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I'm likely to buy specialist games for a reasonable price (£30-40), or buy into a smaller scale WHF (maybe Mordheim sized or something between Mordheim and WHF).

Reduced prices may get me to start a new army in WHF/40K, but I think a good ruleset would help. 40K feels like a bit of a slog at the moment with the constant referring back to the book.

In regards to the rules, I actually think the main ruleset is solid. What screws it up are the individual army rules and their constant contradiction to BRB rules and other codex rules.

Personally I am finding it really hard to answer this question. I backed away in 2005 because of the way the LotR game (my initial draw) went, and stopped buying completely in 2007. However I have 2 sons who both saw "daddy's toys" and wanted models of their own, and as they got older had friends who were into GW and so I got dragged back by them. However, the eldest is 13 and decided he's no longer interested and the 11 year-old youngest is more excited by the stuff coming out of Mantic these days - he can't be bothered to get his head around 40k or WFB's rules and sees what his pocket money will buy him from GW, and reacts accordingly.

So I think for me it would have to be a root and branch change. 40k and WFB would have to be revised so that they were pretty much unrecognizable compared to the current editions which in my view are huge, bloated, unplayable monstrosities of games. Prices oif course would have to be reduced, I can give a percentage as GW's prices are all over the place, but 50p for a plastic trooper seems reasonable £3 for a hero. Obviously vehicles and larger kits would be more, but there's no way I'm paying more than £20 for a big tank. £10 for a smaller vehicle like a rhino seems reasonable to me. For plastic. Resin i'd pay more.

A big killer for me though is that they no longer make metal models. Plastic toys just don't cut it for me unless they are super-cheap. I don't buy plastic because in anway they have quality. I buy plastic because it is often the only affordable way to build a sizeable army for a given system. Given the choice I much prefer metal. Plastic has the association of "mass produced, cheap". It reminds me of the old boxes of airfix models I had as a kid, and metal reminds me that actually I'm no longer a kid and there is something more to the models than little toys I played with on the carpet as a 7 year-old. If they brought back metal for character models, and didn't charge the earth, I could be possibly persuaded to part with the odd £1 or to. But I'm never going to pay £10, £15, £20 for a hero model. £5 is my absolute limit, and that has to be something pretty special.

The final nail in the coffin though is overall "fun". these days there is just an atmosphere of despair around all things GW. They have betrayed the community on so many levels, over such a long period of time and to such a degree that I feel like a spurned lover. Even if they came back crawling on their knees, I fear that my response would be to kick them in the face, not embrace them. It is strange to feel this way over a commercial company, but it is the way I feel, and judging by the comments on this and other forums, I am not alone in this somewhat irrational hatred.

 Osbad wrote:
Personally I am finding it really hard to answer this question. I backed away in 2005 because of the way the LotR game (my initial draw) went, and stopped buying completely in 2007. However I have 2 sons who both saw "daddy's toys" and wanted models of their own, and as they got older had friends who were into GW and so I got dragged back by them. However, the eldest is 13 and decided he's no longer interested and the 11 year-old youngest is more excited by the stuff coming out of Mantic these days - he can't be bothered to get his head around 40k or WFB's rules and sees what his pocket money will buy him from GW, and reacts accordingly.

So I think for me it would have to be a root and branch change. 40k and WFB would have to be revised so that they were pretty much unrecognizable compared to the current editions which in my view are huge, bloated, unplayable monstrosities of games. Prices oif course would have to be reduced, I can give a percentage as GW's prices are all over the place, but 50p for a plastic trooper seems reasonable £3 for a hero. Obviously vehicles and larger kits would be more, but there's no way I'm paying more than £20 for a big tank. £10 for a smaller vehicle like a rhino seems reasonable to me. For plastic. Resin i'd pay more.

A big killer for me though is that they no longer make metal models. Plastic toys just don't cut it for me unless they are super-cheap. I don't buy plastic because in anway they have quality. I buy plastic because it is often the only affordable way to build a sizeable army for a given system. Given the choice I much prefer metal. Plastic has the association of "mass produced, cheap". It reminds me of the old boxes of airfix models I had as a kid, and metal reminds me that actually I'm no longer a kid and there is something more to the models than little toys I played with on the carpet as a 7 year-old. If they brought back metal for character models, and didn't charge the earth, I could be possibly persuaded to part with the odd £1 or to. But I'm never going to pay £10, £15, £20 for a hero model. £5 is my absolute limit, and that has to be something pretty special.

