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 Elbows wrote:
Here's the thing; GW is big enough that they've likely never "lost" money on anything they've produced in the past 5-10 years, maybe even before that. Now, do they have sales expectations? Sure, but there is no massive investment they're losing money on if a kit has poor sales.

Historically people talk about plastic molds being exorbitantly expensive, and they are - but not for a company of GW's size. Plastic molds are very expensive for smaller companies, because they can be in the tens of thousands of dollars to get up and running. GW is beyond that concern.

Most of the Blood of the Phoenix box was old kits anyway, long-term molds they've already abused for 20+ years (yep, the Falcon and Vyper came out in...1997?). Those molds have long since paid themselves off.

Let's make a bizarre assumption. Say a mold for the Howling Banshees kit is $50,000 USD (which it's likely not, I'm exaggerating for the purposes of this discussion). Do we think GW won't sell more than 1,000 copies of a $55 box within the first week they sell that kit? Consider the world wide sales of a new GW kit. Hell yes they probably will. So it's not a discussion of losing money, or recouping losses...unless you simply mean that over 5-10 years a mold/kit underperforms compared to other kits...but that's the nature of the beast.

There's a lot of fallacies in this post.
Plastic moulds are expensive, regardless of the size of company making them. cheaper than 10 years ago, certainly, but not a trivial cost. Large companies are better able to absorb those costs, but any sensibly run company will still want each new product to pay off upfront costs in a reasonable window - ideally within the financial year you launch it.

Secondly, the cost of mould-making isn't the only cost is it? those models have to be designed (Ok, in this case, this step is just, "open up Jez's notebooks from the 90s archive"), digitally sculpted, broken up into parts on sprues, etc. someone has to do work to do it, who will be drawing a salary. Using software that needs to be paid for. GW don;t usually say how long this takes, but we can infer from various interviews on podcasts, it's several months. GW is a big business with large overheads, not everything about company scaling favours the bigger player.

All that said, £32.50 for 5 T3 1W aspect warriors (60 points? 75? don;t have my codex to hand) is still bloody expensive. I *might* get some to replace my c2008 metal banshees, if only because the metal ones fall over if on anything but a laser-levelled surface.

Mold making is expensive? They made sure the kit is as small as possible, while still increase/keep the price same as other bigger kit.


And they still have space left over on the sprue, so here's a big rock for the exarch, a triskele, and Ynnari heads, yay for option!

Hefty prices. Not unexpected, but certainly not helpful. Shame for Eldar players who've waited for those kits for so long.

 Argive wrote:
It seems 40k is going down the" WHFB in its waning twilight route" Lower and lower pts costs, meaning armies having to be bigger and bigger... while price per model steadily going up. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if 40k end times is on the books..

"Warhammer Age of the Emperor"
As long as space marines continue to exists and continue to sell. It doesn't matter about other armies or the lore or anything really does it from a company perspective right?

40k already got soft end timed and 8th ed is Age of Girlyman. They didn't go full Age of Sigmar because they saw how poorly it fared, but all the design elements of the release version of Age of Sigmar are present in 8th ed 40k, complete with tacked on emergency rules from the General's Handbook.

Had Age of Sigmar's release version not been rejected, 8th ed 40k wouldn't have points or matched play rules today. Honestly I'm not sure there'd even be power levels (as those are the direct equivalent of the points system introduced in the General's Handbook rather than the actual points system of 8th ed).

Setting and narrative changes are also broadly in line with End Times, Age of Chaos and Sigmar's reconquista. Just with blue and gold Space Marines instead of gold and blue Space Marines.

RFT wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Here's the thing; GW is big enough that they've likely never "lost" money on anything they've produced in the past 5-10 years, maybe even before that. Now, do they have sales expectations? Sure, but there is no massive investment they're losing money on if a kit has poor sales.

Historically people talk about plastic molds being exorbitantly expensive, and they are - but not for a company of GW's size. Plastic molds are very expensive for smaller companies, because they can be in the tens of thousands of dollars to get up and running. GW is beyond that concern.

