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

Kilkrazy wrote:This rumour is based on a single report from an independent store.

If it comes true, just don't buy any GW Stuff.
They are not the only company on Earth which makes wargame figures and rules.

OT but I gotta say I love the pimp hat.

Sidstyler wrote:If you desperately need to get rid of product then just mark it down or something, sell it at a discount. Telling lies just makes you an ass.

Agreed. I ran a shop for 5 years, and managed to keep it running quite healthily without lying to my customers. In fact, I got quite a lot of repeat business out of my honesty.

Anyway -- let's hope it is just random rumour. I'm totally stoked about the Tyranid codex, and planning on giving GW lots of cash this year so I can make a lovely Tyranid army. I really don't want them to make me unenthusiastic again with a price rise.

If it comes true, just don't buy any GW Stuff.

Price hikes certainly do have an effect on volume of sales and likely more on some items than others. Though it's clearly not likely to happen all at once or en masse if they lose some customers to competing game companies each time there's a substantial hike then over time there is certainly an impact on GW's overall well being. Customers who leave often take others with them to other games and of course they are no longer recruiting new customers for GW as active customers tend to do.

Ian Sturrock wrote:

Sidstyler wrote:If you desperately need to get rid of product then just mark it down or something, sell it at a discount. Telling lies just makes you an ass.

Agreed. I ran a shop for 5 years, and managed to keep it running quite healthily without lying to my customers. In fact, I got quite a lot of repeat business out of my honesty.

Exactly. There's no reason to lie to anyone. Take GW glue for example... if someone walks in and wants to buy some, I'll take their $8, but if they ask me about it, I'll tell them to go to Wal-Mart like I do. I've had people thank me and go buy another box of minis before, losing me $8 but gaining me $35.

Anyway, back on topic: I run a hobby store here in Oregon, and I tend to chat a lot with our GW rep, and he hasn't mentioned anything about any price increases. Anyway, even with a price increase, overall this is a very inexpensive hobby. A few hundred bucks will get you a full army, and if your FLGS is anything like my store, you can use their glue, tools and paint to put it all together, all while getting help from more experienced players/modelers.

Compare that to Magic: The Gathering. Even if you buy, lets say a box of every new set, that's still somewhere around $100 every few months. Not to mention you WILL buy booster packs (you will!), you'll enter FNM tourneys ($4-$8 a week, easy), booster drafts ($12-15) and much more. And with 2 sets rotating out every year now, You're looking at upwards of $800- $1000 a year just to keep up.

Warhammer, if you can find a good 3000 or so points that you can interchange for some 2000-point lists you like, is very, very cheap.

Of course, if you're like me and feel the need to buy every model that you see, yes, it gets expensive. (Ordering what I want at cost offsets that a bit, but really...it just means I get 45% more stuff, not that I spend 45% less money >< But if you have a bit of self control, it's easy to keep it a relatively inexpensive hobby, even if they raised prices by like 50%.

The GW bashing amuses the hell out of me, though. Don't let logic stop you!

If you are middle of the road income, it is a cheap hobby. For many people this simply does not hold true though. If saving money is the reason that you are going with wargaming, your going to need substantial amounts of disposable income from the get-go.

I still don't understand how having 'hobby' attached to an idea, actually connects any set of activities together. You spend money on both... and... that is about the extent of the similarities; oh, you also set aside time for both, just like you do for work.

If the fact that models have increased drastically in price, beyond any reasonable expectations, doesn't bother you; then neither should the price of gas, or milk, or any other 'cheap' goods. Increasing prices by 10 percent, multiple times over, twice in a year, is ridiculous. All I will say is that this price hike being real, would not surprise me at all.

You make these armies happen, and only after you make them happen do they become anything more than a piece of plastic, that stands at a mighty 2-6 inches tall. You can try and spin false perceptions around a very simply concept, but that does not change plastic into metal. Look at the models, they are good quality; and in no way does that change the fact that you assemble, paint, and in many other ways create the value of your army.