The final nail in the coffin though is overall "fun". these days there is just an atmosphere of despair around all things GW. They have betrayed the community on so many levels, over such a long period of time and to such a degree that I feel like a spurned lover. Even if they came back crawling on their knees, I fear that my response would be to kick them in the face, not embrace them. It is strange to feel this way over a commercial company, but it is the way I feel, and judging by the comments on this and other forums, I am not alone in this somewhat irrational hatred.

I might be wrong but I can't ever remember a price point you are asking for during my two decades in the hobby. When I bought my first pewter Dwarf Lord in 1997 it was $12.99, which at the time was 9 or 10 pounds.

In regards to you atmosphere of despair, I largely think that only exists on the internet. People are more likely to flock to the internet to complain about a company rather than sing it's praises. I love my Ford F150, but I don't go to the internet forums to tell everyone I love it. However, when it had an electrical issue, I went to the internet and found several forums of people complaining about the same issue and hating on the car. People that owned competitor trucks chastizing owners of the F150. If I were to base everything I think about my car based on internet forums, I would assume it's the worst car ever made and it's going to be out of production. In reality, it's the top selling vehicle in the US. A better analogy is Apple and their products. They are priced at a premium, where you can find competitors options that often do the same thing or more for much less, and there is a ravenous internet community of defenders and detractors of their products.

I think the same can be said about GW. When you are one of the world's largest table top wargaming companies and they are priced at a premium, you are going to have some detractors, and people singing the praises of the competition. Up until I started reading forums a few years back, I had no idea there was such an anti-GW community out there. Most complaints locally were about increasing prices. Even now, the only time I see people really complaining about GW is on the internet. I have lived all over the United States in 7 different states in cities large and small, and no real complaints outside of the hobby being expensive (which it always has been). My community now has about 60 active players, and out of that maybe 6 or 7 take any part in the online wargaming community. While some of them do take issue with GW, and some have stopped playing and gone over to products like Privateer Press, the vast majority still love the hobby.

riburn3 wrote:
In regards to the rules, I actually think the main ruleset is solid. What screws it up are the individual army rules and their constant contradiction to BRB rules and other codex rules.

That's still the fault of the core rules to some extent. If you have a solid basic ruleset where the steps of doing something are clearly defined, then you can hang new rules from that or create exceptions to them without any problem.

For example: In Warmachine, there are several stages that a model goes through when it loses it's last damage point, and different effects trigger at each one. Most of the time, it doesn't matter (loses all damage, take it off the table) but sometimes it does. Say I have a model that explodes when it dies, that gets killed by a model that heals damage when it kills something. I can check the order of sequences to see which effect goes off and which doesn't.

Compare that to the 40K question of "Does Entropic Strike trigger if the model was wounded but makes a Feel No Pain roll?", which went on for several torrid pages in YMDC, mainly because the rulebook was fuzzy on whether a model that passes FNP suffers an actual wound at any point (I think). Fold armour and FNP into the to-wound roll, instead of the odd "Damaged but you may be retroactively not damaged." system.


An even release schedule would help with this problem a lot. Codexes shouldn't have to play roulette every time a new edition comes out, and factions shouldn't languish in the vicious circle of "not selling because they're neglected, neglected because they're not selling", and editions wouldn't need to compatible with army books that might be up to a decade old. Release the edition and a basic form of the army lists, in the style of Ravening Hordes. Release army books for the new edition. And then release new books that have something for all the factions (or half the factions) at once.

 Elemental wrote:

riburn3 wrote:
In regards to the rules, I actually think the main ruleset is solid. What screws it up are the individual army rules and their constant contradiction to BRB rules and other codex rules.

That's still the fault of the core rules to some extent. If you have a solid basic ruleset where the steps of doing something are clearly defined, then you can hang new rules from that or create exceptions to them without any problem.

