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I think you also have to make allowance for the sheer amount of time the games been running for

that means there's been ages to build up more and more different units/armies/races

Its all very well for a new system to say we can produce an effective competitive army for a lot less than 40K...

but will that be true in 20 years time when loads of new units/rules have been added (and they will be added if they system succceeds and survives)

the only way to avoid this is either to regularly remove units/armies to make way for new ones (and we saw how well that went down with the squats),

or not to produce new units/armies, just regularly reskin the old ones (again i'd doubt that's a real oooption)

games would like a system that doesn't reward extra spending (pay to win),

but on the other hand they really want extra new cool stuff (and cool stuff that has useful rules, most won't buy if the rules are junk)

and those two are, unfortunatly, incompatible desires

Eilif wrote:

My only experience is with IG and Marines, but a few glaring examples I see would be:

-Getting a Heavy weapon other than missile launcher for your Marine Tactical squad
-Wanting your devastator squad to all have the same weapon. A pretty standard game choice, but one that the kit doesn't allow for, though it must be said the current options are much greater than the previous versions.
-A weapon other than flamer or grenade launcher for your IG squads. The box doesn't come with ANY plasma or melta guns.
-Wanting plasma or melta for your Vets.

I had considered plasma/meltaguns, but as you can actually get them at a reasonable (even per GW) rate, I didn't consider them a good comparison.

You do make a good point with the devastators/tac squad guys.

rothrich wrote:
But at the same, time we look down on players who have craptasticaly painted models or models that are poorly converted or not the official model.

By "craptasticaly" do you mean that they painted it bad because they're lazy?

Honestly even working on stuff 30 minutes a day will have results in a few months. And power washing armies is a joke. I did 1000pts worth of plague marines in 12 hours and scored in the top 5 for painting.

The only minature game more focused on pay more for better in game effect than 40k IS WHFB.
AFIAK.
The new WoC book allows a chaos champion (16 pts +) to be transformed into a spawn of chaos(50 pts) or Deamon Prince,(250 pts ish).IF THE PLAYER HAS THE APPROPRIATE MODEL.

Yeah, having to have the model is totally paying for performance.

Or not. Whichever.

That's no different from saying that a Tervigon can only spawn Termagants if you have the models.

rigeld2 wrote:

Saldiven wrote:
Well, it isn't a miniatures game, but Magic: the Gathering will eat up your money if you're wanting to stay competitive. It's even worse if you decide you want to get into the Modern or Legacy formats, or if you're the "flavor of the month" type player.

Here's an example of a hypothetical deck that would cost over $7,000 to build with average condition cards:

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=732125

You act like that's an average price for a competitive deck. You don't need moxes and black lotuses for a deck.

No, I didn't act like that was an average price for a competitive deck. That link is for a Legacy deck, such as those I reference in the second page of my post as being really bad as far as expense is concerned.

If a person is attempting to play competitive standard, they're either buying multiple boxes every time an expansion comes out or buying the singles at a premium of $5-$40+ per card for the important cards. If a person plays for an extended period of time, they're adjusting their deck every three months or so as new sets come out and what classifies as "standard" changes.

I'm not an avid M:tG player, but there are a good number of players at the LGS. I personally know people that spend literally hundreds of dollars every month on cards.

I spend maybe $60-70 on cards a month and stay relatively competitive. I don't win every FNM I go to, but I win enough.

Seriously, MTG isn't significantly more expensive than 40k if you're trying to stay on the bleeding edge.

rigeld2 wrote:
Yeah, having to have the model is totally paying for performance.

Or not. Whichever.

That's no different from saying that a Tervigon can only spawn Termagants if you have the models.

>_>

If I don't have the termagants, I cannot spawn them... I do indeed need to pay for performance... if my list revolves around me spawning gants...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rigeld2 wrote:
I spend maybe $60-70 on cards a month and stay relatively competitive. I don't win every FNM I go to, but I win enough.

