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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
The principle is exactly the same, too many Barcodes to handle some need to drop to give space to others… the only difference is the speed it's going but have you noticed the warp speed of GW new releases the last few years? For sure the faster you release the faster you need to discontinue.

Ridiculous you say? Probably? but not sure. KT is not GW core game and maybe to update/maintain it they need to go at this speed?

And I said again that if GW were that concerned about SKUs they wouldn't have released 6 separate Ork buggy kits.

So, I got some information back from GW Customer Service and the Community Team.

Bottom line is that when they came out with these kits, they came out with a short shelf life from the get-go. Now, GW hadn't planned for their shelf lives to be THIS SHORT. They made one big run of the killzones and the Starter Box and that was it. When they sold out... they were out. They made enough that they expected to be able to supply demand for 9 months. Instead, many of the products didn't last 3 months due to the overwhelming popularity of Kill Team.

It has nothing to do with SKU's, it has nothing to do with barcodes, it has nothing to do with them needing more space or anything like that. The fact of the matter is that someone on the GW team said something like, "Yeah, 1 million units should be enough to last us through till March of 2019." And instead they really needed 3 million.

Now, why the Necromunda stuff is going Last Chance to Buy and all of that stuff I have no clue. Probably because it wasn't selling well. Same with the Commanders. While the Commander expansion sold very well, the individual commanders are still on shelves in plenty of places, not moving any time soon.

Anyway, long story short, Kill Team Starter Set and Killzones were too popular for their own good and instead of going back and printing more, GW is just going to charge ahead and release more product, hopefully in higher quantities.

And I think I'd be fine with that really, if they'd maybe release the exclusive killzone cards on Warhammer Community to download or something so you could at least buy the terrain at regular prices and play those options as intended.

Can someone explain then if these kits "came out with a short shelf life from the get-go" if they constantly release boxes and deals and discontinue them what is the reason to do so?
Regardless of selling very well or not. The fact that the shelf life was to be short from the start shows a very serious concern with how they populate their store stocks.

They have limited space for unlimited stock.

Also it fits their strategy* of constantly releasing new kits at incredible speeds to keep you coming back for more. I think its really working well for them.

* assuming that is their strategy

Either way im ok with that, theres always a new shiny I guess. I missed thousands of miniatures due to discontinued products, GW and other companies so not really an issue.
Only concerned when minis get discontinued due to companies going under because thats a game over for those lines and peoples incomes etc… If they get discontinued due to immense popularity then good for them.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Can someone explain then if these kits "came out with a short shelf life from the get-go" if they constantly release boxes and deals and discontinue them what is the reason to do so?
Regardless of selling very well or not. The fact that the shelf life was to be short from the start shows a very serious concern with how they populate their store stocks.

They have limited space for unlimited stock.

Also it fits their strategy* of constantly releasing new kits at incredible speeds to keep you coming back for more. I think its really working well for them.

* assuming that is their strategy

Either way im ok with that, theres always a new shiny I guess. I missed thousands of miniatures due to discontinued products, GW and other companies so not really an issue.
Only concerned when minis get discontinued due to companies going under because thats a game over for those lines and peoples incomes etc… If they get discontinued due to immense popularity then good for them.

It has a LOT less to do with not having the space to store these things and a LOT more to do with... these kits and box sets are selling faster than they anticipated.

A big point that has been cited to me by several sources is that the cardboard boards that the killzones have are sourced from China. They tell the factory there to make X number of these boards and... that's it. That right there, I would say, is probably the main limitation on the Killzones. Once the boards are sold out, they can't continue to package them, so they have to discontinue them. That's it.

You're really hung up on this being a 'space' issue, and I guarantee that it's not. If it was a space issue, they would not have made 5 different Ork Buggy kits that most people will only buy one or two of, if any at all. There also would be a lot of other products that don't sell nearly as well as Kill Team that would have disappeared years ago.

The space issue keeps getting brought up because that was their justification for eliminating a large number of FW products last year.

One source of frustration with the short run of Kill Team products is that the boxes come with cards that have in-game effects. You can still buy the same models and terrain pieces outside of the Kill Team range, but you can’t get those cards.

Not hung up at all just not buying your simplistic argument of "incompetent planning" if you are in the business of generating a product, stock volumes are errr crucial and if you are also in the business of having a big chain of physical stores then believe me stock levels are like ESSENTIAL! Making sure you have the right things for sale is a science in itself.

