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AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Zywus wrote:
I assume master of ordinance was referring to the undead range rather than Mantic's range overall.

Depends which undead range I think. Tomb Kings had old crappy models anyway so I prefer Mantic, though the Mantic characters and special stuff I don't think stand up to close examination like the newer GW stuff. Vampire Counts overall I still prefer GW. Skeletons I think GW make some really nice models though they cost a fortune. Zombies, I don't really like either to be honest, I don't know what look Mantic were shooting for but to me they look like they're break dancing, GW Zombies I prefer the aesthetic but the proportions are bit whacky.

Yea, it's all subjective of course, although I think you're in a quite small minority to prefer the GW zombies. I truly think Mantic's zombies are among the best kit's they've ever done (and the opposite goes for GW's). The contorted bodies gives them a shambling, twitchy feel.

Disregarding price, I'd give GW the edge in every range outside the Undead where I'd say their quality is similar enough that it's mainly personal preference that tips the scales. If we take price into consideration the result can be different of course. I probably don't give the big GW kit's much points as they don't really matter to me. They're of great technical quality and I kinda like the look of them, but I don't really see a use for them. They're just too big and busy and would be nearly impossible to take with me anywhere.

That's the major problem with their big models you can't take them anywhere without breaking something, and if you can't transport them then they are just shelf ornaments.

And honestly I can get better shelf ornaments for a lot less money if I want to decorate.

But they give GW massive profit margins which is why they push them.

Yeah I wasn't really thinking of GW's big kits, more their characters and special choices seem to stand up better to close scrutiny than Mantic's.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah I wasn't really thinking of GW's big kits, more their characters and special choices seem to stand up better to close scrutiny than Mantic's.

Well for character models you have raging heroes and avatars of war who do great models.

I generally use Reaper miniatures for my character models in Kings of War - the GW characters have become too over the top for my tastes, and habe been since before AoS.

Plus, I now have some rather nice looking dwarf character models coming out pretty soon from their latest Bones Kickstarter -

Not bad for a $10 add on, and the King is also available standing on his feet, rather than sitting on his... throne.



Even at market price, these are going to be a lot less expensive than a similar kit form GW would be - and without the over the top poses.

The Auld Grump - for the record, I generally like Reaper minis ore than either GW or Mantic.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah I wasn't really thinking of GW's big kits, more their characters and special choices seem to stand up better to close scrutiny than Mantic's.

True, I give GW a big edge in characters. (if we disregard the price). At least characters made before the EndTimes/AoS aestetic infected GW.

Special choices I'd say Mantic holds up decently with their Zombie Trolls and Wights who looks really nice although the latter especially is rather limited in the number of poses they have. Werewolves doesn't set the world on fire exactly though. I'd like to see them redone in a non-restic material with some better proportions.

Heroes like the latest Krell and the Wight Lord are truly exquisite. But as pointed out, there are just soo many places to get cool characters these days, and for a comparative pittance.
Where GW should/could have the edge is in good quality infantry/cavalry kits (the kind of stuff people generally want to buy more than ne box of) but they have squandered away much of that potential these last years, making huge centerpiece models, while leaving many basic kits ancient and outdated

The prices for the new genestealer cults are a good example, each box is 40bucks, no matter if it is a 5man or 10mand box.

The "special" with effectively a 5 and 10 man box is 80buck, no discount/savings at all. Few years back they had deals that actually had savings as high as a 45dollar shave off. Now they get you for full price of all the minies, had they done the 15man special for say oh 60-70 that might have shown some savvy on their part.

 Zywus wrote:
But as pointed out, there are just soo many places to get cool characters these days, and for a comparative pittance.

I mostly agree, though I struggle with getting models from different sources because I struggle to maintain a consistent aesthetic. Sometimes it works out fine, other times not so much. It's usually fine for humans, though even then getting consistent scaling can sometimes be problematic.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
The prices for the new genestealer cults are a good example, each box is 40bucks, no matter if it is a 5man or 10mand box.

