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 Byte wrote:
I pay full retail for my GW. At my FLGS. I have no advantage buying at my store other than giving them business and getting to get my hands on what I buy in real time(limited selection of course, I do order stuff through them as well).

I never buy retail bits, anywhere. I've never ordered any GW online.

My point is, do I represent a segment of other gamers? Should I get mad at my FLGS because they never discount? Should I rage?

If you love to support your FLGS so much you probably should rage at GW for restricting them with a limit of $500 direct only and exclusive items in a move I can only describe as GW wanting to push sales away from the FLGS who support them.

I like to support my FLGS, though I tend to not do it via GW. I do it by getting their traded goods and accessories and items that they make more money on. Occasionally I'll do a big miniatures order through my FLGS and the guy gives me 15-25% off (it's not an advertised or organised discount, it's just a case of "oh you're ordering all this, it'll be $230, I'll just make it $200 for you"). I've been going to that FLGS for about 16 years.

However, I think my FLGS is very much disgruntled toward GW. Over the 15 years I've been going there, their GW selection has shrunk to a fraction of the size while other table top games have massively increased and often I go there to order some GW product the owner will complain about what GW is doing to him now or how they are fething him around or how they won't let him order a certain thing or whatever. Back when I started, there was a 90% chance that what I wanted he carried, now it's more like 10% chance he'll have it and 90% he has to order it and when he does have to order it, increasingly GW are screwing him over by delaying it for one reason or another. I most recently ordered about $300 of Lizardmen from him and it took a month to get there. I could have ordered from a 3rd party seller in the UK and it would have gotten to me quicker, why the hell did it take GW so long to supply their own FLGS when I could have gotten it direct delivered from the other side of the world faster than that?

I really don't feel remotely bad for my FLGS if I order online internationally or from discounters or 2nd hand or whatever, GW are the ones screwing him over, not me, and now instead of trying to reduce how much they screw him over, they're going to screw me over even more, yay...

Even the "can't open box" thing is going to screw over my FLGS because I'd often go in and ask "I need this this and this out of this box, you can keep the rest, how much?". There's things I never would have bought if it weren't for him being able to open the boxes and he made more money off it in the end.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Even the "can't open box" thing is going to screw over my FLGS because I'd often go in and ask "I need this this and this out of this box, you can keep the rest, how much?". There's things I never would have bought if it weren't for him being able to open the boxes and he made more money off it in the end.

You should still be able to do that, though I could understand a stores reluctance to do so because you won't need to actually be guilty of a breach in terms for GW to cut you off.

The store can't split things up to sell, so they can't offer just the bits you want. But there's no restriction on the store buying used partial kits, so you could arrange to buy the kit and sell him the stuff you don't want back, Then it never came from GW so he can do what he wants with it. But as I said, I'm not sure GW would view it favourably anyway

Well personally I blame Phil Barker and the Wargames Research Group for giving them the idea of multiple editions and constantly redefining what the figures looked like, their equipment and how they played in the name of "research".

I stopped after WRG 6th. by which time my Late Roman Legionaries had gone from Regular C, Leather armour and LTS to Regular D, unarmoured with JLS and then back to Regular B, HI with HTW, D, JLS, Sh..... but I digress

The fact is I think that when complaining about GW people are comparing apples & oranges.

For "you" it's a hobby, a game, a shared activity, a solo activity, a friendly game, a competition - and possibly a way of life if you started painting your car red because it will go faster...

For GW it is simply a business from which they aim to extract as much money as possible.

The fantasy and science fiction nature of the "universes" allows them to constantly "discover" new armies, new characters which have to fitted into new rules which have to be upgraded every couple of years etc etc

In some ways it is very like a computer game, you liked Orc Nuns I, so you buy Orc Nuns II & III & IV and the spin-offs and the add-on packs and you upgrade the hardware to play it etc etc

One reason I suspect LOTR and The Hobbit don't do so well is that GW don't have the same control over the setting so it is harder to invent "new" races and "new" characters - not that seems to have stopped Peter Jackson & GW trying IMHO

I have loads of 40K stuff I still haven't got round to painting or assembling, I don't buy much new now as I have most things (actually that's what I said 2 days before buying DV box set plus extra cultists and bits for conversions and.....)

I don't competitively game and rarely friendly either, preferring solo gaming for the tabletop. I do a lot of FFG DH and now Only War (another good excuse for that "extra" squad....)

We don't have a FLGS, there is a nearly local GW store but I prefer to buy online - because I'm lazy and the car parking costs too much.

After some bad experiences with independents I tend to stick to GW now, you don't get a "discount" but for me the service has always been excellent and that's worth it.

I stick with GW because I like them, like the background. Where I don't like the rules and the army lists I change them - which I can do as I only have myself to please. I buy less figures probably because I have what I need (until the next time) and the prices are an issue in a recession.

