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Apple fox wrote:
for a lot of eldar players I find that there just isn’t anything to buy, In a lot of cases. For both Craftworld and dark eldar, a single model release would have been huge.
Something to talk about, something to push interest in the range, even something simple like alternative farseers, archons in little releases along with other things.

except Eldar HAVE gotten releases. they got a new plastic farseerer. they also got blood of the Pheonix and Pheonix rising.

here's a question for you, what other xenos race gets a boxed set all to itself and several entire campaign books to themselves?

beyond Pheonix rising, 7th edition gave Eldar and Dark Eldar Fracture of Bel Tain, 6th gave us the Valdore Apoc book.

I'd say Eldar are hardly being forgotten about and passed aside by GW.

they've certainly gotten more attention then say.. necrons

If you ignore that Necrons got an entire new range less than ten years ago.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
If you ignore that Necrons got an entire new range less than ten years ago.

A lot of it was bad so it doesn't count.

Truly, its a mystery why GW don't release the Banshees/Incubi/Jain Zar/Drazhar sculpts separately while piles of them sit on shelves in BotP boxes around the country. I just wish we knew what they were thinking?! What could their reason be; to keep those new sculpts available only in a boxed set that totally hasn't sold out at all? Oh well, I guess we'll never know.

Cronch wrote:
That's...a horrible, bizarre, and so incredibly anti-consumer attitude. It's on the company to provide a desirable product, not on the customer to beg the company for scraps as you suggest.

People are making a lot of assumptions about GW's future actions. Certainly sales figures play a role in future business decisions, but I'm sure they're not dumb as a post.

Everything in that box has its very own sprue, which means they'll release a box on its own in the future. Do people believe they're just going to let those molds rot?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Cronch wrote:
That's...a horrible, bizarre, and so incredibly anti-consumer attitude. It's on the company to provide a desirable product, not on the customer to beg the company for scraps as you suggest.

People are making a lot of assumptions about GW's future actions. Certainly sales figures play a role in future business decisions, but I'm sure they're not dumb as a post.

Everything in that box has its very own sprue, which means they'll release a box on its own in the future. Do people believe they're just going to let those molds rot?

I think the point is that the act of withholding the new models to provide incentive to sell some rather highly priced boxset is rather anti-consumer in itself. You can reason why they would do it in a business sense, but as a consumer, I'm not going to pay the price to line Games Workshop's pockets.

the individual sprue will not release for a very very long time.the aos battleboxes sold out within hours and they contained lynchpin characters for multiple armies and they haven't been released and it's been over a year. people need to be buying the battleboxes for the new stuff. That's what gw wants and it will keep pushing this practise. It is strongly anti consumer and just aids Ebay scalpers but gw and being anti consumer go hand in hand. I think everyone can see botp is an outlier a tragic failure of a battlebox. And I believe it has doomed the entire rest of the two armies ranges.

It was going so well until the last sentence there goat.

Rule of sales, if you want people to buy stuff, don't over price and fill it with un wanted crap. They held the new models hostage and they could have made a killing on those kits sold on their own. They made the box over the top costly to boot with poor selection of units, of course it would sell poorly. That has nothing to do with the new kits and the line as a whole.

If they released a huge guard box with mostly just old infantry squads and heavy weapon teams for a huge bloated price with maybe a one new kit in it of a character and say new ratlings, I bet they'd sell like crap too as most guard players have men by the bucket loads already.

This was a problem GW made for themselves. and highlights nothing but how dim they are as to what the people want.

Almost with how poorly they predicted how many people wanted the sisters release of new models for that collectors box. They are more in touch with us all these days yet still worlds away with understanding us which is their problem.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
[
The problem here is that CWE players are effectively showing GW that there's no financial benefit releasing new aspect warrior sculpts (something I believe they thought anyway which is why it's taken so long). This in turn means there's less chance of plastic aspect warriors and in a way the CWE players are to blame.

please don't bypass the language filter like this.
Reds8n

GW wants to sell me plastic Aspect warriors & associated Phoenix Lords? Then they can damned well release some new Fire Dragons, Swooping Hawks, or Scorpions. Maybe Dire Avengers. Until then I'm good. I'll wait.

