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 Peregrine wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Are they somehow more entertaining that the same amount of money and time spend on, for example, Perry Miniatures plastics sets? Because that kind of money will net you about three plastic boxes there, so... 60-70 minis, I guess? One would think you'd be spending more time being "entertained" with those.

Does it really matter if I spend $1 per hour or $2 per hour when either miniatures option is still cheap relative to my other hobbies? Whatever miniatures I happen to buy next it's a rounding error in the overall budget compared to the $170/hour I'm spending on tomorrow's airplane rental. I might as well spend a bunch of time worrying about whether I should fly in to the airport with the $10 burger or the one with the $12 BBQ plate.

And this have something to do with something being or not objectively bad value against other options in the same hobby... how, exactly?

I am aware that stamp collection is much more expensive. It matters not when I'm talking about small monopose mandolls in relation with other small monopose mandolls.

Plus, you know, for some people the monetary difference might actually be important, even if it's a non issue for you.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Are they somehow more entertaining that the same amount of money and time spend on, for example, Perry Miniatures plastics sets? Because that kind of money will net you about three plastic boxes there, so... 60-70 minis, I guess? One would think you'd be spending more time being "entertained" with those.

Does it really matter if I spend $1 per hour or $2 per hour when either miniatures option is still cheap relative to my other hobbies? Whatever miniatures I happen to buy next it's a rounding error in the overall budget compared to the $170/hour I'm spending on tomorrow's airplane rental. I might as well spend a bunch of time worrying about whether I should fly in to the airport with the $10 burger or the one with the $12 BBQ plate.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have a hobby budget I try desperately to stick to. Sure, I CAN spend more, but it’s going to come from somewhere else like savings, tithing, vacation money, etc... I imagine if you don’t really track your expenses and have a decent income it may all just mesh together and not seem to matter if you spent $200or $250 last month. That’s kind of how I did it before we had kids, because it didn’t really matter as much then.

Now though, despite being more able than ever to not worry about GW prices, I recoil from what I perceive as bad value compared to other games I enjoy like bolt action.

That said, it also matters what your priorities are in the hobby itself. If you’re more a collector/ painter the original price of the minis is going to matter less. As I’m interested primarily in the gaming, it definitely matters to me.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
My understanding is that GW will replace (for free) a badly-cast miniature. It's not like GW releases a lot of really badly-made minis, at least, not compared to other metal minis manufacturers, but I wish I'd known that way back when I was actually playing 40k for the few that were really bad.

I'm sure they will, but it's still effort and frustration on my part. If I can fix it, I might as well fix it. GW's quality control has had highs and lows over the years - when I was considering SoB as an army, they were definitely in a low and I wasn't prepared to put up with it. At the current metal prices for SoB, their QC had better be on their AAA game.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50

Now double it and you'll see how I feel.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Are they somehow more entertaining that the same amount of money and time spend on, for example, Perry Miniatures plastics sets? Because that kind of money will net you about three plastic boxes there, so... 60-70 minis, I guess? One would think you'd be spending more time being "entertained" with those.

Does it really matter if I spend $1 per hour or $2 per hour when either miniatures option is still cheap relative to my other hobbies? Whatever miniatures I happen to buy next it's a rounding error in the overall budget compared to the $170/hour I'm spending on tomorrow's airplane rental. I might as well spend a bunch of time worrying about whether I should fly in to the airport with the $10 burger or the one with the $12 BBQ plate.

We get it. You have money. How about we discuss how the other 98% deal with sticker shock? For some people, minis are not just a tertiary hobby to distract us from how lonely our horses must feel when we jet to Dubai.


I maintain that products within impulse-buy pricing ranges make for the best entry into a new range, and the easiest way to introduce new players.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
We get it. You have money. How about we discuss how the other 98% deal with sticker shock? For some people, minis are not just a tertiary hobby to distract us from how lonely our horses must feel when we jet to Dubai.

