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 chaosmarauder wrote:

 Korinov wrote:

 chaosmarauder wrote:
To me it actually felt a lot worse back in the 90s when they pretty much only sold metal models.

I collected Warhammer fantasy back then.

I remember it was something like $18 to buy 2 infantry models or a command squad.

So if you wanted to field a unit of say 15 Daemonettes with command squad it would cost you like $200.

So to me atleast - the plastic kits seem way cheaper than back then.

I remember in the late 90s and early 00s metal units for fantasy were sold in boxes of 10 models for around 20€* (from 2002 to 2005 the price hiked up to 27€ or so). So in order to field a squad of 15 daemonettes you would need a box (about 20€), a command squad blister (12€) and another blister of 'normal' models (10€). That's around 42€ to me, which even a few years back when the Euro at its peak would have meant what, 55$? Unless GW was brutally screwing the US market, of course.

*Technically, in the late 90s the Euro was still not a thing in the streets, so speaking from memory regarding national currencies of the time.

Dont know if it was before boxed sets or the store just didnt have that many boxes but almost everything was sold in blister packs of 2-3 metal models even basic infantry.

No, that was the case. You sometimes had cheap plastic boxes with like 8 or so dudes in it, but most of it was metal. I remember having to buy a unit of Dark Elf Spearmen and it was like $60ish for the entire unit; what always bugged me was the command was 3 guys, blisters were 2 so I always had 1 guy left over for a unit of 20 so I almost always ended up fielding a unit of 15 (6 blister packs + command squad). That was in... 1995-96 I want to say.

Zimko wrote:
Another issue is when you purchase a 40k kit, you're only contributing to the one army that kit is for. But in MtG, when you purchase a booster, you can get cards that will contribute to multiple decks and play-styles. So even if you don't get the rare card you want, you still feel like you got something useful because you can say "oh, this can go in my aggro deck".

In 40k, you invest heavily into 1 army, but if you get tired of that army or if GW nerfs that army then you're stuck. You don't have a collection of models that can be used for other armies.

This is only partially true, since most people who play magic competitively don't buy boosters outside of limited play, but rather they buy indicidual cards. More, a play set of Bazaar of Bahgdad or Mishra's Workshops cost 700$ x 4 or so for each sey and only work in one format and one deck type, well you can say one deck even. That's 2800$ for four cards only really playable in one deck, yet it's not massively uncommon though it's an extreme. There are plenty of similar cards at lower values but still costing 50$+. These investments aren't completely safe from the ban hammer either, Splinter Twin was banned recently in the only format it's played and I'm guessing it was above the 20$ mark.

Don't forget, we also have allies in 40k now so there's more cross use of units, because if for example my Tau get nerfed I could still play Taudar or something.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Saying "well, GW is dirt cheap compared to Magic/hang gliding/racing/ etc." Is ridiculous. Yes, playing 40k is infinitely cheaper than flying a plane as a hobby, but that doesn't matter because I'm not trying to buy a plane, I'm buying 40k.

Strongly disagree here. The comparison might not be valid for you, but it's valid for a lot of people. For example, that plane might cost you $30,000, with operating costs of $100+ per hour. A weekend trip could easily cost you $300 in fuel alone, plus food, hotel rooms, airport fees, etc. So if that's your primary hobby expense then maybe the price of 40k doesn't matter. A tank model that takes a month to finish and contributes to years of playing the game is still "cheap" regardless of whether it costs $50 or $100.

Except that's not really the case, no matter how rich you are, if you aren't satisfied with a product it'll feel expensive for what it is, that's what this discussion is about. It's not about money or price itself, it's about perseption and satisfaction or lack thereof.

Trust me, if you're used to eating good quality burgers that are 15-20$, and you don't find them expensive, you can easily feel like a 2$ McWhatever is expensive because it feels like a waste of money. That's the issue with GW, it's not that it's expensive, it's that it's empty.