Most of the Blood of the Phoenix box was old kits anyway, long-term molds they've already abused for 20+ years (yep, the Falcon and Vyper came out in...1997?). Those molds have long since paid themselves off.

Let's make a bizarre assumption. Say a mold for the Howling Banshees kit is $50,000 USD (which it's likely not, I'm exaggerating for the purposes of this discussion). Do we think GW won't sell more than 1,000 copies of a $55 box within the first week they sell that kit? Consider the world wide sales of a new GW kit. Hell yes they probably will. So it's not a discussion of losing money, or recouping losses...unless you simply mean that over 5-10 years a mold/kit underperforms compared to other kits...but that's the nature of the beast.

There's a lot of fallacies in this post.
Plastic moulds are expensive, regardless of the size of company making them. cheaper than 10 years ago, certainly, but not a trivial cost. Large companies are better able to absorb those costs, but any sensibly run company will still want each new product to pay off upfront costs in a reasonable window - ideally within the financial year you launch it.

Secondly, the cost of mould-making isn't the only cost is it? those models have to be designed (Ok, in this case, this step is just, "open up Jez's notebooks from the 90s archive"), digitally sculpted, broken up into parts on sprues, etc. someone has to do work to do it, who will be drawing a salary. Using software that needs to be paid for. GW don;t usually say how long this takes, but we can infer from various interviews on podcasts, it's several months. GW is a big business with large overheads, not everything about company scaling favours the bigger player.

All that said, £32.50 for 5 T3 1W aspect warriors (60 points? 75? don;t have my codex to hand) is still bloody expensive. I *might* get some to replace my c2008 metal banshees, if only because the metal ones fall over if on anything but a laser-levelled surface.

A few months ago one of the scale modeling podcasts had an interview with someone who worked in the model making industry and they quoted a cost of $1,000 -per part- as a rule of thumb for total cost of a new tooling for a model. That was for steel, the said that shorter use aluminum, which is (apparently) less expensive to tool., I assume because it’s easier or faster (or both) to machine.

RFT wrote:

There's a lot of fallacies in this post.
Plastic moulds are expensive, regardless of the size of company making them. cheaper than 10 years ago, certainly, but not a trivial cost. Large companies are better able to absorb those costs, but any sensibly run company will still want each new product to pay off upfront costs in a reasonable window - ideally within the financial year you launch it.

Secondly, the cost of mould-making isn't the only cost is it? those models have to be designed (Ok, in this case, this step is just, "open up Jez's notebooks from the 90s archive"), digitally sculpted, broken up into parts on sprues, etc. someone has to do work to do it, who will be drawing a salary. Using software that needs to be paid for. GW don;t usually say how long this takes, but we can infer from various interviews on podcasts, it's several months. GW is a big business with large overheads, not everything about company scaling favours the bigger player.

GW said a long time ago that moving casting to in house equipment and switching from Steel to Aluminium reduced the cost a lot, which made it possible for them to make those 15€ small Hero sprues profitable

And as long as design is done in house the costs are trivial as they have to pay the equipment and people anyway no matter if they do something or not.

plastic molds are expensive if you need another company to do it.

so this is why it is cheaper to make one sprue with different models and pay people to remove them

but for GW this is a little bit different

Chopstick wrote:
Mold making is expensive? They made sure the kit is as small as possible, while still increase/keep the price same as other bigger kit.


And they still have space left over on the sprue, so here's a big rock for the exarch, a triskele, and Ynnari heads, yay for option!