I'm not exactly in the 1%, and I'm hardly alone in that level of budget. I know plenty of people making not all that much money who think nothing of regularly blowing $50 in a night of drinking. Even the cliche of dinner and a movie is getting up to the $50 per person level. The simple fact here is that 40k models are not all that expensive relative to other things people spend their entertainment money on.

I maintain that products within impulse-buy pricing ranges make for the best entry into a new range, and the easiest way to introduce new players.

New players are an entirely different subject. 40k's prices aren't that bad as an ongoing hobby once you've decided it's something you want to do, but the time and money investment required to start the game is awful. But, rather than slashing prices to impulse buy levels (a decision that would require a massive explosion in the popularity of 40k to make up for the loss of revenue) what 40k needs is a smaller-scale entry option. Kill team is a step in the right direction, but the lack of support is a major mistake. Even if the per-model cost doesn't change much for starter sets having a way to play a real game of 40k for $100 and decide if you like it enough to invest more is the biggest thing GW could do to grow the hobby.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Albertorius wrote:
And this have something to do with something being or not objectively bad value against other options in the same hobby... how, exactly?

I am aware that stamp collection is much more expensive. It matters not when I'm talking about small monopose mandolls in relation with other small monopose mandolls.

Plus, you know, for some people the monetary difference might actually be important, even if it's a non issue for you.

Why is value so important? Do you really gain that much satisfaction from knowing that you have successfully optimized your grams of plastic per dollar? I can't see how anyone can find that approach enjoyable. Buy the miniatures you want, and if the cost per model is higher buy them at a slower rate. If you want 40k then the fact that some unrelated historical game you have no interest in gives you more grams of plastic per dollar shouldn't have much impact on your buying choices.

 Peregrine wrote:
Why is value so important? Do you really gain that much satisfaction from knowing that you have successfully optimized your grams of plastic per dollar? I can't see how anyone can find that approach enjoyable. Buy the miniatures you want, and if the cost per model is higher buy them at a slower rate. If you want 40k then the fact that some unrelated historical game you have no interest in gives you more grams of plastic per dollar shouldn't have much impact on your buying choices.

Wow, way to twist words, there. Cmon, is it so hard to grok that, if you have more than one choice of stuff that you can equally enjoy (say, for example, I equally enjoy 40k, Perry and Gundam models... which I do, or RPGs, which I could say I enjoy even more), one might choose one over the other because one's better value for your (hard earned, and not infinite) disposable hobby money?

I mean, I like Agressors, Inceptors and even these new goldboys, but I've chosen to buy 4 Gundam kits for the same price of any single one of those boxes, which incidentally are quite a bit more fun to assemble, and I even can play posing and reposing them, with no hint of glue used whatsoever! Because I've pondered all the options where I could have spent my month's hobby money on stuff I might enjoy, and I've decided that it made much more sense to me that way. I might even enjoy it more, because I'll have more stuff that I enjoy!

Also, I have found that I can't justify to myself buying GW's character models for the price they ask, which is just as well, as kitbashing is fun.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
4 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £52.50

Now double it and you'll see how I feel.

So, 8 small plastic toy soldiers that come unpainted for £105.00?


If anything, I feel GW's prices hurt the most on the rulebook side of the game, particularly the digital versions. Seriously, $40 for the ebook version C:SM, and it's a fething epub. So I'd have to jump through half a dozen hoops just to get the damn thing to display on my PC (feth ever getting it to display properly on my Kindle Fire), and it would still have problems.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ah the old metal models debate again. I feel sometimes like I'm the only person on this forum who doesn't use gak glue or something...?

Metal models do not fall apart just by giving them a funny look.

As my powers grow, they do!

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
It is swings and roundabouts though. I remember paying £12 for 10 Ork boys 18 years ago now, and at this present moment they cost a grand total of £18!
Not to mention the wealth of customisation options available in the current kit compared to the old one.

So yes they can gouge you on some things, but they do have bargains in there still (the start collecting sets for one!).

That same box of Ork boyz had 16 models in it too. The modern one has 11.

Remember when Cadians came 20 to a box?

20 in a box for £15 at that.