Quite simply I strongly believe there is a clear distinction of core games and the other smaller games. Smaller games going from one shot board games to popular KT's neither of them seem to have long shelf presence/time at all in comparison with the core range, which is understandable. The trend across the board seems to be not to have overproduction and too much stock, GW seems happier to have things outofstock rather than the opposite. Seems to be working.

It may all be that someone does think the value of your product increases if you constantly give the clients the illusion that if you don't get in fast you will miss out… or it could be just incompetence in understanding supply and demand.
Personaly I believe its not an isolated case and discontinued products are a mix of many factors.
For sure a company this size doing so well is not due to sheer luck, sorry if I give them more credit than you seem to.

As for Ork boxes I raise you 2 in one kits on most armies.

GW literally didn't plan for the demand that Kill Team would bring. That's the long and short of it.

FW also keeps their stock separate, which is why it costs so much to ship. They have their own warehouse. Also, it had less to do with the stock of the models, and more to do with the stock of the *molds* to make the models. There's only so much space they have for molds.

Also, why didn't they make all of those Ork buggies dual kits? I think if space was a concern, they would have done that. Also, fewer kits released now are dual kits. The Primaris, Death Guard, Genestealer Cults, even the Imperial Knights releases were not dual kits. The Armigers were two separate kits with one shared sprue and one separate sprue. Same with the Castellan/Valiant.

The dual kits were popular with early GSC and Admech, but have since dropped off of GW's production radar. Clearly, space is not as much of a concern.

Finally, I'm THRILLED that GW is doing as well as it is. I seriously think they just need to re-look at their product planning and fire the guy that's in charge of determining how much needs to be created. Selling out of a product that's highly in demand is generally not a great business practice, and yet that's exactly what's happened.

drbored wrote:
GW literally didn't plan for the demand that Kill Team would bring. That's the long and short of it.

Ehhh...I think this is a bit oversimplifying things. The Killzones were huge sellers simply because of the savings associated with them. But that always happens with terrain bundles unless it's the Deathworld Forest which was just poorly received.

Also, why didn't they make all of those Ork buggies dual kits? I think if space was a concern, they would have done that. Also, fewer kits released now are dual kits. The Primaris, Death Guard, Genestealer Cults, even the Imperial Knights releases were not dual kits. The Armigers were two separate kits with one shared sprue and one separate sprue. Same with the Castellan/Valiant.

The Ork buggies didn't have a lot of shared parts. The GSC had dual kits(Rockgrinder/Goliath, Metamorph/Acolyte). GW commented that the Castellan/Valiant and Armigers were to do with packaging issues.

Finally, I'm THRILLED that GW is doing as well as it is. I seriously think they just need to re-look at their product planning and fire the guy that's in charge of determining how much needs to be created. Selling out of a product that's highly in demand is generally not a great business practice, and yet that's exactly what's happened.

Maybe they also need to start limiting sales via webstores and to brick+mortars when it comes to items with "exclusive" bits--because I've seen a couple people locally trying to flog the "exclusive" datacards from the various Killteam sets for stupid amounts of cash.

As long as there is demand for it, people will continue to try to sell individual parts of something for quick cash, like tactics cards and such. That's not going to go away unless GW makes them easier to obtain by, say, making them available online for free instead of forcing people to buy a limited box for them :/

Maybe I have the power to find out the real truth here, so we can cut the conjecture and conspiracy theories.

I'll see what I can do...

The truth I know that I have just been paid and all my money is now out again buying remaining Killzone stock from discounters, plus a few other things.

H.B.M.C., do you think I can make a decent go of a Mechanicus table with just four Killzones? Not as big as yours but passable for a tabletop.

You managed to pick up four of the Mechanicus Killzones? Lucky you. I've never even seen one in stock...

As far as what's in there... hmm...

You would have 4 Ferratonic Incinerators, 4 Alchomite Stacks and 4 sets of Thermic Plasma Conduits. This means you have 16 struts, 8 long walkways, 8 short-walkways, 4 lots of "circle" walkways, 4 stacks, 4 domes, 4 kilns, and 4 furnaces. Plus a bunch of pipes and end-bits.

You have a severe lack of curved walkways, which is a problem. And a lack of walkways in general. I'd personally pick up 1-2 Promethium Refineries to bulk everything out, plus that nets you another 1-2 stacks, kilns, domes and furnaces.

With what you have you could make, I'd say, 3 decent buildings with good levels and walkways, a couple of smaller ones, and then some random kit-bashy stuff out of left-over pipes and the conduits.

drbored wrote:
FW also keeps their stock separate, which is why it costs so much to ship. They have their own warehouse.