The thing is at least with most armies when I buy a box of 40k minis, I am hardly ever dissatisfied with the content. It's really just the price. When things break down to like $10-15+ dollars per miniature, it's a hard pill to swallow. Especially comparative to other games.

 jasper76 wrote:
40k feels expensive, because it is expensive. It'd feel about right if they cut the price of everything by 50%.

Still, at least you get something besides a card with a picture, one that is so easily reproducable in so many ways (not that I condone) that it makes one seriously wonder how the hobby stays afloat.

Then we get into hobbies like golf and scuba and the like, and 40k seems like peanuts even with the overinflat costs.

I collect watches. My most recent purchase, an Omega PO 8500 Liquidmetal, cost more than every penny I've ever spent on wargames, MtG and video games combined. It still doesn't make $150 for a thanatar seem like a bargain. That watch will always be worth close to what I paid for it and I could pass it down to my grandkids (if I were ever unfortunate enough to have children). The models are something I play with for awhile and then ebay for half of what I paid to fund a new army. Anything else I drop that kind of money on (guns, cars, watches, autographed football memorabilia) feels like a worthwhile investment compared to some plastic/resin models.

Now excuse me while I go add some stuff to my FW cart to get me over the 250 pound free shipping minimum...

If you go to the shop to buy some oranges at £2.50 per kilo, and you come home with rump steak at £25.00 per kilo, does that mean that oranges are cheap fruit?

Akiasura wrote:
As someone who plays golf and does scuba, 40k is way more expensive than either. Golf is really a one time investment with a small fee to play, scuba is a one time investment with a relatively small fee to dive.

I've been doing both for 2 decades...I think combined they equal one of my 40k armies.

I'm not sure where you're playing but it must be cheaper than my golf courses. When I played at Muirfield it was $50,000 a year. Golf Club of Dublin was $110 a round. Longaberger was about $150. Any golf course I played on Maui was at least $125 a round just for greens fees. That doesn't include clubs, balls, gloves, tees, food, alcohol, etc. However, Muirfield was a private club built by Jack Nicklaus that hosts a large PGA tournament every year so it's a bit at the higher end of the price scale. Either way, unless you're using some obsolete clubs and playing on a bad to mediocre course, golf is definitely more expensive than 40k. $200 for 4 hours of golf. Now if you buy $200 worth of GW or even FW models, how long will it take you to build and paint them? This doesn't count time you'll spend playing the games.

Good lord those prices are astronomical.
Our local area isn't anywhere near those prices. Not even close.

So the major discussion, when you cut everything that's been posted here to the core, is in perceived value. The issue is it's nigh impossible to convince someone that what they perceive as value isn't and there's no reason to even try. I've seen several posts here argue the fact that getting models that you can convert and paint adds to the value of the models for them; for me it's just the opposite - I view painting models as a chore I have to do to make them at least look decent to play with (and to be honest, I don't get that chore done as often as I should). I'm a gamer, I enjoy gaming, I enjoy wargames for the dynamics of army building rather than the static nature of board games. Given the choice, I will always choose painted models like X-Wing. Does this mean the person that perceives unpainted models to be higher value is wrong? Absolutely not, I know several people that enjoy painting the figures at least as much, if not more than, gaming with them. However, his argument also does not mean I am wrong in the value I get out of already painted models and being able to just get to the gaming.

So you may ask why I play 40k? Initially I didn't even know there were other options and all of the people in the gaming group that I joined played 40k and then we brought more people in (this was the middle of 5th ed). Now, I have a large group of Tyranid and CSM models and hadn't really wanted to spend money on new models for another new game I still love the look of the models and I enjoy the fluff of my armies, but my play "group" is now down to 2 of us -most having left for board games or just not liking the direction 40K went- and we only play 40k every now and then. I honestly haven't touched my 40K models since October or November. Then a friend of mine expressed an interest in X-Wing and we split the starter set and I found out everything that GW is doing wrong. So I don't need to buy a rulebook and a codex and dataslates and Imperial Armor on top of 100 models to play a semi-competitive game? Really? Not to mention that I've spent all of maybe 80.00 on X-Wing and I can now play at 100 points of either Imperial or Rebel, maybe not fully tournament competitive 100 points, but I don't think I'm that far off. That's why 40k feels expensive, within its own arena it IS expensive.