YOU CREATE THE VALUE.

The higher GW's prices go, the less stuff I buy, period. I will always make the usual purchases to have something to work on but as the prices go up my interest in APOCALYPSE types of purchases goes down sharply.

I think a raise in prices would be ill advised; however, I'll wait until if/when it happens to make any decisions as to planning my future purchases.

Marneus Smurfgar wrote:[
Compare that to Magic: The Gathering. Even if you buy, lets say a box of every new set, that's still somewhere around $100 every few months. Not to mention you WILL buy booster packs (you will!), you'll enter FNM tourneys ($4-$8 a week, easy), booster drafts ($12-15) and much more. And with 2 sets rotating out every year now, You're looking at upwards of $800- $1000 a year just to keep up.

The GW bashing amuses the hell out of me, though. Don't let logic stop you!

Slightly off topic but..

I think your overestimating the amount people spend on MTG. I don't personally know many people who buy a box every set. Most stick to buying singles online and only buy boosters for draft. (which is by far Wizards biggest money maker in MTG) If your playing tabletop magic at home, its even cheaper. Most decks shouldn't run you more than $20-30 dollars. (yes, I know tournament mana bases alone will often cost you $200)

Oh and they actually have a constantly updated ruleset with comprehensive FAQ and an easy to use FAQ that gets you an answer quickly and painlessly. All without raising the prices 3 times in 2 years.

/fanboyism off

With that off my chest, this is an insanely expensive hobby and their is no way 4 pieces of thin plastic should cost $35. The idea of another price increase (after the 3 they have had in the past 2 years) is laughable. Its price gouging, plain and simple. It works because the market is too small for any government to really take notice. And given the amount of crap that GW has given its customers (or as people mistakenly like to see themselves as 'fanbase') it blows my mind that people continue to buy stuff from them. (and no, I haven't bought anything from them in years. 2000 points and the 4th rulebook is all I will ever need)

The prices certainly aren't relative to production cost. Take Empire State Troops and Empire Greatswords: Same quantity of plastic, yet the Greatswords cost over twice as much.

Don't get me wrong.... I love 40k. I love the entire hobby, but if things get much more expensive I'll hold down what I have until GW wises up.

IntoTheRain wrote:

Slightly off topic but..

I think your overestimating the amount people spend on MTG. I don't personally know many people who buy a box every set. Most stick to buying singles online and only buy boosters for draft. (which is by far Wizards biggest money maker in MTG) If your playing tabletop magic at home, its even cheaper. Most decks shouldn't run you more than $20-30 dollars. (yes, I know tournament mana bases alone will often cost you $200)

Oh and they actually have a constantly updated ruleset with comprehensive FAQ and an easy to use FAQ that gets you an answer quickly and painlessly. All without raising the prices 3 times in 2 years.

/fanboyism off

I think you're drastically underestimating the amount of tournament players in comparison to casual "living room" MTG players. Locally, I know that MTG far outsells GW at the local stores that carry and support both. I imagine my area is not uncommon. I got out of tournament magic because of the cost involved. GW is cheaper, even when I switch armies at the beginning of every year.

mikhaila wrote:If no one else has heard anything about a price increase, other than possibly VAT related, I'm thinking this is bogus.

The information comes from someone dumping GW stuff at 40% off. He obviously is getting out of selling GW. Why dump something that will soon cost him more to re-order? And I'm not sure what UK discount is to retailers, but it sounds like he is either getting back his wholesale cost, or losing money at 40% off.

I'd easily bet money on this that someone is just using the "Quick! Buy more now before the Price goes up!" strategy.

The 40% off was just in the week/days before Christmas, and he is not getting out of selling GW.

If the store still has the sale a week from now I will start to get suspicious, but I doubt he would lie to regular customers like that.

Also, with this kind of price reduction no further shenanigans are needed to make sales. People were almost literally coming out of the woodwork to buy stuff. While it is not very profitable to have 40% off new product like the Skaven boxes, a lot of other blisters and boxes that had been unsold for years were gone now, so they did shake up their stock quite a bit (which supposedly was the whole point to it).