 Albertorius wrote:
I mean, I like Agressors, Inceptors and even these new goldboys, but I've chosen to buy 4 Gundam kits for the same price of any single one of those boxes, which incidentally are quite a bit more fun to assemble, and I even can play posing and reposing them, with no hint of glue used whatsoever! Because I've pondered all the options where I could have spent my month's hobby money on stuff I might enjoy, and I've decided that it made much more sense to me that way. I might even enjoy it more, because I'll have more stuff that I enjoy!

Sure, but it sounds like the primary reason for your decision is that you prefer the Gundam kits independent of price. And that's fine. I, on the other hand, wouldn't have even the slightest interest in those Gundam kits if they were free. What I object to is the comparisons like "look how many miniatures you could get from this historical company" when neither the person making the comparison nor most of the other people in the thread have any interest in buying those cheap miniatures. A high score on grams of plastic per dollar is not sufficient to justify a reasonable purchase decision.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
I mean, I like Agressors, Inceptors and even these new goldboys, but I've chosen to buy 4 Gundam kits for the same price of any single one of those boxes, which incidentally are quite a bit more fun to assemble, and I even can play posing and reposing them, with no hint of glue used whatsoever! Because I've pondered all the options where I could have spent my month's hobby money on stuff I might enjoy, and I've decided that it made much more sense to me that way. I might even enjoy it more, because I'll have more stuff that I enjoy!

Sure, but it sounds like the primary reason for your decision is that you prefer the Gundam kits independent of price. And that's fine. I, on the other hand, wouldn't have even the slightest interest in those Gundam kits if they were free. What I object to is the comparisons like "look how many miniatures you could get from this historical company" when neither the person making the comparison nor most of the other people in the thread have any interest in buying those cheap miniatures. A high score on grams of plastic per dollar is not sufficient to justify a reasonable purchase decision.

At the same time Peregrine, not most of us can afford to hire an aircraft at $170 per hour, and many of us struggle to justify £50 on 10 nice models, let alone £52 on four rather clunkily detailed models. I play 40K, and I also do historicals and Infinity, and nothing compares to the price of GW. Its not just the weight, its the number of figures. For just over half of what your four guys cost I can get Joan and four Knight Hospitaller's, models that look lovely, that I will enjoy, and will also be nearly 2/3rds of my army. For the price of your four guys I can build my German platoon, with armour support. For that price I can purchase a Figma figurine.
Simply put, GW is overpriced. There is no getting around this. They produce average sculpts, they are not special in any way. They are just incredibly greedy.

Nice signature btw , its nice to see a fellow Maiden fan.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Why is value so important? Do you really gain that much satisfaction from knowing that you have successfully optimized your grams of plastic per dollar? I can't see how anyone can find that approach enjoyable. Buy the miniatures you want, and if the cost per model is higher buy them at a slower rate. If you want 40k then the fact that some unrelated historical game you have no interest in gives you more grams of plastic per dollar shouldn't have much impact on your buying choices.

Wow, way to twist words, there. Cmon, is it so hard to grok that, if you have more than one choice of stuff that you can equally enjoy (say, for example, I equally enjoy 40k, Perry and Gundam models... which I do, or RPGs, which I could say I enjoy even more), one might choose one over the other because one's better value for your (hard earned, and not infinite) disposable hobby money?

I mean, I like Agressors, Inceptors and even these new goldboys, but I've chosen to buy 4 Gundam kits for the same price of any single one of those boxes, which incidentally are quite a bit more fun to assemble, and I even can play posing and reposing them, with no hint of glue used whatsoever! Because I've pondered all the options where I could have spent my month's hobby money on stuff I might enjoy, and I've decided that it made much more sense to me that way. I might even enjoy it more, because I'll have more stuff that I enjoy!

Also, I have found that I can't justify to myself buying GW's character models for the price they ask, which is just as well, as kitbashing is fun.

It's been almost a decade since I've been motivated to buy something new at retail from GW. I will, however, buy every Transformers Generations figure that comes out with a few notable exceptions.