So that's the thing, like I'm not just an outsider looking in, I'm someone who wants to enjoy 40k, who wants to be really into it, but just can't find enough reason to feel happy about it as a whole. I also see this in a lot of 40k fans, they're just not happy about the whole situation.

That being said, I can't say I'm ever sad when buying a kit right away, I do enjoy the painting and modeling, but it does feel tiring after painting a large series of the same model. Though as a whole there is a happiness to getting a new kit, but that feeling fades super fast when I realise I can't actually play it in a game, because there aren't any games to be played unless I want to go over the top in travel.

I think that's what's so big about Magic for me, there's the rush of getting a new thing, a piece of art, a piece of history, and then there's the game I can play. I was going to say that Vintage is the size of 40k, but really it's not, it's a dead format of Magic and it's still so much more alive than 40k, which is honestly heartbreaking.

Edit: Heck, I haven't played Magic in a year or so, but the option is always there, and I get pestered more to play it than anything else, which is a great feeling, but I can't ever say the same for 40k. You can't deny that having the option to always do something, even if you might not, is better than not ever having the option, that's why so many people have gym memberships after all.

It's sort of hard to compare MtG with 40k, beyond the fact that both are hobbies. MtG is a card game..they are selling pieces of paper with pictures and words that you put in a deck and can instantly play with. 40k is a game as well as a craft hobby. Not that you have to do the craft part, but someone does unless you're counting pennies as Tac Marines and nickels as Sternguard,

MtG is usually compared to 40k because MtG is seen as the premier collectable card game that all others are measured against (Yugioh may be more popular, but MtG is understood as the most well designed, if not balanced).

40k is often considered the "premier" tabletop wargame since it's one of the most iconic. While not many people know of tabletop wargames, generally those that do will know of 40k better than any other game.

The reason the two are compared so much is that MtG is what 40k Could Be, if the company actually gave half a squig's ass about balance, design and the hobby.

Sure, MtG is what 40k could be, but only if GW transformed a game of miniatures into a game of cards. But maybe the point is more about rules, design, and balance.

Hobbywise, I mean from an "arts and crafts" perspective, there is no meat whatsoever to MtG, except of course if people are making their own artwork for cards, which I doubt is a mainstream part of the game.

Considering the extent of GW's hobby advice nowadays is "buy this set with these paints and a brush", there's not much they're offering in terms of hobby either, at least no more than Wizards do for MtG (MtG at least have tactics, deckbuilding and artwork showcases).

I use to get lost in the dozens of Daily MtG articles just like I use to with Black Gobbo. Now I just get lost in Daily MtG.

Here you are being wilfully dishonest. It is well known that GW sells a wide range of overpriced paints, glues, craft tools, craftbooks, etc. MtG is a game, but it is a game that requires no craft from the player, in the sense of 'arts and crafts'. You simplyt buy cards, put them in your deck, maybe get rid of some old cards, shuffle, play, rinse, repeat. I'm not putting it down, I actually like the game.

 jasper76 wrote:
Here you are being wilfully dishonest. It is well known that GW sells a wide range of overpriced paints, glues, craft tools, craftbooks, etc. MtG is a game, but it is a game that requires no craft from the player, in the sense of 'arts and crafts'. You simplyt buy cards, put them in your deck, maybe get rid of some old cards, shuffle, play, rinse, repeat. I'm not putting it down, I actually like the game.

Actally, that may work in MtG's favor. Wizards of the Coast doesn't have a vested interest in customization, which means there is no conflict of interest when players do customize their cards and mats and can showcase them.

What this means is you are not required to engage in customization to enjoy the game and the company can support it with less hesitation.

