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 TheCustomLime wrote:
However, I think their paint is exceptionally overpriced. I mean, really, five dollars for a pot of paint?

You're ultimately paying for shipping to the US in that too. Same reason as our NZ-based OP is paying nearly double what we do in the UK for his Green Stuff.

It doesn't have to be expensive if your don't buy from GW. I was saving £20-50 by buying for 25% off here in the uk for new models. But still, after playing other games I was shocked. I was like this model is £30 just for a space ship? Then the dude goes "yeah, but that one space ship is half your entire points and it's also fully painted to a pretty good standard when you buy it. That's when I learned to stop hating GW and just spend my money on other games while slowly building and painting the remainder of my collection.

 greatbigtree wrote:
War Machine / Hordes still has a following in London, Ontario.

I like the game play better than 40k. In North America, even buying at full retail, the game is cheaper than 40k would be.

Local tourneys run 1500 to 2000 points, in 40k. WMH tends to be paired lists at 75 points.

While cases can be made for both to be expensive, particularly if you don't play the "main" factions of either system, WMH is by far cheaper in North America.

Well, PP is located in North America. So its no surprise that this game is cheaper there.
We had an active group playing WMH but it vanished totally. Even the addicted WMH players (some weird guys among them) now (try to) play 40k.

Crispy78 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
However, I think their paint is exceptionally overpriced. I mean, really, five dollars for a pot of paint?

You're ultimately paying for shipping to the US in that too. Same reason as our NZ-based OP is paying nearly double what we do in the UK for his Green Stuff.

shipping is not nearly that expensive when done in bulk quantities for a company like GW. I used to help a smallish chemical company (all green/enviromentally firendly products)with their books/inventory software. sending a gallon of chemicals from FL to the UK was only a few bucks. in that same box size/weight one could fit hundreds of paint pots or blister packs of green stuff. GW is so much bigger than that company and i guarantee the y get even better rates than that.

HoundsofDemos wrote:I'm not going to defend GW's hobby tools or even their paints (some of which I still buy just to have all my guys look the same) price wise.

One thing I've seen on dakka and other online outlets is this idea that to get into the hobby you drop the money to have 1750 to 2500 army in one go, which at this point is probably a grand or two depending on what army your playing.

That was not my experience when my gaming group got into it about a decade ago and not the culture around the stores I play at.

It's not my experience, either. I built up a 1500pt (Index) Slaanesh Daemon list over three months with a SC! Box and a Daemonettes box each month

It's a pretty expensive hobby, but ultimately way less than my 4 year PC upgrades and VR headset among other things.

I'm sitting pretty on my next build with all new models - 60 CSM, 3 VC, and other stuff for $350.

And the thing is...i'll never have to replace these models. Not for 10 years. Not for 20 years.

Some people do manage to make it more expensive by cutting up $150 kits with $80 kits to make their own thing, but that's what they enjoy, so their choice.

I agree entirely that the long term investment in 40k models, or any models is good. I'm still using models (and even some paint!) that are pressing 20 years old now.

But there are cheaper companies to buy into that, hypothetically, are also going to be useable in 20 years time.

Regarding NA vs Europe, the OP is in New Zealand. So regardless of continent they have the import costs to deal with. I also specify NA as many European posters have claimed WMH is more expensive in the past, and that 40k is cheaper... so of course 40k is cheaper in the EU as they're in the EU.

I have the benefit of coming into WMH in 3rd edition, after the 2nd edition players have abandoned the game. I have confidence that PP will turn the popularity around in 4th, hopefully going for a less gimmicky approach but only time will tell. Right now, I find my casual approach to the game to be far more fulfilling of the experience I want from a wargame than 40k. I'm hopeful that WMH will see a resurgence in their next edition, particularly should GW continue the "Formations-esque" approach that drove 7th edition into the ground.

Generally speaking as a wargamer, GW is in the top couple. There are some bespoke companies who also charge $30-40 per miniature (which is fething insane) and there are a couple of companies I can think of which have pretty horrendous pricing, Battlefront for example.

Given the average size of 40K it's safe to say it's one of the most expensive, easily.