Are the five on a single sprue? If so, the price is even more out there.

 kodos wrote:

GW said a long time ago that moving casting to in house equipment and switching from Steel to Aluminium reduced the cost a lot, which made it possible for them to make those 15€ small Hero sprues profitable

And as long as design is done in house the costs are trivial as they have to pay the equipment and people anyway no matter if they do something or not.

plastic molds are expensive if you need another company to do it.

so this is why it is cheaper to make one sprue with different models and pay people to remove them

but for GW this is a little bit different

The idea that the salary of the people who design things and run the equipment is not part of the cost because they're employees is incorrect. They are absolutely part of the cost of producing the kit, but people don't like discussing that because it's much harder to define and impossible without access to internal data that GW probably doesn't really even collect such as employee hours spent on design. This has the additional knock-on effect with the support infrastructure that muddies the water further. A garage operation doesn't have an HR department, likely won't have an accounts payable/receivable departments and will employ few, if any, genuine sales reps. All of those people cost money, and the model kits are the major way that GW makes money. Thus, the cost of those employees does factor into the costs of their kits because they need to cover their other labor costs as the primary income source.

Is the aggregate cost of those employees working on the project and their requisite support lower than contracting it out? One must assume so or otherwise GW would do that instead. However, to say that they don't factor in at all is a fallacy; we tend to hold it aside because it's not useful for discussion but their component of the cost does *absolutely* exist and that nuance is important. If one is discussing the total price of a kit, then the total costs must be considered. Warhammer TV is unlikely to generate significant income on its own, and the Warhammer stores have been known as more or less loss-leaders for a while for many locations. The extra frippery they put out does mean they charge more to protect their margin. Much like the scorpion and the frog, GW will always push to maintain that margin.

On the actual topic, $55 for 5 is a fairly standard pricing point for them these days. However, unlike the Havocs and Retributors which were fairly beefy units with heavy weapons (and cherubs), the Howling Banshees have no where near the options. They're Howling Banshees and that's pretty much it as opposed to the SoB squad which can supplement a normal Battle Sister Squad and has readily cross-compatible parts to introduce diversity into the overall force. Much like Blood of the Phoenix itself, while it is their price point it doesn't feel like it's a particularly great one for these specific models.

Yeah, there are VERY few optional bits in that banshee box. Basically, you've got 5 identical alternate face bits, 1 extra sword and pistol to choose not to make the Exarch, and your choice of 3 exarch weapons. That is it. If you want to swap the arms around on the banshees to vary up the poses, you need to cut them with knives and fill gaps with putty. out of the box, they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them, with precisely 1, count em 1, additional option included.

Same deal with Incubi, though instead of head options they have little back spike thingy options.

Kind of a far cry from retributors, which is at least a box with 6 heavy weapons, several melee/pistol options for the sarge, a bunch of different looking heads, the two cherubs and a couple other goodies in it.

I'm actually considering getting into sisters or expanding one of my other army projects much more so than getting yet another box of banshees. Doesn't help that they're godawful in game and have been for 4+ editions.

That's very disappointing. The fact there's only 5 is bad enough but they could at least be good for conversions.

 Krinsath wrote:

 kodos wrote:

GW said a long time ago that moving casting to in house equipment and switching from Steel to Aluminium reduced the cost a lot, which made it possible for them to make those 15€ small Hero sprues profitable

And as long as design is done in house the costs are trivial as they have to pay the equipment and people anyway no matter if they do something or not.

plastic molds are expensive if you need another company to do it.

so this is why it is cheaper to make one sprue with different models and pay people to remove them

but for GW this is a little bit different

The idea that the salary of the people who design things and run the equipment is not part of the cost because they're employees is incorrect. They are absolutely part of the cost of producing the kit, but people don't like discussing that because it's much harder to define and impossible without access to internal data that GW probably doesn't really even collect such as employee hours spent on design. This has the additional knock-on effect with the support infrastructure that muddies the water further. A garage operation doesn't have an HR department, likely won't have an accounts payable/receivable departments and will employ few, if any, genuine sales reps. All of those people cost money, and the model kits are the major way that GW makes money. Thus, the cost of those employees does factor into the costs of their kits because they need to cover their other labor costs as the primary income source. .

of course the company has to pay those people and the process
but how they do it has a huge impact on how to price the product and it as more or less an artificial number

the first design that takes the most work need to cover the cost the designer put into it and therefore will be priced higher while the others which are copy&paste with minor changes take less time and therefore should be cheaper.
So a Rhino need to cover the development cost of the tank itself and should be more expensive than a Whirlwind or Predator and the loyalist one is more expensive than the chaos one.

or you consider the long term development and that the design fee is distributed among all products equally

the_scotsman wrote:
If you want to swap the arms around on the banshees to vary up the poses, you need to cut them with knives and fill gaps with putty. out of the box, they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them, with precisely 1, count em 1, additional option included.