AFAIK GW are not currently involved in human rights abuses but are a company selling a legal product in a free market to consenting customers, so talking of "boycotts" to me demeans the term.

If you like it, want it, and can afford it - then buy it. If you don't then don't. Just like I do with Maccie D's....

At the end of the day we're moving bits of plastic, metal (and resin!) around on a table pretending they represent something which isn't real, using sciences and magics which are made up, in a universe that doesn't exist - it's supposed to be fun - not an exercise in existential angst.

First time poster (I think) looooong time lurker.

I got into GW about 23 years ago with Heroquest and started collecting fantasy a bit after, got out of it when Necrons were released (was reading WD, just closed it and said no), got back in about 8 years ago after finding my old IG codex and decided to make a go of it now I could afford what I wanted. In that time I've spent a few hundred direct, a couple of grand on discount mail order and the same on second hand ebay. I love the fluff and the IP (though I feel they're dangerously over-simplifying some of it).

The usual things like the price rises, GW's inexplicable business practices, shedding the old studio staff (esp. Priestley which I only just heard about) and the perpetual rubbishness of WD have annoyed me as they have many but I kept buying GW though they increasingly had to share the money with other companies. But finally one straw broke the camel's back and I'm done with them.

At Christmas, having decided to one shot my 24th army and 8th chapter of marines I went into the local GW and bought a space marine megaforce, though I knew I could get it for £30 off I thought it would be good to support that store (I don't play there because of cheating munchkins with unpainted armies of the month and I don't have a relationship with any of the staff). The assistant asked me if I wanted a bag for my not insignificant purchase and when I replied in the affirmative he said it was 10p or 20p or whatever it was. I didn't have any change having just given him all my money so I just carried it which was a pain with my other bags of people's presents.

That one act of meanness on their part to not give someone buying such a big-ticket box a bag to carry it in has bothered me so much that it has sometimes actually spoiled my enjoyment of the models (scoff if you will, it's true). In any other store where I would have bought a similarly priced product I could have negotiated a discount and received much better service.

I have vowed not to give another penny to the corporation who are trying to ruin my beloved hobby, the best thing that can happen IMO is that GW contracts back to the company it used to be, the one that deserved their success. The worst thing would be this apparently incompetent (according to stock figures if nothing else) upper management to bring the whole company down with them and strangle access to the IP.

Until then all of my hobby money is going on MTG, FFG, Mantic, Spartan et al.

Bag tax may not be GWs doing. It is the next big thing for curbing pollution so many places cannot legally give you bags for free without paying a bag tax. Stores cannot pay taxes for consumers. In my area, I can't get a bag period from many of my stores and those who have bags must charge. It is carry reusable bags or walk out with everything stuffed in your arms or pockets.

nkelsch wrote:
Bag tax may not be GWs doing. It is the next big thing for curbing pollution so many places cannot legally give you bags for free without paying a bag tax. Stores cannot pay taxes for consumers. In my area, I can't get a bag period from many of my stores and those who have bags must charge. It is carry reusable bags or walk out with everything stuffed in your arms or pockets.

So just give your customers a 10p "discount" on the box...

No round here they give you a bag everywhere else, but a 10p free gift would go further than they'd think.

And there's a hell of a lot less plastic in the bag than in the half pound of sprues.

 Sigvatr wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
Bag tax may not be GWs doing. It is the next big thing for curbing pollution so many places cannot legally give you bags for free without paying a bag tax. Stores cannot pay taxes for consumers. In my area, I can't get a bag period from many of my stores and those who have bags must charge. It is carry reusable bags or walk out with everything stuffed in your arms or pockets.

So just give your customers a 10p "discount" on the box...

legally in my area, they are not allowed to.

Retailers cannot pay taxes for consumers. It is illegal here. Besides, why should retail stores suffer for the laws made by the politicians we elected in? All retailers are oppressed equally. I can get angry or carry a reusable bag when shopping or pay my tax.

That's not the case here though, I didn't buy it in America I bought it in Glasgow, every retailer can give you all the bags you want and happily give you extra ones if you need them. I realise they pollute and i make every effort to avoid taking a polythene bag (it is the norm to just be given one without asking) and I carry reusable bags in different sizes. As I said it was Christmas and all my bags were full and more besides. In a country with no bag tax, (which GW know fine well as it's the same one they're based in) most retailers (in fact absolutely all other retailers without exception) would try and increase the customer's convenience by giving you a bag, there's also no such charge for their smaller bags so it makes even less sense.

I enjoy sex.
Until recently I paid for sex from Candy the hooker.
She frequently treated me badly and raised her prices on a whim.
If I complained about increases her pimp beat me into compliance.
I now pay for sex with my wife
Her prices are amazingly consistent.
She also makes me food and irons my shirts.
I still enjoy sex; just not with Candy.

