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 Necros wrote:
In the last couple of years I've sold off a lot of my armies, mostly to fund other projects. Right now I have 2 armies for each game, Lizardmen, goblins, necrons and tyranids. So I'm just going to keep those and add new things here and there, but I don't expect to ever start a new army again. It's just too expensive and frankly I'm finding 10-model skirmish games to be a heluva lot more fun these days. I just don't have the spare time I used to and with skirmish games I can get a good team or army going in a short time, and for a lot cheaper.

Sums up my position almost exactly. Can't bothered with any more big armies when theres too much other stuff out there.

These threads are like AA meetings.


One day at a time people. One day at a time

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
It's been my experience that while price might be the reason a person stops buying 40k, it's rarely, if ever, the reason they leave the hobby.

If a person is playing league games weekly, tournaments montly, and is building a new army all the time, price becomes an obstacle, not a barrier. it's only when you stop playing that price becomes prohibitive.

But, it's not as much fun to announce, "I've decided I just don't play the game, so I'm quititng."

If it's presumptuous to make blanket statements that GW is too expensive, then it's presumptuous to claim that nobody quits "the hobby" because GW prices them out of the market, and doubly so to try and cast anyone who asserts they did as just looking for a sensationalist way to present their decision.

I didn't claim nobody does that. I was actually pretty careful, and stated only what I've seen. Now, if you want to argue about my experience, feel free. My more subtle point is that compared to the internet, which if full of people rage quitting over price, I've never met an actual person who did the same. At least not one that was still enjoying other aspects of the hobby.

And I think it's more fun to explain decisions as due to immediate, tangible proximate causes. "i quit 40k because the prices got to high." "I dumped my girlfriend because she cheated on me." It's a way of neatly explaining what's often a complex issue. I don't think it's sensationalist, but it is more fun, and as I noted, generates more discussion.

And frankly, I don't agree that it's wrong to say GW is too expensive. Goods have an objective value and a subjective value, the former being the cost of materials, labour, development, production, distribution, warehousing, and necessary company overheads, and the latter being the Capitalist definition of value as "whatever someone is willing to pay". There comes a point when a product is priced so far above its objective value that anyone who buys it is being irrational, regardless of the subjective value they assign to it; a perfect example is that ludicrous Kanye West t-shirt. It's a plain, white, crew-neck cotton t-shirt, and they were charging $120US for it. There is no scenario in which paying $120US for a plain white t-shirt is rational. Some of GW's product range is approaching that point, some has already passed it, and the realisation of that is why I stopped buying GW models except in very rare instances - I was allowing my love for the 40K and WHF IPs to inflate my assessment of GW product's subjective value.

This is all so very, very wrong.

Goods don't have objective value. They do, as you point out, have an objective (or at least determined, non-arbitrary) cost to produce. But I can spend $1,000,000 on something and have zero value left over. Value is a subjective assessment.

And calling costs "irrational" says more about your reason than it does the costs in question. I don't know about $120 t-shirts, but I do know people gettting $115 worth of fun out riptides. So, maybe you should realize that there are more aspects to value than you current think.

MarsNZ wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
I've little interest in the core games because they're (broadly) for children.

Ah, a perfect contender for this thread.

Only if by "stupidest" you mean "accurate."

Why don't we ask GW themselves? In 2004, Tom Kirby mentioned in the preamble to the annual report that "Games Workshop is in the business of selling toy soldiers to children."

I'm sorry if you don't like that you're playing a game aimed at children, but the guy running GW might know who the target audience is better than you.

GW was too expensive for me when I started collecting 5 years ago.
My purchases from GW were limited to about $100 a year.
That being said, I've got about 6k worth of CSM.
That's thanks to Ebay, Swap Shop, and occasional sales at my FLGS.
I make decent money, but I've got a family and other hobbies (making and drinking beer.) So yeah, GW priced me out - of paying full price for anything they've got.

I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? There are way more expensive hobbies out there, it's not like magic where you need to keep buying pack after pack and when a new set comes out you HAVE to buy more.