What is possible though, is that he was misinformed about the price raise by some non-GW source, or he heard about the UK VAT thing and confused it with that. I was surprised to not have read about it here since news usually hits the internet shortly after it breaks anywhere around the world, so that is why I made this thread.

Let us hope it is not true, obviously.

Off topic a bit, but that type of sale is poor business. Especially at Christmas. It means the items you would have effortlessly sold at full price, now go out the door at your wholesale cost. You might get your money back on some older stuff, but by far the largest percentage of product will be things you must then re-order. Good stuff sells, unpopular stuff doesn't. At 40% off, it's the same. A store sells more unpopular models, but also clears the shelves of the good stuff. Then he re-orders, having missed the opportunity to make a profit at Christmas? It might look like an increase in short term cash flow, but it kills profits, and cashflow gets killed when you have to re-order.

The only way I've seen it make sense is when a store has years and years of over ordering errors, and it's resulted in thousands of dollars of slow selling models. The losses were taken over the years, so selling off the stock actually helps the store. And I'd still do that in Jan/Feb, and not at Christmas. (Hmm, actually I do exactly that, every Feb 14th to 20th, mark it on your calendars. )

deitpike wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

karimabuseer wrote:because as far as I'm aware of, they decided to let all of their customers benefit from the reduced VAT, even those not in the UK.

Can you confirm that? because i cant remember any time that GW reduced anything.

By the Canadian flag next to your name, I'm guessing you are in Canada.
You should remember October 2008 when Canada had an across the board price reduction.
Easy to remember what you don't like, and overlook a 10-20% price drop on everything in the shop.

My laptop says I'm in the Uk. My computer says I'm in the United States. Yours says I'm in Canada.
I come from the UK

my reply was to Lunahound
neither here nor there at this point

mikhaila wrote:Off topic a bit, but that type of sale is poor business. Especially at Christmas. It means the items you would have effortlessly sold at full price, now go out the door at your wholesale cost. You might get your money back on some older stuff, but by far the largest percentage of product will be things you must then re-order. Good stuff sells, unpopular stuff doesn't. At 40% off, it's the same. A store sells more unpopular models, but also clears the shelves of the good stuff. Then he re-orders, having missed the opportunity to make a profit at Christmas? It might look like an increase in short term cash flow, but it kills profits, and cashflow gets killed when you have to re-order.

The only way I've seen it make sense is when a store has years and years of over ordering errors, and it's resulted in thousands of dollars of slow selling models. The losses were taken over the years, so selling off the stock actually helps the store. And I'd still do that in Jan/Feb, and not at Christmas. (Hmm, actually I do exactly that, every Feb 14th to 20th, mark it on your calendars. )

Yes, it definitely does not seem like the smartest way to do business. It would be better to pick out the items that have been gathering dust for a long time and only discount those instead of everything.

I was happy to get all the stuff at -40% though, so I do not really care

TBD wrote:

mikhaila wrote:Off topic a bit, but that type of sale is poor business. Especially at Christmas. It means the items you would have effortlessly sold at full price, now go out the door at your wholesale cost. You might get your money back on some older stuff, but by far the largest percentage of product will be things you must then re-order. Good stuff sells, unpopular stuff doesn't. At 40% off, it's the same. A store sells more unpopular models, but also clears the shelves of the good stuff. Then he re-orders, having missed the opportunity to make a profit at Christmas? It might look like an increase in short term cash flow, but it kills profits, and cashflow gets killed when you have to re-order.

The only way I've seen it make sense is when a store has years and years of over ordering errors, and it's resulted in thousands of dollars of slow selling models. The losses were taken over the years, so selling off the stock actually helps the store. And I'd still do that in Jan/Feb, and not at Christmas. (Hmm, actually I do exactly that, every Feb 14th to 20th, mark it on your calendars. )

Yes, it definitely does not seem like the smartest way to do business. It would be better to pick out the items that have been gathering dust for a long time and only discount those instead of everything.

