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You can talk about sales volume all you like, but it makes no sense that this is this is £15 yet this is £18.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You can talk about sales volume all you like, but it makes no sense that this is this is £15 yet this is £18.

In that context, it does make some sense. They're going to sell far, far, far more boxes of Plaguebearers than they are Heralds. The cost to make the mold of each is in a similar range - the mold for the plaguebearers might be 3-4x as much what with multiple sprues, but they're recover the mold costs very quickly. The mold cost of the Herald, though, will take a while to recover - unless they charge out the yin-yang for it.

I think GW sets their prices to recover mold/design costs ASAP, then leaves the cost in place, because people were fine paying the inflated cost anyways. They know they can't charge endless amounts for troops models, but the characters and big special pieces?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You can talk about sales volume all you like, but it makes no sense that this is this is £15 yet this is £18.

Let's say fixed price is 100,000£. You expect to sell 10000 sprues of A and 1000 sprue B. Guess what? To make up for fixed cost sprue B then needs to sell for 10x price or sprue B is making loss. The price of plastic itself is pretty neglible so amount of plastic the 10x more sprues take doesn't affect price hugely. Then top of that hero price common in many companies and GW extra price hike and there you go.

You can't sell as many sprues of characters as you do for basic guys. Who needs as many sprues of characters as basic guys? Nobody. Even worse with special characters which rules flat out prevent using more than 1(and the way no options are many players don't want more than 1 generic model since they are all carbon copies anyway so might get the 1 and rest in other way)

tneva82 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You can talk about sales volume all you like, but it makes no sense that this is this is £15 yet this is £18.

Let's say fixed price is 100,000£. You expect to sell 10000 sprues of A and 1000 sprue B. Guess what? To make up for fixed cost sprue B then needs to sell for 10x price or sprue B is making loss. The price of plastic itself is pretty neglible so amount of plastic the 10x more sprues take doesn't affect price hugely. Then top of that hero price common in many companies and GW extra price hike and there you go.

You can't sell as many sprues of characters as you do for basic guys. Who needs as many sprues of characters as basic guys? Nobody. Even worse with special characters which rules flat out prevent using more than 1(and the way no options are many players don't want more than 1 generic model since they are all carbon copies anyway so might get the 1 and rest in other way)

I get the volume issue but isn't that GWs fault? They've decided to make a low volume sales product out of a high volume sales material. They then dump the costs of this choice onto the consumer. Let's not forget the switch to plastic was supposed to drop the cost of minis within the industry for consumers. In the main it did. Just not with GW who decided to switch everything to plastic including low volume sales miniatures where plastic just isn't economically viable.

niall78 wrote:
I get the volume issue but isn't that GWs fault? They've decided to make a low volume sales product out of a high volume sales material. They then dump the costs of this choice onto the consumer. Let's not forget the switch to plastic was supposed to drop the cost of minis within the industry for consumers. In the main it did. Just not with GW who decided to switch everything to plastic including low volume sales miniatures where plastic just isn't economically viable.

Yes. That's why I'm not happy with plastic everything. That's been IMO one of the big mistakes GW has made. Right material for right job. If they did characters for example in metal they could even also release tons of variable character poses like they used. Not same commissar only. Remember when there was like half a dozen different commissars? Bits would also be feasible. Imagine having option to buy some other weapons for your characters!

It's a bit of an irony that GW completely abandoned Finecast as it is, in theory, the perfect material for low-volume character casts. It's the happy medium between the workability and low price of plastic and the low production cost (in terms of moulds and machinery, not material costs) of metal.

tneva82 wrote:

niall78 wrote:
I get the volume issue but isn't that GWs fault? They've decided to make a low volume sales product out of a high volume sales material. They then dump the costs of this choice onto the consumer. Let's not forget the switch to plastic was supposed to drop the cost of minis within the industry for consumers. In the main it did. Just not with GW who decided to switch everything to plastic including low volume sales miniatures where plastic just isn't economically viable.

Yes. That's why I'm not happy with plastic everything. That's been IMO one of the big mistakes GW has made. Right material for right job. If they did characters for example in metal they could even also release tons of variable character poses like they used. Not same commissar only. Remember when there was like half a dozen different commissars? Bits would also be feasible. Imagine having option to buy some other weapons for your characters!

I'd agree completely. Another upside is you could rejuvenate high volume core forces for factions in plastic a lot quicker if a lot of your design and production capacity wasn't going into low volume characters.

I too certainly missed the miniature variety once metal got canned. My first RT/2nd Marine army is nearly 50% metal and the variety is striking. Beaky Marines helped with that as well!