Usually when it comes to warhammer, when you have what you need you're done. Unless more gizmos come out you want to upgrade. I haven't spent out of pocket on GW stuff in awhile, if I want something else in the hobby I sell what i have and buy fresh from the proceeds I make from selling.

 pities2004 wrote:
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? There are way more expensive hobbies out there, it's not like magic where you need to keep buying pack after pack and when a new set comes out you HAVE to buy more.

Usually when it comes to warhammer, when you have what you need you're done. Unless more gizmos come out you want to upgrade. I haven't spent out of pocket on GW stuff in awhile, if I want something else in the hobby I sell what i have and buy fresh from the proceeds I make from selling.

Because GW?

 pities2004 wrote:
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? There are way more expensive hobbies out there, it's not like magic where you need to keep buying pack after pack and when a new set comes out you HAVE to buy more.

Usually when it comes to warhammer, when you have what you need you're done. Unless more gizmos come out you want to upgrade. I haven't spent out of pocket on GW stuff in awhile, if I want something else in the hobby I sell what i have and buy fresh from the proceeds I make from selling.

>_< Please stop spouting this garbage about magic being more expensive because of set rotation. Much like how in GW games you have to buy the latest rules to play in current edition tournaments, you have to play with the current rotation to play in the Standard style tournament rules. Modern has sets going back 10 years, and vintage and legacy go back to the beginning. You can buy an Intro pack for 15 dollars, and NEVER HAVE TO SPEND A PENNY MORE if you just play with your friends.

That line of thought is just as stupid as someone spouting GW being the most expensive hobby...
Also rules for playing magic on a budget: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=464749 just like there's the second hand market for playing GW on the cheap.

 Alfndrate wrote:

 pities2004 wrote:
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? There are way more expensive hobbies out there, it's not like magic where you need to keep buying pack after pack and when a new set comes out you HAVE to buy more.

Usually when it comes to warhammer, when you have what you need you're done. Unless more gizmos come out you want to upgrade. I haven't spent out of pocket on GW stuff in awhile, if I want something else in the hobby I sell what i have and buy fresh from the proceeds I make from selling.

>_< Please stop spouting this garbage about magic being more expensive because of set rotation. Much like how in GW games you have to buy the latest rules to play in current edition tournaments, you have to play with the current rotation to play in the Standard style tournament rules. Modern has sets going back 10 years, and vintage and legacy go back to the beginning. You can buy an Intro pack for 15 dollars, and NEVER HAVE TO SPEND A PENNY MORE if you just play with your friends.

That line of thought is just as stupid as someone spouting GW being the most expensive hobby...
Also rules for playing magic on a budget: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=464749 just like there's the second hand market for playing GW on the cheap.

You can also play warhammer on a budget, what's the difference? I could use pennies as models if i play with friends.

Magic only becomes as expensive as Warhammer if you want to play very competively. Only then.

Plenty of other adult hobbies are just as expensive, if not more expensive than Warhammer, including some of the aformentioned.

But Alf is right, Magic really isn't one of them.

 pities2004 wrote:

You can also play warhammer on a budget, what's the difference? I could use pennies as models if i play with friends.

The difference is that formats like Pauper, Vintage, Legacy, Cube, Commander/EDH and many other MTG formats are legitimate formats for the actual game and not a sub-standard substitute like using pennies for 40k. Locally there are sanctioned Pauper events, Commander leagues and a variety of other stuff. These examples of formats other than Standard are actually playing the full game of Magic: The Gathering.


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 pities2004 wrote:
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? There are way more expensive hobbies out there

The point of the thread is that people are expressing that price has finally become an issue for them. When people have been participating in a hobby and then feel like they're not getting the value they once did, they want to talk about it. It's not that people hate GW or something, they actually love 40k and WFB and are just interested in expressing some disquiet about there no longer being a value for money proposition in any of GW's offerings (from their perspective). It's about talking.

As for the "there are way more expensive hobbies out there"-- that is 100% a total red herring.

GW is cheap compared to golf
Golf is cheap compared to dirt biking
Dirt biking is cheap compared to 4x4 off roading
4x4 off roading is cheap compared to sailing a yacht
Yachts are cheap compared to space tourism.

