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It may be a $500 dragon model, but it's still a dragon model. Dragon + "Lord of the Rings" has to equal "I don't care how much it costs" to some people. They could just carry the thing around doing Smaug impressions.

I mean, how many people have purchased dragons from the Bones line when they don't care one bit about any other Bones model, or just want to make a diorama and need some victims?

 solkan wrote:
It may be a $500 dragon model, but it's still a dragon model. Dragon + "Lord of the Rings" has to equal "I don't care how much it costs" to some people. They could just carry the thing around doing Smaug impressions.

I mean, how many people have purchased dragons from the Bones line when they don't care one bit about any other Bones model, or just want to make a diorama and need some victims?

It's one of the few decent dragons GW has made. Actually, the only one if you exclude FW, lol.

Dragons are something that gw seem to struggle to get right. Reaper are lucky to have Julie Guthrie, I've got a few dragons from the bones range and she, and they, always get it spot on.

Demons and dragons are 2 areas where GW constantly disappoints me. Both can be so cool but GW always seems to miss the mark.

It's a matter of taste for the traditional dragons. GW's dragons are very nontraditional, often with skinny, serpentine bodies rather than the bulkier Smaug or D&D Dragonlance look. The Silver/Red/Black/Green dragons out of DL are a perfect example of what I consider a classic dragon look.

Some of their dragons are really cool, like the high elf and wood elves ones, but they don't fit what I normally imagine.

For some reason, in RPGs and computer games, and fiction, I absolutely love the fantasy genre, with dragons right at the top of the lore, but for miniatures, they're not really my thing. I have no idea why, but with miniatures (GW or otherwise), SciFi vehicles just excite me a lot more.

Like you, skunk, I have never really been a fan of GW demons (Skarbramd is an exception).

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW could survive with only 750 SKUs instead of 1,750... Likely more profitable, too.

Do you think they should eliminate entire factions, like Orks, Tau or Dark Eldar, or just eliminate the low selling kits from individual factions. For instance, they could drop Cadians, Heavy Weapons and BMPs from IG to just sell Leman Russes and Baneblades.

GW should have never created so many armies in the first place, but that ship has long passed. At this point, I thing GW is doing the right thing by basically cutting 1,000 Fantasy SKUs from their catalog.

 Talys wrote:
It's a matter of taste for the traditional dragons. GW's dragons are very nontraditional, often with skinny, serpentine bodies rather than the bulkier Smaug or D&D Dragonlance look. The Silver/Red/Black/Green dragons out of DL are a perfect example of what I consider a classic dragon look.

Some of their dragons are really cool, like the high elf and wood elves ones, but they don't fit what I normally imagine.

For some reason, in RPGs and computer games, and fiction, I absolutely love the fantasy genre, with dragons right at the top of the lore, but for miniatures, they're not really my thing. I have no idea why, but with miniatures (GW or otherwise), SciFi vehicles just excite me a lot more.

Like you, skunk, I have never really been a fan of GW demons (Skarbramd is an exception).

I've spoken to more people who aren't fans of GW dragons than are I think The skinny bodies but with huge heads that looked like a squashed snake head on a stretched out neck, small limbs but with huge extremeties, and they always seem weirdly posed. The old Bretonnian book at the back had a picture of a diorama using a Carnosaur as the basis for a dragon conversion and it looked pretty awesome.

And then there was the old Talisman Dragon, which repurposed as Asarnil...

Unless I'm mistaken the two big FW dragons (the regular one and the chaos one) got discontinued a while back, which might partly account for the success of Smaug, since it fills that spot for people who want a big dragon model.

I suppose, but there are non GW dragons to fill that niche. I think Smaug was special, just because he's Smaug.

I'm just genuinely surprised that even worldwide, there's more than a thousand hobbyists (possibly a lot more) who want a $500, unpainted, unassembled resin model of Smaug. Or any dragon of that size, for that matter. It's a significant hobby project to do the model justice, too.

I mean, I guess I shouldn't be, because I never thought there would be as much demand for models like Warlord Titan, Reaver Titans, and Imperial Knights, either. I always thought these "centerpiece" models would be something people would build one of as a centerpiece, not something there would be such an interest of building armies of dozens or more of. It's all fascinating though.

So does this prove AoS is a flop?

 Orock wrote:
So does this prove AoS is a flop?

Some will say yes, others will argue no.... All the shops around here still have all the boxes they bought 6 months ago, that's all the evidence I have

@Orock - We'll never really know whether AoS was a flop on its first half-year based on this countdown because it's being measured against WHFB, which wouldn't have done all that well versus 40k for top 28 kits anyhow. Most of us assume that in 2013 and 2014, Fantasy did, GW would have just given us 9e.

One real indicator will be comparing 2H 2015 to 2H 2014.

