Asmodios wrote:
Do people actually buy the official GW plastic bases? I looked into it when i needed some 32mm for an old box of necron warriors i had. I bought a pack of 100 off amazon for cheaper than buying 10 from GW

 kodos wrote:
No point in playing a game were you auto loose turn 1 because your opponent brought double the amount of points.

7th was not the game of basic FOC armies against each other but about formations

If you wanted to have a competitive army you needed specific formation and allied forced. I am not talking about competitive or tournament armies here.

I played my Wolves several times in 7th with without formations, was wiped out turn 1 ever time and deployment took longer than the game itself

I don't consider this "you can still play the game" as it is not "playing" to place models on the table and remove all of them 15 minutes later without doing anything

 greatbigtree wrote:
My experience in North America, Canada in particular, is that it is substantially cheaper to make a WMH double theme list than it would be to make a 1750 list in 40k.

And when it comes to the second hand market? WMH is amazing. For under $600 CAD I purchased four themes and basically the entire Retribution model line. I can play anything I’d want. Some of that was full retail, but mostly second hand.

TLR - if you want a cheap game, WMH is where it’s at right now... in Canada.

 Stormatious wrote:

 Alphabet wrote:
I use 3rd party sites within the UK and it honestly is not all that bad. I looked into games like Bolt action and infinity not so long ago and I noticed the prices are not too far apart.

I will say that some kits seem way overpriced. But all in all, they are just as expensive as everything else nowadays IMHO.

Edit: I am aware that for everywhere else in the world they bumped up there prices quite substantially!

Oh because the brexit stuff they bumped it?

 kodos wrote:

Formerly Wu wrote:
I highly doubt (though could be wrong) that White Dwarf / GW brick-and-mortar business is net profitable for the company. Those look like loss leaders to me.

I would say they do, as I saw those things changing a lot over time and stores that were too large were scaled down (moved to smaller rooms that cost less with just one or no table to play), those that did not worked well closed and so on
Also what those stores had on stock changed a lot over time to keep them profitable

Of course in some cities/countries it might be different as just having the presence of a big GW store is worth it without making profit but they wouldn't do it if it is an overall los.

happy_inquisitor wrote:
I don't know about that, most factions you can start out with a couple of Start Collecting boxes and then fill in the gaps to get a workable army. Is that really $500? It is far from that in the UK.

Just got thru the numbers in a different topic, if just the cheapest boxes (start collection, core box, snap fit) is used you still end up around 400-500 depending on the army you play
before you start caring to win or talking about having the same 5 models 20 times to get the numbers.

Formerly Wu wrote:
That's always going to be the case if you play to chase the meta, no matter who you buy your models from. His point was that the game itself would still be around, and the core units from the majority of armies are still usable in anything but the most cutthroat competition.

happy_inquisitor wrote:
The size of a "full" army also matters. GW dropped their points values for their events to 1750 which was an instant 12.5% reduction in the cost of getting a full army on the table. Nothing to do with them if ETC/ITC want to stick to higher points values - actually given their approach of expecting people to do serious travelling for the tournament scene the cost of 250 points of models is perfectly rational to the ETC/ITC.

Stormatious wrote:
What do you mean by life time, do you mean some models become obsolete, or do you mean they are nerfed in a way where other models are needed or some thing. Either way i really hate the idea of models you buy wonday becoming obselete, thats rubbish and if thats true i would rather pick another wargame maybe like historical. I hope they have some thing written some where that allows models you bought a long time ago to still be used. ( i would still buy cool looking models though just for display )

happy_inquisitor wrote:
You only have that level of obsolescence if you are playing at a competitive level, in which case your other costs (travel, hotel, tournament fees) are way more than $100 per year which is what your costs above come out to (and you did not include selling the stuff you no longer want on ebay). If you are chasing the dragon of the competitive meta for any other reason than serious regular attendance of big tournaments then the price of GW models has nothing to do with what is going on in your life.

