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 frozenwastes wrote:
Rich at Wayland confirmed that in the last year, the sales of Wayland Games went up 15% and GW sales made up no part of that. Given Wayland's direct relationship with hobby distribution and their generalist approach to supplying the UK and Europe, it might be a fair corallary to the ICV2 numbers from the US reporting around the same level of growth.

Did Wayland say what did made up that 15%? The ICV2 articles only mention CCG's and boardgames driving growth. No mention of miniatures collectible or non-collectible being part of the growth over the last year. They even mention game stores abandoning all non-CCG gaming in favor of only carrying collectible card games. None of the articles or economic data I have seen is showing the miniature games market is growing. The growth from the other companies appears to be from income that use to go to GW and is now going elsewhere.

CCG's and boardgames are on the rise, so I would attribute that growth to them more so than wargames or RPG's. I reckon what money doesn't go to GW goes to other figure manufacturers - wargamers are a hardcore bunch and spend their money mainly on miniatures, they don't drift off to other forms of entertainment once their favorite wargaming company ceases to please, they instead look for another one.

The interesting thing is that cost of sales dropped a fair bit, from £19,431,000 to £17,187,000. In other words GW managed to cut their costs of making stock, or they made less stock (or both).

In an ideal world, GW has started a lean production technique in which kits are moulded and packed more or less as customers order them through the website. I don't know how feasible that might be when moulding polystyrene models.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
In an ideal world, GW has started a lean production technique in which kits are moulded and packed more or less as customers order them through the website. I don't know how feasible that might be when moulding polystyrene models.

I'd be inclined to say "not at all". HIPS is all about economies of scale, which you don't get if you're constantly moving moulds around instead of just doing bulk production runs.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:It's worth pointing out that the shares have hardly tanked, they've returned to the level of 18 months ago.

I hope this is a wake-up call for GW. They obviously need to address recruitment - I vote they introduce Space Hulk-style sets, which are cool, playable for young kids, and will ease them into the universe. But the most serious aspect is the lack of community, something they've allowed to slide drastically over the last couple of years. We play a lot in GW stores, but increasingly in our good local FLGS. The local GW used to organise leagues and tournaments with dozens of people - now this has collapsed, and we've turned up for campaigns, then been hassled by staff if the game goes over an hour.

Kirby boasts about the company attitude - their job ads, in the shops, are bizarre, very intimidating, and suggest a very fixed company culture. The biggest challenge is whether they can change their attitude and culture. I hope they do, they're a successful British manufacturing company, who produce mostly on-shore, and we don't have too many of them.

Definitely agree with this, especially the sentiment of keeping manufacturing within the UK.

The 'yes man' culture is something that has been going on for some time. I remember almost a decade ago having a quite frightening experience of chatting to someone from White Dwarf, with him trying to explain that the drop in sales of LoTR (this was after the 'bubble burst') was nothing to do with films not being on in the cinema, and that is was within the power of the shop staff to maintain sales levels. Honestly, his eyes practically rolled up so only the whites were visible. Not a happy time.

 silent25 wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
Rich at Wayland confirmed that in the last year, the sales of Wayland Games went up 15% and GW sales made up no part of that. Given Wayland's direct relationship with hobby distribution and their generalist approach to supplying the UK and Europe, it might be a fair corallary to the ICV2 numbers from the US reporting around the same level of growth.

Did Wayland say what did made up that 15%? The ICV2 articles only mention CCG's and boardgames driving growth. No mention of miniatures collectible or non-collectible being part of the growth over the last year. They even mention game stores abandoning all non-CCG gaming in favor of only carrying collectible card games. None of the articles or economic data I have seen is showing the miniature games market is growing. The growth from the other companies appears to be from income that use to go to GW and is now going elsewhere.

Corvus Belli (Infinity) sales have gone up substantially over the past few years. I'm pretty sure others (X-Wing, now Malifaux etc.) have probably grown also. I did read about 20% of growth in the industry last year, which is heartening. GW might have a slightly smaller slice of that pie, but still have the lions share.
Still, complete domination of a market by one company is generally only good for the share-holders, and the customer will ultimately benefit if the current trend of a levelling of market share continues a little while longer - a greater variety of high-quality games, with well written rules and well sculpted miniatures, and GW themselves having to up their own game. From this side at least, hopefully things can only get better over the next five years!