For example: In Warmachine, there are several stages that a model goes through when it loses it's last damage point, and different effects trigger at each one. Most of the time, it doesn't matter (loses all damage, take it off the table) but sometimes it does. Say I have a model that explodes when it dies, that gets killed by a model that heals damage when it kills something. I can check the order of sequences to see which effect goes off and which doesn't.

Compare that to the 40K question of "Does Entropic Strike trigger if the model was wounded but makes a Feel No Pain roll?", which went on for several torrid pages in YMDC, mainly because the rulebook was fuzzy on whether a model that passes FNP suffers an actual wound at any point (I think). Fold armour and FNP into the to-wound roll, instead of the odd "Damaged but you may be retroactively not damaged." system.

I get what you're saying, but the larger issue with the individual books is that they are all written by different people and often introduce a new mechanic such as entropic strike, that introduces a rule completely left out of the larger game. Warmachine is a tighter rule set, but that was one of the intents when the game was made. In Warhammer, in the first couple of pages they tell you to roll off if there is a rules dispute without clarity. That right there should be a heads up that not everything will be perfect, especially playing a game that has newer editions with older edition codex books that require backwards/forwards compatibility. Most rational people are able to come to a logical conclusion on the rules and get over it with a rule as intended philosophy, and never think about it again. Some people can't do that so easily so they then spend hours on the internet arguing the minutia of a game that was never built to be super serious business.

riburn3 wrote:

I might be wrong but I can't ever remember a price point you are asking for during my two decades in the hobby. When I bought my first pewter Dwarf Lord in 1997 it was $12.99, which at the time was 9 or 10 pounds.

I wouldn't deny it. I remember my first Citadel model was a dwarf from the Fantasy Tribes line. It cost me 25p, which was about a quarter of my weekly pocket money. That felt expensive then, back in 1985! However, there are companies who produce models for the prices I am prepared to pay, and in metal too. Just Citadel aren't one of them.

riburn3 wrote:
In regards to you atmosphere of despair, I largely think that only exists on the internet.

I certainly think it is prevalent on the net, which tends to act as a focus for negative emotion in many ways. However, my personal experience is that it is more than just that. I remember lots of fun events - Games Day, store based stuff, White Dwarf's 30th anniversary party - with cake! All of that was exuberant fun which made you want to spend time hanging around GW. None of that exists any more. Any fun that remains around the 40k and WFB brands is the tail end of GW's involvement at Warhammer World (can you see Warhammer World being constructed if 2004 had been now though?) and what clubs are able to generate internally themselves. I am not decrying those aspects - they are still fun.

Also White Dwarf, Citadel Journal, Fanatic Magazine. Etc. All of those had an element of fun about them. Now the atmosphere WD for the last few years has just been.... sterile. A sort of fun that just isn't.

that's what I'm feeling. When I was a kid, back in the late 80's there was a vibe around GW that drew me in. Nowadays there's nothing comparable that attracts my own kids who are the age now I was then. Sure the world has changed, but it's not all down to Xbox and PS4. There is definitely a different atmosphere. GW is simply a business now, not a hobby centre. And that is fundamentally unattractive to little boys!

riburn3 wrote:
I get what you're saying, but the larger issue with the individual books is that they are all written by different people and often introduce a new mechanic such as entropic strike, that introduces a rule completely left out of the larger game..

You're missing the point. It's because Warmachine has clear steps for things like attacking or killing a model that new rules can be grafted onto the game so easily. For example, when the Convergence faction came out for Warmachine, they worked quite differently from other armies, but were easily integrated into the game. Their warjacks can pass focus to each other, but because the wording of how they do it has clear meanings, it's easy to see how it works and interacts with existing effects. For example, if I cause Disruption to one of them, does that prevent it getting focus in this way? The system uses the word "allocate", and Disruption stops "allocation", so it is indeed prevented. For a simpler example, their robotic infantry have an existing special rule called "construct" that says they're not living models. So when I'm checking if they're immune to a certain effect, I just see if that rule specifies living models.

Because the basic rules are there, new additions can be hung from that ruleset without needing to re-invent the wheel and leave ambiguities open when two special rules conflict.

riburn3 wrote:
Warmachine is a tighter rule set, but that was one of the intents when the game was made. In Warhammer, in the first couple of pages they tell you to roll off if there is a rules dispute without clarity. That right there should be a heads up that not everything will be perfect, especially playing a game that has newer editions with older edition codex books that require backwards/forwards compatibility. Most rational people are able to come to a logical conclusion on the rules and get over it with a rule as intended philosophy, and never think about it again. Some people can't do that so easily so they then spend hours on the internet arguing the minutia of a game that was never built to be super serious business.