Crispy78 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
However, I think their paint is exceptionally overpriced. I mean, really, five dollars for a pot of paint?

You're ultimately paying for shipping to the US in that too. Same reason as our NZ-based OP is paying nearly double what we do in the UK for his Green Stuff.

OTOH, isn't Flames of War dramatically cheaper over in NZ vs US / UK?

Oh I’d say GW is probably the most expensive, but their more recent plastics are simply better than everyone else, so . . .

I recently finished painting Belisarius Cawl. That model is absolutely packed with detail and various tubes and robes and arms all overlapping, but it wasn’t that hard to build, and there were relatively few mold lines to worry about.

The redemptor dread is just a fantastic kit that goes together beautifully and is very pose-able.

There are weird value head scratchers in there like the plastic contemptor, but meh, just about everything since the launch of 8th has been brilliant.

I even like some of their paints and tools. The painting handles and dry brushes are just great and worth the money (and they’re even competitively priced). Some of their paints like Khorne red or retributor armor are very tough to beat. Their pots do have a slight flaw where paint tends to drip behind the lid “tongue” and dry in the area where the lid should snap on. Just clean it out with a toothpick once in a while no big deal.

Then again I buy paints from just about every manufacturer. There are stars and duds in every brand’s paint line. I don’t use any GW brushes besides the dry brushes, because the others aren’t as good as say Rosemary and Co or Raphael.

I guess what I’m saying is the modern GW stuff seems to be expensive, but I’d actually say it’s generally worth the premium over their competitors.

Now they just need to step up their rules publication/distribution game. It does seem like they’re actively trying to improve on that front though.

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
However, I think their paint is exceptionally overpriced. I mean, really, five dollars for a pot of paint?

You're ultimately paying for shipping to the US in that too. Same reason as our NZ-based OP is paying nearly double what we do in the UK for his Green Stuff.

shipping is not nearly that expensive when done in bulk quantities for a company like GW. I used to help a smallish chemical company (all green/enviromentally firendly products)with their books/inventory software. sending a gallon of chemicals from FL to the UK was only a few bucks. in that same box size/weight one could fit hundreds of paint pots or blister packs of green stuff. GW is so much bigger than that company and i guarantee the y get even better rates than that.

Ask the guys down under or in NZ. They pay premium prices.

Games workshop pricing is insulting.



£24 for a rubbish cast in a horrible(worst on the market) material.

No wonder the 3rd party market is booming.

How many of those did GW force you to buy?

It's a fair argument - their Finecast is complete gak and expensive...and you would be better off asking "how many did you not buy because of the cost/material".

For instance I assembled a 5,000+ point Eldar army using almost entirely 2nd ed metals because their modern Eldar are mediocre sculpts in finecast and obnoxiously priced. I would have gladly purchased modern GW kits if they were plastic and reasonable.

 Elbows wrote:
It's a fair argument - their Finecast is complete gak and expensive...and you would be better off asking "how many did you not buy because of the cost/material".

For instance I assembled a 5,000+ point Eldar army using almost entirely 2nd ed metals because their modern Eldar are mediocre sculpts in finecast and obnoxiously priced. I would have gladly purchased modern GW kits if they were plastic and reasonable.

Yeah, from the backlash they've been getting with their attempts to move characters to plastic sprues (yep, a 30$ per model price point is actually pretty realistic given how many Primaris Space Marine Apothecaries they probably expect to sell...) I can see the desperation that probably went into the Finecast Debacle. Bunch of corporate execs sitting around a table telling themselves no, it looks good, and this means we don't have to throw out all our molds! You just...you just gotta fill some air holes sometimes...well, all the time...

I think they (at some point) must have accepted how bad it is --- I know most GW stores allow you to open them at purchase and verify if it's good or not (heard of some people going through 3-4 of them to find a decent cast). If you look at finecast it's dirt cheap resin...it doesn't cost them anything to make or ship it (outside of the packaging). At some level they finally admitted it's garbage.

I haven't bought anything new for a while. Are they still doing finecast? I would have thought they'd stop making them. With a material that's all across the board inferior, you'd think that business decision wouldn't be sustainable.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
How many of those did GW force you to buy?