I play historical a lot. Core armies these days are high quality plastics. Cheap for high volume. You then sprinkle in a whole lot of metal for the more characterful stuff. Even mixing with the plastics for extra effect. The result is great variety at low enough costs.

tneva82 wrote:

niall78 wrote:
I get the volume issue but isn't that GWs fault? They've decided to make a low volume sales product out of a high volume sales material. They then dump the costs of this choice onto the consumer. Let's not forget the switch to plastic was supposed to drop the cost of minis within the industry for consumers. In the main it did. Just not with GW who decided to switch everything to plastic including low volume sales miniatures where plastic just isn't economically viable.

Yes. That's why I'm not happy with plastic everything. That's been IMO one of the big mistakes GW has made. Right material for right job. If they did characters for example in metal they could even also release tons of variable character poses like they used. Not same commissar only. Remember when there was like half a dozen different commissars? Bits would also be feasible. Imagine having option to buy some other weapons for your characters!

I don't get it. Plastic kits are more suited for having different bits than metal ones. Also they're much easier to convert than medal models.

I can't speak for other people but the possibility of converting stuff made me put more money into GW stuff. Think about biker characters that are not in the catalogue, to assemble them you need to buy the standard bikes kit and probably something else just to have the necessary bits to make those characters. Monopose plastic models can be converted quite easily and can also be kitbashed mixing other kits. This should encourage people to buy more models, or at least it did for me.

I've never thought of converting metal models instead, and the majority of plastic bits don't even match them. Even if the metal character comes with different bits to chose, what do I do with the spared ones? I used pretty much all my spared bits from different boxes to convert stuff, plastic is way more handy than metal, which is heavier and harder to cut.

That's also the reason why I'm opposing the politics of removing options/characters that are absent in the original kit or are not in the official catalogue. IMHO people would buy more models if conversions/kitsbashing are the only ways to represent some unit/character.

The decision to release monopose characters has nothing to do with the material, unfortunately it's a GW politics.

You guys aren't even thinking with portals. GW could just put a monopose character on every regular troop sprue. Bingo bongo, you've got half a dozen different poses per faction pretty fast. You'd end up throwing most of them away but you do that with superfluous guns anyway.

Back to prices in gneral, the price of a cinema ticket is 6 times what it was in 91, GW seems on par or better.

 Blackie wrote:
I don't get it. Plastic kits are more suited for having different bits than metal ones. Also they're much easier to convert than medal models.

Either they would have to make HUGE sprue for character with variant torsos, legs etc or they would have to make different sprues which costs money.

Sure first option would be nice but really do you see them releasing character box with say 5 different torso/legs? And how that would be different to releasing box of 5 characters then...

For metal they can create alternative models for dirt cheap. Moulds are practically free unlike plastic that's big investment. It's metal itself that's pricey but the way this runs out it's much more affordable for small print runs. Ie characters.

It's just not financially possible for GW to release say 8 different looking commissar in plastic. Short of them making big box of 8 commisars! Which works fine for those who want 8 but what about those who want 1? 2? 3? 4?

Now those who want 4 commisars are stuck with one model with variable pistol. Wopedoo! When there were metal models you could pick 4 different models. You could order bits! Need 10 power weapons? No need to buy 10 boxes that have one. Just buy 10 power weapons.

I like the plastic character models. But, I'd prefer it if they went back to the Space Marine Captain and Empire General style of boxed set.

Multipart, with a good few options, compatible with the rest of the range.

Consider the Nurgle Herald, Sloppity Bilepiper and Spoilpox Scrivener. Those could've, conceivably, been designed as a single, flexible kit. Even if you can only build the one, you'd still have the spares left over. That of course allows those on a tighter budget to convert up the other two by adding the parts onto standard Plague Bearers.

But for now at least, they've stuck with the mono-pose approach.

If GW just bit the bullet and realised they don't have to make as much profit on every single sprue. They're not going to make a loss on these, but just sell them so people aren't put off. The school club I used to run had 10 or so new year 7 kids turn up each year wanting to play. The first figure they go look up for a new army is a boss and who can blame them. They see the price. Maybe 1 of those 10 kids would go onto collect and play. If those single figures had been priced reasonably, I'd have seen a much larger take up of the game. Seriously GW, a pre-teen/early teen kid is not going to want to buy 1 small plastic monopose soldier, for the price they could pickup a few week old PS4 game.

If they made the sprue full size and fit on loads of options that could build 2-3 variant HQ models with options galore, that would be far more economical.

But... GW collectors/gamers keep on buying at those prices... GW don't need to change.