I sense the end of this thread is near...

 Doomsdave wrote:
I enjoy sex.
Until recently I paid for sex from Candy the hooker.
She frequently treated me badly and raised her prices on a whim.
If I complained about increases her pimp beat me into compliance.
I now pay for sex with my wife
Her prices are amazingly consistent.
She also makes me food and irons my shirts.
I still enjoy sex; just not with Candy.

I LOL'd.

Also, 8 posts in 7 years? That's commitment to stealth!

 Doomsdave wrote:
I enjoy sex.
Until recently I paid for sex from Candy the hooker.
She frequently treated me badly and raised her prices on a whim.
If I complained about increases her pimp beat me into compliance.
I now pay for sex with my wife
Her prices are amazingly consistent.
She also makes me food and irons my shirts.
I still enjoy sex; just not with Candy.

Sooner or later she will raise her price and quit ironing your shirts, just a heads up.

I gave up on GW but kept playing 40K with the stuff I had and went into other games as well. Eventually, the general crapness of 40K and the openess & variety of other games moved me away from it properly. Slow process, but not one that I thought would have happened.

If I do play now, its a heavy scenario based and GM game with lots of weird stuff going on. I think its literally once a year.

 Doomsdave wrote:
I enjoy sex.
Until recently I paid for sex from Candy the hooker.
She frequently treated me badly and raised her prices on a whim.
If I complained about increases her pimp beat me into compliance.
I now pay for sex with my wife
Her prices are amazingly consistent.
She also makes me food and irons my shirts.
I still enjoy sex; just not with Candy.

Just wait 'til you break up. She'll suck your bank acount empty just like Candy sucked your dic...tionary out of words.

Haha, I haven't bought new gak from GW in over a decade.

Buy from your FLGS - You don't give as much money to GW, and you're keeping a local business, and presumably, gaming store you play at, alive

 stubacca wrote:
Buy from your FLGS - You don't give as much money to GW, and you're keeping a local business, and presumably, gaming store you play at, alive

Easy to say when you're only local seller of GW products is a GW... and was closed year ago.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 stubacca wrote:
Buy from your FLGS - You don't give as much money to GW, and you're keeping a local business, and presumably, gaming store you play at, alive

Easy to say when you're only local seller of GW products is a GW... and was closed year ago.

lmao, ok, good point well put.

I keep forgetting that I'm stupidly fortunate to have a FLGS about a 10 minute walk from my house, another stockist that just sells GW stuff 15 minutes walk away, a GW store and Worthy Painting about 15 minutes drive away, and then about another 6 GW stores within 30 minutes drive in local towns, not including all the local stores nearby too 0_o

nkelsch wrote:
Bag tax may not be GWs doing. It is the next big thing for curbing pollution so many places cannot legally give you bags for free without paying a bag tax. Stores cannot pay taxes for consumers. In my area, I can't get a bag period from many of my stores and those who have bags must charge. It is carry reusable bags or walk out with everything stuffed in your arms or pockets.

Any excuse is better then none.

I forget how fortunate I am to have 2 FLGS with ample play space within 10 minutes of my home.

Complete truth - GW gives no single thought for us. This is all what they understand.



When they hear you crying or yelling about their new guidelines. This is what they look like.



After realising that if they don't do something, their business will end up bad. So they decide to sketch their future plan for us.



What hobbyists do..



...when they should be doing this.



Like it was going to change eventually, if every single time after prices going up we just accept it and pay more. Ofcourse they snitch more from us, when we keep accepting it...

I still love playing 40k and the Fantasy counter part of it, but I am getting to the breaking point of my patience to spend my little hard-earned money direct to the company.

So yes, I am going to continue to play the game, but I am going to go through Second-hand channels to get the most I can (Paints, Minis, books, what I can) and play another game like Warmachine or so on so I do not have to give up entirely on the hobby.

I am willing to play the game as i love the fluff and game it's self, though the direction the game seems to be going isnt doing great things for me.

I am more tempted to buy small forces and play Kill team, custom scenarios and the likes.

And more importantly buy second hand.

 kronk wrote:
I forget how fortunate I am to have 2 FLGS with ample play space within 10 minutes of my home.

My FLGS with GW and game tables is 1.9 miles away from my front door.

 Byte wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I forget how fortunate I am to have 2 FLGS with ample play space within 10 minutes of my home.

My FLGS with GW and game tables is 1.9 miles away from my front door.

My GW is about 7 miles away, but my FLGS is about 27.9 miles away. Not that I am going to mind driving to the FLGS a whole lot.

I play WHFB.

My army is mantic.
My rule and army book come via other sources.