Except that's not true anymore. They share space with "standard" GW in Memphis now for US orders.

Hi everyone. We will not have to wait long to get a straight answer about all this.

Everything will be cleared up at the Weekender, so for now can stop speculating and guessing.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Maybe they also need to start limiting sales via webstores and to brick+mortars when it comes to items with "exclusive" bits--because I've seen a couple people locally trying to flog the "exclusive" datacards from the various Killteam sets for stupid amounts of cash.

Wait, so your plan to prevent scalperscum from using limited product availability to extract money from people is to make the availability of the products even more limited? Not to mention that in some countries "limit it to brick & mortar" means, functionally, "limit it to GW stores" for a lot of people, so in order to potentially save folks money, your idea would definitively make the product more expensive.

How about - and this is a radical idea I know but bear with me - GW A; get better at figuring out how much stock to make of new products, and B; maybe use some of that gigantic cash pile they're sitting on to move the parts of their supply chain that are holding them up on restocking this stuff(ie, printing and cardstock die-cutting) in house.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Hi everyone. We will not have to wait long to get a straight answer about all this.

Everything will be cleared up at the Weekender, so for now can stop speculating and guessing.

Great, I look forward to the weekender. Thanks for the info.

A shame that they can't do their printing in-house (presumably a cost/volume issue for it to be worthwhile) or at least in the UK (presumably much cheaper to import from Chinese printers).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You managed to pick up four of the Mechanicus Killzones? Lucky you. I've never even seen one in stock...

UK based, bought one casually, planned to buy six, rush bought three this week from an online retailer once they suddenly disappeared from sale from most sites. Got lucky.
Also in the order is one Killzone Sector Munitorum.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

As far as what's in there... hmm...

You would have 4 Ferratonic Incinerators, 4 Alchomite Stacks and 4 sets of Thermic Plasma Conduits. This means you have 16 struts, 8 long walkways, 8 short-walkways, 4 lots of "circle" walkways, 4 stacks, 4 domes, 4 kilns, and 4 furnaces. Plus a bunch of pipes and end-bits.

I have one set already part assembled, though in subcomponents. It was a test purchase, and I felt I got quite a bit for my money. I find I didn't appreciate how big the stacks and furnaces are until I assembled some. I particularly like the pipes, I assembled the first set as a double stack of pipes for some linear blocking terrain. Not done anything with the walkways as I know I haven't enough to afford to waste on mistakes.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

You have a severe lack of curved walkways, which is a problem. And a lack of walkways in general. I'd personally pick up 1-2 Promethium Refineries to bulk everything out, plus that nets you another 1-2 stacks, kilns, domes and furnaces.

I was looking at buying 2-3 Sacristan Forgeshrines, mainly because it afforded diagonal walkways and stacks efficiently, but that was while I was still planning to spam buy Sector Mechanicus. If GW release more I will go back to plan A and buy another two or three Killzones and start from there. I will now be very lucky to get that far.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

With what you have you could make, I'd say, 3 decent buildings with good levels and walkways, a couple of smaller ones, and then some random kit-bashy stuff out of left-over pipes and the conduits.

My plan is to make this my primary 40K board, with aim for a 6x4 with decent cover but room for vehicles, and a more stacked and densely covered 3x3 to 4x4 for Necromunda. Thing is I have no idea how much I will need to achieve that goal realistically, but am sold on the aesthetics of the set and want to do it properly. Likely I will make my own board, and might just use the killzone card mats, they are nice quality if a little samey.
If I need to pad this out I can make up some platform base slabs from lino tiles and set them on a swamp map with one full set of deathworld forest. This will give me a frontier manufactorum/munitorum built on foundation slabs in an alien jungle. Not entirely sure this will work though.

I will also be getting a number of terrain items from 40K Conquest, though the timing sucks, the Galvanic Magnavent will be on cheap sale on March 2020! Though plasma conduits and plasma regulators will be available sooner, and I intend to stock up during the availability window.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Hi everyone. We will not have to wait long to get a straight answer about all this.

Everything will be cleared up at the Weekender, so for now can stop speculating and guessing.

Nothing was cleared up at the weekender. :/

Well. We learned out we bought out AT transfer sheets in month or two they had expected to last for a year and are looking for more.

Hopefully GW learned to produce more AT stuff! Strike while it's still hot. Don't let sales hurt just by not having storage!

 Kanluwen wrote:

drbored wrote:
GW literally didn't plan for the demand that Kill Team would bring. That's the long and short of it.

