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Cost isn't everything. i find I enjoy Warmachine more at the moment and I've made a Space Marine army entirely out of Scibor Monstrous miniatures so even if you spend sometimes stupid amounts of money on your hobby there are benefits to the systems.
I find that I've grown fed up with Warhammer's feature creep and the obnoxious deity models. I don't want to have to get a Crimson Hunter per potential flyer I will face and I don't want to have to go Mech Eldar on the off hand that I'll face a high amount of Noise Marines.
While Warhammer offers a lot of variety, you will find eventually that if you are to have a balanced game then your local meta will dictate what you have to bring along. It's not even optional unless you really do like uphill battles.

So far Warmachine doesn't seem to be that way. Sure, I have to bring something that can punch through or disable ARM22+ because one of my Warmachine friends play Khador. I also have to deal with the very different Cryx and soon it looks I'll be facing beasts from Circle as well, but none of those mean I have to worry about being hard countered the way a window hard counters a small song bird.

And, honestly, for what you get, I would still argue that 40k is a better deel for the cost. That said, to get started with Warmachine you need a ton less. For instance, a unit of winterguard infantry costs $50 US for 13 dudes...

Dude, disregard what I wrote above because I just shot my own theory in the foot when I actually did research. For a "price per model" perspective winterguard cost the same as guardsmen and pikemen cost the same as terminators (less actually).

Mind = blown!

I know it isn't the be all and end all price, but it was the only real point I took in from the previous page.

It is a large contributing factor however, I can afford maybe one 40k army a year along with all my other hobbies, but if that army doesn't play as well as I'd like, I'm stuck with it and its very expensive and hard to change it.

However I can easily afford a Warmachine army or two and pay the small amount to completely change the way it plays - £6-£20 for a caster won't break the bank but can 100% change the way an army plays.

Wombat- it's never been a question of price per figure. Everyone will admit that's about a wash between the various types of figures. It's about how many figures you need. There's no question that 40K requires the use of more figures, on average, than Warmahordes. Therefore a player doesn't have to pay as much to play Warmahordes compared to 40K.
If you really want to try to analyze the games fairly (for price) then pull off a couple of random tournament winning lists from each game and price them out accordingly. Tournament winning lists will make sure that the list isn't just some thrown together units/models and I'd be suprised if you find more than 1 or 2 40K armies that were cheaper than the Warmahordes armies. For comparison 2000 in 40K is about 50 in Warmahordes and 1500 = 35.

Leo, you also need to analyse how many respective models you need in order to get variety in and what type of models you need for casual games as well as the over all "mistake purchases". Causal games is more a game design point than cost.

Variety: In Warhammer in order to make a force that plays differently and which forces my opponent to re-think the game when facing me I have to bring a completely different army. Due to the system design this means that I need to change not 10% of my army, but most likely 80% of my army.
With Warmahordes you can change your army drastically with just the 'caster.
This means for variety Warhammer is an order of magnitude more expensive.

Mistake purchases: In Warhammer it's easy to make a mistake purchase. If I buy Howling Banshees I'm going to have a really hard time making use of them. If I buy Houseguard Riflemen they are still very useful, even if they are often down-rated.
This means that for mistake purchases Warhammer is typically slightly more expensive.*

* and it also means Warhammer is significantly worse designed.

I was surprised because I actually thought that 40k stuff would be lower price per model than warmachine stuff, if only because you need to buy less warmachine stuff so I figured they'd crank their profit margins higher. The fact that they're roughly equal (even with some of the warmachine stuff still being metal) honestly shocked me.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I was surprised because I actually thought that 40k stuff would be lower price per model than warmachine stuff, if only because you need to buy less warmachine stuff so I figured they'd crank their profit margins higher. The fact that they're roughly equal (even with some of the warmachine stuff still being metal) honestly shocked me.

I think it was said that PP prices models only according to the amount of metal and the materials cost. That's why when the cost to make those Winterguard went down, they reduced the price.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I was surprised because I actually thought that 40k stuff would be lower price per model than warmachine stuff, if only because you need to buy less warmachine stuff so I figured they'd crank their profit margins higher. The fact that they're roughly equal (even with some of the warmachine stuff still being metal) honestly shocked me.

I think it was said that PP prices models only according to the amount of metal and the materials cost. That's why when the cost to make those Winterguard went down, they reduced the price.

On the other end of the scale it also explains the Gobber Tinker. You'd be looking at 250 for a battle-box sized game over $1k for a 50pts game, if everything was priced per point like it is. It's just that it's a metal model on medium base that's only worth 1pt.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I was surprised because I actually thought that 40k stuff would be lower price per model than warmachine stuff, if only because you need to buy less warmachine stuff so I figured they'd crank their profit margins higher. The fact that they're roughly equal (even with some of the warmachine stuff still being metal) honestly shocked me.

I think it was said that PP prices models only according to the amount of metal and the materials cost. That's why when the cost to make those Winterguard went down, they reduced the price.

No, they also price based on how many they expect will be sold/army. That's why characters tend to be more- if you're only ever going to sell one/person, then the cost needs to be a bit higher to make up for the significantly lower volume.

Most of the WMH models are metal, actually. Theyre also hollow and use a different metal than GW did. I bought an Earthborn Dire Troll and when i got it i was kinda surprised it was so thin on the model before becoming hollow. But it was still sturdy and heavy, in fact it doesnt like sitting on its base since it tends to tip its so top heavy lol.

GW charged 30-40 for a model half that size made of metal. Earthborn was ~40 give or take a few and is huge. And i'll never need morethan 1 unless i wanna go to insane game levels.

Earthborne was $50 when I bought it, and I have not been upset overall with both the quality of the model and utility in game. PP makes sense in pricing models in relation to others, but so does GW. Before you start raging, I said in relation to other models, referring to the same range. GW may not have the cheapest line, but at least they keep prices steady throughout the whole range.

m14dude wrote:
Earthborne was $50 when I bought it, and I have not been upset overall with both the quality of the model and utility in game. PP makes sense in pricing models in relation to others, but so does GW. Before you start raging, I said in relation to other models, referring to the same range. GW may not have the cheapest line, but at least they keep prices steady throughout the whole range.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440273a&prodId=prod1060074

vs

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1140005&prodId=prod1160009a

or

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440079a&prodId=prod900162a

vs

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440055a&prodId=prod780873

The "price for return" thing is a tad different as I gather. From what I am told, GW tends to price models based on how many folks think they'll need for their armies. But this means that it takes into account rules on the model itsefl for that, so sometimes the power level of the model plays into its retail cost.

PP as I can gather only costs things based on their FA. Even then, I think there have been models who's FA was itself changed based on ease of distribution and cost. That's my personal theory on the Gallows Groves and colossals, models which I think are the FA they are due to price choices.

And stuff.