Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Davor wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
GW models are not overpriced, but they are expensive.

I am curious, what do you mean by that?

What I mean is that they cost a lot of money, but people think it is worth paying.

It's like a Bentley. They start at about £250,000. For that, you get a superb car completely tailored to your tastes including internal lighting schemes, leather, type of wood trim, and so on. Smooth, comfortable, powerful, safe, with great handling and plenty of luggage space. Very well worth the money. But expensive.

IMO it's up to GW to set the retail price, and they do so based on a number of factors, the most important of which are GW's need to sell expensive stuff and GW's customers' willingness to pay for it. So it's useless to talk about them being overpriced. People who like them will buy them and count it money well spent. But like a Bentley, they are expensive. However rich you are, you can buy fewer Bentleys than Fords, and you can buy fewer GW kits than Perry Bros.

Honestly when it comes to the super expensive character models it all comes down to the individual model for me. At that price range, there's a very high threshold of quality and design that needs to be reached before I shell out. In recent memory, I have found both the Stormcast Castellant with Gryph Hound (to be fair, two models in one clampack) and the simply unparallelled Admech Tech-Priest Dominus, one of the best GW models ever IMO, to be worth the high asking price. I do not find the latter to be overpriced or even particularly expensive, considering the quality both design-wise and tech-wise. If I'm iffy on a character there's no way I'm paying £20+ for it though. For nice but not awesome clampacks, £15 would probably be my absolute limit, £10 preferred.

Part of the problem I see is that even if you are blessed enough to have the free money to buy an army, you really need a community of similar people to really get the full benefit of the gaming community. You might be able to afford a Bentley, and driving one is not at all dependent on anyone else in your area being able to afford one. But if you are the only one in your gaming locale able and willing to drop the cash needed to build an army, you are building shelf display pieces. You can drive the only Bentley in your area, but good luck gaming with the only 40K army within 100 miles. If you only buy and paint for display, then you are the customer that GW is banking on.

I really would like GW to reset back to the release of 6th edition. I vastly preferred the minis, and lots of people in the area were playing and building. It was great fun to go to a local tourney and know I would be seeing a dozen armies to get inspiration from.

I do not like the newer style, but I agree it is an amazing technical feat. The CNC work is amazing. So what? I can't afford it and the mini has no soul.

Nirvana did not feature the greatest guitar work compared to some of the more technical masters. Yet they were great to listen to.

I love Oldhammer, in fact I have a Chaos army mostly consisting of models that are 20+ years old, so I totally see your point. That said, I can still appreciate and marvel at what new technology has brought!

kenofyork wrote:
Part of the problem I see is that even if you are blessed enough to have the free money to buy an army, you really need a community of similar people to really get the full benefit of the gaming community. You might be able to afford a Bentley, and driving one is not at all dependent on anyone else in your area being able to afford one. But if you are the only one in your gaming locale able and willing to drop the cash needed to build an army, you are building shelf display pieces. You can drive the only Bentley in your area, but good luck gaming with the only 40K army within 100 miles. If you only buy and paint for display, then you are the customer that GW is banking on.

Good quote. My local game shop literally stopped having Warhammer/40K games because nobody plays them. Why? Too expensive, so they go to other games. Game Workshop needs to stop thinking that everyone can afford a Bentley.

 ejazzyjeff wrote:

kenofyork wrote:
Part of the problem I see is that even if you are blessed enough to have the free money to buy an army, you really need a community of similar people to really get the full benefit of the gaming community. You might be able to afford a Bentley, and driving one is not at all dependent on anyone else in your area being able to afford one. But if you are the only one in your gaming locale able and willing to drop the cash needed to build an army, you are building shelf display pieces. You can drive the only Bentley in your area, but good luck gaming with the only 40K army within 100 miles. If you only buy and paint for display, then you are the customer that GW is banking on.

Good quote. My local game shop literally stopped having Warhammer/40K games because nobody plays them. Why? Too expensive, so they go to other games. Game Workshop needs to stop thinking that everyone can afford a Bentley.