I stopped playing 40k. So did most of the gamers I know in the area. Most have moved to other games and used the ebay proceeds to fun this move.

As much as I play their games, as I love the settings, and I enjoy the communities at my local game store, I don't buy GW products. I convert or manufacture my own miniatures to use to play their games. I've been playing their games since '95, including 40k, Fantasy, Blood Bowl, and Mordheim, and I've seen the volume and quality of their support for the game and hobby aspects of their merchandise drop dramatically, while the cost for their products has increased. I find I really enjoy finding alternative ways to represent miniatures for Games Workshop games instead of paying their exorbitant prices.

Additionally, their practices in regards to their franchise have become increasingly profit-motivated through the years. My preference, as I assume most hobbyists would prefer, would be that the Games Workshop staff work to support and refine the quality of their game systems, miniatures, and hobby products, resulting, incidentally, in an enthusiastic and loyal consumer base. Instead, their design work, marketing, and business practices are directly profit-motivated, which I find grating.

As an example, consider White Dwarf Magazine. White Dwarf is effectively a product catalog. Buying one, to me, is analogous to paying to watch television advertisements. The vast majority of the magazine merely outlines newly-available, expensive models, interspersed with pointless interviews with self-obsessed Games Workshop staff. The magazine wasn't always this way. Below is a list of some of the features the magazines used to include, which I found appealing:

Mini games

Art posters (as opposed to product posters)

Add on games components (miniatures, character cards, spell cards, equipment cards, maps, cardboard terrain etc.)

Scenario rules

Campaign rules

Fiction

Detailed modeling project guides (terrain building, etc.)

As another example, consider the way the rules for their games are progressively altered in order to sell more miniatures. This does not improve the games, and, in fact, often makes them worse. Rules should be altered to make a game system more appealing, exciting, balanced, elegant, interesting, easy to learn, quick to play, etc. These latter sorts of changes result in a better game, which incidentally ought to draw more customers, and therefore more business.

In the end, GW makes decisions based on what's best for the company, but there ought to be a symbiotic relationship between GW and it's customer community. They see their numbers, and their decisions must be working out, but I have a niggling suspicion that they are inevitably undermining their own market. I make this assumption, because there must be other hobbyists out there like me. I play their games; I've been playing them for almost 20 years, but I won't give them another cent.

The part that has my mates and I buying ONLY ebay and overseas, and ignoring WD from here on is simple,
IT NEVER USED TO BE THIS WAY..
GW made more profit and grew a business from a little fanbase to a superstore by giving quality AND quantity for money,
IE White Dwarfs 'back in my day' gave not only the adds for new products, but a free novella or two.. or three (they make you buy those now?),
extra rules for all games not just the main two/three (death from above? really? 10 yrs ago they gave you a 4 page lift out for free..)
They also had AN ENTIRE battle report, not these 'this is what happened during turn 1-4' Bullswipe.
And when Necrons first came out, you bet you the rules were free.... and they even gave pictures of upcoming models releases months ahead while they were still putty and cuttings
And this is al during their growth period... which we all know is ended... it's the same for models..
Does anyone recall 'The Trolls cave'.. hint-they weren't a third party.. in fact they gave regular deals in the last few pages of WD every month..
All in all, I've been watching these shenanigans for some time and have remained LOYAL AS HELL through it... but not any more.
Fifteen!! years of solid loyalty to be fethed around by a company asked for more and giving less consistently, in fact doing worse than that if possible...
We love the game, I love the lore... but it's just too much, the joy the game gives is not worth the frustration you feel walking into or out of the stores (FWLG or GW) once you find out about there latest changes that purposefully distance the player from the industry, if not the game...

And no, third party games don't interest me, nobody I know plays them, and I'm not interested in making friends with those caricatures of 'still living with mom' basement nerds...
So my mates and I had a few drinks the other day and made a pact.. we have enough models, we've paid enough money, its time we all stop playing GW's mindgames and refuse to coff up.. it's the only way they'll learn the error of there ways....
Join us fellow nerds, curb your crack addiction for the next two years +, they'll either play ball or go bust.. we don't care anymore which.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I enjoy sex.
Until recently I paid for sex from Candy the hooker.
She frequently treated me badly and raised her prices on a whim.
If I complained about increases her pimp beat me into compliance.
I now pay for sex with my wife
Her prices are amazingly consistent.
She also makes me food and irons my shirts.
I still enjoy sex; just not with Candy.

Love this part, except, imagine if you will the local pimp just got a hold of your wife and now jacks her charges up, and makes you pay extra for ironing... along with the consultation charges for how you want them ironed... even though the previous arrangement worked fine

 Byte wrote:
GW isn't going anywhere. The haters will come and go.

If it does, please understand I'm going to sig this. No offense.