commensurate with the difficulty and effort involved in accessing, removing, and processing it. As the easier stuff depletes, extraction moves on to the next easiest option available - but the next easiest option is always slightly more expensive to extract than the previous. Visualizing an open pit mine is a good example of what that means in practical terms - for each "tier" down in the pit mine, the cost of extracting the resources from that tier was slightly higher than the tier before it, because removing it entails slightly more work. The travel distance to remove material from the pit increases the lower you go, which means more work, energy, and fuel are used to bring it to the surface and remove it from the pit. Additionally, the deeper you go, the more waste material you need to remove, and the harder it is to remove it because of the aforementioned reason. Then theres the additional shoring, support, de-watering, etc. needed. The same is true of virtually every other form of resource extraction.

3. Energy costs generally increase every year - in part because fuel extraction costs increase every year, in part because of equipment decay (see below), in part because population growth increases demand relative to available supply, in part because technological advancement increases demand relative to available supply (see also: the impact of AI computing on the energy sector), etc. The more expensive energy costs become, the more expensive it becomes to do pretty much anything. Even renewables aren't immune to this reality - turbines require maintenance and replacement, solar panels see efficiency losses over time and eventually need replacement, etc.

4. Operating costs increase every year because equipment, facilities, systems, technology, etc. decay and degrade with use and require increased maintenance (read: more money) in order to service, maintain, and ensure continued operations. Its a simple fact of life that a piece of equipment purchased today will not deliver the same amount of value and productivity 20 years from now, both because of the increased downtime resulting from those maintenance needs, but also because the performance output of that system will never match its capabilities when it was brand new. Eventually you need to replace it, and its going to be more expensive to replace it than it was to buy the system you are replacing - because of all of the above reasons.

The net sum of all of that?

Things will get more expensive, regardless of whether or not the products you are buying become more "valuable".

All of the above is 100% true.
But I will also add that we are in the era of private equity, high investor class payouts, and in the Age of Infinite Growth. Whereby, anything less than growth year over year over year is not desirable in any sense

While costs must certainly increase, and that’s absolutely a requirement, regardless of industry, the amount of increases in cost for many things of late has been astronomical, and nearly unprecedented in almost any era of history outside of economical depression.

It used to be that increasing revenue for a business by 10% over 3-5 years would often offset increased costs and maintain healthy profit margins over that time period quite satisfactorily. Not so today. And this is due to shareholder dividends, private equity owning far more than they should, and less so resource, energy and maintenance costs- with increases in technology come increased efficiency in every aspect of production and extraction. But we do not see costs maintained in ANY sector due to this fact. It’s only increases and some of them exponentially.

It used to be that increasing retail, maintaining a 10% growth year over year was more than sustainable, and this was a mere 20 years ago. Now? Retailers are demanding 30%, 40%, and in my own personal case, 145% increase in sales over the last years quarter.
That is not normal, excusable, nor sustainable in any sense.

I’m not saying that costs for all of the above mentioned don’t increase. But annual increases of 4,5,10,20+% of any product or resource are far from ‘normal’. Especially when we are seeing advances in technology as fast as they have occurred over the past few decades.

Now pardon me, I need to get some more Necromunda stuff before costs go up….

> Because GW is pricing against (in)elasticity

Yeah, that. GW has always been expensive and always *will* be expensive. Who buys GW stuff not knowing that??

I'm fine with generic fantasy. Not hard to find cheap miniatures, rules, and, when Miniature Market has a sale, paint!

The normal yearly price increase has nothing to do with tariffs, as it isn't US only

This is simply just there to make sure the artificial value of their products remains and "buying now for cheap" + fomo in place as everyone know it won't get cheaper if you wait but just more expensive

This is also why we have pile of shames, because a "maybe I need it in future" means buy it now and put it in your storage because you don't know if it will still be available but you know it will be much more expensive

And of course this works, GW makes good money with their sales strategy and the yearly increase is an important part of it

The only surprise is how many people every year are coming forth with explanations on why GW has no choice.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
My issue is it can't be blamed on tarrifs, as the price increases are not applied equally across the entire product range.

Nor are they limited to the US

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In other news, winter is cold, rain is wet, and doggos are lovely creatures.

GW simply wants this: to get people used to annual price increase so they don't care anymore and keep buying their stupidly expensive games.

But it’s not an exclusively GW thing, is it?

Prices go up over time. Food, fuel, books, toys, gadgets, gizmos, cars, homes, rent, all your bits and bobs.

Inflation and wages go up. So the prices increase to offset and maintain profit margins.

We don’t have to like it. But there’s no getting away from it.

A fixed yearly price increase that is more or less random among SKUs and only on average similar to inflation is exclusive to GW

we already have calculated GWs increases for inflation several times and yes, some items are exactly at the inflation rate over the past 20 years, others are double or even 4 times the inflation.

And given that GW operates at a very high margin unlike supermarkets, their increase is never a "must" to survive but simple a "people still buy it"

Kind of?

Again, it’s not something anyone has to like, but GW’s legal responsibility is to their shareholders. And that’s to maximise profits.