No Eldar player is to blame for not buying that box. Any statement of this is completely asinine at its face. If a company tries to do you dirty, you're not supposed to say " please sir, may I have some more ? " You vote with the wallet and say, no. It isn't their fault they won't pay a bloated price for crap they don't need and frankly to suggest they get what they get because they wouldn't just buy whatever GW puts out for their faction is insane.

Of course you can vote with your wallet and say 'no, I'm not buying this thing you're trying to sell me GW'.

You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

"Why aren't GW making more of that product that didn't sell well at all?" Is probably one of the most stupid things I've ever heard. Why GW are electing not to release the kits from BotP while stocks of the box sit on shelves should also be obvious.

E - to be clear I'm not trying to put the blame on Eldar players here, but I think some of you need to look at it from GW's perspective. They release a boxed set with 2 new character sculpts and 2 new unit sculpts and the set totally bombs. Meanwhile there are sets released with less new sculpts that sit around a similar price range (Forgebane immediately springs to mind) and they fly off the shelf. I really wouldn't be surprised if GW don't release plastic aspects for a long time, most Eldar players have more aspect warriors than they need, there is a huge secondary market and the boxed set used to gauge interest bombed. As far as GW are concerned - all the data they've gathered all but confirms the demand for such products is low.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

Then perhaps GW should listen to what its non-Marine customers actually want, rather than just shoving models no one asked for into hilariously overpriced boxes.

 vipoid wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

Then perhaps GW should listen to what its non-Marine customers actually want, rather than just shoving models no one asked for into hilariously overpriced boxes.

As I have said above - similar priced boxes with less new models sold far better. Proving there's little market for Eldar units is not an exercise that's going to get the faction more models.

what a load of nonsense..

Which similarly priced boxes that have 2x 20 year old kits and less new models have sold better? This price tag was utterly disgusting.. What's even been priced similarly ?
Like everyone apart from you agrees it was ridiculous.

And yeah I got BOTP with a DE player which split in half... But thats mainly because my army was actualy missing banshees as I was hunting for metals. So there was some value TO ME.

But if anyone has collected eldar for longer than a year or two? This box has zero value to buy of the shelf even a discount. You are better off getting the new sculpts of a re-seller thats how bad it is.. See, if they put in like a squad of 10 Dire avengers or even 10 guardians instead of the vyper and a wave serpent instead of the falcon, heck even leave the falcon... Then it would be great value for money+utility at that price and I guarantee it would sell a lot more. Also the box should have included the PR book at the very least at that price point...

I can't comment on the DE side. It had 0 value to me.

BrianDavion wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
for a lot of eldar players I find that there just isn’t anything to buy, In a lot of cases. For both Craftworld and dark eldar, a single model release would have been huge.
Something to talk about, something to push interest in the range, even something simple like alternative farseers, archons in little releases along with other things.

except Eldar HAVE gotten releases. they got a new plastic farseerer. they also got blood of the Pheonix and Pheonix rising.

here's a question for you, what other xenos race gets a boxed set all to itself and several entire campaign books to themselves?

beyond Pheonix rising, 7th edition gave Eldar and Dark Eldar Fracture of Bel Tain, 6th gave us the Valdore Apoc book.

I'd say Eldar are hardly being forgotten about and passed aside by GW.

they've certainly gotten more attention then say.. necrons

First dark eldar and craftworld eldar are not the same, and a single model over quite a long time, and a crap box Yay!
The others are hardly anything, it’s kind of pitiful for such a large company and there flagship game.
I am talking about regular little releases, and at least an update to older models within a decade.

Fracture was more Ynarri I was thinking, I nope outta 7th since it was trash.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

Then perhaps GW should listen to what its non-Marine customers actually want, rather than just shoving models no one asked for into hilariously overpriced boxes.

As I have said above - similar priced boxes with less new models sold far better. Proving there's little market for Eldar units is not an exercise that's going to get the faction more models.

