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I don't mean why is this game so expensive, I mean why does it feel so expensive. One thing I looked at was how much my investment into 40k would cost as a whole, and how much my investment into my other hobbies would cost, one being Magic: the Gathering, and honestly, I've spent more on Magic than I would ever on 40k, and I don't feel any issue with it, but I feel rather stingy when it comes to 40k. More so, I've spent a ton on free games like League and Hearthstone without feeling bad about it, though every small purchase in 40k leaves me feeling drained. The obvious answer is that all those purchases are small purchases, so they don't feel as bad as a 50$ kit from 40k, though I've bought individual cards worth over 400$. Now you can say they will retain value, and even grow, but in some cases I fully intended to never sell them, but rather keep them, generally in the 200$ range, but the more expensive ones I did sell.

Here's my thoughts on why I think 40k feels so expensive, the simple answer being that the game isn't good enough to justify the price. Look at it this way, when I buy my Magic cards, I'm either drafting which means I'm using the product right then and there, or I'm playing a constructed format. Even the more niche formats I can find a tournament at least once a month in my area, if not more, but I can't say the same about 40k, in fact I want to play in ITC events but looking at the map there are 0 events in the Boston area in the near future, with the closest being in other neighboring states that are several hours of driving away. With Magic there were local small scale events every day of the week, I could decide when I played and how I played, at what store I played, and then there were larger events each weekend of different types, in fact even with those I was spoiled for choice most of the time. With 40k, sure I can probably find people in my area to play against, but because the rules are dependent on house rules I have to go out of my way to negotiate things, just to set up a game with one person, and this simply isn't the case with other gaming hobbies, or well any hobbies, where in most cases you can show up to an LGS or club and play a game with complete strangers without having to know them.

In short, I feel like 40k only feels expensive because of how little use it really has, it's not like other games where you can just always have someone to play with, but rather it's a game that puts a massive burden on you to just get a game going, which makes it seem significantly more expensive than it really is.

What do you guys think? What makes 40k feel expensive to you? I know I always thought it was overpriced, but when I sat down and thought about it, I realised it wasn't that it was overpriced, it was just that the game aspect of it wasn't good enough to make me feel safe for the price I was paying, reasonable or not.

I am pretty sure it feels expensive because it is expensive.

With the other hobbies when you buy something you unwrap it or apply it if it is digital, and then you can use it right away. With 40k when you buy something and unwrap it, well that is just the beginning of your journey. I have about $1,500 worth of plastic crack that I bought over 4 years ago ... and that pile ain't getting any smaller anytime soon.

The price is what it makes expensive to me that is why i use more and more proxies

I can't tell you how much this post made my day.

It feels expensive because (for me at least) half of the stuff I buy ends up being worthless on the table. I buy a box of Guardsmen for $29 a pop (plus taxes), only to have them die a horrible death nearly instantly on the table. Thanks to the stellar rules writing at Gee-dubs, unless you're a jetbike, a GMC, or certain super heavies you're essentially worthless.

 Tinkrr wrote:
Here's my thoughts on why I think 40k feels so expensive, the simple answer being that the game isn't good enough to justify the price.

That right there sums it up to me.

I get a lot of joy out of making conversions, painting, etc., so I personally feel like I am getting my money's worth in most 40k circumstances, especially since most sets come with a huge amount of extra bits that I carefully squirrel away for future use. As for the time investment, it isn't the same type of game as magic and what not, so it seems like an apples to oranges comparison. But, I do agree with the poster who mentioned spending $30+ on a unit that doesn't equate to very much in the game itself. That does always feel like you aren't getting your money's worth. Still, it doesn't even begin to compare to Fantasy pre-AOS, which I was accustomed to. 40k was always the "bargain game" in comparison.

Just getting back into Magic, I have to agree that drafting is a far more rewarding experience than anything 40k offers. Spend a little bit of money, play a game for a few hours, sell off the stuff that gets you some money and you might even have been paid to have fun by the end of it. I've broken even on the one draft I took part in. $15 buy in, $15 card. Done and done.