Games Workshop had 3 consecutive months of Age of Sigmar, and then a few weeks of releases mixed in between 40k stuff in the second half of 2015. There are some other factors, too: in July 2014 (which is part of 2H 2014), Games Workshop gave us Stormclaw, then Space Wolves, Nagash, Space Hulk, Deathstorm and Glotkin, stuff we know or strongly suspect did well. Blood Angels Tacticals don't make the cut, because they were in December, which are technically part of 1H 2015.

Compare with 2015 2H, GW popped out Age of Sigmar Starter, followed by endless weeks of stormcast, generic fantasy terrain, and then some chaos stuff, including the Khornetress. On the 40k side, towards the end, we got Tau, with some really awesome models, but not a lot of time to move them (a couple of months) and with 3 weeks to go to the end of the half-year, they released Betrayal at Calth. I think Space Marines made the start of the half year, and Dark Angels, hut none of those models made a huge impact, based on the top 28 - except, I suppose, space marine tactical, but I'm sure those always sell well. Devastator managed to edge into the bottom of the list. I don't think Burning Dawn and Solaq made nearly as huge an impact as Deathstorm or Stormclaw because they weren't nearly as good a deal.

Now obviously there are other factors (like Smaug, who didn't release until 1H 2015, because it was in December 2014), and it's all more complicated than "what did they release". Still, release windows are important, so I think it's a useful gauge of how well or poorly AoS did. If there were NO reorders of AoS (beyond mandatory first-units), you'd imagine the half-year would be pretty crummy. Also, it's worth keeping in mind that the releases for 2H 2014 were factions that lots of people thought would be good sellers.

Oh yeah, and I didn not mention Dark Eldar from last year, because I don't think that was very impactful to sales.

 Orock wrote:
So does this prove AoS is a flop?

No, this thread does: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/666438.page

 Talys wrote:
I'm just genuinely surprised that even worldwide, there's more than a thousand hobbyists (possibly a lot more) who want a $500, unpainted, unassembled resin model of Smaug. Or any dragon of that size, for that matter. It's a significant hobby project to do the model justice, too.

I mean, I guess I shouldn't be, because I never thought there would be as much demand for models like Warlord Titan, Reaver Titans, and Imperial Knights, either. I always thought these "centerpiece" models would be something people would build one of as a centerpiece, not something there would be such an interest of building armies of dozens or more of. It's all fascinating though.

Maybe it is a UK thing, but in any town/city I know of there are more shops selling model train stuff and airfix/tamiya type models and the associated scenery stuff than wargame stuff. That is stuff which people don't buy to play with but just to make and display. Why is it easier to find shops selling that stuff than wargame stuff (and I mean wargames in the wider sense not just GW)? How many magazines for wargames do you find vs modelling/train magazines in the local newsagent? That usually seems biased to general modelling not wargaming when ever I've looked.

LOTR is a massively well known IP, far beyond anything any wargame can hope to achieve. The highest grossing film trilogy of all time.

Even ignoring your worldwide market, the main market for GW is the EU and USA, plus some other areas (AUS, CAN etc). That is about 1 billion population. If 1 in 1 million people would buy smaug you will sell over 1000.

@puree - the problem is that only a tiny fraction of that billion people are interested in models of any sort at all.

Then, take out the ones that can't afford $500 for one display model, and I think you're left with a small pool of potential customers.

Of course, but how small do you think. 1 in 1 million is pretty small (and that is not even world wide), and it is a larger market than GW by a large margin based on what I see on the high street (modelling vs mini wargaming).

 Talys wrote:
@puree - the problem is that only a tiny fraction of that billion people are interested in models of any sort at all.

Then, take out the ones that can't afford $500 for one display model, and I think you're left with a small pool of potential customers.

Have you never ran into someone that collects or has collected miniatures outside the FLGS? If the miniature gamer pool was so small like you are insinuating, then you would never run into anyone.
Also, LoTR+hobbit grossed 6 billion dollars in the cinema, that is a lot of people that might be possible buyers based on the IP.

 Talys wrote:
I suppose, but there are non GW dragons to fill that niche. I think Smaug was special, just because he's Smaug.

I'm just genuinely surprised that even worldwide, there's more than a thousand hobbyists (possibly a lot more) who want a $500, unpainted, unassembled resin model of Smaug. Or any dragon of that size, for that matter. It's a significant hobby project to do the model justice, too.
...
.

I'm not that surprised. Look at DakkaDakka. We've got almost 100,000 members, a lot of whom clearly put a lot of effort and money into their hobby and are easily capable of building the Smaug kit and would regard it as a fun build if they could afford the price of the kit.

We only need 1% of our membership to buy Smaug and there you go, it's no.1.

Incidentally, I still think they sold way more than a thousand Smaugs, as I don't believe that the contest is rigged to exclude non-web sales. Even so, I think whatever channel they picked, it's amazing that it sold at least on a ratio of 1/3 the number of IK models.

I hope they do this next year -- I enjoyed it a lot.