These similar boxes were considerably cheaper than Blood of the Phoenix - most were around the £95 to £100 mark. The fact that they jacked the price up to £140 for what is essentially a similar box in terms of model count was one of the major problems with BotP. As somebody said earlier in the thread, it felt like they were testing the waters for what they could get away with charging for one of these boxes, and hopefully the fact that it didn't sell will mean that future battle boxes won't be priced quite so absurdly. Even the entirely-brand-new models Shadowspear was, what, £110? £115? So I don't buy the fact that there were two new characters and two new units somehow justifying the £140 price tag for BotP.

I'm a Craftworlds collector, and I've got 20 metal banshees already. And yet I'd absolutely love to build a full 10-elf squad of the new ones, and get my hands on Jain Zar. But I can't get 10 banshees without buying two copies of the box. I only need one Jain Zar, I've already got more Falcons and Vypers than I'm ever going to need, I'm not interested in the DE half in the slightest, I don't know any DE players to split with and can't be bothered with trying to sell the bits I don't want. And yet - if the box had been priced more in line with the previous ones, I might have picked up a copy. I picked up Wake the Dead on preorder because it was much more reasonably priced and everything in the Eldar half was something I wanted. The price was reasonable enough that I didn't mind paying it just for the Eldar - the Primaris are still on sprue on my shelf. I might have applied similar logic to BotP if the price hadn't been so high.

So I decided to wait until they're released separately, and I get the impression that many Craftworld/DE collectors have done the same. I'll admit I was a bit worried about what sort of impression it would leave that this box wasn't selling, whether GW would get the impression that people weren't interested in the new Eldar rather than simply not being interested in a bad box set. A fair number of Eldar players dropped emails to GW customer service to explain why they weren't buying it, in a bit of an effort to show that the market for the new models was there, just not for the BotP box. I did the same - I have no idea what sort of an impact it might have, but it was better than nothing.

Now I fully expect we'll have to wait ages for the standalone releases, because if BotP isn't selling now, then why on earth would it sell once the formerly-exclusive models are available separately? But I'd expect that once the standalone releases are out, they'll sell considerably better.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Of course you can vote with your wallet and say 'no, I'm not buying this thing you're trying to sell me GW'.

You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

A real company, run by real people instead of muppets, would probably spend some time and money to research as to why their high-profile box with new models failed instead of assuming "people dun like it".
Freaking McDonalds researches why certain menu items didn't sell!

 vipoid wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

Then perhaps GW should listen to what its non-Marine customers actually want, rather than just shoving models no one asked for into hilariously overpriced boxes.

you say that like Marine players are always listened to. for every new unit Marine players get that is what we want, there's a half dozen marine units thats nom asked for.

I think the reason Banshees where chosen for a resculpt BTW is because they're one of the more visually impressive aspect warriors

BrianDavion wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

Then perhaps GW should listen to what its non-Marine customers actually want, rather than just shoving models no one asked for into hilariously overpriced boxes.

you say that like Marine players are always listened to. for every new unit Marine players get that is what we want, there's a half dozen marine units thats nom asked for.

I think the reason Banshees where chosen for a resculpt BTW is because they're one of the more visually impressive aspect warriors

For the record, it's not the Banshees I take issue with.

To be clear:

Using CAD prices,

Venom + Vyper = $80
Hellions + Scourges = $70
Incubi + Banshees = $80
Jain Zar + Drazhar = $60
Falcon = $65
Book = $40

Total: $395
Actual price for BotP: $280
Savings: $115

Note that I low balled the price for JZ & D as well as the Incubi.and Banshees, putting prices in line with their resin competition rather than anticipating the cost once these boxes are released as separates, meaning that the actual savings will be $20-40 higher.

So you can argue about how you think the box would have sold more if they swapped unit a with unit b, or that it would have sold better if a few of the older units had just been left out in order to achieve a lower cost. This is almost certainly true.

But what you can't do is suggest that combining the models increased the cost of the components, because objective reality seems to suggest that it actually resulted in roughly 30% savings.