Jus to make things clear

I started Warhammer Fantasy at the end of 4th and beginning of 5th edition. Had a small group, tried to get everyone to play something different. I had a 3000 point Empire army and was just playing with friends, never competitive and also thought about a Khorne army just to have something different. And this was an expensive one as by that time a single Knight had nearly the price of Box plastic Infantry and ordering them at GW was kind of random as I wanted to have 10 Knight, 1 unit, with lances from one order and got 5 White Wolves, 5 from different knightly orders. Complaining on the Phone was complicated and the answer we got was that Knights in Blisters are packed randomly into Mail Orders.
Same with Artillery, I needed 3 Mail Orders until I got a cannon instead of a Mortar.

With 6th edition everything changed and my 3000 points were worth 1500 at best but did not fit the new restrictions anyway so it was more like 1000 points but with proxies as Haflings and some war machines were gone and never returned.

This was also the time I moved to a different city for job, so I stopped with Fantasy and started 40k with the local community.
Space Wolves in 3rd/4th edition

Guess what, things changed and I played Thousand Sons during 4th (a 3000 point collection as games were just 1500 but with some variation the army will grow. The whole thing is something around 1000 points with 8th edition Codex and no were near legal playable with the current rules)
.
As the game become worse over time the community shrinkend and we got into Warhammer again with 7th edition
My Empire army was still not useable (units never returned, army size changed as core units needed to be bigger now and so on) and I needed to start from scratch anyway so it dwarfs.
Again around 3000 points painted but only 2250 needed but just to have some variation

This was also the time I went to tournaments as my local Fantasy group did so and we played just for fun so I went there with a full melee army, which was also more expensive than the regular one.
Was a very fun time and so I decided to start the old dream of a Khorne army again.
A lot of expensive metal models again and a lot of conversions to get those Juggernauts from just one hero models.

This time I just bought what was really needed to get those 2250 points because I wanted to get it ready sooner and save money
8th edition hit, and my just bought Khorne army was not worth the points needed to play again (same for the dwarfs)

But this was also the big time of 40k here, as tournaments were bigger than for Fantasy (which was already declining at the end of 7th but just died with the edition change) and 5th was better than the previous ones

So back to Space Wolves and added some more units to play "Codex Hopper" with own colour scheme as I didn't want to buy 9 Rhinos just to have 3 grey, 3 blue and 3 green ones.
And I wanted to get around the problem that units just disappear/are removed from the game by playing different armies
Ended up with a lot more than before. Did not play with the meta but just what I wanted.
Still waited to get my 1kSons back to the game and with the new Codex the army split into CSM and Deamons. With the Sons not really being playable on their own (without regular CSM) I took the other half of the army and started Deamons
6th edition hit before I finished painting them

Family and Job things changed so 6th was over before I could play a game and than 7th came with the free unit inflating stuff
I played some games with Daemons, but as soon as formations hit my ~10k Space Marines could not make a single 1750 point army anymore (I had too many of the wrong units and too less of the others)


So you don't need to hunt down the meta to have the problem that your army becomes obsolete
Units get removed from the game, some may return and others are never seen again. Some you can use as proxy if the opponent/tournament allows it others are just nice models on the shelf.

Each time GW changes, the standard game size increases in 2 ways, total point cost rises and points per model decrease.
A 2000 point army in 3rd edition is now equal 1000 points in 8th.

Of course you can play 1000 points now and if you opponent allows proxies/count as and agree to play a non standard point size and so your initial investment lasted 20 years.
But in reality as long as there is no fixed group that does not changes over time (they are out there, I still know people who just play 5th edition 40k and never made the edition change) it is easier and cheaper to just shelf your stuff after and start from scratch


PS:
This is also a reason why Skirmish games are on the rise as no one wants to have a huge collection of an army on the shelf that will never be used again. (and it is also easier to get people playing an OOP skirmish game from time to time than to get people playing an old edition of 40k)

 Desubot wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
TLR - if you want a cheap game, WMH is where it’s at right now... in Canada.