Seriously, MTG isn't significantly more expensive than 40k if you're trying to stay on the bleeding edge.

65 dollars x 12 months = 780 dollars, and besides that legacy deck, I did show a few decks that are worth several hundred dollars... That's still a lot for cards...

 Alfndrate wrote:
That's still a lot for cards...

Now price a new 2k point army from scratch for every codex release.

That's a lot for plastic. Go ahead and include Forgeworld options when they're released as well - have to stay on the bleeding edge dontcha?

 Peregrine wrote:

What army are you buying for only $3-400? You might be able to get a 500-750 point army for that much, but good luck getting to the 1500+ level that people usually play at.

$400 buys you a 1500 point armored battlegroup, though you'll be short a pair of tanks from the full 10-tank company. But that's mainly because it's 1500 points, not because you're cheaping out.

I find that MTG is as expensive as you want to make it. you can be competitive with relatively cheap decks in standard or have a decent chance of winning in limited formats. it all comes down to after the game where you can sell or trade cards around for profit. being able to collect cards you know will end up being popular, then trade/sell for profit.

i remember back like a year or 2 ago i used to jump into fnm standard nights for 5$ with a cheep red deck wins which was like 10$ and at least place for prizes, which could net me like 2-3 boosters. if i felt bored i could open them and ma bye get a nice rare, or i can sell them at school or amounts friends for like 3 dollars, recouping me entry and eventually the deck.

then again i also collect older cards with 2-5 dollar commons and unhinged/unglued lands just because i like the looks.

also i basically stopped and haven't seen what the top decks are lately. (but the basic red deck wins, white weenies are almost always affordable)

40k doesn't really reward total money spent unless you have a very large force for the army with nearly every unit the codex has.

And the reward is in resistance to edition and codex changes.


We'll take my Vanilla Marine collection as an example.

I have 100ish bolter marines, 20 special weapon marines(with various weapons) 20 heavy weapon marines(even mix of lascannons and missile launchers, with a couple HBs and a MM thrown in) and 2 of each HQ choice(with different weapon options)

I also have 50 terminators(even mix of assault and tactical, with a mix of weapons)

Then I have a bunch of speeders, 3 landraiders, 2 predators, Stormtalon, vindicator, 8 dreadnoughts, and 4 Rhinos/Razorbacks.



With this critical mass I have built up, I don't have to buy much of anything if/when the codex gets updated.

Lets say the new codex gets released tomorrow with the Stormraven. I'd only need to buy the new codex and a Stormraven to update my army. Thats if I was going to use a Stormraven, which I wouldn't.



When the GK codex got released, I only bought the new codex, Crowe, 2 Dreadknights, 2 Stormravens, and 2 boxes of PAGKs. At the time, that was only around $200. I already had 40 metal PAGKs, 10 terminators, and a couple grandmasters.

The more money you put in now, the less you have to pay to update with each edition change.



GW games don't reward you with game power the more money you spend. They reward you with longevity. Power comes from spending that money on the correct units.

If it's TTGs, then my vote goes to M:TG.

However, if it's games in general, then the Call of Duty series gets my vote.

TheCustomLime wrote:
If it's TTGs, then my vote goes to M:TG.

However, if it's games in general, then the Call of Duty series gets my vote.

wait you can spend irl $ in cod? when did this happen?

 Desubot wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:
If it's TTGs, then my vote goes to M:TG.

However, if it's games in general, then the Call of Duty series gets my vote.

wait you can spend irl $ in cod? when did this happen?

They are called DLC packs, my friend, and they run you $15 for very little content.

TheCustomLime wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:
If it's TTGs, then my vote goes to M:TG.

However, if it's games in general, then the Call of Duty series gets my vote.

wait you can spend irl $ in cod? when did this happen?

They are called DLC packs, my friend, and they run you $15 for very little content.

But does it give you an advantage in multi-player?

otherwise thats not really pay to win, just pay to play a bit more.

The most recent one gives you an additional gun to use in multiplayer.

rigeld2 wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
That's still a lot for cards...