As for ruining either line, I think that's pretty unrealistic. These boxes will be released as separates, and when they are, sales data will reflect that that it was the combination of old + new + dual faction all in the same box that resulted in poor sales.

I believe BotP was released in October. Four months- it may feel like more, but we've only been waiting four months. To put that in perspective for you, it's 1/99th of the game's total lifespan.

If you wonder why they're waiting, I suspect it's a combination of two factors: the first, as the cynics have pointed out, is that GW is probably trying to squeeze every last sale out of BotP by starving us, but fewer people have cited the other possible reason- they're sculpting other stuff for both ranges and the separates will drop when the other content is ready in order to create synergy.

My hope is a Kill Team drop with Eldar Aspects and DE Mercenary units as kill team boxes with Commorragh and or new Eldar terrain.

Look, this edition doubled down on GSC and Sisters; it gave us Custodes, Death Guard, Thousand Sons all for the first time. They've given us Rogue Traders again. I assure you, DE and CWE will do just fine.

None of this is to say that I don't want more content and soon- of course I do. But I have faith; so far this edition has reaffirmed my faith more than any other. I have been given absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe the trend will end any time soon.

You think the 40 page book in BotP is worth $40, Jake? It isn't the Eldar Psychic Awakening book, but its own thing.

Thousand Sons were 7th ed (with a semi-expansion in 8th), and Custodes also saw their initial release in 7th (though I'd definitely agree they doubled down on Custodes during 8th).

I don;t really consider custodes a 7th edition army, they had a single mini pack introduced in 7th. it wasn't until 8th edition they got a codex, HQs etc.

BrianDavion wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

Then perhaps GW should listen to what its non-Marine customers actually want, rather than just shoving models no one asked for into hilariously overpriced boxes.

you say that like Marine players are always listened to. for every new unit Marine players get that is what we want, there's a half dozen marine units thats nom asked for.

I think the reason Banshees where chosen for a resculpt BTW is because they're one of the more visually impressive aspect warriors

Artel W released amazing bashees that GW stopped with legal actions. They also have new scorpions, dragons and reapers.
From personal friend i know their resin is better than GW or FW. If you have worked with reapers, you will know what i`m talking about, missing parts of the model and holes.
Don`t you think it`s super strange that this is their first release with 28 mm bases ?
It`s like GW were kind of forced to start renewing the aspect or slowly lose income, cuz of new and more flexible player.
Artel promised to release new rangers, if they do i`ll probably get some, because GW rangers are terrible.

I believe BotP was released in October. Four months- it may feel like more, but we've only been waiting four months. To put that in perspective for you, it's 1/99th of the game's total lifespan.

Imagine your 14-15 and someone tells you that they have to wait half a year to get something. A lot of people quit the game after a CA change to their army, out of the 10+ people that started the game at the same time as I did, only 4 including me, still play. Now I understand that if someone is 40 and plays for 30 years, 4 months doesn't seem like a long time. But it is very much a matter of perspective.

Karol wrote:

I believe BotP was released in October. Four months- it may feel like more, but we've only been waiting four months. To put that in perspective for you, it's 1/99th of the game's total lifespan.

Imagine your 14-15 and someone tells you that they have to wait half a year to get something. A lot of people quit the game after a CA change to their army, out of the 10+ people that started the game at the same time as I did, only 4 including me, still play. Now I understand that if someone is 40 and plays for 30 years, 4 months doesn't seem like a long time. But it is very much a matter of perspective.

Yes but if you're 14-15 chances are you don't yet own every single Eldar model there is. In fact a delay on release of one model isn't a huge problem because you've got ALL the rest of the army to collect. The old 30-40 player who has bought Eldar for 20 years and HAS everything is the one waiting

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Of course you can vote with your wallet and say 'no, I'm not buying this thing you're trying to sell me GW'.

You probably shouldn't expect them to make more of that thing that you didn't buy though?

"Why aren't GW making more of that product that didn't sell well at all?" Is probably one of the most stupid things I've ever heard. Why GW are electing not to release the kits from BotP while stocks of the box sit on shelves should also be obvious.