 Talys wrote:
Incidentally, I still think they sold way more than a thousand Smaugs, as I don't believe that the contest is rigged to exclude non-web sales. Even so, I think whatever channel they picked, it's amazing that it sold at least on a ratio of 1/3 the number of IK models.

I hope they do this next year -- I enjoyed it a lot.

Y'know me too. And I hope they don't reveal their criteria because guessing that was half the fun.

I think the Smaug thing merely reinforces why GW says they make models for collectors and hobbyists, not gamers. The IKT is, by far, the most gamer-friendly model GW released, tied to awesome in-game rules. And it got beat by a model for a game that basically nobody plays.

 Talys wrote:
I suppose, but there are non GW dragons to fill that niche. I think Smaug was special, just because he's Smaug.

I'm just genuinely surprised that even worldwide, there's more than a thousand hobbyists (possibly a lot more) who want a $500, unpainted, unassembled resin model of Smaug. Or any dragon of that size, for that matter. It's a significant hobby project to do the model justice, too.

I mean, I guess I shouldn't be, because I never thought there would be as much demand for models like Warlord Titan, Reaver Titans, and Imperial Knights, either. I always thought these "centerpiece" models would be something people would build one of as a centerpiece, not something there would be such an interest of building armies of dozens or more of. It's all fascinating though.

I wonder how many were purchased by people who worked on the movies. I could see the SFX guys buying a copy for each manager as a bonus or something. My parents used to get a ton of fairly expensive models for the aircraft they worked on from McDonnel Douglas and Boeing, for example.

The most interesting thing to me is ad mech/skitari is one of the most profitable armies gw has. Nearly everyone of thier box kits is in the top 14.
I'll be hugely surprised if we don't see additional kits for them this year. War convocation will be hugely popular this year. Especially with gw new starter set bundles.

The depressing thing is there's a guy nearby who owns two Smaugs. One to stay boxed and wrapped, one to play, display and use at the store.

Never underestimate the LotR collector.

I just don't think the Smaug model is that impressive, at least not $500 impressive. It's probably big, I've never seen one in person so I wouldn't know, but it looks kinda lame how he's all coiled up to fit better on the base. If I'm going to drop that much money on a giant dragon model for display purposes then I want something that looks more imposing than that, with head held up and wings/tail outstretched. The GW Smaug just isn't really doing anything. As far as the level of detail and such goes it's not really that bad otherwise (I'm surprised his skin actually has texture, a lot of the time GW avoids that and leaves scaly creatures skin almost completely smooth because they just can't be bothered I guess), it's just a little overpriced for what it is in my opinion.

Yet it's the #1 seller

Uh, yeah? I guess not everyone agrees with me. Bummer.

 the_Armyman wrote:
I'm glad for GW that something like a Smaug resin kit can be a success, but I fear for the future when I see Smaug and 8 other Super-heavy/Gargantuan/Monster kits on the list. It just reinforces GW's inbred thought processes towards 40K and Fantasy/AoS. Why make a better game when you can just make larger kits?

Why? So you can have more sales, and more profit and not rely on the large kits. Once the large kits are sold, what are they going to sell and to whom? There is a reason why mega companies buy more than one company that produces a product. GW needs to diverse as well, so they are always selling something. Eventually the collectors will have everything they need.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Formosa wrote:
Without actual sales evidence, I'm inclined to believe gw just made these up, when I worked at a certain high street gaming store, we used to just make up most of the top ten games, this actually led to an increase in sales of those games, so this to me is just a marketing ploy, until proven otherwise.

So why no Age of Sigmar then? Going by what you say, you would think this would be a perfect time for a "marketing" AoS now eh?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SickSix wrote:
Smaug? Clearly they have made this up or used an algorithm to get the desired outcome.

Again, desired outcome really? Then please explain why no Age of Sigmar in top 10?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orock wrote:
So does this prove AoS is a flop?

According to people who say the poll is fixed. No it's not. Will be funny if they use this poll to prove AoS is a flop though lol.

I don't think GW "made it up", but they choose criteria for inclusion that we don't know and can only guess at.

For example, the qualification period obviously ended before December 2015, and we infer that it included Nov 2014 to capture the first batch of Smaug sales. Maybe it covered Nov 2014 to end Oct 2015.

We also infer from the lack of any starter game boxes that GW excluded model kits that included rulebooks. This rules out Black Reach, Battle of Cattle and Age of Sigmar from consideration. However this is not certain.

For all we know, if these boxes had been included, they would have ranked 1, 2 and 3 and pushed Smaug into 4th place. But equally we could guess they sold so badly that they would have placed embarrasingly low on the ranking, even below 28. Thus we can impute a motive to GW of wanting to preserve their "collectable model" image, or of wanting to conceal their failures with launching games.

Perhaps the three starter boxes were included but sold too badly to get into the top 28. Perhaps BC would have got into no.1 but it was released outside the accounting period.

All this is guesswork piled on guesswork. I mention it only to make clear how we can look at the list and read whatever results we like out of it.