Inferior product is way oversimplifying things because ultimately most sci-fi/fantasy Wargames companies don't just compete on price. Mantic is your best example of an inferior product line, because a lot of it is positioned to offer cheaper alternatives to GW's products so customers can "build big armies."

But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point.

Mantic doesn't just aim to undercut GW. Mantic aims to fill a demand that exists and that GW has not filled. That's not an inferior product. Mantic may be doing well because GW is doing badly, but that doesn't mean Mantic is going to do badly once customers have more disposable income. That's daft.

Agreed, and underscores how badly Mantic is dropping the ball with their nagging issues that continue to crop up.

Hence, Mantic. Almost.

GW is in a position of weakness that they haven't been in since...forever?

There's never been a better time for competitors to step in with quality product and claim bigger pieces of the market share pie!

The "inferior product" idea is interesting, and certainly might represent a factor.

The hole in that theory for me is that, to the best of our knowledge with the information available, people seem to be spending more in the niche that GW competes in, even if it is on goods with a lower RRP.

So, if we are to assume that people are buying other goods because they are cheaper, one could also assume that they are being more relaxed with the quantities of cash they are spending, which surely runs contrary to the idea of why they are purchasing inferior goods in the first place?

I think if the consumer is spending in your market, but not with you, then the blame for that lies squarely on your shoulders. You are either selling a product the customer does not want/does not value, or haven't kept up with changes in the nature of demand.

I think first, we should be looking at the market then comparing how GW did versus the market.

We should all begin by eliminating the nonsense that this is a niche market. By most business definitions, a niche market is any market which is $100 million or less in worldwide revenue. The tabletop gaming market is a multi-billion dollar market today and estimates of the "miniatures" portion of that market have it at about $400m-$450m growing at about 8% CAGR. In other words, the miniatures market is a VERY healthy market right now even given the current economic situation in the world and is by no definition a "niche" market.

That being said, with the higher than usual sales decline for GW in the latest financials, coupled with the dramatically increased release schedule of products over the last year, the latest report shows that GW is showing some serious structural cracks. While their ridiculous policies (like not recognizing the internet exists and smacking down FLGS partners) and insane pricing practices have something to do with this, I think the bigger problem can be seen in how the competitors have risen and grown over the last decade. GW has abandoned their entry games (Space Hulk, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer Quest, Mordheim, etc.) which were better entry points into their main systems and this is where the competition (Malifaux, Infinity, Hell Dorado, et al.) have moved in. This is having a dramatic impact on GW when coupled with their isolationist business practices.

While the next financial report will show if this is going to be a longer term trend, I think watching if they "humble" themselves and start moving with a more sound and industry friendly business strategy will foreshadow what those results will be. Right now, GW continues to operate with the arrogance and heavy-hand that TSR did when Lorraine Williams was CEO there - and we all know how that turned out - TSR went bye-bye.

Based on past history with the current management, here is what I expect to see going forward through 2014:
- GW will raise prices again this spring which will finally cross-them over the price-value threshold and have a dramatic negative impact, more than any other price increase, on the decline in unit sales.
- As they move Finecast to Forgeworld, and current Finecast models will be repriced much higher to match current Forgeworld model pricing. This will again have a negative impact on unit sales.
- They will continue to let their lawyers run lose in stupid fashion and further damage their already volatile reputation like TSR did when they became known as T$R. The effect will be the same as it was on TSR then.
- They WILL look to release a revised 40k rulebook before the end of 2014 (probably around the November timeframe), to try and reinvigorate 40k sales. This will really be like a 6.5 version that will keep all current codexes valid.
- Late summer will see a new 40k supplement "Gods of War". Each race will get a new God of War model. Each God of War will be 250 points, have 10 D-Weapons with 72 inch range that can fire all their weapons in one turn. The model kit will build a 48" by 36" model (so you an an opponent can fill a 4 foot by 6 foot table with only two models), have 12 variants in the same kit and sell for around $1500 a model. After release, GW won't understand why every 40k player isn't rushing to buy one of these when total unit sales reach a whopping total of one, putting it only one better than the number of Adeptus Astartes chapters sold (which is none!).
- Speaking of disappointing Adeptus Astartes sales, GW will introduce GW Finance, where you can now buy Adeptus Astartes bundles with 60-months of 12% APR financing with only $100 dwon. One person will go for this which will lead them to create similar $12,000 bundles for all armies with the same financing options. No one beyond that first person will ever go for this so GW finance will be shut down before years end.
- Sales of the next edition of Warhammer will disappoint when the new version rulebook comes out priced at $250 standard, is 1200 pages, weighs 14 lbs., is three inches thick, and has 640 pages of a "miniatures showcase", showing GW continues to live in their reality-disconnected bubble.
- Games Day will move to one man shows and be set up in the closet of the convention halls, rather than the main floor.
- When the next financial report is published, and numbers are even worse than the current one, Tom Kirby will blame it on the fact we are living in the end times, that J.K. Rowling wrote a new book, and that President Obama only scored a 74 in his last golf round. In other words, he will begin to pull out bigger and bigger BS reasons why they are failing in a "GROWING" market than it being anything but management.