E - to be clear I'm not trying to put the blame on Eldar players here, but I think some of you need to look at it from GW's perspective. They release a boxed set with 2 new character sculpts and 2 new unit sculpts and the set totally bombs. Meanwhile there are sets released with less new sculpts that sit around a similar price range (Forgebane immediately springs to mind) and they fly off the shelf. I really wouldn't be surprised if GW don't release plastic aspects for a long time, most Eldar players have more aspect warriors than they need, there is a huge secondary market and the boxed set used to gauge interest bombed. As far as GW are concerned - all the data they've gathered all but confirms the demand for such products is low.

Your reasoning is so silly to me. So, to show GW they should make more eldars, we should buy every single thing they make no matter how awful or poorly done they handle it ? How then do you ever let them know they are screwing things up ? You can't keep rewarding crap offerings. GW is pretty stupid sometimes but I even credit them with more brains to just go " Hurr Durr, our crap box is selling badly, guess people don't like Eldars no more ! Shut it down ! " Your theory gives absolutely no way for them to ever be shown how to better their offerings or change for the good of the consumer and not the betterment of their own greed. Why should anyone feel beholden to support them in the hopes they eventually give you things that will finally be good and well thought it because if we don't support poor practices they'll just send us to bed without dinner ?

GW should spend time to look at it from a sellers point of view, it's a buyers market, if you're not offering things worth buying, or holding things that would sell hostage behind stuff that won't move, you aren't doing yourself any favors. I'm not a marketing guru here but this feels super poorly handled and even before the box dropped it had such lukewarm reception you should smell the flop from here, rich and ripe as a meadow muffin.

Edit: As for saying the box saved you money, sure it does. However there is a thing to be said for actually needing the models offered at all. Most people didn't need any of them aside from the new sculpts so any money saved on the box contents means little if you'd be spending less just picking up the new stuff as opposed to box trash you won't ever assemble or use and that is not even mentioning if you don't play both armies. The box was poorly put together, should have been cheaper with less clutter to lower the cost as opposed to be a vehicle to try and move things no one wants for good reason. There is no value in having to spend more to get things you don't need for some of the things you actually want being the smallest sum of the items present.

Ah the age old self fulfilling prophecy


"GW won't release a new kit for X because it doesn't sell, but it doesn't sell because the kit is so old so they won't release an update but no one is buying it because it is so old etc"

And around and around we go!

 Overread wrote:

Karol wrote:

I believe BotP was released in October. Four months- it may feel like more, but we've only been waiting four months. To put that in perspective for you, it's 1/99th of the game's total lifespan.

Imagine your 14-15 and someone tells you that they have to wait half a year to get something. A lot of people quit the game after a CA change to their army, out of the 10+ people that started the game at the same time as I did, only 4 including me, still play. Now I understand that if someone is 40 and plays for 30 years, 4 months doesn't seem like a long time. But it is very much a matter of perspective.

Yes but if you're 14-15 chances are you don't yet own every single Eldar model there is. In fact a delay on release of one model isn't a huge problem because you've got ALL the rest of the army to collect. The old 30-40 player who has bought Eldar for 20 years and HAS everything is the one waiting

Besides, that's horriable logic, by that logic GW shouldn't release any new models and just tell us warhammer 40k is just whatever the hell is in dark Imperium. sure it's a lot less but hey "it's complete! no waiting"

All this is ignoring the flat precedent that GW can and does release units for armies all the time at high speed.

So any argument around this as to why they can't do it for eldar is demonstrably false.

Until GW starts advertising and selling it's products in a way that clearly tells the consumer that non marine armies are fundamentally different and will not receive the kind of ongoing support marines get, they are expected to treat every army the same.

Their armies are like car models - who would buy a model of car if they discovered they had no after sales service, no colour choices, no optional extras, when another one from the same company in the lot right next to it does have all those things and is a similar price?

GW should and will be held accountable for its double standard of product sales by its customers. It borders on false advertising to sell a product like it is equivalent to another one, but its components are sup par, few in number and never released.