I was happy to get all the stuff at -40% though, so I do not really care

Certainly wouldn't fault anyone for taking advantage of a sale like that.)

Tacobake wrote:The higher GW's prices go, the less stuff I buy, period. I will always make the usual purchases to have something to work on but as the prices go up my interest in APOCALYPSE types of purchases goes down sharply.

This is why I almost never buy nothing full price from GW now, I certainly don't buy things in their own shops, only the very occasional purchase from independents. The amount I buy has decreased under their continual price increases to virtually nothing. I get some things 2nd hand and prefer to collect individual miniatures from other companies. I'm now only a painter not a gamer, gaming requires collecting whole armies which is simply too expensive now, even individual units are exceedingly costly costing £20-30 for 5-10 miniatures. Plastic Terminators work out at £5 each, it's just not enough bang for your buck. Sheesh. GW have priced me out of their hobby, and that makes me sad because I love their fluff and like many of their miniatures, but it's not a choice I made.

Yeah GW has a box of 5 terminators at $50? for only 5 two inch tall plastics! I haven't played in a while but are they pricing by points value now?

Because people will buy it.

How many people? For how long? I really don't know.

The line of logic goes like this:
You want a unit? You freaking buy it. Very simple stuff. GW expects people to stay interested because they have money to dispose of. If you are on a limited budget, you are simply not their preferred customer; i.e. they give two gaks about you. What I think GW fails to realize (on so many levels it is astounding) is that their market is not composed of magical money faeries that like to burn money. Comparing apples to oranges, does not change the fact that GW specializes in plastics, and does a poor job of maintaining a fair price scheme.

I am sure that everyone here understands that the main reason that any good fluctuates in price, is because companies think that they can just get away with it. If you 'need' a squad of terminators, and GW has set up a web forcing you to buy them, most will just buy the toys. Fair pricing has nothing to do with how GW runs their business; they want you to spend as much as possible, as often as possible, without caring about your investment at all.

You buy plastic from GW, plastic miniatures that represent (within themselves) around 20% of the actual price that you paid. 50% (or so) goes to external expenses, and the rest goes into maintaining GW's legal team/ marketing hammer. You pay GW to push you around, and if not you, someone else that contributes much more to the actual community as a whole.

I was priced out of the hobby a while ago. My spending has slowed to a trickle. Now they are just getting fething ridiculous with the cost of small sheets of pressed plastic though. They're going to run themselves out of business once they pass their ceiling.

Once again I am forced to belive that the games workshop is in some financial difficulties...

jamunition wrote:Once again I am forced to belive that the games workshop is in some financial difficulties...

They probably ran out of new customers that were buying AOBR and space marines.
i was wondering how many MEQ armies would be bought by new players before they all get tired of seeing marines...

This is rumour control, here are the facts.

There has been no confirmation by GW (so far) that the price is going up. But in all likelihood the return of VAT to it's usual level will be used as an excuse to hike the price yet again.

We have seen 2 price rises in the last year.

We have seen written evidence from GW's own end of year report to shareholders that the executive believes the prices of the plastics can be increased to the same level as the price of the metals.

The price of the metals was greatly increased during the so called 'tin crisis' with a message that when that dark time was over, the price would return to normal, the 'tin crisis' lasted all of 3 months, in May 08 then decreasing in July 08 - no decrease in the price of the metal minis occurred. Now the plastics will be brought to the same level due to the 'price elasticity' that GW customers are 'willing to tolerate' in the opinion of Mr Tom Kirby.

A box of Warlord Games 30 celtic warriors (28mm multipart plastic unit) costs £17. That's .57p per model.
A box of Games Workshop 10 empire greatswords (28mm multipart unit) costs £25. That's £2.50 per model.
The Games Workshop miniature is approx 3.5 times the price of the Warlord Games miniature. Why? It's certain that they do maintain shops on the highstreet, but then their sales volume is going to be considerably greater and thus much higher profits to maintain said stores, so why the actual difference?