Here is what I think will happen after the above takes place in 2014:
- In January of 2015, after another disappointing sales decline and all of the above "we don't know how to run a business" management mis-steps we will get good news. A long time GW 40k fan, playing since the Rogue Trader days, who started an internet start up and sold it to make almost a billion dollars will buy 51% of GW stock and initiate a hostile takeover. That person will succeed and the first thing they will do is kick Kirby and the rest of the incompetent GW management to the curb. Next, they will release a brand new version of Warhammer 50,000 by Christmas 2015 authored by Andy Chambers and Rick Priestly. It will be an entirely new game system from scratch and will move the clock forward 10,000 years to disassociate it from all the damage done to the brand by Kirby and company.
- They will also realign prices to market realities and Warhammer 50k will be a huge hit bringing the masses back to the new GW.
- This same person will institute an Outrider program to expand knowledge of the game, drive the release of several entry level games (such as those noted above), allow internet retailers to post GW product pictures, become partners with GW FLGS and allow them to sell ALL GW products again.
- This person will also expand Games Day to be a Games Weekend with all sorts of manner of games being played, painting workshops, painting competitions and other such fun.
- This person will institute FLGS store and larger tournament formats with unique prizes and other goodies.
- This person will adopt a franchise program for independents to form their own GW branded FLGS and get GW out of the retail business altogether. Instead they will teach others who start their own franchise how to run a successful retail environment (in other words, not the way Kirby and Co. are doing it), and promote the GW hobby on a massive scale.
- This person will reform the studio and completely separate it from sales so that they actually are designing games again instead of marketing promotional pieces.

Anyway, just my thoughts and opinions.

Can't argue with any of that!

Will just pick up on one thing. Purely speaking for myself, I use the term niche to mean tabletop wargaming, which is a niche within the wider tabletop gaming market, which in itself is a part of the toys/games/hobby market, rather than any strict economic definition.

So, by my way of thinking, something like Magic does compete for the Warhammer £, but not as directly as something like Warmachine.

As one point of data i will offer up my own sales. My 2 stores together sell an amount of GW product in the low six figures per year. GW dropped 33% in 2013 sales, vs. 2012. We had been having a slow decline in GW sales before that, but it's accelerating. I attribute this to:

- A lack of GW stock on the wall. They moved so many things (nearly all blisters, many plastic boxes) to mail order that i simply have less things to sell.
-Inability to actually sell a customer a full army due to lack of product. (WFB in particular)
-The complete lack of information and promotional support for new products before their release.
-Increase in price.

There are other factors, but these are the major ones affecting sales.

weeble1000 wrote:


But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point. .

There is nothing lean about Mantic's prices.

They shadow GW to be just under them and relatively cheaper, but a company that charges you 15 GBP / 25 USD for a box of 8 no-options, restic, several-repeat sculpts DreadBall miniatures isn't doing any "lean". pricing.

I agree on the customer experience though.

 Zweischneid wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:


But in reality Mantic is selling a customer experience that GW has utterly failed to deliver. Mantic has a trim, fast playing, tournament friendly rule set and well supported 'specialist' games. Mantic is even putting out e rule books that work on any platform, can be run locally or streamed, include robust game tracking functionality, AND a lean price point. .

There is nothing lean about Mantic's prices.

32 Page Mini Kings of War Core Rulebook
40 Plastic Dwarf Ironclad
Hand Weapons and Shield
Champion, Standard Bearer and Musician
30 Plastic Dwarf Ironwatch
Rifles or Crossbows
15 Plastic Dwarf Shieldbreakers
Two-handed hammers
2 Dwarf Ironbelchers with crew
Ironbelcher Cannon or Ironbelcher Organ Guns
Loads of Mantic Points
20mm Square Bases

50 quid. 50.