GW on the other hand does have a vested interest in customization, as it can eat into their profits. I know of the days when GW showcased cool custom models made from deodorant bottles and encouraged players to do so with anything try could find. Now, due to that conflict of interest, nothing is being showcased unless it is 100% GW approved and you are kicked out of GW stores if they find out you have "counterfeit" models.

And no, offering substandard, overpriced paints and brushed does not make them an arts and crafts company, especially when they requiem your army to be painted to be played at their stores, like surtax on your models.

You guys do know MtG has a craft element to it, if you want, right? There's not only a hobby of altering cards, but actually a whole business to it too. It's literally a painting hobby, which if done well adds to the value of the product.

Heck, one guy bought some beat up Moxen (couple hundred dollars each even in ba condition) and a black lotus that was best up (at the time was probably 500$+) and for those of you who don't know the Moxen are jewels in their art and there's a total of five, with the lotus being six. He had them altered so the original jewel/lotus showed but if you layer them out together they'd form an ornate Indian Jone's style treasure map.

I'll see if I can dig up a picture of it, it's super pretty. But yea, there's a lot of art to be had with MTG, whether it's altering art or making 3D cards (3D cards are not tournament legal).

The discussion of the super-expensive out-of-print Magic cards isn't really relevant to most player's experience. Those cards aren't allowed in most tournaments, for one.

Also, a lot of Magic players do booster draft tournaments, which are in the ballpark of $12 to $15 and don't really require any kind of prior startup cost. Startup cost is where 40K really suffers.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Saying "well, GW is dirt cheap compared to Magic/hang gliding/racing/ etc." Is ridiculous.

bs. It's a hobby like any other. End of. Period.

"But other companies are cheaper."

Collecting cars is a hobby. Buying a 2008 Hundai is cheaper than buying a 1969 Mustang.

"But don't lie to people or yourself and think GW is cheap or reasonable when literally every company making plastic kits that are even remotely in the same vein are beating them in price or quality, or both."

Strawman argument. No one is saying that GW is cheap or reasonable. Find one post in this thread that did. I'll wait.

"when literally every company making plastic kits that are even remotely in the same vein are beating them in price or quality, or both."

1. Other companies make excellent plastic kits. Again, find a post in this thread that claims otherwise. Again, I'll wait.
2. Show me an example from "literally every company" that is this fething awesome.. Remember, "literally every company," and not 1 or 2. That is YOUR childish claim. Back it up with facts, or start behaving like an adult in this thread.




"It is absolutely fair to label GW as expensive when competitors can make similar quality kits for far lower prices, or beat them on quality in the same price bracket."
1. I call GW expensive all day. As does/has nearly everyone in this thread. I have kits from other manufacturers and think they're great! ME, for example.
2. Show me 3 examples from 3 different companies that have as many options and is of the similar quality for far lower prices as this kit. Show me 3. The onus is on you.




Edit: This post may have come off more aggressive than I meant it to. Apologies for hurt feels and all that.

I don't view it as especially expensive. For less than £30 I'll spend a couple of hours assembling and a couple of weeks painting a predator tank. And when it's done I'll feel satisfied with it (hopefully, if I did a good job).

I guess if you only want to play then you are only "using" half of the product which might explain why it feels expensive. If I just thought of them as game pieces instead of a project I'll enjoy, I'd feel ripped off maybe.

My army might cost £300-400 but it's spread over a year and too many hours to count getting them up to a good standard.

40k is expensive, but GW miniatures are not significantly more expensive (and in many cases even cheaper) than the miniatures offered by other wargaming companies. In fact, model by model, GW is actually the cheapest of the companies I buy stuff from.

You can't really compare 40k with MtG in any meaningful way, the only thing they share in common is that players collect stuff. You might as well compare it with any other hobby that involves collecting stuff. What about post stamps?

About whether 40k feels expensive or not (to me it does!), that is a completely subjective matter of opinion. Other people will have different experiences and different opinions, and thus it is difficult to argue about it in a meaningful way. For example, someone who struggles to find games of 40k or someone who relies on a local store to find games with strangers will be in a completely different position from someone who has lots of friends that play 40k and can easily get a game at home every weekend. How expensive something feels to you depends a lot on the perceived value you get out of it, and as a matter of perception, it is not really argueable.