The "special" with effectively a 5 and 10 man box is 80buck, no discount/savings at all. Few years back they had deals that actually had savings as high as a 45dollar shave off. Now they get you for full price of all the minies, had they done the 15man special for say oh 60-70 that might have shown some savvy on their part.

Remember, a sale devalues the quality of the product. It is rather disheartening that they still keep those ridiculous web bundles as a thing

WayneTheGame wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
The prices for the new genestealer cults are a good example, each box is 40bucks, no matter if it is a 5man or 10mand box.

The "special" with effectively a 5 and 10 man box is 80buck, no discount/savings at all. Few years back they had deals that actually had savings as high as a 45dollar shave off. Now they get you for full price of all the minies, had they done the 15man special for say oh 60-70 that might have shown some savvy on their part.

Remember, a sale devalues the quality of the product. It is rather disheartening that they still keep those ridiculous web bundles as a thing

Ah but the artificially inflated value is also a misnomer. A box of 10soldiers for 40dollars is 4dollars a figure, same price for just 5figures makes it 8bucks a mini. whereas if they held to 4bucks a plastic soldier, the 5man squad would be around 20bucks but they do love milking their artificial importance of the minis/models for the army. Just lowered costs would allow for higher volume sales of the items they sell, and thus make them a lot more money as more people can afford their stuff.

WayneTheGame wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
The prices for the new genestealer cults are a good example, each box is 40bucks, no matter if it is a 5man or 10mand box.

The "special" with effectively a 5 and 10 man box is 80buck, no discount/savings at all. Few years back they had deals that actually had savings as high as a 45dollar shave off. Now they get you for full price of all the minies, had they done the 15man special for say oh 60-70 that might have shown some savvy on their part.

Remember, a sale devalues the quality of the product. It is rather disheartening that they still keep those ridiculous web bundles as a thing

Except they've been doing it with things like the Getting Started bundles and those little 'games' with two flyers or knights.

They're all over the place with how they do bundles.

years ago...and truthfully not that long ago...GW had an actual adversarial relationship with it's own community.

it thought that local game stores were a threat and that players were less important than painters.

Miniwargaming had an excellent video explaining this and how hard it was to be a store that supported GW...because GW would actually try to to stop them from being successful.

a tangential example of this is the 40K CCG that was out in the early 2000's. It was doing really well and GW feared it was taking away from it's games...so they forced the creators to cancel it and come out with a dumbed down set based on Horus Heresy.

after years of losses they removed a large portion of the leadership that was behind this philosophy and are now on course to be a competitive company again.

this is nothing you've seen before if your main experience is with MTG...they have always supported the community and stores.

I would be curious to see the true numbers of the debacle of Age of Sigmar.. How much Game Workshop lost when
they killed off Warhammer for a half baked idea.. A year after and a few top guys gone later... it seems they want
to fix the wagon they broke.. But looking at the armies, a number of them have been stream lined or completely
gotten rid of. And new armies like Simariates are pushed heavily in hopes to increase sales, instead of when all
armies had their time in the spot light.
Industry reports there is more comic / game shops open right now than there ever has been in the past.. even
more than in the 90's before the comic book crash.. But any shop you walk into will have Magic and comics..
and maybe Games workshop, they could be every shop if they would stop flipping from a company that wants
and needs local stores, to a company that is board line liking of high end purse retailer that only wants "their" shops
to sale "their" product. They either need to close their stores and try to sale in every FLGS like magic the gathering..
or only sale through their retail and hope for the best.. Both ways is not working..

Well, the price for the Goliath Truck is very off-putting. it is no bigger than a Taurox or Chimera, yet they want 115USD for it, that's right, a simple vehicle for One-Hundred-Fifteen dollars!

That and the 40 bucks a squad regardless of 10 or 5 men, is not making me warm up to the line as much as the idea is cool.