But nothing about that means that any individual product offering in any of the above hobbies can be priced at any price. The fact that Yachts are cheap compared to space tourism doesn't mean that all yachts are good value for the money. I'm sure some are and some are not.

So yeah, total 100% red herring.

haven't spent out of pocket on GW stuff in awhile, if I want something else in the hobby I sell what i have and buy fresh from the proceeds I make from selling.

This is a really smart approach. I'd definitely encourage anyone who has grown disatisfied with the value of new releases to enter the second hand market. There are great deals to be had and people willing to buy stuff you've grown tired of.

Thanks for the Magic the gathering, stuff. I have never played it so only had what my friends spend on it to go off.

 pities2004 wrote:
You can also play warhammer on a budget, what's the difference? I could use pennies as models if i play with friends.

This response is fantasic, I've got me a two'fer on this post right here...

Please regale me how I can pay 15 dollars for GW products and never have to spend a penny more to play a full game of 40k (I'm talking 1 HQ and 2 Troops minimum as a full game of 40k).

As to pennies as models, are your friends playing 6th edition 40k while your pennies are using 3rd edition rules? I don't care if you don't buy the books, this is fething laughable on a level I've never encountered on this website before. 15 dollars on an m14 Intro pack gives me enough cards to play Vintage, Legacy, Modern, maybe Pauper, and Standard (Commander/EDH is 100 cards with no repeats other than Lands and a Legendary Creature as your Commander). Sure I might not be able to play in a Standard tournament once m15 hits next year, but we're not talking tournament play, we're talking play with friends. So my 15 dollar investment will literally last me until the day I die, Magic dies, or has a drastic rules change that a 60 card deck is no longer legal.

Also you can't play with pennies, a penny is 19mm wide. You're modeling for advantage by lowering the space your models take up on the table. You can spread them out more, making it hard for me to hit them with templates and markers, and the distance require to charge them is a little more, which makes them harder to assault. Not to mention that they can be completely out of line of sight due to the height of a penny.

The bolded part should be taken as sarcasm

I'm sorry, but it isn't a red herring at all.

Presumably, some of us have other hobbies outside of Warhammer or wargaming. For those folks, hobby dollars all compete with each other.

For example, for me my wargaming $$ compete with collecting and shooting firearms and going to concerts/festivals. I place a value on which I'd like to do more, and I save and spend accordingly.

It's not a red herring at all.

I can appreciate that everyone feels strongly about these things, it is much better than, ..meh...

All I can do is look at my own actions:

1) Mainly buying models second hand (bulk growth for Apocalypse).
2) Yes, did buy a couple new aircraft (meta update for armies).
3) I am a bit of a completionist and just cannot spend $190 for that oversized tank centaur: the design is not good enough. (Found my limit!)

I went into the Robotech Kickstarter and bought two Battlecry kits with some add-ons.
X-wing is looking real good to me and $190 would be VERY well spent there.

I will play 40k, I have plenty to keep me busy but the big flashy items are dead to me now.
In the future, I would update my armies with a couple key purchases and that is it, if they perform a mass obsolete of models I would probably drop out all together codex by codex.

This is my "reasonable" take on things as they are now.

 pities2004 wrote:
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? There are way more expensive hobbies out there, it's not like magic where you need to keep buying pack after pack and when a new set comes out you HAVE to buy more.

Necron scythes, Helldrakes, Tau...this is even worse than MTG. MTG releases balanced new rulesets. GW releases blatantly overpowered models on purpose to increase their sales.

 Talizvar wrote:
In the future, I would update my armies with a couple key purchases and that is it, if they perform a mass obsolete of models I would probably drop out all together codex by codex.

This is my "reasonable" take on things as they are now.

Pretty much exactly what I do. Makes it a lot easier.

Personally, I only play Magic online, which is a shame, because I love the game. I just refuse to be around the people at Friday Night Magic. Its....unsavory...in my area.