Luckily there is a 3rd party option conversion kit.



Why would anyone ever buy the GW version if they knew this option existed.

GW pricing is disgusting. It's got to the point where people will actively go out of their way to find 3rd party buy old metal and strip especially due to how awful finecast is. With the quality of finecast and the fact that they are using old sculpts and molds from metal minis, no finecast single character should cost more than £10 and no box of 5 should cost more than, £20. Thats is all they are worth, at a push based on what you'd pay for the same quality from elsewhere.

Finecast is the worst resin product in the industry, while being one of the most expensive, outside of the limited edition ranges with a collectibility factor, such as kingdom death.

The single pose plastic characters are usually a total rip off too. They just need to learn to nail resin casting, because if tiny boutique resin casters can get perfect beatutiful casts, sell them for less desipite not having efficiency of scale, gw certainly have the R&D budget to get it right.

They are doing their customers a great disservice by not keeping up with the rest of the market, and for low volume character models, a high quality resin cast is the best option.

When it comes to the plastic kits, many are 10-20% overpriced, if you shop around, take advantage of your flgs discounts and are willing to use ebay you can usually find kits priced sensibly.

 kodos wrote:

I started Warhammer Fantasy at the end of 4th and beginning of 5th edition. Had a small group, tried to get everyone to play something different. I had a 3000 point Empire army and was just playing with friends, never competitive and also thought about a Khorne army just to have something different. And this was an expensive one as by that time a single Knight had nearly the price of Box plastic Infantry and ordering them at GW was kind of random as I wanted to have 10 Knight, 1 unit, with lances from one order and got 5 White Wolves, 5 from different knightly orders. Complaining on the Phone was complicated and the answer we got was that Knights in Blisters are packed randomly into Mail Orders.
Same with Artillery, I needed 3 Mail Orders until I got a cannon instead of a Mortar.

I'm going to be blunt here- either you got scammed or you're straight up lying.

GW had a bits order system in place for years. You could order whatever parts you wanted so what you describe is next to impossible. You could just ring them up, quote the part numbers and get exactly what you wanted.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 kodos wrote:

I started Warhammer Fantasy at the end of 4th and beginning of 5th edition. Had a small group, tried to get everyone to play something different. I had a 3000 point Empire army and was just playing with friends, never competitive and also thought about a Khorne army just to have something different. And this was an expensive one as by that time a single Knight had nearly the price of Box plastic Infantry and ordering them at GW was kind of random as I wanted to have 10 Knight, 1 unit, with lances from one order and got 5 White Wolves, 5 from different knightly orders. Complaining on the Phone was complicated and the answer we got was that Knights in Blisters are packed randomly into Mail Orders.
Same with Artillery, I needed 3 Mail Orders until I got a cannon instead of a Mortar.

I'm going to be blunt here- either you got scammed or you're straight up lying.

GW had a bits order system in place for years. You could order whatever parts you wanted so what you describe is next to impossible. You could just ring them up, quote the part numbers and get exactly what you wanted.

Those were the days. I remember reading off huge lists of seemingly random bits for awesome conversions.

Apparently GW were losing a fortune on selling bits.

Funny that now its gone a blooming 3rd party bits industry has taken it's place.

Yet another thing that is disgusting about GWs practices is that they don''t do weapon sprues, they know you have to buy 4 boxes to make the one squad you want. The upside is that there are garage industries who cater to this and anything that promotes small businesses is a good thing.

Mike712 wrote:

Apparently GW were losing a fortune on selling bits.

I doubt that.

They could be cast to order and GW staff could buy stuff for £30/kg (50p Crisis Suits baybay! ). If anything they got rid of it to streamline their catalogue and clear warehouse space rather than it was haemorrhaging money.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 kodos wrote:

I started Warhammer Fantasy at the end of 4th and beginning of 5th edition. Had a small group, tried to get everyone to play something different. I had a 3000 point Empire army and was just playing with friends, never competitive and also thought about a Khorne army just to have something different. And this was an expensive one as by that time a single Knight had nearly the price of Box plastic Infantry and ordering them at GW was kind of random as I wanted to have 10 Knight, 1 unit, with lances from one order and got 5 White Wolves, 5 from different knightly orders. Complaining on the Phone was complicated and the answer we got was that Knights in Blisters are packed randomly into Mail Orders.
Same with Artillery, I needed 3 Mail Orders until I got a cannon instead of a Mortar.