 Just Tony wrote:
It's been almost a decade since I've been motivated to buy something new at retail from GW. I will, however, buy every Transformers Generations figure that comes out with a few notable exceptions.

I haven't bought any GW stuff in over a year, when I bought a set of MTO Diazettes direct from GW. If they did MTO Horrors, I'd probably get a set of those, too. OTOH, I'm net cash positive for GW for the past several years, as I've sold off various GW items.

Lucky for me, all of that evil, dirty GW money has allowed me to buy pretty heavily into Kingdom Death.

 Peregrine wrote:
Sure, but it sounds like the primary reason for your decision is that you prefer the Gundam kits independent of price. And that's fine. I, on the other hand, wouldn't have even the slightest interest in those Gundam kits if they were free. What I object to is the comparisons like "look how many miniatures you could get from this historical company" when neither the person making the comparison nor most of the other people in the thread have any interest in buying those cheap miniatures. A high score on grams of plastic per dollar is not sufficient to justify a reasonable purchase decision.

Actually, I hadn't bought a single Gunpla in something like a couple of years, whereas I've bought Betrayal at Calth and Burning of Prospero. Because, as it happens, I like both 40k and gunplas, and those two boxes seemed like a very good value for what I got, so I even have a unit of Custodes, and they're hella cool.

But see...

- BaC/BoP? 38 and 47 miniatures each, for 125 euros (plus, you know, actually playable right out of the box with no other purchase needed, if you want to).
- The Legio Custodes Preorder? 4 miniatures for 70 euros

I like 30/40k enough that I can justify buying the formers, but not the latters.

Bought the bac box too as I myself thought it was a great box, but yeah am much as I like the 30k/40k setting there’s no defence for these crazy prices.

As I said earlier and as have other people there no excuse for price settings like gw are putting out.
I go back to my example of warlord games, great price and great minis to boot. I get more joy from building historicals these days. That’s probably nothing to do with gw mind, more likely me getting older and more beardy lol

I am with JohnHwangDD. I bought into the last Kingdom Death Kickstarter and have been busy with that game since.

Both games are expensive but Kingdom Death don’t charge me a higher rate because I live in the Southern Hemisphere.

Don’t get me wrong I still like the GW settings it’s just that I am liking another companies world more at the moment.

 xKillGorex wrote:
Bought the bac box too as I myself thought it was a great box, but yeah am much as I like the 30k/40k setting there’s no defence for these crazy prices.

As I said earlier and as have other people there no excuse for price settings like gw are putting out.
I go back to my example of warlord games, great price and great minis to boot. I get more joy from building historicals these days. That’s probably nothing to do with gw mind, more likely me getting older and more beardy lol

I suspect GW 'defense' is: they are making lots of money with their current prices.
Likewise, their 'excuse' for the high prices is: people buy them.

I have no criticism or objection to someone saying 'Those kits are way too much for me to buy. I prefer 'X' anyway', but the language used in this discussion seems to suggest that there is some moral issue with GW prices, or that people who are willing to pay them need to defend them somehow.

That confuses me. Capitalism is about making money, not being nice.

No not at all bud, I know there’s a need to make money but for me it’s more down to preference I guess. I’ve no issue if people are happy to buy the kits and enjoy the models.

To me I just like to see my money go a bit further when it comes to spending out on hobby/ toys purchases. If I’m honest I think most of the other products out there while cheaper are of same if not higher quality for other gaming systems.
Still this is just my point of view/ thoughts and not meant to be taken as a slight against anyone.

Fair enough.

I think partly it depends why you buy stuff.

I enjoy painting and modelling as much (maybe more?) than playing. It also takes me ages to paint stuff because I take my time and my wife/son also need my attention (as well as work/family/etc).

Now, if I factor in the painting time as 'fun' then some of the expensive kits don't look like too bad value for money; I'm gonna get hours of fun out of the kit before I've even put it on the table.

If you are a gamer who sees painting stuff as almost a tax for getting your fun then the value for money argument looks a lot less compelling.