Now price a new 2k point army from scratch for every codex release.

That's a lot for plastic. Go ahead and include Forgeworld options when they're released as well - have to stay on the bleeding edge dontcha?

Why are people buying 2000 point armies for each and every codex release? You can only ever play 1 at a time... But okay, I'll bite... using some lists from Dakka 40k Army lists since I don't own anything really all that new, nor do I play 40k much, so you'll have to excuse the quickness of this... And why would I include Forgeworld? I can't use them in tournaments can I? No need to stay on the bleeding edge of things if I'm not playing competitively. These are just 3 lists that I grabbed, 2 of them are 2k and 1 of them is sub 2k, but it's still a "tournament army". I'll use GW prices, and even include a Savvy shopper price of someone that might use the Warstore for their order...

Using the lists here (1850), here, and here.

You would pay the following:
List 1 - CSM 1850 Tournament list


List 2 - Chaos Daemons 1999+1


List 3 - 1999 +1 Space Wolves


So there are 3* lists that I pulled that all spend less than you do on magic in a year for far more physical items than just cards. Is it expensive? Feth yeah it is... But I've done what you asked. Humorously the only one to not come in under 700 dollars was the smallest point cost list lol .

* - 1 of the lists is 150 points shy

 Desubot wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

TheCustomLime wrote:
If it's TTGs, then my vote goes to M:TG.

However, if it's games in general, then the Call of Duty series gets my vote.

wait you can spend irl $ in cod? when did this happen?

They are called DLC packs, my friend, and they run you $15 for very little content.

But does it give you an advantage in multi-player?

otherwise thats not really pay to win, just pay to play a bit more.

A fair point but that can apply to 40k and M:TG too. You can spend 200 dollars on 40k or MTG and still be able to play but not with as much variety. Likewise with CoD, you can own the vanilla version but you won't gain access to at least half of the available maps without paying double. Very few games have "pay to win" models of play, and most of them are F2P MMOs AFAIK.

 Alfndrate wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
That's still a lot for cards...

Now price a new 2k point army from scratch for every codex release.

That's a lot for plastic. Go ahead and include Forgeworld options when they're released as well - have to stay on the bleeding edge dontcha?

Why are people buying 2000 point armies for each and every codex release? You can only ever play 1 at a time... But okay, I'll bite... using some lists from Dakka 40k Army lists since I don't own anything really all that new, nor do I play 40k much, so you'll have to excuse the quickness of this... And why would I include Forgeworld? I can't use them in tournaments can I? No need to stay on the bleeding edge of things if I'm not playing competitively. These are just 3 lists that I grabbed, 2 of them are 2k and 1 of them is sub 2k, but it's still a "tournament army". I'll use GW prices, and even include a Savvy shopper price of someone that might use the Warstore for their order...

More and more tournaments are allowing Forge World, so including them is valid.
If you don't care about bleeding edge, you don't need to spend even a quarter what I do on mtg.
So, amusingly, you proved my point. Thanks.

And if you're not playing competitively why do you care about pay-for-performance?

 Alfndrate wrote:
Why are people buying 2000 point armies for each and every codex release? You can only ever play 1 at a time...

I suspect he was going with the idea that the most recent codex is going to be the most powerful, so you need to switch to it when it is released.

You can certainly play more than one army at a time these days, though... That's what Apocalypse was for

And why would I include Forgeworld? I can't use them in tournaments can I?

You can use them in those tournaments which allow Forgeworld... which is a growing number of them.

Why are we ruling scratchbuilds out as a viable option?

Sorry my wording in regards to Forgeworld was unclear... if I can't use them competitively, why would I purchase them? If they're indeed becoming more prevalent, then it's something that a competitive player should look at... I'm far from such, so someone else can handle that.. It's been a long day at work, but my point stands. 780 dollars is a lot for cards... For less than what you spend on Magic in a year I can get a full 2000 point army, which is exactly what you asked me to do, now I don't personally know how competitive those lists are, but if you'd be willing to provide me with 6th edition GT (or even prominent RTT) lists, I'll do the same exact thing.