Well, to address the OP:
Why does 40k feel expensive?
Because comparatively I can have more fun for the money with my other hobbies.
To keep 40k alive and my collection up to date I grudgingly have to spend more on it than other hobbies for less fun (still fun mind you, but could have spent more on X-wing!).
Does that make sense?

Like I said before, the biggest issue is the huge asking prices of the kits. A few pages back I made the example of, say, a "boosterpack" of a marine for 5 dollars that was completely random (or, if you must have it on par with everything else, make it 8 dollars, basically the "average" of all the Power Armored models) and just gave you the pieces of that one marine, a lot less people would be apprehensive about it. But ask someone to drop 50-100 bucks, minimum, on a set, and it feels expensive. Even though logically we know that small increments adds up to the same, it's what feeds into these collecting addictions and hobbies, since our brains only see the 5 dollar investments, not the 400 or so we've blown this past month.

Like, take the new re-packaged bloodcrusher for example. It's a dreadnought-sized model that GW is effectively asking 20 bucks a pop for. That's not that unreasonable.

But put it in a box of 6 and charge 120? Now that's gonna make me stop and think a sec before opening my wallet. The price has not changed on a per-model basis, but the larger number just makes you feel a lot more unsure.

On top of that, an issue with GW kits is that you often get too much. I mean sure I'd like to have all the weapon options and arms available, but do I really need 30-40 shoulder pads and 15 heads? The new Assault Marine box actually comes with so many arms, heads, torso, pads and backpacks that if you just had 5 more legs, you could have assembled another 5 marines out of it. Again the arms I can see why, but to have enough extra bits to outfit nearly an extra set of marines seems way too excessive. This is even worse with dual kits, many of which only share the tiniest of parts (Mucolids and Tyrannocytes comes to mind) that otherwise have no reason to be in a kit together other than to drive sales.

(Now a good example of a dual kit is the Space Wolves one. That one actually makes all of the excess items feel right since the Wolf Guards, Grey Hunters and Blood Claws share so much that it would be unfeasable to make them all into separate kits.)

Finally, the pricing structure is weird as well. A box of tactical marines is 50 Canadian, while a box of Sternguards are 60 canadian. However, the Tactical Marines come with 3 full sprues while the sternguards come with only 2. And the two were released at relatively the same time, so it's not like one was the product of an older method. I can understand if a clampack cost the same as a box with 1 sprue in it, cuz regardless of the size of the sprue they still gotta set up the mold. But when something has actually less sprues (yes I'm aware that the sprues are all cast as one then split up during packaging) in it and being charged more, there's something up with their pricing scheme.

Say if tacticals were 50 bucks and sternguards were 45, that I could understand a little bit since it means the price difference in sprues is due to the casting company charging a flat rate for setting up, then an additional charge for the size of the actual sprues. For me, there's no reason why Sternguards should cost more. And it's not the amount of details either; the Scions were basically resculpted from scratch, but even they cost less than the Sternguards while having the same number of sprues.

Most people are dumbfounded when I tell them how much I spend on the rulebooks alone. $50 Codex, $80 rulebook, $70 Apocalypse, $70 Doom of Mymeara. Thats $270 just for the rules of my units. Add in the cost of a battleforce you want and you are looking at $800 easily. I guess you could remove the Forgeworld book if you wanted to play codex only units and the apocalypse book if you didn't want the formations but I shell it out cause of the size of my army. I can field every formation in the apocalypse book at full strength all at the same time except the Cloudstrike formation.

If someone doesn't like the game then they would feel as though their $800 was wasted. I know I started small with a vision and it took me years to complete that vision (30 wraithguard). Back then the wraithguard were metal only and came in blisters of 1 for $15 each. I bought them 1 at a time for 3 months before I could even field a small unit of 5. But those small purchases are gone (and frankly you can get a box of 5 wraithguard now for $50 so thats a little cheaper than what i pad for them). Back then it was easy to swallow multiple $15 purchases over a few months than a $50 purchase.