Thing is, we are not GW customers. Just like how Ferrari is not upset that we don't buy their cars, GW doesn't get upset when we don't buy their product. We are not their target audience, just gravy or icing on the cake.

Davor wrote:

 ejazzyjeff wrote:

kenofyork wrote:
Part of the problem I see is that even if you are blessed enough to have the free money to buy an army, you really need a community of similar people to really get the full benefit of the gaming community. You might be able to afford a Bentley, and driving one is not at all dependent on anyone else in your area being able to afford one. But if you are the only one in your gaming locale able and willing to drop the cash needed to build an army, you are building shelf display pieces. You can drive the only Bentley in your area, but good luck gaming with the only 40K army within 100 miles. If you only buy and paint for display, then you are the customer that GW is banking on.

Good quote. My local game shop literally stopped having Warhammer/40K games because nobody plays them. Why? Too expensive, so they go to other games. Game Workshop needs to stop thinking that everyone can afford a Bentley.

Thing is, we are not GW customers. Just like how Ferrari is not upset that we don't buy their cars, GW doesn't get upset when we don't buy their product. We are not their target audience, just gravy or icing on the cake.

Ferrari would be VERY upset if half the people that did buy Ferrari's switched to Lamborghini instead.
Your argument only holds weight if GW are making consistent sales, or growing. They are not.

 ejazzyjeff wrote:

*snip*
My local game shop literally stopped having Warhammer/40K games because nobody plays them. Why? Too expensive, so they go to other games. Game Workshop needs to stop thinking that everyone can afford a Bentley.

Wow, we're really torturing this Bentley metaphor, aren't we?!

So people, who presumably already full armies (certainly enough to game with), stopped playing because they found the games too expensive, even though they already had armies to play with? That doesn't make much sense, honestly. Though getting new blood in, until the release of these Start Collecting boxes, obviously had a pretty steep entry barrier.

I do genuinely feel for our Aussie and Kiwi cousins though. Their pricing is just bananas.

I recently invested in Guild Ball, and I would highly recommend anyone that's upset with GW to give it a go. They already have a pretty good foothold in Aus/NZ and the US and you can buy in for £60-70 for a full team. All the rules, tokens and cards and whatnot are available free online. Oh yeah, and the game itself is fun!

Here is how it can happen.

When 6th edition was introduced, the rules went up to £50 and the codexes to £30.

I stopped playing although I have two armies, Tyranid and Tau, because the cost of rules became so high.

Once I didn't buy the new rules and codexes, I didn't buy any of the new units like RIptide and Haruspex either. The community also lost a player.

If I want to get back into the game now, I will need to spend £110 on books just to begin, let alone any important new units.

As a wargamer I have always liked to play a variety of games, and it's amazing how much wargame you can buy for £110 if it isn't GW.

It is noticeable that the start of GW's sales problems coincided with the introduction of £30 army books for WHFB in 2010, and there was an acceleration with the introduction of £30 codexes for 40K in 2012.

Putting aside the Bently, which is clearly inferior to the Aston Martin , I bring this up because I spoke to the local game stores this week about this which included then more feedback from other store owners in the country. Plus, this has come up since the ET (and before) is those fantasy customers aren't regularly spending money on fantasy.

Now, it's expensive and many of us don't need to buy more if our army is complete and don't want to feel pressure to buy buy buy! but it's out there. Maybe your store is one that needed to add Magic to boost regular sales. So I supposes I see is as not that GW was giving the bird to all their fantasy players (which, come on, it really kinda was on various levels) but that they were ok with dropping a customer base they did not feel, for whatever reason, would continue buying fantasy products. Obviously some of those customers also buy other GW products and understandably have turned their wallets away.

I wrote mor but this f$&@- iPad decides to lag and then highlight huge blocks of text and just delete them so hopefully you get the idea.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Here is how it can happen.

When 6th edition was introduced, the rules went up to £50 and the codexes to £30.

I stopped playing although I have two armies, Tyranid and Tau, because the cost of rules became so high.