 Denny wrote:
Now, if I factor in the painting time as 'fun' then some of the expensive kits don't look like to bad value for money; I'm gonna get hours of fun out of the kit before I've even put it on the table.

Thing is, that's only true if the only thing you find "fun" to build and paint is the expensive stuff, of course. As soon as you find as fun building and painting other, cheaper stuff, the analogy doesn't really hold, as then you would have had as much fun either way and you would also have extra money for whatever else.

Maybe it's because I like many different things, but a lot of the time GW seems to give a worse cost to fun ratio when compared with other, equally fun stuff (not always, they also do some pretty nice stuff at competitive prices... which makes these other instances even more baffling).

I really find it hard to believe most people find building and painting armies fun There's a lot of elements surrounding the building and painting of an army that is fun, but the actual building and painting itself is so monotonous.

I'm sure there's some crazies that like it, but surely they're the exception rather than the rule?

I can understand enjoying building and painting 1 or 2 models in an army, beyond that I find it arduous more than fun.

90% of my GW tiime is spent painting. Painting and storytelling are the two things I get out of the hobby more than anything. The pure gamers that are only into gaming and not much else surely exist in great numbers but the people that enjoy painting armies are not a tiny minority in my experience.

 auticus wrote:
90% of my GW tiime is spent painting. Painting and storytelling are the two things I get out of the hobby more than anything. The pure gamers that are only into gaming and not much else surely exist in great numbers but the people that enjoy painting armies are not a tiny minority in my experience.

I never said the others were pure gamers.... I'm sure LOTS of people love reading fluff, creating army list, theoryhammering and mathhammering, coming up with paint schemes, chatting on internet forums or loitering in their local gaming shops. None of that stuff actually requires buying a model though.

I'm sure LOTS of people love painting the first squad or two of their army, and I'm sure LOTS of people love painting the last squad in an army and seeing it all completed.

People who enjoy painting all the models in between? Insanity

I often work on some models that are pure display pieces which never see a gaming table. I enjoy doing so. But they aren't whole armies and nor are they GW models. I spent well over 100 hours on a Spitfire that only cost me $50AUD and actually enjoyed it because it's not monotonous like painting a whole army.

Perhaps some crazy folk find the monotony soothing or something, lol.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Denny wrote:
Now, if I factor in the painting time as 'fun' then some of the expensive kits don't look like to bad value for money; I'm gonna get hours of fun out of the kit before I've even put it on the table.

Thing is, that's only true if the only thing you find "fun" to build and paint is the expensive stuff, of course. As soon as you find as fun building and painting other, cheaper stuff, the analogy doesn't really hold, as then you would have had as much fun either way and you would also have extra money for whatever else.

Maybe it's because I like many different things, but a lot of the time GW seems to give a worse cost to fun ratio when compared with other, equally fun stuff (not always, they also do some pretty nice stuff at competitive prices... which makes these other instances even more baffling).

It doesn't need to be expensive, but it needs to be something I'm interested in. I have zero interest in historical because then I feel like I should be trying to duplicate a colour scheme rather create my own. I also dislike tanks or machines and I'm not too interested in painting humans unless is a small project like a gang or something. I like monsters and mutants and other 'fantastical' creatures. So no, it doesn't have to be expensive or GW to be fun (I bought a bunch of stuff from Heresy, Mantic and Creature Caster fairly recently) but once you eliminate tanks/robots, historicals, and 'normal' humans, there are far fewer 'cheap' options than you might think.

Also the money . . . is just not much of an issue? I could spend about four grand on miniatures today and it would not affect my day to day life at all (except my wife would kill me and I'd have to put off refurbishing the bathroom). I don't do this of course because I'm boring and responsible (which is incidentally one of the reason I could afford to do it ), and I do try and save money when I can. Like everyone I have my line (the new Beast of Nurgle, for example, is too rich for my blood), but money isn't a pressure on my hobby time.

My big restriction is time.

