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It's a fun game.

Not $124.00 fun though.

I enjoy playing it, but i'd not have bought it if my wife hadn't had a fit of generosity and bought it for me

AllSeeingSkink 497907 5220074 null wrote:You're right about the Cyclone Launcher, though changing the rules and making old options less effective is hardly what I'd consider a good reason to raise a price.

Well, that's the current context by which I measure them.

To me:

SW Termie kit - makes 5 Wolf Guard Terminators, maybe Lone Wolf, generally sub-optimal weapon configurations
DW Termie kit - makes DW Terminators, optimal weapon configurations, DW command squad, optimal weapon configurations, and DW Knights, while cool looking, will probably not see a lot of play, but bitz will be used

So one kit in my opinion is better than the other, and I can justify paying more for it.

Zoned wrote:

AllSeeingSkink 497907 5220074 null wrote:You're right about the Cyclone Launcher, though changing the rules and making old options less effective is hardly what I'd consider a good reason to raise a price.

Well, that's the current context by which I measure them.

To me:

SW Termie kit - makes 5 Wolf Guard Terminators, maybe Lone Wolf, generally sub-optimal weapon configurations
DW Termie kit - makes DW Terminators, optimal weapon configurations, DW command squad, optimal weapon configurations, and DW Knights, while cool looking, will probably not see a lot of play, but bitz will be used

So one kit in my opinion is better than the other, and I can justify paying more for it.

Yes, but this is one of the problems with GW pricing. They make something obsolete, then the next kit is better with better options... so they raise the price. But then they release a new kit which is 5% larger so they charge 10% more. So they raise the price. But then they release a kit with a new banner. So they raise the price. They give us a few more colour pages and a hardback (whether we want it or not) which would only cost them marginally more, but increase the cost much more for us. Then they reduce box contents by 50% but only charge 20% less for it (eventually to go back up to similar price)

The DW kit still only makes 5 terminators and is still only 3 sprues with still only ~100 parts, but for 20% more money.

I'm guilty of buying in to it, because when they release a new kit which I think looks better, I can justify buying it, but it is bloody annoying none the less. Instead of GW improving their models and us getting more for the same price as time goes on, we pay more and more for it, so the cost to actually construct an army just goes up and up and GW end up with more money in their pockets, as other companies display the fact they can do the same for less.

I have no comment about slashing box contents and upping price per model, I remember thinking it was weird that I got 10 Space Marines in a box but my buddy got 20 Guard in a box when we started off years ago. To my newbie brain I was thinking why did he get so many more models than me? I see things differently now, but I do remember that initial reaction.

I personally enjoy the hardback codices far more than the softback ones. Not everyone feels the same way, to each their own.

Yes, the DW kit still only makes 5 models. But again, if you compare it to the basic Termie kit or even the SW one, are they equal? I think it's clear it stands head and shoulders above the basic one. I've argued that it's even better than the SW one. Is it 20% better? Well, that's very subjective. Would I have liked it to be the same price? Of course. For me, do I think it's worth the $10 hike? Yes. I mean, if it had been $15 or $20 more, I'd have to draw the line. But for me, $10 was the most they could have squeezed out of me, and they will (should I decide to build the army one day.)

Looking at the new Warriors of Chaos releases, GW has lost their minds.

This is no longer a "little timmy" game, these are now at or beyond Forgeworld prices in their entirety. This is no exaggeration.

The new plastic-sprue infantry sized on-foot Chaos Lord is the same cost as many Forgeworld 40mm Terminator Space Marine Characters, or the cost of an entire Warhammer Forge unit command section of 3 models. Throgg by himself costs as much or more than the Warhammer Forge Chaos Dwarf infantry units or half the war machines. The new Slaughterbrute kit is about the same price the Imperial Guard Baneblade debuted at just 5 years ago.


I don't see how this can keep up.

It's true throng is expensive, but he is a character large model, I remember the old non termie Marneus Calgar, he used to be £8 in about 2004' which was a huge amount given 2 terminators were about £6' so for 1 small metal mini he was ludicrously expensive, but he was priced as he was a hard unit and expensive points (not per weight of metal etc).