They're fully monopose?? I thought the justification for the higher price than the other sets like shadowspear was that the new models were the more expensive multipose!

adduly wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
If you want to swap the arms around on the banshees to vary up the poses, you need to cut them with knives and fill gaps with putty. out of the box, they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them, with precisely 1, count em 1, additional option included.

They're fully monopose?? I thought the justification for the higher price than the other sets like shadowspear was that the new models were the more expensive multipose!

They're as multi-pose as the metal or finecast models were, as with those you were perfectly free to chop their arms off and swap them if you liked.

The set comes with 5 pistols, 5 swords, 1 set of mirror swords, 1 executioner, and 1 triskele. It also comes with 6 heads (1 exarch+5 banshees) which are 3-part assemblies, and the middle part is a mask which you can choose to be masked or unmasked.

The masked and unmasked faces are all identical to each other, there's 5 of each.

In terms of extra bits you will have left over when you build the kit, you'll have 6 masks and pieces of equipment. The legs and torsos are all assemblies, there's one way to put them together.

The incubi kit is similar, with one way to assemble each incubus, but the arms will be much more difficult to swap if you decide to deviate from the way the models are designed out of the box because they're paired for the most part holding the weapon with two hands. Instead of alternate helmetless heads, you have alternate back...fins? mostly with different trophies and such stuck to them. In terms of the one swappable member, you can assemble him as a regular incubi with a klaive, or as a klaivex with one of two different sets of demklaive arms. He can be holding the demiklaives locked together darth maul style, or he can hold one in each hand similar to how new Drazar looks.

The main reason you have so few bits despite similar number of sprues is the fact that both incubi and banshees have lots of long, slim equipment. The banshees have the long swords, the long executioner, long legs and the complicated big bulky heads, and the incubi have the super-long klaives and back doodads. Usually, GW is able to stuff a lot of variety into the sprues by including lots of tiny heads, stubbier weapons and little extra things. The "Sprue and a half" design here with the nonstandard weapons limited them a lot in the sprue layout.

EDIT: Sorry, I stand corrected, the incubi do have helmetless heads, but there's no extra back dongles, there's exactly 10 in the box. it does look like the torsos were designed with flat joins like the rest of the dark eldar range though, so you could pair any klaive with any torso. Incubi do look a lot more poseable than banshees, which is good for me because they're the ones I'm getting first.

I'll probably use my existing 5 metal ones, assmble 2 Klaivexes, and use the second with the split demiklaives as Drazar. I have an old metal drazar, I wonder if I can surgically extract his old helmet and put it on the new klaivex...

adduly wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
If you want to swap the arms around on the banshees to vary up the poses, you need to cut them with knives and fill gaps with putty. out of the box, they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them, with precisely 1, count em 1, additional option included.

They're fully monopose?? I thought the justification for the higher price than the other sets like shadowspear was that the new models were the more expensive multipose!

"Was". Now is the new normal.

 Albertorius wrote:

adduly wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
If you want to swap the arms around on the banshees to vary up the poses, you need to cut them with knives and fill gaps with putty. out of the box, they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them, with precisely 1, count em 1, additional option included.

They're fully monopose?? I thought the justification for the higher price than the other sets like shadowspear was that the new models were the more expensive multipose!

"Was". Now is the new normal.

ehhhh, the banshee box is particularly egregious. Most of the newer kits at least have 2 drastically different ways to assemble each torso. Full monopose is more unusual.