I am one who does not have that kind of disposable income for a army so expensive. If I did, I may have bought DKoK stuff.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Well, the price for the Goliath Truck is very off-putting. it is no bigger than a Taurox or Chimera, yet they want 115USD for it, that's right, a simple vehicle for One-Hundred-Fifteen dollars!

That and the 40 bucks a squad regardless of 10 or 5 men, is not making me warm up to the line as much as the idea is cool.

I am one who does not have that kind of disposable income for a army so expensive. If I did, I may have bought DKoK stuff.

That Goliath price your using is the one for New Zealand. The US price will be half of that.

Claas wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Well, the price for the Goliath Truck is very off-putting. it is no bigger than a Taurox or Chimera, yet they want 115USD for it, that's right, a simple vehicle for One-Hundred-Fifteen dollars!

That and the 40 bucks a squad regardless of 10 or 5 men, is not making me warm up to the line as much as the idea is cool.

I am one who does not have that kind of disposable income for a army so expensive. If I did, I may have bought DKoK stuff.

That Goliath price your using is the one for New Zealand. The US price will be half of that.

Yeah, I just noticed the flag change, so my bad, still, that 40bucks for either 10men, or 5 does not sit well either for me.

Just goes to show new boss is same as the old boss, there's been some token social media presence and a few army boxes with a minor discount but GW hasn't changed its spots.

hobojebus wrote:
Just goes to show new boss is same as the old boss, there's been some token social media presence and a few army boxes with a minor discount but GW hasn't changed its spots.

Its this kind of reaction that really bothers me.
There is no question that Gw had a very rough few years. Killing off games day ( my personal biggest complaint), changing white dwarf, getting rid of battleforces, price increases etc etc culminating in the incedibly botched launch of Aos.
But the sea change in the company is undeniable. Bringing back specialist games, commiting to support of lotr, bringing back (a much improved White dwarf), reingaging with the community, daily Duncan, 7 board games in one year plus a bunch of mini games, open days outside the UK, bowing to community pressure by bringing points to Aos, more than 40 discount bundles so far this year and attempting to reach new audiences with battle for vedros.

I can't believe that people can look at this and think that the company is not improving.

Price unfortunately is the biggest hurdle to face and the one that share holders will push back against the most. If people really want pricing to change then avoid the expensive new shinys and buy a bunch of start collecting stuff. If the top 30 bestselling items this year are all start collecting boxes gw will do more like it.

Chikout wrote:
I can't believe that people can look at this and think that the company is not improving.

It's easy: GW has "improved", but only in very superficial ways. Yeah, adding a social media presence is something, but it's a small thing and just doing the basic stuff that every successful company does in 2016. Meanwhile the hard things are still being ignored. The rules are still garbage, prices are still ridiculously high (and the newest kits are getting worse, not better!), etc. A lot of us want to see GW doing the hard work of making things better and demonstrating that "new GW" is more than some pretty decoration on the same old GW before we start congratulating them and feeling confident that our hobby is in good hands.

Why are Tau Fire Warriors $50 US, yet the basic troop selection for Space Marines is still just $40 US?

That's pretty expensive for something that is only a troop choice!

 Peregrine wrote:

Chikout wrote:
I can't believe that people can look at this and think that the company is not improving.

It's easy: GW has "improved", but only in very superficial ways. Yeah, adding a social media presence is something, but it's a small thing and just doing the basic stuff that every successful company does in 2016. Meanwhile the hard things are still being ignored. The rules are still garbage, prices are still ridiculously high (and the newest kits are getting worse, not better!), etc. A lot of us want to see GW doing the hard work of making things better and demonstrating that "new GW" is more than some pretty decoration on the same old GW before we start congratulating them and feeling confident that our hobby is in good hands.