But 40k is just a money pit. I spend more and more money and it will not make me anything from it. I'm going to just keep spending my money, keep playing my game when I can and that's that. But I'm also more into 40k than I'll ever be in Magic, because Magic is just a game. 40k is a full hobby for me to take part in. I'm willing to go that extra mile because the building and painting is just as big a part of it as playing. I've still got dozens of models waiting to be built, but I can assure you, I'm not going to building a Magic card.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:
Here's my thoughts on why I think 40k feels so expensive, the simple answer being that the game isn't good enough to justify the price.

That right there sums it up to me.

Ditto. When I first got into 40k, it was an exciting learning experience. As time went on and the rules were morphing I saw the man behind the curtain. Meaning, I noticed things like certain units that were obviously over powered or under costed just to sell more of those boxes of plastic. The game itself became a chore of negotiating how to play before every single match.

The real last straw for me was the current dark eldar codex. Disappointing barely scratches the surface. I'm not entirely sure why they even bothered unless their purpose is to try and kill off that army.

So, yes, I see the so called new box deals and all I can think is that my money would be better invested in a lottery ticket. Because at least then I have a chance of getting some value for my money.

The thing with something like Magic is that the basic product, the boosterpack, is always around 5 bucks a piece. That's an impulse buy. It makes it a lot easier to spend a lot on it. The random factor also helps; you always feel like that one pack will be a big buck ticket if you get that ultra-rare card. Also, MTG frequently has discounts and sales, such as Fatpacks, starter sets, Event Decks. These are all very cheap (Event Decks are now available at department stores and are, at most, 30 bucks), so it's easy to go overboard with them.

40k, on the other hand, slap you in the face with the pricetag each time. You may spend 400-500 on magic cards in a single season, but I'm willing to bet that most of that spending was incremental, with huge purchases like a playset of cards or a whole box of boosters to be a treat of some kind. With 40k, the bare minimum is around 30-40 bucks, and that's just for the clampacks and small boxes (which should be impulse buys). You want an actual set that might make a difference (say a tank, monstrous creature, flyer or large walker)? 80-100 bucks. You want a "treat"? fork over 200 at once.

5 dollars being spent incrementally (like, I can get 3 boosters for 12 bucks if I buy em at once) makes those costs easier to swallow, even if I end up spending the same anyways. But ask me to fork over 200-400 bucks all at once? Even if I know it's a good deal, I'm gonna be thinking twice about this.

Another thing with Magic is that the tangible feel of the things you get feels "right". For most people, a pack of magic cards might as well just contain the one rare card and maybe 2 Uncommons. But it feels a lot better when you get 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare, 1 land, and 1 rules card. Decks pad it out even more; a duel deck set is 20 bucks for two 120-card decks, most of which are reprints of old favourites. In comparison, look at the new Plastic Librarian; it costs 40 CAD and is a tiny-ass clampack with a tiny sprue inside. Now I know that Duel Decks are largely worthless reprints, lands and tokens, but what feels better? 120 cards divided into 2 playable decks for 20 bucks, or a clam pack with a bit of plastic inside for 40? I was actually faced with this choice a while back and you can bet your ass I grabbed the 20 dollar duel deck. It just feels more substantial.

EDIT: I bet if they came out with a Space Marine "Booster pack" that contained the pieces to assemble one RANDOM space marine (either Devastator, Tactical, Vanguard, Assault, Sternguard, or captain) for 5 bucks (about the average price of all those) or a similar pack for your army, you would probably be broke by nightfall. Fundimentally the marine still cost the same, but you'd feel far less apprehensive buying a 5 dollar minipack 10 times than buying a box of marines at 50 dollars.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
EDIT: I bet if they came out with a Space Marine "Booster pack" that contained the pieces to assemble one RANDOM space marine (either Devastator, Tactical, Vanguard, Assault, Sternguard, or captain) for 5 bucks (about the average price of all those) or a similar pack for your army, you would probably be broke by nightfall. Fundimentally the marine still cost the same, but you'd feel far less apprehensive buying a 5 dollar minipack 10 times than buying a box of marines at 50 dollars.