See Abberrants. Each legs+torso can be used to assemble 2 extremely different looking dudes with different weapons.

 Albertorius wrote:

adduly wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
If you want to swap the arms around on the banshees to vary up the poses, you need to cut them with knives and fill gaps with putty. out of the box, they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them, with precisely 1, count em 1, additional option included.

They're fully monopose?? I thought the justification for the higher price than the other sets like shadowspear was that the new models were the more expensive multipose!

"Was". Now is the new normal.

I meant that it was said that the reason why shadowspear was so much cheeper than BotP was because SS models were singlepose. A store manager told me the fact the new banshees and incubi were multipose made them have to raise the price due to the higher development price of multipose

Yeah shop managers have been known to say stuff like that.

adduly wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

adduly wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
If you want to swap the arms around on the banshees to vary up the poses, you need to cut them with knives and fill gaps with putty. out of the box, they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them, with precisely 1, count em 1, additional option included.

They're fully monopose?? I thought the justification for the higher price than the other sets like shadowspear was that the new models were the more expensive multipose!

"Was". Now is the new normal.

I meant that it was said that the reason why shadowspear was so much cheeper than BotP was because SS models were singlepose. A store manager told me the fact the new banshees and incubi were multipose made them have to raise the price due to the higher development price of multipose

I know. I mean that was the excuse they were told to give. Now it will be a different one, or they'll just stop telling it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:

ehhhh, the banshee box is particularly egregious. Most of the newer kits at least have 2 drastically different ways to assemble each torso. Full monopose is more unusual.

See Abberrants. Each legs+torso can be used to assemble 2 extremely different looking dudes with different weapons.

Take a look at Sisters, then. Or any Necromunda box, for example.

At least those have optional arms and heads.

Just a quick confirmation that both the Banshees and the Incubi are indeed ￥7700, same price bracket as the Retributor sisters. They are only sold in boxes of 5.

 Geifer wrote:
Hefty prices. Not unexpected, but certainly not helpful. Shame for Eldar players who've waited for those kits for so long.

 Argive wrote:
It seems 40k is going down the" WHFB in its waning twilight route" Lower and lower pts costs, meaning armies having to be bigger and bigger... while price per model steadily going up. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if 40k end times is on the books..

"Warhammer Age of the Emperor"
As long as space marines continue to exists and continue to sell. It doesn't matter about other armies or the lore or anything really does it from a company perspective right?

40k already got soft end timed and 8th ed is Age of Girlyman. They didn't go full Age of Sigmar because they saw how poorly it fared, but all the design elements of the release version of Age of Sigmar are present in 8th ed 40k, complete with tacked on emergency rules from the General's Handbook.

Had Age of Sigmar's release version not been rejected, 8th ed 40k wouldn't have points or matched play rules today. Honestly I'm not sure there'd even be power levels (as those are the direct equivalent of the points system introduced in the General's Handbook rather than the actual points system of 8th ed).

Setting and narrative changes are also broadly in line with End Times, Age of Chaos and Sigmar's reconquista. Just with blue and gold Space Marines instead of gold and blue Space Marines.

I highly doubt they intended to keep the Age of Sigmar free for all sandbox forever. That would have killed any sort of competitive play that GW needs. It also would have meant no more codexes or rule book sales? That wouldn't have made any economic sense for them to do. I really think it was just a temporary placeholder and they were planning to release the GHB all along. But then again tournaments weren't as big of a deal in 2015 as they are now. I heard some weird things from GW employees at the time saying that they wanted wargaming to be more like "Minecraft" and just be a gigantic sandbox where you could do whatever you want. Granted, back in those days I had some hysterical games where we basically just made up rules as we went along, but that got old really fast, and I think they predicted that.

 posermcbogus wrote:
Just a quick confirmation that both the Banshees and the Incubi are indeed ￥7700, same price bracket as the Retributor sisters. They are only sold in boxes of 5.