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 Sigvatr wrote:

 pities2004 wrote:
I'm not sure what the point of this thread is? There are way more expensive hobbies out there, it's not like magic where you need to keep buying pack after pack and when a new set comes out you HAVE to buy more.

Necron scythes, Helldrakes, Tau...this is even worse than MTG. MTG releases balanced new rulesets. GW releases blatantly overpowered models on purpose to increase their sales.

Oh yay! Glad to have the cries of OP enter the fray.

Good to have you!

 cincydooley wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
In the future, I would update my armies with a couple key purchases and that is it, if they perform a mass obsolete of models I would probably drop out all together codex by codex.

This is my "reasonable" take on things as they are now.

Pretty much exactly what I do. Makes it a lot easier.

Personally, I only play Magic online, which is a shame, because I love the game. I just refuse to be around the people at Friday Night Magic. Its....unsavory...in my area.

That's part of the reason why I bought Duel of the Planeswalkers, so I can play magic without having to split my fridays between Wargaming and Magic.

 cincydooley wrote:
Magic only becomes as expensive as Warhammer if you want to play very competively. Only then.

Plenty of other adult hobbies are just as expensive, if not more expensive than Warhammer, including some of the aformentioned.

But Alf is right, Magic really isn't one of them.

I agree 100% here. A good example for me is drumming. A top of the line drumming setup runs as much as my 10 year budget for Warhammer. And upgrades there are never cheap. Now granted drums hold their value longer, and are an entire other beast to deal with. But it is a good example of other hobbies that cost just as much as playing GW games.

The biggest difference there is that the perceived value of $5,000 worth of drums is far greater to me than that of the same amount in models.

But when we look at comparable costs like this, it astounds me that GW still thinks this is a kids game.

I don't get this post at all.

You obvioulsy don't have a job since you only get money during Christmas and your Birthday, or if you do have a job you are struggling since once again you only get extra cash as gifts.....

40k is a hobby, therefore it shouldn't be an "expense" its something like shooting or fishing or even rebuilding old muscle cars, something you do when you have the time and the money.

I'm getting so annoyed with this Wahh GW is so expensive I can't afford it wahhh threads.... Its a hobby and comparably speaking its not even that expensive, for the price of say one nice rifle you can have about 4000pts of an army, the rulebook, and your codex... For the price of golfing memberships and clubs you could buy a whole company of Space Marines.

If you want cheap, buy some legos, download the Brickwars rules and have at it

 Aerethan wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Magic only becomes as expensive as Warhammer if you want to play very competively. Only then.

Plenty of other adult hobbies are just as expensive, if not more expensive than Warhammer, including some of the aformentioned.

But Alf is right, Magic really isn't one of them.

I agree 100% here. A good example for me is drumming. A top of the line drumming setup runs as much as my 10 year budget for Warhammer. And upgrades there are never cheap. Now granted drums hold their value longer, and are an entire other beast to deal with. But it is a good example of other hobbies that cost just as much as playing GW games.

The biggest difference there is that the perceived value of $5,000 worth of drums is far greater to me than that of the same amount in models.

But when we look at comparable costs like this, it astounds me that GW still thinks this is a kids game.

Touche. I could easily go drop $5k and up on a nice skeet/trap shotgun today. And that's a ton more than I'll spend on GW in any given year.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

2x210 wrote:

If you want cheap, buy some legos, download the Brickwars rules and have at it

A- Completly agree with your post.

B- Brickwars rules? That sounds interesting!

cincydooley wrote:I'm sorry, but it isn't a red herring at all.

Presumably, some of us have other hobbies outside of Warhammer or wargaming. For those folks, hobby dollars all compete with each other.

For example, for me my wargaming $$ compete with collecting and shooting firearms and going to concerts/festivals. I place a value on which I'd like to do more, and I save and spend accordingly.

It's not a red herring at all.

The red herring is the idea that because other hobbies cost more than GW, price considerations related to GW's products somehow don't count.

Of course spending on non-essentials is going to be allocated to different things for different reasons, but when you're assessing whether or not something is good value for the money, the fact that space tourism costs even more doesn't add anything to the evaluation-- in fact, it muddies the evaluation.