Once I didn't buy the new rules and codexes, I didn't buy any of the new units like RIptide and Haruspex either. The community also lost a player.

If I want to get back into the game now, I will need to spend £110 on books just to begin, let alone any important new units.

As a wargamer I have always liked to play a variety of games, and it's amazing how much wargame you can buy for £110 if it isn't GW.

It is noticeable that the start of GW's sales problems coincided with the introduction of £30 army books for WHFB in 2010, and there was an acceleration with the introduction of £30 codexes for 40K in 2012.

Actually you can buy ebook versions of the core rules plus both the Tyranid and Tau codices for a total of £62, so that's something. If you have an iPad, you can get the Gamers Edition of the Codices, and the total drops to £50 for all three books (£20 for the rules and £15 for each codex).

That still sounds really expensive for rules.

It makes them about the same as the printed products were four years ago. Rules = £30, codexes = £15. I needed one rulebook and two codexes.

I remember the iPad codexes were reviewed pretty favourably but I didn't have an iPad, still don't, only bought an Android tablet about a year ago, and to be honest I prefer to have reference books as paper.

At any rate, the damage was done in 2012. I gave up 40K because of the rules prices, and for whatever reasons, I'm not likely to go back to it.

It is expensive for rules, especially when you consider that a lot of the other prominent miniatures games right now either include figure stats on cards (X-Wing, Malifaux, WarmaHordes) or have it all available for free online (Infinity). Infinity and WarmaHordes also give away their core rulebooks, so there's no cost there either. X-Wing also has a free rulebook PDF, but you still have to buy a starter set for the maneuver templates so there is still a mandatory rulebook purchase of sorts. In those games, it's a lot easier to dabble in multiple factions when buying an extra army doesn't mean another rulebook that you have to keep updating.

You can buy a set of aftermarket templates for like ten bucks for X wing. You would need a damage deck, but you only need one between two players, so it would be far from impossible to play X wing without buying a core set.

GW have REALLY fallen behind with rules, AoS is a good step forwards but 40k is an expensive mess.

AOS's move towards free rules would have helped reduce entry cost if not for everything else about that game. They still push for a really high model count (and therefore cost) and the game's severe lack of structure has earned it a lot of backlash.

I have to say I like X-Wing as a game, but I *hate* the purchase model.
Bought a Tie Interceptor? Cool, Here's the rules and a few upgrade cards.
Oh, you wanted to play Soontir Fel with the Push the Limit upgrade? Yeah, you'll be needing to buy the A-Wing then.

From other players I know, I'd say roughly 1/3rd of the money they spend on X-wing is buying ships they already have or don't want / like in order to get a card they do want.

Can't find the link off the top of my head, but someone did an analysis of the 2015 official tournament and the top 8 ranked in descending order of $rrp of their lists.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It makes them about the same as the printed products were four years ago. Rules = £30, codexes = £15. I needed one rulebook and two codexes.

I remember the iPad codexes were reviewed pretty favourably but I didn't have an iPad, still don't, only bought an Android tablet about a year ago, and to be honest I prefer to have reference books as paper.

At any rate, the damage was done in 2012. I gave up 40K because of the rules prices, and for whatever reasons, I'm not likely to go back to it.

This. When those were the prices, I'd buy every codex/army book for both Warhammer and 40k, some just to read as I didn't own the models. Most would have a shelf life of 4+ years as well, so they wouldn't go out of date for a while.

When they brought the £30 hardback books out I was initially impressed. I bought the ones for my armies as they came out but realised they were just jam full of all the latest releases in an attempt to push the new models. It was like buying a hardback white dwarf advertising book. Then they started to replace them much more quickly - or worse - miss out entire units which came in another seperate £30 book. That was when 40k died for me. Fantasy died when they started bringing out limited edition End Times stuff. I couldn't get hold of the first End Times book when released. When the 2nd one came out, I thought... what's the point. They eventually listened and brought out the paperback versions, but by then it was too late.