And since I don't play 40k regularly, nor do I personally care how much someone spends on their various hobby, but for the prices of how much you spend on Magic, or 1 of those armies, I can get almost an entire Malifaux Faction (Bought all the Gremlins from Wyrd a year ago for about 250 to 275 dollars), a competitive Hordes army (my Trolls are competitive at 35 points for about 150 to 175 dollars (though I have more)), and 200 Resources of Brushfire for about 100 dollars.

But obviously the more money to spend on both 40k and Magic, the closer you can get to pay to win. My Iron Warriors are an old 3rd Edition army, in 6th ed, they're foot slogging CSM with no flyers or anything else new that I "should" have in 6th edition... I haven't paid, I'm not winning with them... I've yet to have game go past Turn 3 with them against updated armies and armies using 6th ed rules (this includes Flyers)

... and that's my point. I spend that much to stay up to date. If you don't want to stay up to date, you don't have to. At all.

Even when your cards rotate out of standard they aren't invalidated. You can still sell/trade them for current cards and not spend a dime.

For what I spend on magic you can get a single army. I've built about a dozen decks that are standard legal, have 4-5 more that are in progress and have a sizeable collection of trade fodder.

$700 is a lot for anything, but pretending that Magic is more expensive than 40k is just untrue.

Only if you have a small specilized army, then yes its expensive to update.

But if you have a lot of models that can give you a varied build you won't have to buy much to update.

Reading this, I would like to point out that while you say $700 is a lot for cards, the difference is that when you're done with them, as long as you didn't destroy them through lack of sleeves you can sell them to someone else for generally 80%-100% of their market price.

Also, once you get good enough at the game, it becomes self-sustaining. I have a modern deck that has payed for itself at least once so far in tournament winnings.

 forrestfire wrote:
Reading this, I would like to point out that while you say $700 is a lot for cards, the difference is that when you're done with them, as long as you didn't destroy them through lack of sleeves you can sell them to someone else for generally 80%-100% of their market price.

Also, once you get good enough at the game, it becomes self-sustaining. I have a modern deck that has payed for itself at least once so far in tournament winnings.

And Mannahin has a self-sustaining Tournament Army... he goes to RTTs and gets store credit... he then turns that into models or codicies... Everyone can sustain themselves on something if they put enough effort into it. You put the extra money into your cards to keep them looking nice, a decent painter can keep his models looking nice and sell them for a pretty penny if he wanted to as well to fund other projects...

Eilif wrote:
When you buy a warhammer 40k kit, very often there are options that are in the rules that can't be achieved without purchasing of additional bits, or kits.
It seems to me that the player who is willing to drop the $ on the extra bits or kits is often going to be a -sometimes severe- advantage over the player who is not.

Compare this to a game like Warmachine which is not really much less expensive (not the point of this thread) but doesn't have the kind of menu of options that a 40k model has. Everyone who buys that kit has the same options. The same seeming to be true for Infinity.

It seems that 40k is fairly unique this incentivising of the purchase of additional bits beyond the purchase of the unit itself. I realize that there are many generic games (many of which I play where the options are even wider) but -among games that sell their own miniatures- are there other games that do the same or is this mostly a 40k thing?

Somewhat of a tangent.
There have always been some GW copycats, but It is somewhat ironic that as GW produces both the models and rules, it is really their own actions which have created the recent (last 10 years) market for the 3rd party bits producers which in many cases have expanded into ranges of GW-compatible complete models.

The idée is that you should buy and fit your models Correctly. Many people do not do this.. Problem when they do not is that, then you can mini/max as much as you want, and then GWs games become broken. If everyone had to Buy everything we would not have as much problem playing a "fun game" of WH40k. But as everyone I have ever played with uses Proxes etc.. the game gets broken fast. I would probably like WH40k and Fantasy Better if everyone just stuck to the rules and played Exacly what they had on the miniatures...