Yeah as I always say, I think its a vicious cycle, I reckon that if you spend far too much on the hobby, then you take the hobby too seriously, and if thats the case, its no longer a hobby, its a fethed up obsession.

Stick to one or two armies, and you physically cant spend that much money, models and books don't decompose like tea bags on compost heaps.

Honestly, I am not even boycotting GW and I have not spent more than about $200 the last two years, I've got the same 4000 points of SM I have always had and I occasionally add gak, half of DV got me the new rules and some DA for $50 and.. I dont think Ive bought anything in about 10 months.

You can keep spending just 100-200 dollars a year, and gradually build up a fething awesome collection. I have only been dropping about that a year since I started back into the hobby four or five years ago, and now I have got absolutely gak loads of models.

Almost every hobby costs me more, I've spent three times that on video games, ten times times that on gambling, and about.. well.... feth knows, on going out boozing.

And when I finally move over to the US thanks to the badgering of my homesick missus, I will be spending a good few grand almost as soon as I land on guns and ammo.

When in Rome.....

Good value for the money is completely subjective.

It's not a red herring because you're comparing them to, as I said before, other common adult hobbies.

If you want to compare them specifically to other wargaming companies, then limit it to that. But that valuation is still purely subjective.

I, for one, buy more GW than other companies because of a few reasons:

1. I like the background and story. They have their hooks in me there.

2. I like their multipart plastic kits more than anyone elses.

3. I can always find a game.

For me, these three things, and in particular #3, mean a lot when adding my perceived value. I could legitimately walk into ANY of our 4 local stores with a 40k or Fantasy army and get a game more or less on sight.

2x210 wrote:
I don't get this post at all.

You obvioulsy don't have a job since you only get money during Christmas and your Birthday, or if you do have a job you are struggling since once again you only get extra cash as gifts.....

40k is a hobby, therefore it shouldn't be an "expense" its something like shooting or fishing or even rebuilding old muscle cars, something you do when you have the time and the money.

I'm getting so annoyed with this Wahh GW is so expensive I can't afford it wahhh threads.... Its a hobby and comparably speaking its not even that expensive, for the price of say one nice rifle you can have about 4000pts of an army, the rulebook, and your codex... For the price of golfing memberships and clubs you could buy a whole company of Space Marines.

If you want cheap, buy some legos, download the Brickwars rules and have at it

Or you could think of it as. He is a kid, already priced out by GW, so when he dose get a job and can aford GW product. He will still not buy them becouse he will already be spending his money of other companys models and games. Witch could of been avoided, but that is what GW says the market plan is, short trem gain from kids. So truth be told GW all ready done with the OP, and everyone else here for that matter.

 mattyrm wrote:

And when I finally move over to the US thanks to the badgering of my homesick missus, I will be spending a good few grand almost as soon as I land on guns and ammo.

When in Rome.....

I will happily take you to do some sporting clays, sir.

Clays? He's hunting Hicks!

 Polonius wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
It's been my experience that while price might be the reason a person stops buying 40k, it's rarely, if ever, the reason they leave the hobby.

If a person is playing league games weekly, tournaments montly, and is building a new army all the time, price becomes an obstacle, not a barrier. it's only when you stop playing that price becomes prohibitive.

But, it's not as much fun to announce, "I've decided I just don't play the game, so I'm quititng."

If it's presumptuous to make blanket statements that GW is too expensive, then it's presumptuous to claim that nobody quits "the hobby" because GW prices them out of the market, and doubly so to try and cast anyone who asserts they did as just looking for a sensationalist way to present their decision.

I didn't claim nobody does that. I was actually pretty careful, and stated only what I've seen. Now, if you want to argue about my experience, feel free. My more subtle point is that compared to the internet, which if full of people rage quitting over price, I've never met an actual person who did the same. At least not one that was still enjoying other aspects of the hobby.

And I think it's more fun to explain decisions as due to immediate, tangible proximate causes. "i quit 40k because the prices got to high." "I dumped my girlfriend because she cheated on me." It's a way of neatly explaining what's often a complex issue. I don't think it's sensationalist, but it is more fun, and as I noted, generates more discussion.