Kings of War replaced Warhammer Fantasy - and is an infinitely better game imo. Although I do sometimes buy GW figures to add to my armies still.
Deadzone and Maelstrom's Edge have replaced my 40k habit, although the rules I enjoy the most now are Bolt Action - which feels like 40k used to do in the good old days.

If GW hadn't gone with those massive price increases, I'd have not discovered so many other good games. I give my thanks to GW and their price increases. May it continue forever, pushing more players to better games.

X Wing is a collectable game. If you don't like the purchase model and you like Star Wars, you could buy a bunch of cheap Micro Machines and download a copy of the rules of Star Wars: Star Warriors (West End Games.)

Personally I've only bought X WIng models that I liked, not for the cards. I'm not interested in playing tournaments. I see it as a casual, fast-playing game with a lot of pop-culture appeal.

It does help that FFG doesn't suppress posting rules information the way that GW does. Having to buy ships just to get upgrade cards for other ships is a venue requirement, not a necessity to play the game. Online squad builders and/or the X-Wing wiki allow you to easily proxy all cards for casual play. Hell, FFG posts pictures of most upgrade cards in news posts on their web site, so most of the rules content is available for free completely legitimately.

 jonolikespie wrote:
That still sounds really expensive for rules.

£20 for rules and £15 for army books seems to be about the industry norm for books. Most games are about £10 (softback) - £30 (hardback) with expansions for about £10-15.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

RoperPG wrote:
I have to say I like X-Wing as a game, but I *hate* the purchase model.
Bought a Tie Interceptor? Cool, Here's the rules and a few upgrade cards.
Oh, you wanted to play Soontir Fel with the Push the Limit upgrade? Yeah, you'll be needing to buy the A-Wing then.

From other players I know, I'd say roughly 1/3rd of the money they spend on X-wing is buying ships they already have or don't want / like in order to get a card they do want.

Can't find the link off the top of my head, but someone did an analysis of the 2015 official tournament and the top 8 ranked in descending order of $rrp of their lists.

I'm surprised there isn't some sort of 2nd hand market for cards in the same way as MtG and the like. That said; I'm not a tournament player so I buy the blisters for the ships and then pick cards from what I've got available. I can see it being a problem if you've got a hyper competitive list, but then, it's only like $15 for a blister so how much are people spending on top of the ships they want for the cards they want?

There are guys in my area that have shelled out near $500 for their force bcause they needed the extra cards so had to buy a ton of models to get them.

So wait a sec;
If you don't want to buy the rules, you can borrow/pirate them, and If you don't want to shell out for the minis you can use substitutes, as long as your group/venue agrees with either or both.

...so why are we complaining about pricing again?

Quite off topic now. Especially considering all basic rules for units in AoS and the core mechanics are free to download.

Henry's_outpost on eBay sells individual xwing upgrade cards.

People at the tournaments around here laugh at me since I called myself a purist. I show up with only the small rebel ships from the original movies and play the upgrade cards that came with those ships. Best I ever did with my purist list was 8th place out of 15 people. Most of the time I finish in last place but I really don't give a gak, it's just a kids game.

AoS with the free rules and scrolls was a great move from GW. When I looked at the price to play 40k 7th edition with the ork codex and Gaz book your close to $200 in books. Your lucky if you get 2 years now out of those $200 worth of books with the 40k turn and burn releases.

 Bottle wrote:
Quite off topic now. Especially considering all basic rules for units in AoS and the core mechanics are free to download.

Yeah, but said rules are widely considered to be terrible and the figures are really expensive.

 TheWaspinator wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Quite off topic now. Especially considering all basic rules for units in AoS and the core mechanics are free to download.

Yeah, but said rules are widely considered to be terrible and the figures are really expensive.

Which, as has been demonstrated, are entirely subjective arguments for the most part.

 Bottle wrote:
Quite off topic now. Especially considering all basic rules for units in AoS and the core mechanics are free to download.

That's true. AoS only gets expensive when you buy the official campaign books and model kits.

You can d/l all the necessary rules and war scrolls including terrain rules, and play games using non-GW figures, and fish tank ornaments for terrain.