I'd be all over that, especially if the idea was for it to be anything but a stock standard tactical. Give it a heavy weapon to customize your devistators or to add variety to your tacticals, or a special melee weapon to make an alternate assault squad sgt for when you need a power fist, not a sword, or a sterngaurd who could double as a sgt for a regular squad.

Just a single, cheap, random marine would be great to pick up any time you're at your local store for the hell of it. I basically do the same with X wing and I don't play that all that much, and those are more than $5 a ship.

Well it would be a percentage of a chance for anything other than a regular tactical (and shielded behind a plastic box so that the newest pastime in the store wouldn't be to feel up all the random packs) with the captain being the rarest.

Still though, a cheap pack with the promise of a much more expensive model would probably drive sales through the roof, and without actually lowering the value of their models.

For me its not the models. They cost what they cost and like others, I just dont feel the value of the plastic and sculpts being worth the dollars I put out for them. Especially when I can get just a good of looking models from other companies for lesser cost. But that is just part of being expensive, it isn't really feeling expensive at this point.

The real feeling of expense is in the books. Just to play the game, you need a rule book, and a codex. Probably two as a lot of factions have more than one book in order to get all of the options. Already your putting down 120 - 180 dollars in books and have no way to actually play the game. So that feels expensive. Imagine having to pay an extra 10 dollars for the rule book that comes in each MTG starter box.

But on top of that, just look at the books themselves. What a joke. Its obvious that GW does no employ a single editor. Look at all the wasted space. Look at the recycled photos of stock models where once unique and original artwork used to sit. Ohh... this fluff piece. Yeah, I've read it three times already in the last three codexs that were put out.

The quality of what your getting has just gone down hill hard. Its like buying college text books. You know you have to buy the damn thing and are only going to get one years worth of use out of it, before it becomes outdated and will sit forever on your book shelf and having no way to sell it back.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
I am pretty sure it feels expensive because it is expensive.

Golden.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My personal theory is because GW has the same price marketing strategy as apple. Make your product expensive so that your customers value it as a premium product.
I guess it failed on you.

It feels expensive because the brand as a whole is priced as a premium product, while the actual thing is quite far from being a true premium product. Considering their price tags, the books tend to be brutally underwhelming in both background, rules and quality control issues. The models themselves, while mostly good at this stage, are simply not worth the prices asked for them, not even close.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2014-15-Press-statement-final-website-final.pdf wrote:
Secondly I will review our product range
.We believe this is long overdue it is time for a resetting of the ranges. Not tweaking here and
there but a top down reassessment. I expect to update you further at the half year. We will aim to continue to deliver outstanding
product and customer service, maintain our Group gross margin and continue to improve our Group stock turn. To be absolutely
clear I will not be reducing the RRP of our products: they are premium priced for their premium quality. I will, however, be looking
to offer a broader range of price points. This is exciting and is for the long term, so I'm not promising when you will see
a change. We have already started the brainstorming in our monthly strategic product meetings. It is early days, but I can already foresee some
busy times ahead

Since then the price differentiation was: add products with a higher price so that your old normally priced kits become the low priced range

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Well it would be a percentage of a chance for anything other than a regular tactical (and shielded behind a plastic box so that the newest pastime in the store wouldn't be to feel up all the random packs) with the captain being the rarest.

Still though, a cheap pack with the promise of a much more expensive model would probably drive sales through the roof, and without actually lowering the value of their models.

I'd LOVE to see that as metal models like the old blisters you used to have as special/heavy weapons and sgts. So yes you might only get a tactical, but it'll be a single pose tactical who's kneeling, or drawing a knife, or something you can't post a model doing with the plastic kit.

It feels expensive because GW keep making fairly frequent changes that to a greater or lesser dagree invalidate whatever set of models and books you have at point in time. This requires you to buy more books and models to replace and supplement the ones you already have paid for. It's like joining a subscription based service.