That's a dodge. 40K has had four editions where the basic rules are the same, but they still can't get it right? I don't believe that GW couldn't do that if they wanted to. 40K is not more varied or out-there in terms of rules than Warmachine or Infinity is.

If a rules set is balanced and tight, nobody loses. There seems to be a notion out there that players of more balanced games are grim, WAAC types who can't just chill out and have fun. Actually, they're much like playing 40K, except that rules arguments are resolved by checking what the rules say, rather than "cheat on a 4+", and there's less social pressure not to bring an army that's "too good".

Players in my area. Can't find any.


Sad panda.

 Easy E wrote:
Well, I'm late to the party.

First off, they would need to reduce the size of the game. I want to be able to manuever and not just pack the board with models. That means increasing points per model and using fewer models.

Reducing the size of the game would also reduce the start-up costs.

Two, they need to completely redo the turn sequence. IGOUGO is old and outdated. Plus, it is boring. This needs to change to alternate activation at the minimum.

Three, they need to actually start making games again. I want to explore the 40K and Fantasy universe and the main battle games are not the only/best way to do that,

Sorry to quote myself, but I wanted to add -on to what I said earlier and an edit would just get lost.

The Fourth thing I would like to see would be a return to the "Cult" marketing philosophy that had earlier on. IN this marketing model, you let your loyal followers get a glimpse inside the "inner workings" of the product. You help them feel like they are part of the company by introducing them and letting them get to know the personalities of the key design people. It helps people feel like they are part of something larger and appeals to their need for Status in a relatively low status hobby. With such a strategy you don't earn and build customers, but hobbyists. This is some of the "vibe" that Osbad is talking about.

GW has moved away from this marketing ethos to something else. Now, they only try to employ Push marketing methods and try to force feed everything from on-high down to the base. The natural reaction to such a marketing process is for the customer to gag.

erratyk wrote:
As I haven't bought anything GW in 2 years other than a single box of deathwing knights and a codex from my FLGS when the new DA codex came out, I'd have to say a price cut, AS WELL as bringing market prices in line with the rest of North America.

The Canadian dollar is almost on par with the US, but we have a 20% markup on everything. As such I have to get a 20% discount at my FLGS just to bring the prices on par to US MRSP prices, which is crazy.

And that's just to buy their product. It would be another thing entirely to get me to step into there shops again to buy my plastic crack

What have you been watching recently? The Canadian Dollar is no where near par. in fact it is on a downward spiral for the last 4 months. Today we are at $1.10 which is a large price gap. The CAD is not strong. We had a fluke couple years. GW prices products fine for us Canadians.

 Easy E wrote:
This is some of the "vibe" that Osbad is talking about.

Yes, it is.

I recently got in big on Mantic's Deadzone Kickstarter, and I've been playing and buying models for Kings of War for years, and my 2 lads have got in on both games too. What appeals to me about them, and has kept me interested, positive, and buying (just bought Project Pandora today as it happens!) is more than the quality of the rules (which do appeal) or the models (which I tend to find value for money - lower prices on the whole than many others and reasonable, if not outstanding, quality) is the general atmosphere and "vibe". Partly indeed that stems from the Pathfinder community that you see out and about at shows and events (even the little regional ones we tend to have here in the UK in lieu of a large independent network of FLGS's: such as Smoggycon and Border Reiver in the North East of England). That is certainly a positive effect of Mantic's approach to the issue.

I'm not trying to provoke a Mantic>GW discussion here, as I know Mantic aren't perfect and there were various issues with the KoW kickstarter for instance. But there is one clear difference in this regard in that Mantic do *give the impression* that they care about the hobbyists that buy their stuff a lot more than GW, and are therefore practicing a model that GW used to but do no longer. Pathfinders are one aspect. Open Days where you actually get to play games and see new stuff and have whacky fun are another (I went to the one in May 2013 and it was excellent - compare that to 2013's Games Day and the news that not even that will take place in 2014!). Also their staff are regularly on social media - Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. And engage in Unboxings, blogs, interviews with Beasts of War etc. They even support a fanzine: Ironwatch which is edited and produced for free by a fan, but with official support and endorsement by the company! It costs them little (in fact the fanzine saves them money and meant that they could axe the Mantic Journal which was a bit of a commercial faliure), but it generates such positive PR that really creates a positive buzz around the company and its products. Lots of externalities.