Honestly i recall some shops not being able to move WMH stuff even at cost or super steep discount.

Seabass wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
We have a guy here who started 40k five years ago.
He said he had spent 30,000 Euro for all the stuff he bought.

I've been keeping a record (bad idea?) and I've spent £550 in the year I've been back. To be honest, it's not the most expensive of my hobbies...

This. The supercharger for my mustang was 2800, and i got it cheap, the stuff to install it (fuel lines, injectors, cooling, belts, etc...) was another 2000

hell, I have a multiple optics from trijicon for some of my rifles that cost more than any of my armies.

its all about what you love and what you love to do.

i love pushing man dollies, driving a fast car (though i dont do that anymore)), shooting, and hanging out with my daughter and wife, in reverse order!

 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Don't buy anything from GW but the miniatures; OR buy the mini's second hand from ebay. 3D print them if you can afford to do so. Everything else is just arts and crafts. Paint, primer, paintbrushes, green stuff, bases. Even generic stuff like weapons, grenades, capes, banners, sci-fi armor. You can easily make them or buy them yourself. All it takes is time...granted, its a large amount of time, but thats what hobies are for right? Killing time.

Terrain, you can make using clay, cardboard, paper mache, styrofoam. Whatever you have at your disposal, and whatever you can buy cheaply. I loved making terrain out of clay. I'm lucky in that i have an artist for an aunt, and she happened to have several old kilns lying about in her studio. (Turns out I didn't even use it that often. Most clay you can get at arts and crafts stores can be dried in home ovens. Best stuff needed the kiln of course.)

Peregrine wrote:
So, exactly what I said: you had a legal army, you just didn't have a competitive army that could win against competitive armies that were doing their best to exploit the formation bonuses. "I can't compete" may be a legitimate complaint, but it is not the same as "I can't play".

ccs wrote:
LOL.
If true? Especially that 10k SM part? Then you're incompetent at picking units/making armies.

 greatbigtree wrote:
My experience in North America, Canada in particular, is that it is substantially cheaper to make a WMH double theme list than it would be to make a 1750 list in 40k.

And when it comes to the second hand market? WMH is amazing. For under $600 CAD I purchased four themes and basically the entire Retribution model line. I can play anything I’d want. Some of that was full retail, but mostly second hand.

TLR - if you want a cheap game, WMH is where it’s at right now... in Canada.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
My experience in North America, Canada in particular, is that it is substantially cheaper to make a WMH double theme list than it would be to make a 1750 list in 40k.

And when it comes to the second hand market? WMH is amazing. For under $600 CAD I purchased four themes and basically the entire Retribution model line. I can play anything I’d want. Some of that was full retail, but mostly second hand.

TLR - if you want a cheap game, WMH is where it’s at right now... in Canada.

So WMH is much cheaper on ebay, if you buy your stuff on ebay that is relevant to you. If you buy it in the game store it is relevant in a bad way - when/if you want to sell it you will get almost nothing for it and your cost of ownership is almost the entire purchase cost. By contrast the prices of GW stuff on ebay hold up pretty well, so the cost of ownership for those models will usually be something like 40% less than the purchase cost.

And in the UK I have not seen anyone playing WMH for a couple of years, no point having models that sit on a shelf because nobody plays the game. A very quick search showed up 50 times as many 40K tournaments here as WMH tournaments so I'd say that is a virtually dead game here. The models had better be almost free on ebay.

 Stormatious wrote:


What is WMH?,


Thank you.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

And in the UK I have not seen anyone playing WMH for a couple of years, no point having models that sit on a shelf because nobody plays the game. A very quick search showed up 50 times as many 40K tournaments here as WMH tournaments so I'd say that is a virtually dead game here. The models had better be almost free on ebay.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:


What is WMH?,


Thank you.

An almost perfect example of my point. Warmachine/Hordes; a game which was briefly popular but which I have not seen for a couple of years.