Includes a rulebook.

Say what you like about the quality, but if you're going to try and argue on price, you'd better have more than blatant cherry picking to back it up.

 Alpharius wrote:

GW is in a position of weakness that they haven't been in since...forever?

There's never been a better time for competitors to step in with quality product and claim bigger pieces of the market share pie!

Depends on which companies/games you are talking about. I don't put warmachine or flames of war into the same catagory as these kickstarters we are seeing pop up. Most of the kickstarter numbers i've been seeing aren't direct competition for GW products. Most are board games and other one offs.

The issue that the kickstarter companies have had and will continue to have is maintaining momentum and sales after the kickstarter is done.. After the kickstarter has completely, most of these companies have NOT continued to make adequate sales for the people working for them to take it on as a full time job. That's just reality. They don't have the distribution channels or reliable clients to make it as a full on business regardless of the quality of their product. If you are a gaming store for every dream-forge games there are about 20 defiance games. It's like shopping on Etsy. The products are slightly cheaper and there is no real guarantee that you will get your product on time or ever. Sometime you even lose all your money because someone is dishonest.

That is just the reality of the situation. Saying that you aren't taking on counter party risk by dealing with a kickstarter is complete nonsense.

The difference is that when you place an order with GW, you know you are much more likely to actually get what you paid for and if you don't they will fix it. Other small companies who take their gak seriously like chapterhouse and dream-forge have earned that same level of trust from me but they are the exception and not the rule.

So no.. I don't consider these kickstarters to be competition for GW no more than I see Etsy stores as competition for Walmart.

 azreal13 wrote:


Say what you like about the quality, but if you're going to try and argue on price, you'd better have more than blatant cherry picking to back it up.

I play DreadBall, which (going by their Kickstarter) is 3-times the game Kings of War is, so it's hardly cherry picking.

Either way, despite knowing nothing about Kings of War.. one quick look at the random units in their online shop shows...


Mantic Games

5 Miniatures, no options, metal cast, 15 Quid. (3 quid per mini)

Games Workshop



16 miniatures, plenty of options, hard plastic, 20 quid (1.25 per miniature).




Mantic's even more expensive than GW.

Yes, Mantic is smart, smarter than GW, and thus has a few loss-leading starter boxes and bundles, like the one you "cherry-picked".

Their "average" miniature is nearly as expensive (and, as shown above, in some cases more (!) expensive) than GW.





[

Wayshuba wrote:
I think first, we should be looking at the market then comparing how GW did versus the market.

We should all begin by eliminating the nonsense that this is a niche market. By most business definitions, a niche market is any market which is $100 million or less in worldwide revenue. The tabletop gaming market is a multi-billion dollar market today and estimates of the "miniatures" portion of that market have it at about $400m-$450m growing at about 8% CAGR. In other words, the miniatures market is a VERY healthy market right now even given the current economic situation in the world and is by no definition a "niche" market.

That being said, with the higher than usual sales decline for GW in the latest financials, coupled with the dramatically increased release schedule of products over the last year, the latest report shows that GW is showing some serious structural cracks. While their ridiculous policies (like not recognizing the internet exists and smacking down FLGS partners) and insane pricing practices have something to do with this, I think the bigger problem can be seen in how the competitors have risen and grown over the last decade. GW has abandoned their entry games (Space Hulk, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer Quest, Mordheim, etc.) which were better entry points into their main systems and this is where the competition (Malifaux, Infinity, Hell Dorado, et al.) have moved in. This is having a dramatic impact on GW when coupled with their isolationist business practices.

While the next financial report will show if this is going to be a longer term trend, I think watching if they "humble" themselves and start moving with a more sound and industry friendly business strategy will foreshadow what those results will be. Right now, GW continues to operate with the arrogance and heavy-hand that TSR did when Lorraine Williams was CEO there - and we all know how that turned out - TSR went bye-bye.