Also when I was about 11 I couldn't buy GW stuff, I got some pocket money and bought bits n bobs but it was birthday or treats from folks now and then that got my force started ( blood angel devs and tycho were first, still got tycho and 2 marines I found lol!). Today I see many parents in the shop buying a box of marines, a character or a big model (flyer) etc and none moan about price, it's just what their kid is into and it keeps them happy.

I see exactly the same things today as I did when I was little, diff is I am now closer to buying for my own kid (when I have one :-) ).

It's always been expensive, but it's a luxury good more than it was, it won't get cheaper, it's just had a lot of fluctuation in last 4 years, halving squad sizes in boxes being a bad example.

However the marine battle force saves £20 over individual sets so there are ways to build forces quickly, and a battle force type set would last a kid a good while, building n painting.

Few buy whole armies in 1 go, that's more the vets level of spending.

But it's diff for all

The problem is that the prices are increasing at a rate that far outpaces inflation for most things, meaning that, if you take inflation out of it entirely, it's significantly more expensive than it used to be.

For instance, the IG Baneblade debuted at $90 here in the US just over 5 years go. It's now $115.50. Had that price risen to in line with inflation, it'd be $99. That means the price increase is more than double that of inflation, meaning that, even assuming an identical standard of living adjusted for inflation, these kits cost more as a percentage of your income than they did 5 years ago.


I get the concept of a luxury good, but that's not really what the issue is here. The issue is that, in Real money terms, GW is getting more expensive at a greater and greater rate relative to Real incomes of consumers every year. Keep in mind the *average* inflation rate over the last 5 years has been about 2%. FW's price increases generally have been 4-12%, with most equalling out to 5% or so.


One can look at Forgeworld's example. Five years ago, Death Korps of Krieg infantry kits were 33 UKP, they're 37 now. That fits largely with inflation, assuming my standard of living stayed the same, Forgeworld is no more expensive for me now than it was 5 years ago. Three and half years ago, Guardsmen were $35 for twenty, adjusted for inflation in 2012 terms that means they were $1.89 each. Now they are $29 for ten, $2.9 each. So GW's price increased an average of about 12% while inflation increased at a rate of about 2%, and now instead of costing ~8.24% more where inflation would put them, they cost 53.44% more.

This means that GW's products are becoming less and less affordable over time, and not just by a little bit.

The problem for me, Rick_1138, is when there is not consistency in the line itself. Some examples from recent history:

In Warhammer Fantasy, most elite 25mm infantry are $50 Canadian - such as the Temple Guard, Black Orcs, and Bestigors.

The Forsaken for some reason are $60.

An Ogre Special Character is $50 - finecast, 40mm base.

Throgg is also a 40mm Finecast special character, yet he is $70.

The DA flyer is $90. I haven't seen one in person, but it looks to be about the same size as the SM Storm Talon, which is $55. The wings look bigger, but we're talking almost twice the cost here. Again, I haven't seen one, so maybe it's huge, but the cockpits look very similar/identical.

I doubt anyone sane here in Aus will be starting a WoC army anytime soon... $96 for Throgg the troll... WTF was GW thinking?

Holy **** indeed, for an Australian consumer, Throgg is more expensive than every Warhammer Forge monster except the biggest dragons and their ultimate Greater Daemons, on par with the (much larger) winged minotaur mounted Drazhoath the Ashen for the Chaos Dwarfs.

Zoned wrote:
The problem for me, Rick_1138, is when there is not consistency in the line itself. Some examples from recent history:

In Warhammer Fantasy, most elite 25mm infantry are $50 Canadian - such as the Temple Guard, Black Orcs, and Bestigors.

The Forsaken for some reason are $60.

An Ogre Special Character is $50 - finecast, 40mm base.

Throgg is also a 40mm Finecast special character, yet he is $70.