 Stormatious wrote:
I dont mind supporting my local store, but come on whats up with these anoying paint containers, come on, what the heck. Life would be so much easier with a simple way of extracting the paint, its like can you make it more obvious you are trying to suck as much money with pots that constantly spill out paint when you simple close the lid....

edit - It may not be on purpose that the design of the containers do this, but its kind of strange.

 Peregrine wrote:

 kodos wrote:
No point in playing a game were you auto loose turn 1 because your opponent brought double the amount of points.

7th was not the game of basic FOC armies against each other but about formations

If you wanted to have a competitive army you needed specific formation and allied forced. I am not talking about competitive or tournament armies here.

I played my Wolves several times in 7th with without formations, was wiped out turn 1 ever time and deployment took longer than the game itself

I don't consider this "you can still play the game" as it is not "playing" to place models on the table and remove all of them 15 minutes later without doing anything

So, exactly what I said: you had a legal army, you just didn't have a competitive army that could win against competitive armies that were doing their best to exploit the formation bonuses. "I can't compete" may be a legitimate complaint, but it is not the same as "I can't play".

 John Prins wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
I mean, i ordered just ONE black round base for The Great Unclean One and that costs 12$ ( pretty sure it costs about 5 cents or so to make that base, im just guessing ). Also it seems that citadel is the smallest paints you can get, also some of the worse design for a container for the paint. Half of my paint ends up gettin spilled over the sides of the container just because thats how it acts when i close the cap... And then theres the most expensive spray paints i have ever seen... etc etc

What are your thoughts on this?, do you think its a bit ridiculous that things seem to cost more and come in less quantity compared to every other war game?

edit - Also bought some green stuff, which is about the size of a 2 space marines ( the blue and the green together )... thought there would be alot more, and that was 24$

Any way, im not complaining to be fair, im more interested in what others think about this compared to other wargames, or what ever knowledge/thoughts they have on this.

edit - But if this seems just like me complaining please delete this thread and i apologise.

GW is definitely stupidly predatory when it comes to stuff you can get elsewhere. Glue, tools, green stuff, NEVER buy that stuff from GW, everything is 3x the price or more. One exception, those painting handles are like $10 CAD and well worth it.

Paint-wise, I'll use GW paint because it's easy to acquire, that's it. I have a sizable range of Reaper and Vajello paints a well, but some shades are just unique to GW and I can rely on getting replacement paints the next day, where if I need to order Reaper paints it's a couple weeks because no dealers are nearby. So there's a price for convenience I'm willing to pay.

Miniature wise, if GW is pretty much the most expensive. You could probably find corner cases, but in general, they are the most expensive.

Now, does that matter? Does GW provide value for the money? Obviously the people playing and collecting the game feel they're getting something out of it or they'd skip it. There are plenty of cheaper games none of us will play because we don't like the minis, the lore, the gameplay, even at one third the price of GW.

 LumenPraebeo wrote:
Don't buy anything from GW but the miniatures; OR buy the mini's second hand from ebay. 3D print them if you can afford to do so. Everything else is just arts and crafts. Paint, primer, paintbrushes, green stuff, bases. Even generic stuff like weapons, grenades, capes, banners, sci-fi armor. You can easily make them or buy them yourself. All it takes is time...granted, its a large amount of time, but thats what hobies are for right? Killing time.

Cheeslord wrote:
GW craft supplies seem to be overpriced pointlessness, considering you can get exactly the same stuff cheaper from many outlets.

As for their models, some of the "horde" style boxes (e.g. daemons, guard, orks) seem reasonable value for money, but their "premium" models are scaling a bit out of control (greater daemons at £80-£90 each for example). it comes down to pricing versus the number of models required for the game, which can be quite arbitrary. many other systems actually cost most than GW PER MODEL (for an infantry model for example), but if you only need 6 models in your typical army it works out cheaper to play. based on the rules, and the size of game that is popular/fun (for example Infinity comes in at close to 10 euros per infantry model, on average, but you don't need many models for a typical game)

If you were only to play kill team, for example, GW models would seem pretty cheap.

Mark.