Based on past history with the current management, here is what I expect to see going forward through 2014:
- GW will raise prices again this spring which will finally cross-them over the price-value threshold and have a dramatic negative impact, more than any other price increase, on the decline in unit sales.
- As they move Finecast to Forgeworld, and current Finecast models will be repriced much higher to match current Forgeworld model pricing. This will again have a negative impact on unit sales.
- They will continue to let their lawyers run lose in stupid fashion and further damage their already volatile reputation like TSR did when they became known as T$R. The effect will be the same as it was on TSR then.
- They WILL look to release a revised 40k rulebook before the end of 2014 (probably around the November timeframe), to try and reinvigorate 40k sales. This will really be like a 6.5 version that will keep all current codexes valid.
- Late summer will see a new 40k supplement "Gods of War". Each race will get a new God of War model. Each God of War will be 250 points, have 10 D-Weapons with 72 inch range that can fire all their weapons in one turn. The model kit will build a 48" by 36" model (so you an an opponent can fill a 4 foot by 6 foot table with only two models), have 12 variants in the same kit and sell for around $1500 a model. After release, GW won't understand why every 40k player isn't rushing to buy one of these when total unit sales reach a whopping total of one, putting it only one better than the number of Adeptus Astartes chapters sold (which is none!).
- Speaking of disappointing Adeptus Astartes sales, GW will introduce GW Finance, where you can now buy Adeptus Astartes bundles with 60-months of 12% APR financing with only $100 dwon. One person will go for this which will lead them to create similar $12,000 bundles for all armies with the same financing options. No one beyond that first person will ever go for this so GW finance will be shut down before years end.
- Sales of the next edition of Warhammer will disappoint when the new version rulebook comes out priced at $250 standard, is 1200 pages, weighs 14 lbs., is three inches thick, and has 640 pages of a "miniatures showcase", showing GW continues to live in their reality-disconnected bubble.
- Games Day will move to one man shows and be set up in the closet of the convention halls, rather than the main floor.
- When the next financial report is published, and numbers are even worse than the current one, Tom Kirby will blame it on the fact we are living in the end times, that J.K. Rowling wrote a new book, and that President Obama only scored a 74 in his last golf round. In other words, he will begin to pull out bigger and bigger BS reasons why they are failing in a "GROWING" market than it being anything but management.

Here is what I think will happen after the above takes place in 2014:
- In January of 2015, after another disappointing sales decline and all of the above "we don't know how to run a business" management mis-steps we will get good news. A long time GW 40k fan, playing since the Rogue Trader days, who started an internet start up and sold it to make almost a billion dollars will buy 51% of GW stock and initiate a hostile takeover. That person will succeed and the first thing they will do is kick Kirby and the rest of the incompetent GW management to the curb. Next, they will release a brand new version of Warhammer 50,000 by Christmas 2015 authored by Andy Chambers and Rick Priestly. It will be an entirely new game system from scratch and will move the clock forward 10,000 years to disassociate it from all the damage done to the brand by Kirby and company.
- They will also realign prices to market realities and Warhammer 50k will be a huge hit bringing the masses back to the new GW.
- This same person will institute an Outrider program to expand knowledge of the game, drive the release of several entry level games (such as those noted above), allow internet retailers to post GW product pictures, become partners with GW FLGS and allow them to sell ALL GW products again.
- This person will also expand Games Day to be a Games Weekend with all sorts of manner of games being played, painting workshops, painting competitions and other such fun.
- This person will institute FLGS store and larger tournament formats with unique prizes and other goodies.
- This person will adopt a franchise program for independents to form their own GW branded FLGS and get GW out of the retail business altogether. Instead they will teach others who start their own franchise how to run a successful retail environment (in other words, not the way Kirby and Co. are doing it), and promote the GW hobby on a massive scale.
- This person will reform the studio and completely separate it from sales so that they actually are designing games again instead of marketing promotional pieces.

Anyway, just my thoughts and opinions.

sigh... this is about as rational as the autogenerated complaint letter I posted earlier..

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The interesting thing is that cost of sales dropped a fair bit, from £19,431,000 to £17,187,000. In other words GW managed to cut their costs of making stock, or they made less stock (or both).

In an ideal world, GW has started a lean production technique in which kits are moulded and packed more or less as customers order them through the website. I don't know how feasible that might be when moulding polystyrene models.

I thought there were shortages of newly released kits over the last year where people couldn't get things even on release day; GW were supplying their own shops and independents second. If that's right, then they're playing it very safe by underproducing so as not to have any excess stock that doesn't immediately sell.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:


Say what you like about the quality, but if you're going to try and argue on price, you'd better have more than blatant cherry picking to back it up.