Now, there is more to that than just “slap a high price on it”. If you price yourself out of the market, your sales suffer and you can easily produce reduced profits as a result.

So if you increase by 4% (to use the announced one), but that results in a 5% drop in sales? You’re not maximising profits.

Naturally it’s all much more complex than that, but as a nutshell description it’ll work for this thread.

What we can add is that for decades now, certainly since I first joined Portent in what, 1998? People have been saying that this price increase is definitely the one to break the camel’s back. And it’s never really happened. In recent years, GW has seen serious and sustained year on year growth.

Doesn’t mean GW can’t still price themselves out of the market. But it does kinda go to show that GW know what they’re about, and seem to be getting it right.

They can't manufacture enough product to satisfy demand, their prices being too high is not really an argument that holds any merit at all.

> If you price yourself out of the market, your sales suffer and you can easily produce reduced profits as a result.

Okay. Here comes the economics lecture. It's an oversimplification, so you're best off searching for more information if you disagree, find exceptions, or I'm not explaining it clearly enough.

Elastic vs. Inelastic: "Inelastic demand is evident when demand for a good or service is relatively static, even when its price changes. Inelastic products are usually necessities without acceptable substitutes. As such, these products are things that people need in their day-to-day lives regardless of economic conditions. ... There are no perfectly inelastic goods. " -- Investopedia.

Elasticity, btw, is not "either / or". A product is to a degree against its competitors elastic.

So you're assuming that GW has an elastic product. This is not the case. Compared to a hobbyist of generic fantasy miniatures, a GW customer will generally not migrate to another game system with price increases -- to some extent.

Meanwhile, a company that makes generic fantasy miniatures, faces more elastic demand. Companies that make only metal generic fantasy miniatures lost customers to companies that made plastic generic fantasy miniatures because they're cheaper. Indeed, GW killed its fantasy Warhammer game line because other companies were making fantasy miniatures *that could be used in Warhammer* cheaper.

Every company, of course, wants their product to be as inelastic as possible. That's where "monopolistic competition" comes in. A toothpaste company will add marketing and various health claims to not only distinguish their product from the competition, but also make you brand-loyal, so they can charge more for their product without your switching to a competitor. Likewise, IP protection (eg. trademarks) prevent competitors from making products whose IP you own. Generic fantasy is not an IP that anyone can own, though the can own various variants (eg. Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons).

That's what GW does well -- creating inelasticity. Unlike generic fantasy, science fiction worlds tend to be un-interchangeable, so are better suited for "ownership" resulting in inelasticity. You won't see The Emperor in Aliens, Star Trek, or Star Wars, and each of these media properties are owned. But elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. are commonly found in various generic fantasy media, from movies to hobby games, and this inability for any company to own the entirety of "generic fantasy" is what allows companies to compete against each other for customers who like this genre. Meanwhile, most GW gamers can't just switch to another SF world. GW owns their world.

You are correct that a company can't just raise prices ad infinitum. That's why "There are no perfectly inelastic goods." And, for some potential GW enthusiasts (I like their mini's very much), the cost of GW is too high, so these potential customers go elsewhere. However, GW has created *enough* customers that they don't need these naysayers to make a good profit. (On a related note, see also "whales".)

The trick, then, is to market to your customers suchthat you have as inelastic a good as possible. As said, GW does it through creating a unique world that is unavailable anywhere else. Various videogame franchises, Magic the Gathering, and even LEGO, are other examples of inelastic goods. It's really pretty standard for a company to try to make an elastic good, but GW has arguably done it quite well.


Oh, and then there's this video.

It's a simple equation for me, it's not elastic, I stick to my budget. They can charge what they want.
Its hard to keep up with the "deal" that sells out in minutes, so I avoid it more and more leaving me time to spread the costs in time and the more I extend the project the bigger chance I will just move to something else.
Meaning the higher the prices are, the less impulse buy I do, and that breaks down all of GW marketing master plan.

Once your out of that burn and churn cycle and you just enjoy things in your own time you tend to buy a lot less.

No rush just chilling.

Note - On the other hand, if say, a combat patrol was as cheap as half the price, oh boy I would still be on that hype train and probably getting 3 boxes... today I get none, if I dont need 1 mini in it. Thats the difference and GW did it to themselves.

 NAVARRO wrote:
It's a simple equation for me, it's not elastic, I stick to my budget. They can charge what they want.
Its hard to keep up with the "deal" that sells out in minutes, so I avoid it more and more leaving me time to spread the costs in time and the more I extend the project the bigger chance I will just move to something else.
Meaning the higher the prices are, the less impulse buy I do, and that breaks down all of GW marketing master plan.

Once your out of that burn and churn cycle and you just enjoy things in your own time you tend to buy a lot less.

No rush just chilling.

Note - On the other hand, if say, a combat patrol was as cheap as half the price, oh boy I would still be on that hype train and probably getting 3 boxes... today I get none, if I dont need 1 mini in it. Thats the difference and GW did it to themselves.

GW sell their combat patrol at the price they charge today.

They can not produce the extra boxes that would sell at half the price.