In that case, your personal experience is not reflective of the wider situation - down here at the end of the pay scale where managing every pound you spend is important, quite a few people can and have been priced out of the hobby despite still finding it immensely rewarding and not actually wanting to stop.

And frankly, I don't agree that it's wrong to say GW is too expensive. Goods have an objective value and a subjective value, the former being the cost of materials, labour, development, production, distribution, warehousing, and necessary company overheads, and the latter being the Capitalist definition of value as "whatever someone is willing to pay". There comes a point when a product is priced so far above its objective value that anyone who buys it is being irrational, regardless of the subjective value they assign to it; a perfect example is that ludicrous Kanye West t-shirt. It's a plain, white, crew-neck cotton t-shirt, and they were charging $120US for it. There is no scenario in which paying $120US for a plain white t-shirt is rational. Some of GW's product range is approaching that point, some has already passed it, and the realisation of that is why I stopped buying GW models except in very rare instances - I was allowing my love for the 40K and WHF IPs to inflate my assessment of GW product's subjective value.

This is all so very, very wrong.

Goods don't have objective value. They do, as you point out, have an objective (or at least determined, non-arbitrary) cost to produce. But I can spend $1,000,000 on something and have zero value left over. Value is a subjective assessment.

And calling costs "irrational" says more about your reason than it does the costs in question. I don't know about $120 t-shirts, but I do know people gettting $115 worth of fun out riptides. So, maybe you should realize that there are more aspects to value than you current think.

You're proceeding from a false assumption; I am not a Capitalist, I do not hold to Capitalist economic principles, and I do not accept blindly the doctrines that come with Capitalism(and before anyone starts, "not Capitalist" != "Communist"). Goods do, in my opinion, have an objective value, which I have described - they are worth what they cost to create, regardless of what additional cost people choose to add by bringing subjective emotional judgements into things. In a Capitalist context, there's no choice but to accept that the subjective value and the objective value will be unequal, since that context includes profit, but the objective value does still exist, and it is irrational to pay hundreds, perhaps thousands of times what an item costs to create - a certain amount of leeway exists for personal subjective value, but it isn't infinite. If an item costs X, and most retailers sell the item at X+Y(Y being a modest percentage profit), a person who willingly pays X*1000 is not being rational, regardless of whether or not they personally feel they get X*1000 "worth" of enjoyment from the item.

Oh look, another one of these threads. Hobbies cost money, people. Deal with it. GW isn't even all that expensive, but if you find it to be, just do something else. Stop broadcasting it to the world.

*Goes back to buying GW one-click bundles*

While there are people ready to pay the money...

I think Polonius has summed it up quite well.. the value of something will be different for each of us, although I think very much there is a sliding scale of what people will be willing to pay. The fact was that, relatively, when I was a child it was far cheaper to play some form of GW game than it is now - I had lots of extremely casual-wargamer friends who could play with £20 from picking up a Bloodbowl team, Necromunda or Mordheim gang. These days, only the hardcore need apply; getting and playing the games as GW intends requires a significant investment of money even for upper-middle class families.

In a way I think it's sad for the hobby that GW acts as the 'gate keeper' for wargaming, sitting fat and buddha-like and blocking the doorway as the only option for wargaming (with its own stores, and seemingly doing its best to drive the indies out of business) but as a result scaring off these casual or poorer younger gamers who therefore miss out on something that most of us agree can be an extremely fulfilling experience. In that sense I think it's a shame - great sense from a business perspective, but bad news for the customers.

The figures would seem to indicate that less are buying at the higher rates, but obviously still enough that GW doesn't even need to start thinking about changing course just yet. Expect more stealth rises, and more insulting 'one-click deals'.

 Samurai_Eduh wrote:
Oh look, another one of these threads. Hobbies cost money, people. Deal with it. GW isn't even all that expensive, but if you find it to be, just do something else. Stop broadcasting it to the world.

*Goes back to buying GW one-click bundles*

haha very good..