I play DreadBall, which (going by their Kickstarter) is 3-times the game Kings of War is, so it's hardly cherry picking.

Either way, despite knowing nothing about Kings of War.. one quick look at the random units in their online shop shows...


Mantic Games

Spoiler:

5 Miniatures, no options, metal cast, 15 Quid. (3 quid per mini)

Games Workshop

Spoiler:

16 miniatures, plenty of options, hard plastic, 20 quid (1.25 per miniature).




Mantic's even more expensive than GW.

Yes, Mantic is smart, smarter than GW, and thus has a few loss-leading starter boxes and bundles, like the one you "cherry-picked".

Their "average" miniature is nearly as expensive (and, as shown above, in some cases more (!) expensive) than GW.





[

You say he's cherry picking when you didn't even compare the same thing. Go compare GW and Mantic's Dwarf warriors with each other, or GW and Mantic's "slayers". I'd go on further, but your mind is already made up and spouting rubbish so I've already spend enough time on this.

Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there.. you've pretty much picked up one of the most expensive miniatures (price per) in the Mantic range.

Someone coming into KoW wouldn't buy those. They would be far more likely to buy the box-set which Azrael posted, which costs £50. Actually an army that you can play the game with, straight up.

Dreadball is a little more expensive price per miniature, but it's mitigated by the fact that a team is all you need to play. If a friend has the boardgame already, £15 would seem to be extremely reasonable!

 Pacific wrote:
Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there.. you've pretty much picked up one of the most expensive miniatures (price per) in the Mantic range.

Someone coming into KoW wouldn't buy those. They would be far more likely to buy the box-set which Azrael posted, which costs £50. Actually an army that you can play the game with, straight up.

Dreadball is a little more expensive price per miniature, but it's mitigated by the fact that a team is all you need to play. If a friend has the boardgame already, £15 would seem to be extremely reasonable!

I just picked a random Dwarf from the range. How the feth should I know, which Dwarf does what. They all look the same to me

The only thing I didn't do was pick the obvious loss-leading "get-started-here" box, because that, frankly, is disingenuous. That is cherry-picking.

And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?

What if I want to play "DreadBall Apocalypse" with 100 miniatures each side? Will Mantic sell me the minis for a tenth of the price?

That doesn't make sense at all.

 mikhaila wrote:
As one point of data i will offer up my own sales. My 2 stores together sell an amount of GW product in the low six figures per year. GW dropped 33% in 2013 sales, vs. 2012. We had been having a slow decline in GW sales before that, but it's accelerating. I attribute this to:

- A lack of GW stock on the wall. They moved so many things (nearly all blisters, many plastic boxes) to mail order that i simply have less things to sell.
-Inability to actually sell a customer a full army due to lack of product. (WFB in particular)
-The complete lack of information and promotional support for new products before their release.
-Increase in price.

There are other factors, but these are the major ones affecting sales.

Thanks for the input Mikhaila. One of my FLGS owners commented the too saw a 25% drop in GW sales over the last year. So GW's claim of the drop being due to the switch to one man stores isn't true. Have other miniature games picked up the loss sales from GW or do you see an overall decline in the miniatures market? The same FLGS stated that while games like WMH are growing, they don't offset the lost GW sales. While the other games have lower entry points, he would need players to pick up multiple systems to offset the GW loss. In contrast, he did expand his MtG section vastly with a lot of used card displays.

As for everyone who praises Mantic and KoW, none of my local stores carry it. All the owners say they don't want to carry stock for a company that throws out sales and specials on a regular basis that undercut them so heavily. They will carry Dreadball, and the other boardgames, but not KoW itself.

Silver_skates wrote:Intangible assets have increased by £2m. I find this interesting because intangible assets are often ways of hiding costs on balance sheet as it is purely on the directors opinion that an intangible can be capitalised. Without detailed reports its impossible to know what has been capitalised or not. My assumption is the spead of producing codexes has led to an increase and an increase in intellectual property which has been capitalised to be written off over its "useful economic life". I would flag this as a red herring in my job. If not capitalised profits would reduce by £5m.

Didn't comment on this earlier, but we could have just seen the CHS legal costs revealed.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there.. you've pretty much picked up one of the most expensive miniatures (price per) in the Mantic range.