Opinion:

I put it to you simply that Games Workshop will charge the absolute maximum it thinks it can get away with, balancing the loss of existing players and putting off potential new gamers against the number of new players that will tolerate the increase. Specifically the younger players who do not earn their own money and therefore do not equate the value of the models against the price paid.

So, given these facts, I chose to believe that GW were being unnecessarily ruthless, cynical and uncaring about their customer base. I chose to continue buying at a reduced rate because I just could not equate the miniatures to the prices. Now, with GW's dreadfully executed C&D carpet-purges and attacks on it's own fansites, I removed my custom entirely. If you've read any of the above and are also angered by the grabbing and unprincipled actions of this company, I would urge you to do likewise and simply stop giving them your money. Exercise your consumer rights, veto the company.

As much as people like to complain, lets face it, most of you will continue to buy GW stuff. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see them put in their place for all the things they do, but until they really get slammed in their profit margins, that is really unlikely to happen. It has been going on for over two decades and it won't change anytime soon I'm afraid.

I think what has changed is the quality & cost of the alternatives as compared to GW.

I've been looking at putting together a squad of Rough Riders. Probably only use them for friendly games, anyway, and I don't play in GW stores, so they don't need to be GW figs. I can pay either £6.85 x 5 = £34.25 for a squad of 5 from GW. Or I can spend £5 on 15 plastic Italeri cavalry figures, and £3-4 on a new set of heads for them (from Pig Iron, or West Wind, or Ramshackle), & scratchbuild explosive tips on their lances. That's 3 squads of Riders for around 1/4 the cost of 1 squad from GW. Italeri are regarded as good quality sculpts -- not quite up there with GW, but not far off, at 1/12 the cost INCLUDING new gas-mask heads.

Or the high-end: £15 on 14 cavalry minis from the *Perry Brothers*, who are GW sculptors themselves, and £3-4 for new heads. That's 2 x 7-man Rough Rider squads for around half the price of 1 5-man squad from GW. GW just haven't given me any incentive at all to buy their stuff.

Admittedly I'll be buying a stack of the new Tyranids -- but I would be buying Rough Riders too, from GW, if they competed effectively with other companies. They don't, so they're getting less of my cash than they otherwise would do.

ShumaGorath wrote:I was priced out of the hobby a while ago. My spending has slowed to a trickle. Now they are just getting fething ridiculous with the cost of small sheets of pressed plastic though. They're going to run themselves out of business once they pass their ceiling.

The bulk of their customers must be children living off their parents and who don't understand the value of money, they just keep asking mummy and daddy for more. No wonder GW target children, many will outgrow the GW hobby because they have to start paying for it themselves.

When they first started doing their plastics in the regiment boxes you could get ten 3rd edition Marines for £10, or 20 skeletons, or 20 empire soldiers. Wow, it was £10, a nice amount of money to pay that didn't empty the contents of your wallet and gave you a complete unit for your army. Now you have to pay £20 for that privilage, I know the value of money has gone up but that was only 10 years ago, prices doubling in ten years is not inflation. There's nothing useful inbetween, sure you can spend £12 and get a box of 5 Marines, but that's only half a squad, you can't do much with that. There's no such thing as just getting a "little something" in GW anymore, you either spend a lot or leave empty handed. All the single figures cost a fortune, a heavy weapon Marine is £8, and all the characters more like £10. £10 for a single foot figure? Sigh. I like to browse and and have a selection of things to buy depending on what takes my fancy, the only small purchase you can make in GW is a pot of paint. And even they are overpriced. What puts me off about going in Games Workshop is that I don't tend to browse shops were the minimum useful purchase is around the £20 mark. And if I know I'm going to buy something, I go in, buy it and leave. Or more likely I buy it elsewhere. I don't generally "browse" looking to spend £20-30 on spec.