The DA flyer is $90. I haven't seen one in person, but it looks to be about the same size as the SM Storm Talon, which is $55. The wings look bigger, but we're talking almost twice the cost here. Again, I haven't seen one, so maybe it's huge, but the cockpits look very similar/identical.

Oh don't get me wrong, I am in no way stating GW pricing structures are in any way sane, they charge what they feel they can get away with and seem to for the moment, rest of world is a whole diff ball game and I since at the prices.

The storm talon is a good example as the nephillim fighter is basically a sprue with wings n da bits added but is another what £8? Its a fair whack.

I would have originally bought individual boxes for my armies but the last 4 I have done (I make n paint for eBay a lot) were with battle forces to bulk up the size and just grab the new bits as required. But if I was making an army to play games/tourneys with I would sit n work out carefully what I needed and see how best to get bundles, older boxes from FLGS etc so it's not costing an arm and a leg.

The real kicker is GW models aren't only so much more expensive lately, they're also of lower quality and tend to look terrible. Decline on both ends.

I haven't found a newly released GW model "awesome" in a quite a while.

I find myself agreeing that the majority of models created by GW now are not of the finest quality and cannot understand the price increases that keep piling up from GW. While it will most likely not stop me from playing 40k I now supplement my army with more figs from diffident makers such as the manic zombies for my Nurgle CSM army because the figs are of a nice quality and a very competitive price.

What bugs me the most is the bunk Finecast movement that GW has been hammering 40k players with because of the lackluster quality this medium produces and not to mention the fact that at least 4 out of 10 models have flaws of some form or another. And wasn't there supposed to be a price drop when they went to Finecast from metal?

 Bloodfrenzy187 wrote:
And wasn't there supposed to be a price drop when they went to Finecast from metal?

No. Most people assumed there would be one since resin costs less than pewter and theoretically GW's production costs would decrease rather substantially (which I believe is the reason GW gave for the switch), but that kind of goes against everything GW has ever done in the past. Or at least the past decade and a half, can't really say how it was before that.

Zoned wrote:
The problem for me, Rick_1138, is when there is not consistency in the line itself. Some examples from recent history:

In Warhammer Fantasy, most elite 25mm infantry are $50 Canadian - such as the Temple Guard, Black Orcs, and Bestigors.

The Forsaken for some reason are $60.

An Ogre Special Character is $50 - finecast, 40mm base.

Throgg is also a 40mm Finecast special character, yet he is $70.

The DA flyer is $90. I haven't seen one in person, but it looks to be about the same size as the SM Storm Talon, which is $55. The wings look bigger, but we're talking almost twice the cost here. Again, I haven't seen one, so maybe it's huge, but the cockpits look very similar/identical.

Chances are those are previews of prices to come - expect the other stuff to be brought in line with the new release prices in the Annual Price Hike.

This is great thread and one that has me posting in spite of mostly lurking.

I'm a WoC player and, like many of you, am troubled by the new model prices. However, I would like to advance that I consider most of the new models to be collector-type pieces and not at all essential to any WoC army. They probably don't anticipate every gamer wanting or needing one. Collectors, possibly or yes (I'm sure GW hopes so). The slaughterbrute is a centerpiece model and priced accordingly For all we don't know, it may suck on the tabletop.

You can get the battalion set for $110 which has almost everything needed to play the game (competitively too). Add a couple of exalted heroes and/or sorcerers at $14-16 each and you have a great starting point. It's not going to hurt the wallet that badly to get a basic WoC army on the tabletop.

These new models are not going to be fielded in great numbers. They, hopefully, will not be needed for competitive builds.

themonk wrote:
This is great thread and one that has me posting in spite of mostly lurking.

I'm a WoC player and, like many of you, am troubled by the new model prices. However, I would like to advance that I consider most of the new models to be collector-type pieces and not at all essential to any WoC army. They probably don't anticipate every gamer wanting or needing one. Collectors, possibly or yes (I'm sure GW hopes so). The slaughterbrute is a centerpiece model and priced accordingly For all we don't know, it may suck on the tabletop.