Someone coming into KoW wouldn't buy those. They would be far more likely to buy the box-set which Azrael posted, which costs £50. Actually an army that you can play the game with, straight up.

Dreadball is a little more expensive price per miniature, but it's mitigated by the fact that a team is all you need to play. If a friend has the boardgame already, £15 would seem to be extremely reasonable!

I just picked a random Dwarf from the range. How the feth should I know, which Dwarf does what. They all look the same to me

The only thing I didn't do was pick the obvious loss-leading "get-started-here" box, because that, frankly, is disingenuous.

Well, how about simply picking a boxed set with a comparable number of miniatures for a comparable unit in a comparable game? Could you manage that?

Or simply compare it to a GW Dwarf Battalion, hey, I'd even let you use the last version if they don't make one anymore.

And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?

That doesn't make sense at all.

Of course it makes sense, a lower volume of sales means a higher margin is required, hence why a plastic Space Marine character costs over half what a squad of ten.

Frankly, if your game was good enough, and I genuinely needed only to buy one mini at £50 to start playing, I'd consider it.

 Pacific wrote:
Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there..

Here, there and everywhere!

Anyway, I still don't really see Mantic as 'serious' competition to GW - they've got too many hurdles of their own to overcome before they can be 'taken seriously'.

 azreal13 wrote:

Of course it makes sense, a lower volume of sales means a higher margin is required, hence why a plastic Space Marine character costs over half what a squad of ten.

Frankly, if your game was good enough, and I genuinely needed only to buy one mini at £50 to start playing, I'd consider it.

But volumes of sales for DreadBall are ~3-times higher than Kings of War (guestimate from the two Kickstarter's popularity).

Shouldn't DreadBall minis thus be a lot cheaper than KoW by your logic?

 Alpharius wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Zweischneid, think you are being a bit disingenuous there..

Here, there and everywhere!

Anyway, I still don't really see Mantic as 'serious' competition to GW - they've got too many hurdles of their own to overcome before they can be 'taken seriously'.

Agreed.

On both points.

Personally, if he was trying to argue Mantic v GW on quality and price, it would be a much more even battle. I think Mantic are very important in the marketplace for their potential to keep GW 'honest' but there's very little I'm actively considering buying right now, but then, I'm a Miercehead, so clearly I'm at the "happy to pay a premium for quality" end of the scale, which isn't really what Mantic seem to be targeting (for now)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Zweischneid wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

Of course it makes sense, a lower volume of sales means a higher margin is required, hence why a plastic Space Marine character costs over half what a squad of ten.

Frankly, if your game was good enough, and I genuinely needed only to buy one mini at £50 to start playing, I'd consider it.

But volumes of sales for DreadBall are ~3-times higher than Kings of War (guestimate from the two Kickstarter's popularity).

Shouldn't DreadBall minis thus be a lot cheaper than KoW by your logic?

No. The return on investment to Mantic per customer is likely much lower because the ceiling for what an average player will spend is likely much lower. That it is more popular is great, because it means Mantic will stick around longer, support Dreadball more heavily and continue to grow. Both financially and in terms of quality.

I don't begrudge a company making a profit, at the end of the day, if you make something that people are willing to buy, you should be rewarded, but on a product like Dreadball, you must base your pricing on the assumption that a new player buys the starter and nothing else, and cut your cloth accordingly.

But that isn't the argument here, and you know it.

 azreal13 wrote:


No. The return on investment to Mantic per customer is likely much lower because the ceiling for what an average player will spend is likely much lower. That it is more popular is great, because it means Mantic will stick around longer, support Dreadball more heavily and continue to grow. Both financially and in terms of quality.

I don't begrudge a company making a profit, at the end of the day, if you make something that people are willing to buy, you should be rewarded, but on a product like Dreadball, you must base your pricing on the assumption that a new player buys the starter and nothing else, and cut your cloth accordingly.

But that isn't the argument here, and you know it.

Not really, because the argument is stupid anyway you look at it.

You can look at companies pricing their product based on roughly supply & demand (not in a pure economics-class sense, but in a business-sense of what people are willing to buy/pay) or at costs-to-market + x% for profit.

The whole notion of "it's based around the cost to the customer for getting "into the game" is ludicrous. Might as well argue that GW is basing their prices around the average customer buying 5 clip-together Space Marines and never anything else.