Many games are not like that. You buy the rules and an army, then you are done. I have Ancient armies 25 years old that are valid with nearly all the modern rulebooks.

In some cases the army lists have changed a bit and I need to update them with some new figures, much like buying a Tyrranocyte for my Tyranids.

The difference is that the Ancient rules have changed twice over 25 years, not four times over five years like 40K.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this hobby isn't expensive, as it is, but most hobbies are rather expensive. This one just seems to feel especially expensive when compared to similar costed hobbies.

I'll get into more detail about some of the replies when I'm not posting from my phone but I'd like to respond to what Killjrazy said. I don't think it's how often things change, if anything you look at Magic and the most popular modes of play constantly change. Standard has a rotation every year for example, and a standard deck can easily cost a few hundred dollars. Limited formats are also the same in that sense and while you can open expensive cards most of what you open isn't worth what you pay. In fact the most popular limited formats were Modern Masters which were something like 30-40$ a draft, during their cheaper periods. The only formats that are slower to change are Eternal Formats and those can easily cost a few thousand dollars to buy into, which is far more than 40k.

So I personally don't believe a constantly evolving game is a bad thing, if anything it's probably really good if done right. If anything, I think 40k progresses too slowly as many armies might not get a new codex for a whole edition of the game or more. Personally if it was up to me I'd say every army should get a new codex each edition, even if it's a minor update in some cases which could be sold as a mini supplement.

The most likely culprit is a deeply embedded presumption that Warhammer 40,000 is more expensive than anything on the planet (which is not far off from what some claim) and it is affecting your judgement on a semi-subconcious level.

A thing that affects many other factors that often end up as statements that simply aren't true when it comes to WH40K.

Source: A player with gravbikes, tigurius & cents, Smashbane claiming he has no chance against my toned down Tau list. We switch lists and I crush him. He was driven by belief he got by reading Dakkadakka (essentially; Tau is so OP they can't be beaten with anything.) And it's simply not true.

Agreed with OP.

Most hobbies are expensive and 40k doesn't stand out much in this regard, but you just don't get enough value from your money anymore if you're in it for the gaming aspect.

The game isn't expensive, it's £65. It's how much you choose to expand it that determines whether or not it is expensive.

Well, 40k feels not so much expensive as AoS here. We have one apoc event per month and one has the possibility to play a game on a friendly basis each weekend. But AoS is dead here. If you have an AoS army, you are stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Am I the only one waiting for Jah to make an appearance here to tell us he thinks the miniatures are amazing and are totally worth the price and that he thinks there the best deal cause there the best miniatures etc etc.
His posts always cheer me up cause its rare to see someone so optimistic about something alot of us are frothing angry about.

My 2 cents is that you don't feel bad about the money that you spend on other things is because the company you buy from at least seems to care that you are buying form them .

Magic has power creep but magic also hosts great tournaments and give out cool prizes and is active on the forums and ..you know...responds?

Blizzard is known for treating its customers like there super special and they really value their business.

These companies may not really care...but they sure pretend well

GW...doesn't seem to care..at all...about you.. Just your money. So when you buy something....you feel that you giving money to a souless jackass that charges too much

 rayphoton wrote:
Am I the only one waiting for Jah to make an appearance here to tell us he thinks the miniatures are amazing and are totally worth the price and that he thinks there the best deal cause there the best miniatures etc etc.

Can't say for certain they are the "best" because that would be a blanket statement, but even objectively they are of damn good quality and the kits mostly well designed. One should check the price for modern kids toys these days.

My tournament WM/H army cost more than my WH40K army does, as the standard is 2 lists. I also bought a box of 10 Bane Knights last month, they cost 53,2€, and they had a 20% discount. They make up one quarter of one of my two army lists.


Also, their quality is, even objectively speaking, purely crap when compared to GW kits. Their weapons are always bent right out of the box, and have a lot of casting debris. They are not even nearly as easy to assemble as GW plastic has been for a long time. This is my 3rd box of Bane Knights in 12 years, I know what I speak of.