Now, Mantic is a much smaller company than GW, but it has such a different vibe that it is unreal. And this is something that others have mentioned before. Ever since the forums were closed down in a response to the level of outcry to the jiggering of White Dwarf issue 316 back in 2005 if I recall correctly, there has been a gradual withdrawal from all contact with their customers as anything other than a source of income. Culminating of course in what lsat year or so became an outright war against some of their biggest fans in the form of some outrageous C&D claims claiming ownership of absolutely everything under the sun. (Now I'm not saying GW should permit their IP to be infringed, I'm just saying they appear to the fans to be taking it to the nth degree of viciousness and pointless nastiness)

It has got to the stage where their brand is actually a drag on them in PR terms. I suspect that actually the name "Games Workshop" has negative value and that for many people if they saw two identical models side by side, one branded "GW" one branded "AN Other Company", they would be prepared to pay more for the latter just to rub GW's nose in it! they have generated so much "negative goodwill" in accounting terms that if another miniatures company (assuming one could be found with the available capital) bought them out, they would actually only be prepared to pay somewhat less than the total value of their net assets - the difference being the amount of money they would have to pay to restore the image of the brand!

riburn3 wrote:In regards to the rules, I actually think the main ruleset is solid. What screws it up are the individual army rules and their constant contradiction to BRB rules and other codex rules.

Would you consider the intersection of contained turns and the model count of a given codex to be a fault of the rules or the fault of the codex?

In the last game of 40k I played, I was playing nids. I think it was turn two and I moved my rather large swarm. I think it was around 70 models, but probably more (it's been 6+ years, I don't quite remember). Then a very large number of them fleeted. And then a large number of them charged, So while my opponent just stood there I did around 200 or so model movements. At the end of the game I actually apologized to the opponent for making them wait through the movement of my swarm and told him that I would never do that to an opponent again. And I haven't. I understand that in casual games people will roll the fleet and everything and do one movement per model directly into combat, but that's a perfect demonstration about how the rules are broken and you have to ignore them for it to work. And it was a small store tournament, not a casual event.

kronk wrote:Players in my area. Can't find any.

And you're just north of Chicago, which GW considers one of their strongholds in North America.

That's a bad sign.

My main concern with 40k and fantasy is that it is not epicly cool enough these days... The fluff describes things like they are awsome. Take Dreadnought for example.. then it gets a glancing hit and explodes, that is just boring....

Compare this to warmachine and things actually can be cool and feard by the enemy. If you are also good at strategi, things can be deadly...

And who really wants to roll 30-40 plus dice???, It takes a long time and it takes up space, overall the main reason everyone in my gaming group about 15 people started dropping out of 40k and WHFB from the year 2010 was the fact that it is not cool(too play, the fluff is cool, but playing it takes a long time and is boring and a very disappointing experience. We have all now switched over to other games, mainly Warmachine/hordes. And I dont think anyone wants to go back hehe..

Pricing has never been an issue for us, and has had no relevance on our decision to drop GW games. The rules are.. Many of us personaly think Warmachine /Hordes miniatures look like crap, and we convert things to make them look atleast decent. But in the End you want to play a fun game and in the time it takes to play one 40k fight at decent points i can play 3 or more warmachine/hordes battles. So both time and the lackluster rules has played a large part to why we no longer play GWs games.

GW needs to drop all their old rules and make big Monsters COOL with lots of Hits, have cinematic rules, like throwing and slaming stuff on the table. Make Terminators, Big tyranids and all the other things that are in the lore Tough and badass and stop with the Randomness of things... Tighter and better rules, COOLER more badass combos.... When a warbeasts comes charging down on your troops in warmachine you know its going to KICK ASS.. When a drednought charges in 40k it will probably die to a glancing power weapon hit before it gets a chans to strike, SO F...ing lame...