You can get the battalion set for $110 which has almost everything needed to play the game (competitively too). Add a couple of exalted heroes and/or sorcerers at $14-16 each and you have a great starting point. It's not going to hurt the wallet that badly to get a basic WoC army on the tabletop.

These new models are not going to be fielded in great numbers. They, hopefully, will not be needed for competitive builds.

And reasoning like that is why GW charges what they do (and so far have been able to get away with it, sort of)

I think the plan is, instead of making AU prices more in line with US/UK prices, they are going to make US/UK prices more in line with AU.

I'm not going to pay AU$83 for the CSM codex. I have them all since 2nd Ed. Even when I wasn't actively playing I still bought them. This time, I'll wait until the next one and pick this one up for peanuts. Let's face it, the CSM release was a big yawn. Just to add to the $$WTF$$ component of the thread, Noisemarines went from a AU$55 box to a $62 box of CSM plus a $25 conversion pack = AU$87. What's that, a 63% increase?

I've pretty much stopped playing since the RoW embargo. I'm interested in Blood Bowl, but any minis I buy from any company these days are just for the pleasure of painting/owning them. I've worked out I can spend roughly AU$400 and have every 2000AD mini from Wargames Foundy, which I would gain a lot more pleasure from than $400 of CSM.

Zoned wrote:
I have no comment about slashing box contents and upping price per model, I remember thinking it was weird that I got 10 Space Marines in a box but my buddy got 20 Guard in a box when we started off years ago. To my newbie brain I was thinking why did he get so many more models than me? I see things differently now, but I do remember that initial reaction.

But now it's swung the other way, and the Guard player is left wondering why his army should have to cost almost twice as much as the Space Marine army his buddy started.

For all people rant about "Little Timmy" it seems that GW is increasingly going more and more for the "mature men with disposable income" market. Which is a shame.

For all those talking about the competators...keep talking. I bought some mantic marines the other day becuase I was amazed at the price. Then I got them out of the box and...eh. Put them next to Cadians and they just look poor. I don't know if it's because I'm just so used to Cadians but I just can't take these guys seriously.



I will say that there are some amazing Space Marine proxies out there, though they're actually more expensive than GW. Also more "common" fantasy things like orks and skeletons are easily proxied.

 BryllCream wrote:
For all people rant about "Little Timmy" it seems that GW is increasingly going more and more for the "mature men with disposable income" market. Which is a shame.

Correction: Their price poitns attempt to go for the "mature men with disposable income" market. Their aesthetic is targetting the Fisher Price crowd.

For all those talking about the competators...keep talking. I bought some mantic marines the other day becuase I was amazed at the price. Then I got them out of the box and...eh. Put them next to Cadians and they just look poor. I don't know if it's because I'm just so used to Cadians but I just can't take these guys seriously.



I will say that there are some amazing Space Marine proxies out there, though they're actually more expensive than GW. Also more "common" fantasy things like orks and skeletons are easily proxied.

Just wait for Dreamforge's plastic production to start.

 Fafnir wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
For all people rant about "Little Timmy" it seems that GW is increasingly going more and more for the "mature men with disposable income" market. Which is a shame.

Correction: Their price poitns attempt to go for the "mature men with disposable income" market. Their aesthetic is targetting the Fisher Price crowd.

This is what googling Fisher Price got me:





This is a Space Marine Command Squad:



I can go through the thematic differances one by one if you like.

 Fafnir wrote:


Just wait for Dreamforge's plastic production to start.

Sorry mate but they look like Elizabethan actors or something. I don't like my toy soldiers to have bulging calves thanks

Some of their other stuff looks pretty sweet though. I will keep on eye on them.

 BryllCream wrote:
Put them next to Cadians and they just look poor. I don't know if it's because I'm just so used to Cadians but I just can't take these guys seriously.

I reckon you've nailed it there, to me that Cadian looks like a joke with crazy oversized hulk hands and a big wobbly head. Much prefer the Corporation. Of course that doesn't mean that the Corporation troopers are the best sci-fi infantry ever made, but if I was looking to start a force of one or the other and all I had to go on was a direct comparion of those minis I'd throw the Cadian away in a a heartbeat.