Less value for the buck than anything in my WH40K army, be it qualitywise or pointswise.

I think the disconnect is, when you make something, you get this achievement, like, "I did this. This is cool."

But when you buy something, you get "wow, this is a cool thing." Immediately after you buy.

With 40k, you buy it, make it, feel "I did this, this is cool." Then wonder why your money is gone because you made it.

Well, i play Blood Bowl. Thats a somewhat cheap game. Mean to say, buy the box, you're done. No real need to buy any other teams, you get 2 in the box.
I love the game. Been collecting the figures Before there were figures for the game. Being into the game, i started converting D&D type figures right away.
Last count, i have over(i say over, because i got about 60 bb figures for xmas)1,200(yes. 1,200+) blood bowl/fantasy football figures. The only thing i don't collect is "sideline staff"(coaches, cheerleaders, apoth. etc). Thats just teams/stars/big guys(do i NEED 15 trolls?).
Its the joy of painting. Of converting a "warhammer" rat ogre into a fantasy football rat ogre.
You get the idea. It is what you want it to be. Don't like the cost of a 40k army at retail? Troll EBAY. Or play a "kill team" style game with less put out costs. Or find a different system.

I think with 40k, as compared to other things, the percentage of your army that each purchase makes up is relatively small.

Take, for example, a Tactical Squad w/drop pod. This is a standard troop choice, nothing weird or unique about it. With all the bells and whistles, this is probably under 200 points (180?) So roughly 10% of my army list.

It costs $75 for the two if bought directly. That's very expensive for what is a troop choice that isn't even very good, and marines tend to have good deals. I need to buy 1 more just to play (or I can buy Rhinos which are even more expensive...) plus the rulebook, plus codex. So, for the books, I'm looking at ~150, and to play, I'm looking at ~200. That's 350 just to play an extremely small game (400 pts? Not even unless I waste points on upgrades just to up it). I'd still need to spend another 50 at least to reach 500. These aren't even competitive choices.

For a Stormwall, a Cygnar model, it's 120-130 when I got mine. It's just shy of 20 points, so it's about 30% of my list for most games. In a 2 list format, I can use the Storm wall in both lists if I wanted to (many armies have core units that are used constantly in lists, like Choir, Gunmages, Murderponies) making it 30% of two lists. It's a beautiful model and huge, doesn't take long to build either.

WMH also has great deals (the battle boxes and all in ones) while 40k doesn't anymore. Makes it much harder to play, and there really isn't anything like a journeyman league in 40k like there is in warmachine.
I can buy a battle box for a 15 point army, or the two army starter for cheap (this is equivalent to a 500 point game). The all in one has a 35 point army, which is about a 1250 point game, for $150. There is nothing like that in 40k. if people could spend 150 and have 1000 points in 40k, the complaints would go away . Most of the options in the all in one are pretty good, usually some of the better options the dex has (mostly, I can't speak for every army. The Cryx and Cygnar ones are good, though the cryx one is better).

So, per model wise, 40k seems fine, though a little expensive. Game wise, 40k is much more expensive than anything else. The longer you stay in the game, the more expensive 40k becomes, since what is strong changes requiring new purchases.

Runic, I have no idea where he got that idea from, but he is horrendously misreading dakka dakka. People on here do not claim Tau are unbeatable for marines if they take the good options. If anything, marines are a great counter for Tau since grav solves a lot of problems with the larger suits and they can reach CC turn 2. Not to mention the Gladius strike force. All of the top 4 can play against each other pretty well if they go competitive.

The argument or discussion isn't about hobbies, it's about why 40K feels expensive.

There is a simple reason for this. 40K actually is expensive compared to comparable wargame hobbies like Infinity, Warmachine, or historicals generally, and it's expensive compared to comparable modelling hobbies like tank or Gundam modelling.

There's no point comparing it to golf, or J Class yacht racing, or collecting Patek Philllipe watches.

Whether you feel 40K is worth the extra expense compared to other similar hobbies is a separate matter. Many people do. That is how GW stay in business.