I personaly dont understand why people keep playing GW games.... There are just so many other games that have far cooler and better rules...

It'd really only take 1 thing:
- A new, modern rule set that entirely scraps the old one. A rule set built from the ground up to be focused on having healthy and varied metagame while producing dynamic and interesting game states.

Bonuses to seal the deal:
-Models that all feel like distinct game elements, rather than "Team of Space Marines with 1 Big Gun" vs "Team of Space Marines with 4 Big Guns".
-A lowered count of distinct entities active in the game. This doesn't neccesiarly fewer models, just a change in how the engine handles those models as gameplay objects.

riburn3 wrote:
In regards to you atmosphere of despair, I largely think that only exists on the internet.

You are very wrong here, We trash GWs games as much in IRL, as we do on the Internet. That statment is the same as some dude who told me on an MMO forum, "that there were only people that were unhappy with a game that posted on the forums". I think it was Star Wars the Old republic. I told him he had to be a very unhappy customer then because he was on the forums(posting his white knight arguments that the game was great ofc hehe). He immediatly replied that was not the case. He was happy and the game was just fine "nothing to see here move along". I then whent on and said "somtimes a cigar is just a cigar" Sigmund Freud said...haha, 6 months later it whent free to play.... Crap is crap, and Balance is the new Holy Grail of the kidds these days(those customers that GW are trying to get into the hobby). The success of competetive Video/PC games have created an atmosphere that BALANCE is key if you want to play with the big boys, if you aint got a balanced game you got gak. And contrary to what some of you belive everyone from Joe Casual gamer too the ultra competative player care about BALANCE.. Nobody accept stuffy old men, who are still living in the 90s, wants to play a bear and pretzels game in the year 2014...

Facts are the Atmosphere of despair has been going on for a long time now.. But the diffrence now from the year 2004-2005 is that there are ALOT, and I mean ALOT of other games that have established brands out on the market. Many of them started more then a decade ago. People who were on the fence, thinking they might not last, do not have those concerns in the year 2014. All of these games also have superior Rules compared to GW games... I predict a slow death for Games Workshop, they have fixed with the numbers for years now, but you cant keep that up forever.

The Writing is on the wall, they are going down, they are cutting and cutting and cutting, No more translation of whitedwarf, one man stores, The last Gamesday looked like a joke, Trying to shut down other copycat brands who make similar miniatures but cheaper and constant price hikes. And they F with people that we as a community interact with, Beast of War and Miniwargaming are examples but there are many others.. When you combine all these things there is going to be blow back, It has been going on for years now, but it takes time to bring down a giant... They have taken everything that was fun about the hobby and cut it away. Now they just want to sell miniatures with some crapy unfinished rules slapped on, and the new generation is not buying it, because they have grown up on PC/consol/video games and they want BALANCE...because that is whats "COOL" these days...

And the worst thing is that once people are gone they never come back, because GWs policy has never been to retain customers.

To address the OP I'm in the same boat as a lot of people- bring back some specialist stuff. I haven't given GW any real cash is a long time, but I would happily drop cash on a decent Blood Bowl, Space Hulk, Necromunda or even Epic sets. Hell I'd buy Space Crusade and Warhammer Quest if I could.

Why GW makes it so hard for me to give them money is beyond me. I feel almost like if you walked into the boardroom and said 'Did you know there are *other games* out there?' they'd genuinely look shocked.

kb305 wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:

boyd wrote:
Is the price parity between other counties due to a tariff?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 carlos13th wrote:
Around 50% price reduction.

No codex's the main rulebook is expensive enough as it is and should contain army lists.

Decomplicate the rules. Way to many special rules and other such nonsense.

If you cut price by 50% won't that just double the costs to produce the model? Wouldn't that only compound the situation as they are beefing up their workforce and other selling expenses for less of a return?

I don't see how that works. The model would cost the same to produce. The profit margins would be smaller. I think they should be focusing on getting more customers into the hobby than gauging the customer on every purchase.