But when I used to play the game I always got voted down when i Wanted to Play what people had and not a bunch of proxed models... This is just another reason why I dislike Games Workshop games.. When I play warmachine/hordes what you see is what you get... Balance is already taken into account...

 Alfndrate wrote:

rigeld2 wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
That's still a lot for cards...

Now price a new 2k point army from scratch for every codex release.

That's a lot for plastic. Go ahead and include Forgeworld options when they're released as well - have to stay on the bleeding edge dontcha?

Why are people buying 2000 point armies for each and every codex release? You can only ever play 1 at a time... But okay, I'll bite... using some lists from Dakka 40k Army lists since I don't own anything really all that new, nor do I play 40k much, so you'll have to excuse the quickness of this... And why would I include Forgeworld? I can't use them in tournaments can I? No need to stay on the bleeding edge of things if I'm not playing competitively. These are just 3 lists that I grabbed, 2 of them are 2k and 1 of them is sub 2k, but it's still a "tournament army". I'll use GW prices, and even include a Savvy shopper price of someone that might use the Warstore for their order...

Using the lists here (1850), here, and here.

You would pay the following:
List 1 - CSM 1850 Tournament list

Spoiler:

Nurgle Lord - Chaos Lord 2 w/Axe (not sure what a Palanquin of Nurgle is) =19.75
5 Units of Plague Marines w/ 2 Melta guns a unit - 225 + 1 pack of melta guns = 235
1 Aegis Defense Line w/ Quad Gun = 30 dollars
3 heldrakes = 222
5 Chaos Rhino kits
Sub Total: 693
Codex - 60
Grand Total: $753
Savvy Shopper: 602.4

List 2 - Chaos Daemons 1999+1

Spoiler:

Great Unclean One - 57.75
Herald of Khorne - 22.75
Exalted Seeker of Slaanesh - 59.50
Herald of Tzeentch on Disc - 40
2 Daemon Princes (Nurgle Finecast Edition) - 74.5
Plague Drones (not sure how much 161 points gets you, but assuming 1 box) - 60
Plaguebearers - 29
Khorne Bloodletters (need 1.5 boxes, priced for 2 boxes) - 58
Pink Horrors (need 1.5 boxes, priced for 2) - 58
Soul Grinder - 66
Sub Total: 525.5
Codex -
Grand Total: 585.5
Savvy Shopper: 468.4

List 3 - 1999 +1 Space Wolves

Spoiler:

2 Rune Priests - 39.5
Dreadnought - 46.25
2 Wolf Guard Terminator Squads - 100.00
Wolf Guard (Converted from GH Squad box) - 0.00
3 Grey Hunter Squads and Sarges from Long Fang Squads (27/30 bodies) - 111.75
2 Devastator Squads - 70
3 Drop Pods - 111.75
Razorback - 41.25
Sub Total:520.5
Codex - 33
Grand Total: 553.5
Savvy Shopper: 442.8


Alternatively: You buy Battleforces for the following list and convert some heavy weapons:
2 Rune Priests - 39.5
Dreadnought - 46.25
2 Wolf Guard Terminator Squads - 100.00
Wolf Guard (Converted from GH Squad box) - 0.00
2 Battleforces - 220
Drop Pod - 37.25
Razorback - 41.25
Sub Total: 494.25
Codex - 33
Grand Total: 527.25
Savvy Shopper - 421.8

So there are 3* lists that I pulled that all spend less than you do on magic in a year for far more physical items than just cards. Is it expensive? Feth yeah it is... But I've done what you asked. Humorously the only one to not come in under 700 dollars was the smallest point cost list lol .

* - 1 of the lists is 150 points shy

Tournament list?? GW do not officaly suport any Tournaments and the rules are broken..Are there still people who take WH40k and fantasy Tournaments seriously?

And as I said everyone I have ever met in this hobby that playes games workshop games just proxes the gak out of their models.. making the games even less fun to play...