 -Loki- wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Brotherjulian wrote:
What really got me though was the prices for individual plastic character models. I paid like $30 for a single BA jump pack chaplain. I work around the plastic industry and believe me, it isn't 30 cents worth of material.

Well apart from usual GW extra price hike these also suffer's from GW's fixation in "everything must be plastic". Even kits you don't expect to sell as much as basic grunts so when static expenses are same whether you sell 1 or 10000000 sprues guess how costs needs to be compensated...

The moment GW decided they won't in future produce anything but plastic this was inevitable.

Other companies manage to make kits in the same hard plastic with the same low volume expectations and manage to price them better than GW. GW has the benefit of tooling and casting in house as well, while other companies outsource to places like Warlord for that, which increases the overall cost.

At the same time, though, GW has physical stores, which add costs in another angle. BUT, they do make quite a bit of a spike of excessive margin, nevertheless.

And the cost of running those stores should be passed into the consumer why...?

Because that's how capitalism and indeed all shops actually work?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seriously. Every time you buy anything in any shop, you're contributing to it's running costs.

Because if you're not, and indeed nobody is, it's not going to be open for very long at all.

That's the business

They aren't holding a gun to your head. You can always play with the models you own - or you can sell the models you own.

The fact of the matter is that: if you stocked up on GW products from 15 years ago, and held them, you could resell them today at a profit.

So the best investment strategy in GW is either: look at the price tag and then buy it to collect, sealed boxes.

Or if you want to play the game and have fun, your best investment is to paint, assemble, and care for your models as best as you can.

GW is reaching a point where their recirculation and vintage products are building up collector value.and even if your models are crap they can be resold...

And if you are a fantastic painter you can get a job at GW, buy GW products at a discount and resell them at a pretty decent profit,

and for that matter: you can buy and fix up and repaint someone else's models. You can also get cheap recasts from China

So it really depends. Considering the quality of their game, the quality of the models themselves has gone up and up over the years, and they've still kept the kits within the same kind of buying range. They've managed to keep bringing new blood into the game, while respecting older players and creating the possibility for a real community of artists and creators to thrive. There is every opportunity to play the game without paying if that's what you're looking to do, but to have that kind of environment you have to accept that there are others playing the game too and also trying to survive. It seems fair to me, but you have to decide for yourself whether it's worth it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Because that's how capitalism and indeed all shops actually work?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seriously. Every time you buy anything in any shop, you're contributing to it's running costs.

Because if you're not, and indeed nobody is, it's not going to be open for very long at all.

I haven't set foot in a GW shop for two and a half decades. Why should I pay a premium for a service I don't get?

Charge the shop customers more if shop costs are an issue. Those customers are receiving an extra service. The vast majority who don't have access to this service shouldn't be paying for it in inflated miniature costs.

 Grimtuff wrote:
And the cost of running those stores should be passed into the consumer why...?

... That's literally how a business works. You translate costs (not just production ones) and margin to benefits into the prize of the final product. The thing is, while its true they have pretty hefty costs from the stores, they also spike further the pricing.

As a long time gamer of warhammer I have to say the price of some of the models is too much. I think the deals on the actual troops and units can be very good like that Plaguebearer box pointed out above.

I have more issue with the big models like the Lord of Change Greater Daemon. Back when the original metal greater demon got rebooted around the time of 40k 3rd edition it was priced at around £25. For a large very detailed model made of metal I think this was fair and with inflation etc I would expect it to be around £45 today.

Now I can go to the website and see the new plastic LoC is £70! That's the same price as Blood bowl with spare change for a pot of paint.

I'm all for GW making a profit but these big centrepiece HQ or Vehicles cost way more than they should.

---

I'd be possibly okay if GW ever had sales or a black friday type event in there stores but they never happen either. Do they even still do the New Store deal where if you bought three box sets you could get the cheapest free? I remember in tale of four gamers (the first one) the guy making the skaven army took advantage of this to get a lot of minis.

 lord_blackfang wrote:


Back to prices in general, the price of a cinema ticket is 6 times what it was in 91, GW seems on par or better.

Well I'd say Cinema tickets and the food in them are way over-priced anyway.

niall78 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Because that's how capitalism and indeed all shops actually work?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seriously. Every time you buy anything in any shop, you're contributing to it's running costs.

Because if you're not, and indeed nobody is, it's not going to be open for very long at all.

I haven't set foot in a GW shop for two and a half decades. Why should I pay a premium for a service I don't get?

Charge the shop customers more if shop costs are an issue. Those customers are receiving an extra service. The vast majority who don't have access to this service shouldn't be paying for it in inflated miniature costs.