Not that it matters the question isn't what should gw do to get more business. It is what would they have to do to get me to start buying them. Around a 50% maybe 40% cut in prices would make their models a decent value for money for me. At the moment they are not.

the prices are fine. 33 US for 5 sanguinary guard is fair. buy from a discounter that figure drops to 25 bucks. which is a fair price IMO. i would not raise it more, i wouldn't drop it lower either.

gouging people by region is what needs to go. im not liking gouging people for new overpowered stuff either. compared to sanguinary guard, they are asking seventeen dollars more for sternguard for some unknown reason. all fiveman kits should be the same price, and 50 is too much. Leave it at 35, get rid of regional pricing and most of us will be happy.

wanting 50% off is just getting greedy on your side.

No its not greedy and its ridiculous of you to say so especially considering many consider GW's current pricing to be greedy. Prices are fine to you and some others, to many they are not worth it at all, to some a small discount would be fine. To me it is not worth it at all. I would purchase from elsewhere, I am certainly not willing to pay the costs it would take to make a playable force. New plastic characters are around £15 which is way to much for me to be willing to pay.

As for the griping being internet only....

I am a part of a local gaming community that dropped GM en masse, shortly after 8th edition WHFB came out.

Twelve players, quitting the same week.

Negativity - it's not just for the internet, anymore.

Most of us didn't think that we were quitting GW - just not that happy with 8th, and we thought that we would try out this new fantasy game from Mantic, 'just this once'.

I don't think any of us have played WHFB since.

I was an exception - I had already played KoW by then, and had already ditched WHFB.

On the other hand, we still play Mordheim, which remains my favorite GW game.

Heck, if they did a The Hobbit version of Mordheim....

The Auld Grump

RE: pricing

Given that online retailers can offer 20% off GW and still make a profit, we can infer that GW is at least 20% over costed as no store would sell product at a loss.

Seriously? Cut the prices. At least 30% off.
And don't treat those players/modellers who use non-GW products as though they're plague-bearing baby-eating Anti-Christs.

Not-so-seriously? Institute a basic level of hygiene (with sniffer dogs if necessary), manners and gamesmanship amongst the patrons and staff - all certainly necessary in the stores I've visited.

WayneTheGame wrote:
RE: pricing

Given that online retailers can offer 20% off GW and still make a profit, we can infer that GW is at least 20% over costed as no store would sell product at a loss.

That's not quite right. Discount retailers typically sell at that discount for all lines. Does that mean ALL products are overcosted 20-25%? Its because they (often) don't have a storefront eating up overhead. What Gamesworkshop does do is try and funnel all sales directly to GW, where they get 100% of MSRP, rather than the 50% (or whatever) they sell to distributors. The other rising game companies (Privateer, Wyrd, Mantic, etc) are less worried about trying to compete directly with the Brick and Mortar stores that sell their products, and just get them out in a wide market. Including, gasp, the internet. Crazy how making your product easy to buy can work out well for ya.

I mean, this isn't to say their products ARENT overpriced. Consider that you can buy a recast GW character on the cheap, but I haven't really seen/heard of any recasts of their competition. I think that somewhat speaks to how much padding their is in some of their pricing structure, because its less profitable for people to counterfeit them.

WayneTheGame wrote:
RE: pricing

Given that online retailers can offer 20% off GW and still make a profit, we can infer that GW is at least 20% over costed as no store would sell product at a loss.

From their own figures, GW spends about 20% of the final RRP before sales tax getting the product on the shelf (design, manufacture, logistics)

It is well known that independents purchase stock at ~40% of RRP before tax.

So yes, there is room for a price reduction, but half is just dreaming because GW's non-product overhead is so high that it would drive them under in no time at all.

If they were to dispose of their retail chain, seriously downsize admin and management, and sell solely through wholesale distribution, then maybe something approaching 50% would be feasible without breaking the company, but that's just not going to happen.

If that is someone's line in the sand for buying back in to GW, fair enough, that's your right, but don't be planning any new army purchases in that basis.

I think the way to effect a price reduction without an actual slashing of product prices is to concentrate on sprue design that's focused on maximum utility for the end user in all future projects.

The existing sprue designs are done. The tooling is done and production is happening. Existing products can't really be revamped for more models per box.

Another problem is that everything else about the product experience devalues the models. The model count of a full army and the figures basically being nothing more than wound counters in games cocentrating on units all serve to make the purchases both a smaller and smaller portion of the total cost of a full army and makes the individual figures less and less relevant in a collection or game.