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

And that's a wrap, folks!

And here's the card alters I was talking about, that's pretty close to 5k-10k worth of cards if not more by now:

 Tinkrr wrote:
Trust me, if you're used to eating good quality burgers that are 15-20$, and you don't find them expensive, you can easily feel like a 2$ McWhatever is expensive because it feels like a waste of money. That's the issue with GW, it's not that it's expensive, it's that it's empty.

But my point is that if you're used to eating $150 steak dinners then the difference between a $2 McWhatever and a $2.50 RoyalBurger probably isn't going to make much of a difference to you when you're picking where to stop for food on a road trip. The $2.50 burger is technically more expensive than the $2 burger, but do you really care about that difference?

Same thing with other hobbies. If I'm used to paying $500+ for a weekend trip in my plane and just put $15k into an engine overhaul last year then whether I buy a $50 tank model or a $75 tank model (which will take me a month to build/paint and give me years of enjoyment) is barely relevant. Both tank models are "cheap", and I'll just buy the one I want more without paying much attention to the price.

Kronk, I could buy a 20-man dfg eisenkhern stormtrooper kit AND accessory kit for less than the price of that GW tac marine kit.







That's the stormtrooper kit and another 4 stories for the accessories.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:
Trust me, if you're used to eating good quality burgers that are 15-20$, and you don't find them expensive, you can easily feel like a 2$ McWhatever is expensive because it feels like a waste of money. That's the issue with GW, it's not that it's expensive, it's that it's empty.

But my point is that if you're used to eating $150 steak dinners then the difference between a $2 McWhatever and a $2.50 RoyalBurger probably isn't going to make much of a difference to you when you're picking where to stop for food on a road trip. The $2.50 burger is technically more expensive than the $2 burger, but do you really care about that difference?

Same thing with other hobbies. If I'm used to paying $500+ for a weekend trip in my plane and just put $15k into an engine overhaul last year then whether I buy a $50 tank model or a $75 tank model (which will take me a month to build/paint and give me years of enjoyment) is barely relevant. Both tank models are "cheap", and I'll just buy the one I want more without paying much attention to the price.

And my point is that it's silly to look at it that way, because as people we're usually not choosing between the same type of thing, as much as we're choosing between different things that fit a greater theme.

As it has come up often in this thread, you can compare apples to oranges when it comes to how expensive one feels in comparison to the other, because while they might be different objects, both are used for the same function of food and taste, which is a limited resource we as people generate. The same goes for hobbies, we only have so much time and finances for hobbies, so it's absolutely silly to go and say "Well GW is slightly less expensive than model company X" because I might have no interest in model company X, but I have interest in GW, and then I have interest in MtG, so those are my two things that consume my hobby time and finance, the other model company might as well not exist because it was never something I considered buying.

Let's put it in a simpler fashion, let's say you own an Xbox, and you're debating on whether you want to buy an Xbox game or see two movies in an IMAX theater with your entertainment budget, does it matter to you when someone comes along and says that the Xbox game is cheaper than a Playstation game? No, you don't own that system, and you weren't considering it, it's bloat information, that's what comparing GW to miniature company X is in this case, because while they have more things in common than other hobbies do to GW, they're not a consideration. That's the point, it might seem like two things are too different, but they're far more related based on the person than two things that seem more similar in a general sense, and reducing things too much will result in a null argument that doesn't matter, unless you want to buy a Wii game when all you own is an Xbox, because it's cheaper when compared to other games and not to other things you enjoy or have access to.

 agnosto wrote:
Kronk, I could buy a 20-man dfg eisenkhern stormtrooper kit AND accessory kit for less than the price of that GW tac marine kit.

Spoiler:

That's the stormtrooper kit and another 4 stories for the accessories.

InB4, "Something something something, but they're not Space Marines so they don't my aesthetic, something something something..."

Am I the only one that noticed the stormtrooper's chiseled asscheeks?