I understand this attitude, but writing the new regime off after a year is also premature. The generals handbook was almost universally well recieved by those who actually play the game. Silver Tower has been very well reviewed by rockpapershotgun and shutupandsitdown.
James Hewitt has dropped hints on twitter that he has been playtesting something for several months. There is a long way to go, especially with 40k but there is cause for optimism.

I'm really happy that they're making the hero cards for Silver Tower, and the hero expansions are cool.

I'm really hoping to see some expansions that are really made for Warhammer Quest or standalone expansions.

I'm also interested in seeing what they do with their newly revived Specialist Games stuff.

 Peregrine wrote:

Chikout wrote:
I can't believe that people can look at this and think that the company is not improving.

It's easy: GW has "improved", but only in very superficial ways. Yeah, adding a social media presence is something, but it's a small thing and just doing the basic stuff that every successful company does in 2016. Meanwhile the hard things are still being ignored. The rules are still garbage, prices are still ridiculously high (and the newest kits are getting worse, not better!), etc. A lot of us want to see GW doing the hard work of making things better and demonstrating that "new GW" is more than some pretty decoration on the same old GW before we start congratulating them and feeling confident that our hobby is in good hands.

I think the disconnect might be between people that play exclusively GW games and people that play a mix of games.

Those that are heavily involved with other gaming companies will see GW's 'renaissance' as little more than moving slightly in line with industry standards while still being miles away from most other war gaming companies in terms of communication, price and game rule quality.

Pure GW fans on the other hand - who have been completely ignored by GW for years - will view a simple Facebook page as the best thing since sliced bread.

niall78 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Chikout wrote:
I can't believe that people can look at this and think that the company is not improving.

It's easy: GW has "improved", but only in very superficial ways. Yeah, adding a social media presence is something, but it's a small thing and just doing the basic stuff that every successful company does in 2016. Meanwhile the hard things are still being ignored. The rules are still garbage, prices are still ridiculously high (and the newest kits are getting worse, not better!), etc. A lot of us want to see GW doing the hard work of making things better and demonstrating that "new GW" is more than some pretty decoration on the same old GW before we start congratulating them and feeling confident that our hobby is in good hands.

I think the disconnect might be between people that play exclusively GW games and people that play a mix of games.

Those that are heavily involved with other gaming companies will see GW's 'renaissance' as little more than moving slightly in line with industry standards while still being miles away from most other war gaming companies in terms of communication, price and game rule quality.

Pure GW fans on the other hand - who have been completely ignored by GW for years - will view a simple Facebook page as the best thing since sliced bread.

Hit the nail on the head there, people who've never left the walled garden are overjoyed at the tiniest improvement but those of us who left see how insignificant the changes have been.

Well, that and GW have given us consistent reason to lower our expectations of them- and it isn't just about the prices.


Bringing back those old games that were awesome means a lot to folks like me.


I don't yet trust them not to completely screw up the aftermath of the 13th Black Crusade (Slaanesh is probably going to get squatted again, and that sucks).

niall78 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Chikout wrote:
I can't believe that people can look at this and think that the company is not improving.

It's easy: GW has "improved", but only in very superficial ways. Yeah, adding a social media presence is something, but it's a small thing and just doing the basic stuff that every successful company does in 2016. Meanwhile the hard things are still being ignored. The rules are still garbage, prices are still ridiculously high (and the newest kits are getting worse, not better!), etc. A lot of us want to see GW doing the hard work of making things better and demonstrating that "new GW" is more than some pretty decoration on the same old GW before we start congratulating them and feeling confident that our hobby is in good hands.

I think the disconnect might be between people that play exclusively GW games and people that play a mix of games.

Those that are heavily involved with other gaming companies will see GW's 'renaissance' as little more than moving slightly in line with industry standards while still being miles away from most other war gaming companies in terms of communication, price and game rule quality.

Pure GW fans on the other hand - who have been completely ignored by GW for years - will view a simple Facebook page as the best thing since sliced bread.

This.

This.

This.