And retributor is on a bigger mold than this.

The price is not as infuriating as the fact that it was a low effort kit and you won't be seeing another for the next 20-30 years.

Unlike Space Marine who get a new "revamped" kit every 5 years or so, even if they got a meh, low effort kit in the current year, it didn't really matter much compared to any other factions.

...that pricing is exactly what i expect from GW at this point.

I get the pain over the pricing. it's why between oddities in my community and that i don't consider myself as much a part of this as id like to be. the sister scale and pricing changes, combined with weird model changes in general on their end made some of the metals i had picked up being cheaper saw to me no longer caring about the plastic run after waiting 6-7 years for attention from GW on that front.

the cost of the models for the scale of the game to me is ridiculous. almost as bad is their love of what i assume is "dynamic" posing, *glares at Drazhar*. you can make the argument of "well, play their skirmish games"

but the one of draw in any gaming store that actually has GW around is army scale. and for some armies the expansion while staying in GW is so horrendous it's not even funny. if i wanted to play skirmish, id get old blood bowl models or play Mordheim.

they wanna make this stuff as profitable to them despite one of their target ranges getting priced out (not just vs other model industries, but all the lower-end hobbies including gaming), and it just seems nuts. in addition as someone who's still newbie to building models after all these years, ill tell you I really dislike all this attached masonry on the newer sculpts everyones leaping off of- it actually bothers me with regards to both model scale, transport and potential breakage issues.

why exactly does GW want to price itself like this AND play the floor is lava!? I can't be the only one bugged by both factors.

It sucks to get no model attention, but when you do if it's not released in a start collecting with the perfect model arrangement for you, prepare to eat such a higher price. when you also add how often armies get left in the lurch rules wise and for how long some have been, it becomes less and less attractive to play, even with an established community.

the_scotsman wrote:
they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them

Well it's not like you need more than 5-10 in army.

 Shadenuat wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
they are as monopose as the metal/finecast that preceded them

Well it's not like you need more than 5-10 in army.

.. a valid point even if they where 20 bucks a pack would anyone be running 3 ten man squads?

Ugh, well there it is.



It was pretty forward thinking to stick them in a box of other stuff that doesn't sell well. I guess I'll be picking them up when they do so again.

ya know, maybe my not being an eldar fan means I just don't appreciate em, but I can't help but compare them to some of the newer plastic kits, such as sisters, primaris marines and chaos space marines and think they don't even LOOK that great

BrianDavion wrote:
ya know, maybe my not being an eldar fan means I just don't appreciate em, but I can't help but compare them to some of the newer plastic kits, such as sisters, primaris marines and chaos space marines and think they don't even LOOK that great

No they’re just not up to the same standard as modern GW at its best. I think the Dark Eldar guys are a lot better. In fact if I had to collect an Eldar army of some flavour, I think the Dark Eldar in general are many times better as a model range than Crafty Eldar. As someone who’s loyalty to particular factions is based almost entirely on what I think of the models, I can honestly say that Dark Eldar and Genestealer Cults are the only Xenos I’ve been tempted to buy. This release hasn’t done anything to change that.

I just bought a box of GSC Jackals to paint up last week, same rrp as these, so it looks like all the bikes in my kit were actually free. Nice!

JWBS wrote:
I just bought a box of GSC Jackals to paint up last week, same rrp as these, so it looks like all the bikes in my kit were actually free. Nice!

Yes, and they’re better models too. Win, win.

Wow, okay. If I ever want Banshees it will be ebay for pre-owned metals for me. Jeez, crazy prices.

Sorry, Eldar players!

 Da Boss wrote:
Wow, okay. If I ever want Banshees it will be ebay for pre-owned metals for me. Jeez, crazy prices.

Sorry, Eldar players!

It is cheaper to buy a SC then 10 banshees.



Imagine that.

feels bad man.

You can make fairly competent armies with some kitbashing out of 2 CSM SC f.e. for less ten 20 nu banshees.