Because that’s the price, and no other business allows you to adjust said price depending on which bits of the their overheads you do and don’t agree with?

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:
As a long time gamer of warhammer I have to say the price of some of the models is too much. I think the deals on the actual troops and units can be very good like that Plaguebearer box pointed out above.

I have more issue with the big models like the Lord of Change Greater Daemon. Back when the original metal greater demon got rebooted around the time of 40k 3rd edition it was priced at around £25. For a large very detailed model made of metal I think this was fair and with inflation etc I would expect it to be around £45 today.

Now I can go to the website and see the new plastic LoC is £70! That's the same price as Blood bowl with spare change for a pot of paint.

I'm all for GW making a profit but these big centrepiece HQ or Vehicles cost way more than they should.

Metal + plastic. Plus bigger size. Even with metal it would be up in price due to more metal + metal price has gone up

To provide some more helpful advice for characters; check out Ebay for 3rd Party sculpts. There is a fairly decent thriving 3rd party industry making figures that will fit in well with many different armies.

Here are just a few:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/28mm-scale-IMPERIAL-LAS-CANNON-TURRET-CONVERSION-SET/263228268988?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 Razorback Lascannons

https://www.ebay.com/itm/28mm-scale-MECHANIC-ADEPT-FEMALE-TECH-PRIEST-DOMINA/262916288614?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 Awesome Tech Priest model

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Kromlech-Sci-Fi-Mini-28mm-Paulus-Von-Phyrra-Imperial-Preacher-Pack-MINT/152839864105?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D47300%26meid%3Df7cb4e09fb5744c0b9b0e12a0af13c1b%26pid%3D100011%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D9%26sd%3D362140054100&_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850 Good IG Priest model

Off the top of my head Scribor makes some good Space Marine character fill in models also. I came back to 8th after stopping at the beginning of 6th and had a fair bit of a character shock also so I went looking elsewhere for models.

 Elbows wrote:
This is why they should have kept using metals for character models where applicable.

Easy, cheap, quick turn-around, many more "limited editions" available. People who didn't game when metals were popular might not be aware of how many random miniatures GW put out, almost monthly, because of how easy it is to mass-produce metal figures.

GW's prices don't bug me...if I don't like something, I don't buy it. My nerves are grated a bit though by the wild inconsistencies within their line-up. While GW and others have explained why they choose to do it, it's tough to compare the "great deals" with the "go feth yourself" models.

For example: Betrayal at Calth, or Burning of Prospero = fantastic and reasonable, borderline really good value. $30-35-40 single figure in plastic? Get stuffed GW.

I'm learning how to spincast right now. Besides the initial investment - I would charge people 7-10$ for most 28mm infantry metal minis to make a profit + shipping cost which is around what the old metal HQs cost. $14-18

Single injection mold figure for $35? No thank you

tneva82 wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Brotherjulian wrote:
What really got me though was the prices for individual plastic character models. I paid like $30 for a single BA jump pack chaplain. I work around the plastic industry and believe me, it isn't 30 cents worth of material.

Well apart from usual GW extra price hike these also suffer's from GW's fixation in "everything must be plastic". Even kits you don't expect to sell as much as basic grunts so when static expenses are same whether you sell 1 or 10000000 sprues guess how costs needs to be compensated...

The moment GW decided they won't in future produce anything but plastic this was inevitable.

Other companies manage to make kits in the same hard plastic with the same low volume expectations and manage to price them better than GW. GW has the benefit of tooling and casting in house as well, while other companies outsource to places like Warlord for that, which increases the overall cost.

So what company sells plastic character models they expect to sell less sprues than others in same prices to sprues they can expect to sell like hundreds of times more?

And not saying there's no extra price hike but expecting both standard infantry and HQ models to cost what 2£ a model is pipe dream.

Picking the extreme of going from 15 GBP to 2 is a choice on your part and not something being proposed by most (or possibly any) in the thread. If anything, most people complaining here expect an increase in the cost of a character compared to a 5-10 model per sprue figure but are saying that the 7x jump for a similarly sized and detailed model to 15 GBP is way too much. If you're going to engage in an intellectual discussion online, please attempt to do so honestly instead of tilting at nonexistent windmills.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You can talk about sales volume all you like, but it makes no sense that this is this is £15 yet this is £18.

Let's say fixed price is 100,000£. You expect to sell 10000 sprues of A and 1000 sprue B. Guess what? To make up for fixed cost sprue B then needs to sell for 10x price or sprue B is making loss. The price of plastic itself is pretty neglible so amount of plastic the 10x more sprues take doesn't affect price hugely. Then top of that hero price common in many companies and GW extra price hike and there you go.