The disconnect mentioned here is so important, I wish the forum could be set to repeat this post at the head of every page in this and similar threads. Outside the GW bubble, the moves "in the right direction" may well be in the right direction, but they aren't enough to make the company and its games appear in the rear view mirror of other wargaming yet. Wargaming has come a long, long way in the last ten or so years, and GW has not. They have so much catching up to do that returning to social media and putting together a few pre-selected discount bundles (that are *still* outrageously overprices by the standards of the rest of the hobby) are admirable baby steps but still fairly laughable compared to the task at hand.

Chikout wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
Just goes to show new boss is same as the old boss, there's been some token social media presence and a few army boxes with a minor discount but GW hasn't changed its spots.

Its this kind of reaction that really bothers me.
There is no question that Gw had a very rough few years. Killing off games day ( my personal biggest complaint), changing white dwarf, getting rid of battleforces, price increases etc etc culminating in the incedibly botched launch of Aos.
But the sea change in the company is undeniable. Bringing back specialist games, commiting to support of lotr, bringing back (a much improved White dwarf), reingaging with the community, daily Duncan, 7 board games in one year plus a bunch of mini games, open days outside the UK, bowing to community pressure by bringing points to Aos, more than 40 discount bundles so far this year and attempting to reach new audiences with battle for vedros.

I can't believe that people can look at this and think that the company is not improving.

Price unfortunately is the biggest hurdle to face and the one that share holders will push back against the most. If people really want pricing to change then avoid the expensive new shinys and buy a bunch of start collecting stuff. If the top 30 bestselling items this year are all start collecting boxes gw will do more like it.

Smoke and mirrors my friend, smoke and mirrors. GW gives the illusion of change but in the end, nothing has changed. So they communicate a bit more. Big deal, they are not really communicating, it's just advertising they are doing and people are eating it up. Where is the real communication? How is this making the game better? 40K is still a mess.

While the change is, that it's CHEAPER to get INTO 40K and start, it's still EXPENSIVE as EVER to KEEP PLAYING and CONTINUING with 40K. The rules are still bloated. I still need to read page 41, then go to page 184 and then back to page 75 to see how a rule works. Prices are still increasing. GW still refuses to reduce prices so they are still same old GW.

Oh another change GW has done is not make us feel like we are idiots or talk down to us. They have kept all the talking down about their customers in house now. Mr Roundtree is able to contain those "leeks" and not let out how GW really feels about their customers.

In other words, GW still have a long way of redemption. Yes it's nice to see the illusion of GW changing, but prices are still high outside of get started boxes, rules are still a mess that 40K is and we are still about 10-11 months away from a new edition to see if GW has really changed at all or not.

So while GW might "feel" nicer and different they are still the same GW. That said it is enough to get me back into buying GW products which I haven't really done in the last few years. So here is hoping that when 40K 8th edition does come around it will be a completely different GW and might actually have "worth" in paying those high prices. Right now, there still is not much "worth" in the high prices right now. Until that changes, GW will not have fully turned around.

GW have changed in a practical sense in that they are releasing board games again. My last GW purchase was the 2014 release of Space Hulk, though Space Hulk is basically a 25 year old game. The newer board games might be good but the way GW prices their products in Australia I'm not taking a gamble on what are typically around $200-300AUD board games Those are insane prices for board games, especially when I think back to the 1996 release of Space Hulk which was one of my first purchases, I can't remember the price but it wasn't nearly as bad, I could afford it as an 11 year old kid.

But as far as their core games are concerned, 40k is still a mess and WHFB is still a rotting carcass lying in the gutter... so... yeah.

Bought the White Dwarf yesterday great content, looked at the prices, then bough a miniature from another company

Yeah I played 7th ed a few times, it's... so-so, I am not a huge fan.
AoS is just weird and I don't even know what to do with it.
I've not seen any specialist games come out, so until then I will occupy myself with wild west games.
At this point I am in it more for painting, especially with my (very slow growing) sisters army.