How/who/by what means should, especially "pre-publication", a company know what the "average amount" of miniatures is an "average customer" will buy? Maybe the "average collection" of the "average DreadBall player" is actually larger than the "average KoW collection" of the "average KoW player", as the former has plenty of teams and the latter is pushing old GW-figures around?

I digress..

Mantic is asking the prices it can ask, because their stuff "feels" like a bargain in the slipstream of GW, and they exploit that ruthlessly (as they should, not begrudging a company its profit and all that). The stuff that sells well, they price higher. The shelf-huggers they discount aggressively. No secret there.

It has absolutely nothing to do with "how many miniatures do you need to get started", and you know it.

No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.

 Zweischneid wrote:


And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?

If those miniatures were good quality, and Kill Team was a distinct, Necromunda/Mordheim-esque game system? Yes. I've bought boutique resin miniatures to use in Mordheim or INQ28 warbands that cost the same or more than GW miniatures. Again though, you're comparing apples to zepplins; Kill Team is NOT a standalone small model-count game, you need the main 40K rules and the codex for any army you want to use, and the hardback rulebook alone costs the same or more than I paid for any of GW's old SG starter boxes that included everything you needed to play the game including full-size rulebooks, two factions of models, dice, whippy-sticks etc etc.

 azreal13 wrote:
No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.

You keep throwing around that "cherry-picking" argument, but it doesn't.

I picked a basic box from their currently most popular game, DreadBall (putting Deadzone into the "not-yet-released" part) and it is fething expensive as miniatures go (if you consider GW expensive that is, neither are up there in the DZC, Malifaux, KD spheres yet, admittedly).

You asked me to take a look at KoW (which I admittedly don't know anything about), and it's just as expensive - in the GW price-range or slightly below - with the exception of some very few of loss-leading army-deals/starter-bundles.

The only way I could cherry pick this is if I were to point to those starter-boxes that break their normal prices.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:


And pricier miniatures is ok if you need less of them? How about I invent a game that only needs 1 miniature to play, would it be ok if I charge 50 quid for each of them? Would you pay your GW twice what they ask for, if you buy minis "only for Kill Team"?

If those miniatures were good quality, and Kill Team was a distinct, Necromunda/Mordheim-esque game system? Yes. I've bought boutique resin miniatures to use in Mordheim or INQ28 warbands that cost the same or more than GW miniatures. Again though, you're comparing apples to zepplins; Kill Team is NOT a standalone small model-count game, you need the main 40K rules and the codex for any army you want to use, and the hardback rulebook alone costs the same or more than I paid for any of GW's old SG starter boxes that included everything you needed to play the game including full-size rulebooks, two factions of models, dice, whippy-sticks etc etc.

So what if I just buy stuff for painting? What if I buy a Box of Dark Eldar Wyches to convert to DreadBall? What if I buy Mantic's more expensive Deadzone stuff to play huge 40K Apoc games? How do you "price" miniatures that don't even have a game to go with (Kingdom Death Pin-Ups, say, or some of GW's Games Day figures?)

There is no uniform benchmark to put a "game-relative" price on a miniature. A miniature is expensive or it isn't compared to similar miniatures from other manufacturers. Hitching the argument to the game is just opening up all sorts of personal biases.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
No, the argument is Mantic pricing isn't keen, that's the argument you put forward and have singularly failed to support other than with some disingenuous cherry picking and a healthy dose of attempted tangentery.

You keep throwing around that "cherry-picking" argument, but it doesn't.

I picked a basic box from their currently most popular game, DreadBall (putting Deadzone into the "not-yet-released" part) and it is fething expensive as miniatures go (if you consider GW expensive that is, neither are up there in the DZC, Malifaux, KD spheres yet, admittedly).

You asked me to take a look at KoW (which I admittedly don't know anything about), and it's just as expensive - in the GW price-range or slightly below - with the exception of some very few of loss-leading army-deals/starter-bundles.

The only way I could cherry pick this is if I were to point to those starter-boxes that break their normal prices.

Fine, by those rules, new, core troop choice, for a popular and recently updated army...



£35 for 10



Brand new range, ten cavalry models, £19.99


Also, disregarding the starter boxes is disingenuous, again. Mantic offer them, GW do not (at least not at the same level.) you cannot simply hand wave them away and claim "they don't count because reasons" and expect anyone to treat your argument as having any degree of integrity.