Special Characters, you say? Well, at least 2 or 3 of this lot would make pretty good Commisars...

http://www.artizandesigns.com/list.php?cat=121&sub=158&page=1

MeanGreenStompa wrote:A box of Warlord Games 30 celtic warriors (28mm multipart plastic unit) costs £17. That's .57p per model.
A box of Games Workshop 10 empire greatswords (28mm multipart unit) costs £25. That's £2.50 per model.
The Games Workshop miniature is approx 3.5 times the price of the Warlord Games miniature. Why? It's certain that they do maintain shops on the highstreet, but then their sales volume is going to be considerably greater and thus much higher profits to maintain said stores, so why the actual difference?

Opinion:
[snip]

So, given these facts, I chose to believe that GW were being unnecessarily ruthless, cynical and uncaring about their customer base. I chose to continue buying at a reduced rate because I just could not equate the miniatures to the prices. Now, with GW's dreadfully executed C&D carpet-purges and attacks on it's own fansites, I removed my custom entirely. If you've read any of the above and are also angered by the grabbing and unprincipled actions of this company, I would urge you to do likewise and simply stop giving them your money. Exercise your consumer rights, veto the company.

I'm going to agree and disagree with this.

The actual difference is that GW is making its models for its games, while Warlord is making models for "historical wargaming". GW has no competition for its games. Warlord has to compete with dozens of historical manufacturers who are all competing, which keeps prices lower. If Warlord charged GW prices, no one would buy their models, since I can get Celts from many manufacturers. Historical wargaming is not linked to any particular line of models, so you can use whatever you want at home, in stores, and at Tournaments. With GW, usually its only at home and the flgs where you can proxy. At GW stores and their GTs, you usually can only use GW models.

You are basically comparing apples (GW Games) to oranges (historicals).

Now, this is not to defend GW's practices, which have caused me to stop buying GW models for the most part. But I don't think its a ruthless and cynical company (they are uncaring though ), any more than model train companies are ($200-$300 for a single engine), or golf club manufacturers ($300 for a single driver). But even for the latter, there is competition and I can get comparable product for less.

What really did it for me was the fact that these other manufacturers were able to produce quality models, in plastic, with 3 times the number of models as GW kits, for 1/3 less. Perry, Victrix, Warlord, etc. Now, quality wise in my opinion, Perry and Victrix are pretty high, the rest are catching up. But it showed me that for small outfits to begin to produce in plastic, at low rates, meant GW was overcharging by a long shot for its plastics. Which, of course, goes to cover their enormous overhead with a worldwide operation, and hundreds of brick and mortar stores.

So, cost is slowly pushing this veteran to other games, mostly historicals for the above reasons.

So, given these facts, I chose to believe that GW were being unnecessarily ruthless, cynical and uncaring about their customer base. I chose to continue buying at a reduced rate because I just could not equate the miniatures to the prices. Now, with GW's dreadfully executed C&D carpet-purges and attacks on it's own fansites, I removed my custom entirely. If you've read any of the above and are also angered by the grabbing and unprincipled actions of this company, I would urge you to do likewise and simply stop giving them your money. Exercise your consumer rights, veto the company.

I didn't really like blood bowl. Your call to action remains largely ineffectual sir.

The bulk of their customers must be children living off their parents and who don't understand the value of money, they just keep asking mummy and daddy for more. No wonder GW target children, many will outgrow the GW hobby because they have to start paying for it themselves.

I never would have started the hobby at it's current prices. I didn't come from a wealthy family. Magic the gathering was a far cheaper alternative (and indeed I dropped 40k and played that for years).

Howard A Treesong wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:I was priced out of the hobby a while ago. My spending has slowed to a trickle. Now they are just getting fething ridiculous with the cost of small sheets of pressed plastic though. They're going to run themselves out of business once they pass their ceiling.

The bulk of their customers must be children living off their parents and who don't understand the value of money, they just keep asking mummy and daddy for more. No wonder GW target children, many will outgrow the GW hobby because they have to start paying for it themselves.

You'd be genuinely surprised. I know which side my Store's bread is buttered, and it's not the kids....