My cadian look fething badass thankyou very much

Riquende wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Put them next to Cadians and they just look poor. I don't know if it's because I'm just so used to Cadians but I just can't take these guys seriously.

I reckon you've nailed it there, to me that Cadian looks like a joke with crazy oversized hulk hands and a big wobbly head. Much prefer the Corporation. Of course that doesn't mean that the Corporation troopers are the best sci-fi infantry ever made, but if I was looking to start a force of one or the other and all I had to go on was a direct comparion of those minis I'd throw the Cadian away in a a heartbeat.

I agree about the big bobble head. It's the one thing I hate about 40k/Fantasy (I'm sure they've gotten progressively worse with bobble-heading miniatures than they ever used to be in the past). But, other than the oversized head, I prefer the Cadian styling and would be more inclined to want to paint it rather than the Corporation.

I meant something along the lines of this:


Those proportions are right in line with GW's figures. Although they have the good taste of being less gaudy.

Riquende wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Put them next to Cadians and they just look poor. I don't know if it's because I'm just so used to Cadians but I just can't take these guys seriously.

I reckon you've nailed it there, to me that Cadian looks like a joke with crazy oversized hulk hands and a big wobbly head. Much prefer the Corporation. Of course that doesn't mean that the Corporation troopers are the best sci-fi infantry ever made, but if I was looking to start a force of one or the other and all I had to go on was a direct comparion of those minis I'd throw the Cadian away in a a heartbeat.

Yes I think the same, although I guess it's down to an individuals preference. I've seen some pretty amazing conversions using the Cadians as a base, but for the standard miniatures I think anyone who can't decide between the two sculpts is obviously going to choose the significantly cheaper option.

As well as that, for the money being asked for just a box of 10 Cadians, they are up against some pretty stiff competition in the form of Victoria's miniatures.

What I find objectionable about the guard isn't so much the price - it is easy to get cheap lasgun models and kitbash sargents. It's the fact that the only worthwhile weapons for your models are insanely expensive. £8.50 for a plasma gun *and* a meltagun. I could just about stomach this if you got two of one kind, since I rarely use meltaguns. But no.

Thankfully for now they still sell individual plasma guns, albeit rather expensive at £6 for 5. I get the feeling they'll stop this at some point since they're just eating into their own sales. When they do I'm screwed since I can never seem to find individual guns on ebay, and I don't really trust any other web sites.

 BryllCream wrote:
Thankfully for now they still sell individual plasma guns, albeit rather expensive at £6 for 5. I get the feeling they'll stop this at some point since they're just eating into their own sales. When they do I'm screwed since I can never seem to find individual guns on ebay, and I don't really trust any other web sites.

This is another one of my gripes with GW. They used to sell parts. Like, any part. I have a Citadel Annual from 1998 and you could order any sprue you wanted or any component you wanted from any model without having to buy the full kit. Yeah, it was a while ago, but not that long considering 5 of the 11 Space Wolf HQ options in the GW store are even older again.

Cast some of your own then. Little bits and pieces like guns are reasonable for recasting IMO. Lots of military modellers do it for small items or things like wheels and small things and you don't get the outcry among them, it's just modelling. It's not like you're churning out whole copies of figures and eBaying them. When you need several copies of little bits in a £30 Tamiya kit and you only get one, you don't get military modellers wagging their fingers at someone recasting a couple more, instead expecting them to shell out £30 several more times for a few tiny parts.

Other than price increases I think the tactic of halving the contents of the box and reducing the price by a quarter has generated more bad feeling, because in doing so GW give the impression they are trying to pull a fast one by advertising boxes of figures at a lower price when the contents are significantly less. It's what food manufacturers do as well and customers don't like it then. But had GW maintained their current pricing approach and not halved the contents of boxes then those boxes of Catachans would be nearly £40 now, quite an increase from the £10 they were released at.