I don't have much time to paint or to play and I have a massive backlog of plastic. I only play with painted miniatures, so if I buy a big expensive model today it will take me . . . four months of so to get on the table?
Because of this I tend to only buy new stuff that I really like. At that point price isn't much of an issue; I'd rather pay more for something I really like than get something cheaper than I won't enjoy painting as much (learnt my lesson there, thank you Mantic kickstarters).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
People who enjoy painting all the models in between? Insanity

YMMV.

I can't say I enjoy every model (in the same way as when I go to the gym I don't enjoy every rep) but the pay off is fantastic and makes everything worthwhile. There is massive achievement in spending months or years working hard to achieve a goal. Nothing else comes close.

Wow, 10 pages on GW pricing, again...
Maybe, just maybe, there IS a problem.

Honestly, I will NEVER pay full retail for a GW ANYTHING ever again.
Ever.
Simply as a point of principle - never.

Rather see the company fail than encourage 30USD for a single plastic monopose model whose rules will be buffed just prior to release and then nerfed just prior to the next model's release.
I am not a fish.
I will not leap on shiny plastic things just because they are shiny plastic things.
Ebay. China. Trades. That is the way to roll.

Also, with paints like INSTAR and others,
I will never use another GW paint.
Ever.
Why bother?
Why feed the beast,
so that when he gets hungry he simply needs more and more to fill his greedy belly?

 Denny wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
People who enjoy painting all the models in between? Insanity

YMMV.

I can't say I enjoy every model (in the same way as when I go to the gym I don't enjoy every rep) but the pay off is fantastic and makes everything worthwhile. There is massive achievement in spending months or years working hard to achieve a goal. Nothing else comes close.

Yep. I discovered this the first time I finally completed a full army that I actually considered reasonably well painted (Epic Orks in my case). Some of that was pretty dull. You try drybrushing sand between tiny 6mm Ork infantry blebs without getting the paint in the wrong place... But I finished them a year ago, I've played dozens of games with them since then, and I *still* sit back, admire them and bask in that quiet glow of satisfaction.

I wouldn't get the same feeling if I'd commissioned someone to do it. There's nothing like knowing that you put every single brushstroke there yourself. And every conversion, every kitbash, etc. Like building a shed yourself instead of having someone do it for you.

Besides, the painting itself can be relaxing if you've got the radio on (or something less old-fashioned perhaps )

If people who enjoyed painting--or at least people who relished the payoff at the end--were a tiny minority, every company would be selling nothing but prepainted figures.

For instance, I can't get into FFG's Star Wars spaceship games because they occupy a weird middle ground between boardgame (where pre-done stuff is expected and you don't really have a strong attachment to the models) and miniatures game (where you do a lot of the work yourself and form a strong emotional connection to 'your mans').

Lego is the same. In the late 90s, they made their kits simpler and simpler, because they thought that kids didn't have the attention spans for it anymore and wanted to get playing as soon as possible. Only later did they realise that slowly building a Lego kit, trying not to make mistakes, and getting to the end knowing you did it all yourself, is a big part of the appeal--even if all you did was follow some instructions.

(On the other hand, I do think the average size of 28mm armies got completely out of control somewhere around the early 2000s and has only grown worse since then. There's no way I could cope with painting up armies of that size. 28mm to me is fundamentally a skirmish scale. It boggles my mind how people routinely paint up 10 tanks and 300 men or whatever. That's what Epic scale is for! Or it used to be, anyway. And at GW prices... *shudder*)

Zenithfleet wrote:

(On the other hand, I do think the average size of 28mm armies got completely out of control somewhere around the early 2000s and has only grown worse since then. There's no way I could cope with painting up armies of that size. 28mm to me is fundamentally a skirmish scale. It boggles my mind how people routinely paint up 10 tanks and 300 men or whatever. That's what Epic scale is for! Or it used to be, anyway. And at GW prices... *shudder*)

It's a matter of scale.

Once you've done, say your 30th fully painted marine, the sense of accomplishment has petered out to some extent, but there is still joy in what you've described.