Ehhh...I think this is a bit oversimplifying things. The Killzones were huge sellers simply because of the savings associated with them. But that always happens with terrain bundles unless it's the Deathworld Forest which was just poorly received.

Also, why didn't they make all of those Ork buggies dual kits? I think if space was a concern, they would have done that. Also, fewer kits released now are dual kits. The Primaris, Death Guard, Genestealer Cults, even the Imperial Knights releases were not dual kits. The Armigers were two separate kits with one shared sprue and one separate sprue. Same with the Castellan/Valiant.

The Ork buggies didn't have a lot of shared parts. The GSC had dual kits(Rockgrinder/Goliath, Metamorph/Acolyte). GW commented that the Castellan/Valiant and Armigers were to do with packaging issues.

Finally, I'm THRILLED that GW is doing as well as it is. I seriously think they just need to re-look at their product planning and fire the guy that's in charge of determining how much needs to be created. Selling out of a product that's highly in demand is generally not a great business practice, and yet that's exactly what's happened.

Maybe they also need to start limiting sales via webstores and to brick+mortars when it comes to items with "exclusive" bits--because I've seen a couple people locally trying to flog the "exclusive" datacards from the various Killteam sets for stupid amounts of cash.

New kits definitely seem packed onto tighter sprues, I think that's one of the reasons for the six buggies - two buggies takes up the same sprue/box as one multipart buggy would have done, but you really don't have much space for redundant parts.
I think once you've taken the decision to make these single sprue vehicles, you can then think about whether you wanted to make them compatible - and I think the idea of having very different vehicles rather than interchangable but largely similar looking ones eventually won out amongst the designers. Probably because that was the only way they could have got the opportunity to do the Scrapjet.

They showed Necromunda sleeves at the Horus Heresy Weekender, would be a late in the day to release those if cards were never coming back.

really disappointing to see the Necromunda stuff on this list. Debating if I should pickup the gang card sets before they go bak into the development limbo the game was in before (and the community takes up the torch again)

 ShotgunFacelift wrote:
really disappointing to see the Necromunda stuff on this list. Debating if I should pickup the gang card sets before they go bak into the development limbo the game was in before (and the community takes up the torch again)

At the Horus Heresy Weekender they confirmed more gangs (in plastic, no less) on top of at least a half dozen other characters either already completed or in concept stages. I don't think Necromunda is going anywhere.

If anything, the cards might be replaced with new, updated sets in the future, but hey, if you want them, now's the time to get them.

Because the best option is to invalidate the cards that exist already rather than just reprinting them.

Oooh! Even better. The new cards will be a different size (to go with the new card sleeves) and completely incompatible with the previous ones.

Or it could be same as with AT. Stock running out, new stock coming.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Because the best option is to invalidate the cards that exist already rather than just reprinting them.

Oooh! Even better. The new cards will be a different size (to go with the new card sleeves) and completely incompatible with the previous ones.

If you think these games are going to have the support life cycle of a mayfly, why bother sleeving the cards at all. It isn't like there is any hidden information cards (in Kill Team, don't know about 'munda). So if they get a little worn, no big deal. I really like Kill Team, but I don't see me playing this so much that I am going wear out the cards to uselessness or so far into the future that the cards would be in pretty rough shape. If I do, I bet there will be a place on the internet that has a compendium of them I could just use instead. If you absolutely have to them sleeved for reasons, that is your personal bent.

To me, it just seems most likely that they haven't figured out yet how to match the logistics to actual demand. They don't want to end up drowning in excess stock (hi dreadfleet!) so they are conservative with anything that isn't a core game.

It's not like back when they produced stuff on site, and could just make everything they needed. Each order has a lead time and the threat of delays with China.

 Polonius wrote:
To me, it just seems most likely that they haven't figured out yet how to match the logistics to actual demand.

Which, if we're being fair, is a pretty common trend among new companies that haven't been doing this for very long.

Wait...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
To me, it just seems most likely that they haven't figured out yet how to match the logistics to actual demand.

Which, if we're being fair, is a pretty common trend among new companies that haven't been doing this for very long.

Wait...

Given the changes in management, shake up of FW (& the studio?), creation of the specialist games team and putting out new games in areas of the market they haven’t touched in a long, long while, I actually think it’s a fair comparison; GW haven’t been doing this type of game for very long. Compare the current situation to a few years ago, where these would have been one-shot, limited release, gone within an hour of pre-order, because the Dreadfleet debacle had burnt the old management so bad (assuming they even took the risk to develop the game; unlikely).