I'm going to be blunt here- either you got scammed or you're straight up lying.

GW had a bits order system in place for years. You could order whatever parts you wanted so what you describe is next to impossible. You could just ring them up, quote the part numbers and get exactly what you wanted.

This is what I did later but via a FLGS and not with the Mail Order directly.

Could be that I just had bad luck with the German MO guys and instead of telling that stuff is out of stock they just shipped something else and played stupid if called again.

But also years later when I pre-ordered the new Dark Eldar Codex I got the book nearly 2 months after release and they told me that this is normal as stock is used to ship orders made on release day and pre-orders are done after that if something is left (and they ran out of stock so I had to wait)

Mike712 wrote:
Games workshop pricing is insulting.



£24 for a rubbish cast in a horrible(worst on the market) material.

No wonder the 3rd party market is booming.

That right there is the most extreme example I know of what i was saying earlier in the discussion.

That is a crazy price kit and everyone knows it. On the other hand the resale value on ebay is almost the same as the purchase price. So if you bought one of those wildly overpriced kits a year ago, played games with it for a year and are now selling it to buy a different army then its cost of ownership for that year is minimal.

Both crazy expensive and really cost effective at the same time

 Grimtuff wrote:

Mike712 wrote:

Apparently GW were losing a fortune on selling bits.

I doubt that.

They could be cast to order and GW staff could buy stuff for £30/kg (50p Crisis Suits baybay! ). If anything they got rid of it to streamline their catalogue and clear warehouse space rather than it was haemorrhaging money.

I think that depends on what you considering losing. If you think that it is normal to have to buy 4 boxs of havocks to have one unit armed with them, then anything that lets people do it with one box and some bits is going to be considered bad.

10-20% overpriced? More like 100% or more. Basic infantry boxes, for example, would ideally be around $25.

Blastaar wrote:
10-20% overpriced? More like 100% or more. Basic infantry boxes, for example, would ideally be around $25.

{citation needed}

Where are you getting these numbers, besides "I want to spend less money"?

 Peregrine wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
10-20% overpriced? More like 100% or more. Basic infantry boxes, for example, would ideally be around $25.

{citation needed}

Where are you getting these numbers, besides "I want to spend less money"?

From Everyone else in the industry?

20-25 is the price for a standard infantry box, difference is just how many models it contains

like Mantic or Fire Forge Games sells 10-20 models per Box, Perry Miniatures, Conquest or Victrix are 40-50 models, and all are around 25

It is only GW who charges 40-60$ for HIPS Troops

Yep, most other manufacturers of plastic HIPS infantry (and cavalry) are more often than not $30-35, and thus available around $25-30 with discounts, etc.

Perry
Victrix (though more for some of their boxes because of 60+ figures)
Gripping Beast
Fireforge Games
Oathmark
Avatars of War (a little pricier but more models)
Dreamforge Games
etc.

It's worth noting that the miniatures are often a bit smaller (scale-wise) but you also frequently get 30-40 miniatures in a box, or 12+ cavalry etc. So bang for buck is much higher (and needs to be since historical kits are a competitive market)

No one else in the HIPS market charges $60 for a box of miniatures. Occasionally for a large vehicle maybe? I think the closest to expensive would be Warmachine and then companies like Warlord Games, etc.

Per model basis? Are you kidding me some games charge waaaay more for the same quality. In fact you will be hard pressed to find similar quality miniatures for cheaper. (A lot of the people commenting really don't seem to be factoring in quality in the comparison)

That being said though GW games will cost you more based off the sheer volume of models you need for standard games.

Every time this hobby comes around, I tend to look at the cost through the value proposition lens.

Do I see value in the products I am buying? if the answer is yes, then I'll buy them and move on. If I struggle to see the value in the purchase, then I just won't purchase it.

I like this game, I'm not sure how many people do on here, lol, but I do, so I don't mind the cost.

Its all about what you enjoy.