Oh, and the slashing of models per box for the same price is just terrible. Normalizing all elites in 40k to 5 figures per box is just crazy. And 10 figure WFB boxes in an edition where you introduce a horde rule? They should be concentrating on sprues rather than figure count as they are the unit of production and tooling. This trend of offering less and less in a box is terrible. I get that they need to stretch out the purchases to get more money, but at 5 figures a pop or 10 figures a pop, a lot of units in both 40k and WFB become obviously not viable and people won't go down the path of building them.

Imagine building a viable witch elf unit. How many $70 boxes of 10 is the typical Canadian WFB going to buy?

Quite.

Stick two extra sprues of WE in (assuming 5 per sprue.) your costs per unit increase by a matter of what? £1, perhaps £2, your margin remains solid, your customer doesn't feel violated by an unsanded wooden pole, everyone wins.

 azreal13 wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
RE: pricing

Given that online retailers can offer 20% off GW and still make a profit, we can infer that GW is at least 20% over costed as no store would sell product at a loss.

From their own figures, GW spends about 20% of the final RRP before sales tax getting the product on the shelf (design, manufacture, logistics)

It is well known that independents purchase stock at ~40% of RRP before tax.

So yes, there is room for a price reduction, but half is just dreaming because GW's non-product overhead is so high that it would drive them under in no time at all.

If they were to dispose of their retail chain, seriously downsize admin and management, and sell solely through wholesale distribution, then maybe something approaching 50% would be feasible without breaking the company, but that's just not going to happen.

If that is someone's line in the sand for buying back in to GW, fair enough, that's your right, but don't be planning any new army purchases in that basis.

Thats a very fair point. It does depend on the models too. Some are over 50% more than I would pay some are far less. I would also doubt all models have 20% cost brining them to production considering many are obviously priced in regard to points cost rather than production costs. But I imagine thats a decent average to work from.

When I say around 50% price cut I mean I would like it to cost close to half the current price it does to create a viable army you can play the game with. Not to worried how they do that. More models per box maybe? Better battlebox deals? Less costly books? Get rid of codexs?

Those are all more achievable ways of getting to that cheaper price point, and certainly a lot of them would be achievable without the potential impact a direct slash in RRP would have.

FWIW I think "power level pricing" is a really daft idea too, it is almost like GW intend it to be part of the balancing of the game, and is definitely responsible for the more extreme outliers that really highlight how expensive things can get.

You're also right about the 20%, that figure is the percentage of their turnover that they list as cost of sales, which in the last one or two annual reports has also included product development, but is an average across their whole range, from paint and tools through books to plastic kits. I would suspect paint and tools (which they don't make themselves) could well be higher as a percentage of RRP, and items such as the 5 man Elite boxes could well be lower. (Things start to get really muddy with the plastic kits though, as the molds would be a significant startup cost, which could then be deferred over the lifetime of the kit, so a new kit would theoretically have a lower margin/higher cost than one that had been in production for a few years and recouped it's startup costs, which is why it is best to work wih averages.)

While power level pricing is insane, I think expected numbers
purchased pricing makes sense. Why produce a high quality
single commander with lots of options if you're going to only
ever sell 1 or 2 to a player and not raise the price?

Raising the prices on those kits makes sense.

I would go back to GW if they made smaller sized game without the huge models.

The reason is I never got to paint everything when playing 40k and often you needed multiples of the same units and vehicles which completely ruined the motivation.

Now with Warmachine, you can have the same amount of fun with less models. Instead of spamming, variety gives you more strength and almost all models are normal sized easy to transport.

How people get to transport 3 valkyries for instance is beyond me.

Prices has no importance for me, the resources put into modelling and painting is the most limited resource.

It is nice going from work to the game store and pulling a few snap shut containers out of my brief case, 3 or 4 dice and some flat templates and have a 25 point warmachine game. If I happen to have a laptop bag then I can easily carry 35 points stuffed with soft cloths in small containers. And that fits around my work stuff. Games like Malifaux and Infinity are even easier.

High model count might look cool when it's all painted up and covering the table, but I see so many downsides that it would definitely have to go before I got back into a GW game.