Having 2 meters of painted tanks, some of which bear your blood from the intensity of work put into them (And i've noticed models that I specifically recall bleeding on during assembly perform better, take that as you will), rocking them up against a titan and *winning* is a sensational feeling.

One that somewhat dulls the previous sensation of accomplishment. The high takes more and more work to achieve, and there isn't really a natural 'out' if you've got £20> of disposable income a month and access to ebay.

As an aside, if you get into the hobby with 2-3 people with the same level of enthusiasm, there's a peculiar form of 'arms race' of who can get the edge first, fastest and - often - best painted, without much thought to the effort involved. I still fondly recall the 8 month long fight I had with my fellow new-starter of SM vs Necrons in the middle of 4th, which I won at the last with consistent fluke lascannons, after about 1500pts of failed experiments.

I have in the past few years at different times focussed on Transformers toys, LEGO and Gundam models, as well as getting back into GW around a year ago after a 15year-ish hiatus.

I also play video games when time allows, and none of those are necessarily cheap hobbies. I defended GW pricing (eww, I feel dirty) in another thread on this, but yeah, they're expensive.

I'd definitely argue that Gundam or LEGO can be at least as rewarding in a modelling sense, and certainly you can always go back and repose a Gunpla kit (there are some that you'd be very, very brave to do that with though...) and LEGO clearly has a lot of re-playability.

That said, aside from a few blips here and there, I've put most of my hobby spending into GW-related stuff this past year. I've gone heavy on the "bargain" packs where possible, and made use of old, often unpainted models as well as updating old paintschemes to hide my adolescent shame...well, one of them anyway.

I'm far from determined to win at all costs playing the game. In fact I've still not played a game since getting back in. I do enjoy list building, and prefer that any models I make are tabletop legal in loadouts, etc, but have been a lot more forgiving in this aspect in my older age.

I'd rather get models I like the look of, and think I'll enjoy building and painting. That's my primary concern. Once I've decided what I want to get to build and paint, then I worry about the best load-outs, and I've a ton of Tau and Nids that I'll be asking questions about whenever I get around to building them.

I've limited time to build and paint, and so take my time getting through stuff. Possibly spending a bit more time on rank and file troops than I should be at the moment, but I'm trying to get better at painting, and trying out new techniques. Its definitely an enjoyable and rewarding process, so I feel I'm getting my moneys worth.

The biggest issue I have with GW models is the disparity in price between models. The single packed characters, vs squads isn't just a case of 1 guy vs 5, but often a case of maybe getting a choice of 2 weapons or heads vs a choice of entirely different units in some cases. I like variety and having spare bitz for future conversions, and when those all come in a box of 5 or 10 guys for maybe only a few quid more than a single character (and often not even a special named character, but a generic guy) it does seem steep. Of course, there are often ways around this.

As I enjoy the modelling aspect a lot, I've taken the route of only building plastic models for my in progess mixed Aeldari army. Given that there's about 4 plastic units in the entire Craftworld range, that's made things interesting, and time-consuming, but resulted in some fun models. I'm slowly amassing enough models for enough armies to try and persuade some friends to give the game a go, without requiring the intial buy-in of buying, building and painting an army, and am really enjoying the journey.

It IS expensive, but I'm not going crazy with the spending and getting my time and money's worth out of it right now, even in comparison to other hobbies. Do I think some of the models could be cheaper? Of course, especially some of those who seem artificially high because they're somehow considered more important, or they've received rules updates making them more attractive gaming purchases (funny that ) but actually have less options from a modelling sense. Do I combat this by purchasing bundle deals or spreading out my purchases, and limiting myself to not buying any more when I realise I've 4 boxes of plastic toy men not even built, let alone painted? Why, yes, yes I do. Is that perfect for everyone? I'm fairly certain the internet would close down in a couple of days if everyone could agree on even one topic.

the danger with price gouging is that there is always the risk of people saying "enough" and abandoning the game wholesale. That would be a disaster for the folks who enjoy the setting and even the rules. The idea is make a nice hefty profit, but dont bleed the customer dry doing it, and generally you will make more if you sell more, cheaper sells more.