If you think the AoS rules are terrible, there are various fantasy rules available that are pretty cheap or even free.

Kilkrazy wrote:Here is how it can happen.

When 6th edition was introduced, the rules went up to £50 and the codexes to £30.

I stopped playing although I have two armies, Tyranid and Tau, because the cost of rules became so high.

Once I didn't buy the new rules and codexes, I didn't buy any of the new units like RIptide and Haruspex either. The community also lost a player.

If I want to get back into the game now, I will need to spend £110 on books just to begin, let alone any important new units.

As a wargamer I have always liked to play a variety of games, and it's amazing how much wargame you can buy for £110 if it isn't GW.

It is noticeable that the start of GW's sales problems coincided with the introduction of £30 army books for WHFB in 2010, and there was an acceleration with the introduction of £30 codexes for 40K in 2012.

Basically what happened in my area. 6th edition came out and nobody wanted to buy the new rule set for almost $100.

Mymearan wrote:
Actually you can buy ebook versions of the core rules plus both the Tyranid and Tau codices for a total of £62, so that's something. If you have an iPad, you can get the Gamers Edition of the Codices, and the total drops to £50 for all three books (£20 for the rules and £15 for each codex).

I am not sure what you are trying to say. How does this apply 5 years ago when there wasn't this option?

RoperPG wrote:I have to say I like X-Wing as a game, but I *hate* the purchase model.
Bought a Tie Interceptor? Cool, Here's the rules and a few upgrade cards.
Oh, you wanted to play Soontir Fel with the Push the Limit upgrade? Yeah, you'll be needing to buy the A-Wing then.

From other players I know, I'd say roughly 1/3rd of the money they spend on X-wing is buying ships they already have or don't want / like in order to get a card they do want.

Can't find the link off the top of my head, but someone did an analysis of the 2015 official tournament and the top 8 ranked in descending order of $rrp of their lists.

How is this any different now from what GW does with the ally chart? If anything it's worse and more expensive from people taking the best units and taking no negatives from the codex?

Davor wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Here is how it can happen.

When 6th edition was introduced, the rules went up to £50 and the codexes to £30.

I stopped playing although I have two armies, Tyranid and Tau, because the cost of rules became so high.

Once I didn't buy the new rules and codexes, I didn't buy any of the new units like RIptide and Haruspex either. The community also lost a player.

If I want to get back into the game now, I will need to spend £110 on books just to begin, let alone any important new units.

As a wargamer I have always liked to play a variety of games, and it's amazing how much wargame you can buy for £110 if it isn't GW.

It is noticeable that the start of GW's sales problems coincided with the introduction of £30 army books for WHFB in 2010, and there was an acceleration with the introduction of £30 codexes for 40K in 2012.

Basically what happened in my area. 6th edition came out and nobody wanted to buy the new rule set for almost $100.

Mymearan wrote:
Actually you can buy ebook versions of the core rules plus both the Tyranid and Tau codices for a total of £62, so that's something. If you have an iPad, you can get the Gamers Edition of the Codices, and the total drops to £50 for all three books (£20 for the rules and £15 for each codex).

I am not sure what you are trying to say. How does this apply 5 years ago when there wasn't this option?

RoperPG wrote:I have to say I like X-Wing as a game, but I *hate* the purchase model.
Bought a Tie Interceptor? Cool, Here's the rules and a few upgrade cards.
Oh, you wanted to play Soontir Fel with the Push the Limit upgrade? Yeah, you'll be needing to buy the A-Wing then.

From other players I know, I'd say roughly 1/3rd of the money they spend on X-wing is buying ships they already have or don't want / like in order to get a card they do want.

Can't find the link off the top of my head, but someone did an analysis of the 2015 official tournament and the top 8 ranked in descending order of $rrp of their lists.

How is this any different now from what GW does with the ally chart? If anything it's worse and more expensive from people taking the best units and taking no negatives from the codex?

Don't know where you get the five years number, but I was responding to KKs comment that he would need to spend £110 in books to get back into the game today.