You can't sell as many sprues of characters as you do for basic guys. Who needs as many sprues of characters as basic guys? Nobody. Even worse with special characters which rules flat out prevent using more than 1(and the way no options are many players don't want more than 1 generic model since they are all carbon copies anyway so might get the 1 and rest in other way)

Another bad comparison since you're apparently comparing a unit sprue to a character sprue. Please take a look at the relative size differences in an unboxing video between the tiny character sprue and the full size unit sprue; the molds don't cost the same. Also, your price of 100k GBP is ridiculous even by 1990's standards. Finally, nothing in business foces a company to make the return on investment in exactly the same time for each product necessitating ridiculous prices to keep every product on an even keel at all times in terms of profit with every other one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I like the plastic character models. But, I'd prefer it if they went back to the Space Marine Captain and Empire General style of boxed set.

Multipart, with a good few options, compatible with the rest of the range.

Consider the Nurgle Herald, Sloppity Bilepiper and Spoilpox Scrivener. Those could've, conceivably, been designed as a single, flexible kit. Even if you can only build the one, you'd still have the spares left over. That of course allows those on a tighter budget to convert up the other two by adding the parts onto standard Plague Bearers.

But for now at least, they've stuck with the mono-pose approach.

When I first saw the captain, I'll admit that there was some sticker shock on my part as I had skipped 4th edition and the beginning of 5th and was used to older $10-15 power armor character prices in metal during 3rd. When I looked at the sheer number of extra bits in that box though, I saw that it was a reasonable price increase given the utility and a good example of using the medium (plastics) for a new type of product (single character models). The current monopose you're lucky if we give you an extra pistol or head plastic characters for even more money are a different story IMO though. It would have been reasonable IMO for instance if they had come out with a $30 Primaris lieutenant that had most of the options on the sprue for instance (jet pack, an assortment of power weapons and relics, etc).

GW being a publicly traded company also has a lot to do with the prices. Most/all(?) other wargaming companies are private businesses. The 'owner' decides how competitive the company needs to be. GW has shareholders to keep happy, and shareholders generally aren't happy with 'break even after paying people's salaries' like private companies might be. So GW will charge whatever the market will bear, and will keep raising prices until the market won't bear it anymore.

As to the cost of big plastic units, I'm less price sensitive. These things in resin or metal would weigh a ton and be fairly fragile without extreme effort in assembly, so going to plastic, even at a premium, is IMO worth it. The resin GuO is $212 CAN, the new plastic GuO is $170 CAN. The plastic one will be easier to cart around and keep from getting damaged. I'm not going to get bent out of shape over the cost of the materials to make it being cheaper, it's a better material for big models.

After paying 60ish euros for WMH Megalith, GW prices seem quite reasonable to me Especially that in most cases you can get 20-25% off.

I had thought GW prices have little do with how much the model cost to manufacture, but I could be thinkint someone else, but was basically determined by the points of model based on the point value or cost to field the unit? At least I thought it was some formula or similar fashion. Units that would cost more points to field in the game cost more $$ to purchase vs cheaper to field which would cost less $$.

I started an Inquisition/IG army this year and have kept almost completely to 3rd party models. (A WW2 Sherman, some 1500's European infantry) then I scour the bits box at my local FLGS and it's now 33-50% GW bits. Boom: tourney legal.

also, 40 guys only cost me $20.... 2 tanks only cost me $40. I could buy 2-3 of these armies for the cost of 1 GW army.

 supreme overlord wrote:
I started an Inquisition/IG army this year and have kept almost completely to 3rd party models. (A WW2 Sherman, some 1500's European infantry) then I scour the bits box at my local FLGS and it's now 33-50% GW bits. Boom: tourney legal.

also, 40 guys only cost me $20.... 2 tanks only cost me $40. I could buy 2-3 of these armies for the cost of 1 GW army.

I thought it was at _least_ 50% GW? Not at _most_ 50%

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 supreme overlord wrote:
I started an Inquisition/IG army this year and have kept almost completely to 3rd party models. (A WW2 Sherman, some 1500's European infantry) then I scour the bits box at my local FLGS and it's now 33-50% GW bits. Boom: tourney legal.

also, 40 guys only cost me $20.... 2 tanks only cost me $40. I could buy 2-3 of these armies for the cost of 1 GW army.

I thought it was at _least_ 50% GW? Not at _most_ 50%

it changes depending on where you go, I've found most people dont care (or will bother to check) so long as it looks good. and my FLGS (and local group) doesnt care if it's 0% GW so I'm good where I'm at, YMMV