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Thankfully even after the "loss" of no longer being able to afford the warhammer brand you still have things you can do about it. And they are way easier than trying make life work with a prosthetic leg.

Voss wrote:

 Kalamadea wrote:
The problem is people that think GW is "The Hobby™".

It that a problem? I know that became a tagline for GW articles during 7th edition (alongside forging that narrative), but I never met anyone who actually believed it. And few that didn't mock or ignore it.

There's literally examples in this thread of posters referring to 40K as their hobby.

Which is akin to saying you "Call Of Duty" or "Grand Theft Auto."

There's many accounts who have posting history almost exclusively in the 40K sections of the site. Frequently threads duplicate themselves in those sections around new releases, which I'd say is indicative that some don't even look outside it to the general sections, otherwise how else would you miss a thread at the top of N+R that's already potentially dozens of posts long?

Now, whether that's a problem? Probably not to those inside the bubble, but if that cage is becoming a little less guilded as GW ratchets up the pressure on the finances, and those people are looking for an escape but thanks to the way they've been inducted into the hhhobby, they're ignorant to their options, then maybe?

 Chamberlain wrote:
Thankfully even after the "loss" of no longer being able to afford the warhammer brand you still have things you can do about it. And they are way easier than trying make life work with a prosthetic leg.

Telling other people their feelings of loss are wrong and unreasonable is typically neither effective nor compassionate.

If someone is sad that they can't afford GW products any more because they genuinely loved them, I don't see any reason to try to demean them for feeling that way. Why not just let them have their feelings, instead of insisting on piling onto them and saying "not only have your lost something you loved, but you're also wrong and a wimp to let it bother you!"

It feels especially silly to be policing the reasonableness of peoples' feelings about a hobby that literally involves spending large amounts of money on tiny toy soldiers.

yukishiro1 wrote:
You could say the same thing about getting your leg chopped off. If that makes you sad about what you've lost out on the ability to do, then it's actually your own thinking that is standing (ha, ha, I crack me up!) in the way, because there's still plenty of other things you can do even without a leg.

It's not wrong, but it's silly and inaccurate to the extent it seeks to portray a loss as not a real loss. One can overestimate the importance of a loss, but a loss is still a loss. Being unable to afford a brand you used to be able to afford is a loss even if you can still afford a cheaper brand, and it's reasonable for someone to be sad over that loss.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat......... I mean ... whaaaaaaaat......???????

Being priced out of GW models is somehow similiar to loosing a leg... Ok I have officialy been stunned... Need a second there to collect myself.

Its not a loss if you a haven't got it... It would be a loss if NOBODY would be able to buy GW models coz they stop making miniatures. Then there is physicaly no way to get new GW minatures.

You can always get a second job to afford that GW hobby if you need it so much it feels like loosing a leg... If I had lost a leg and could magically fix it by earning more money / having extra £2.50 to buy that box of troops.... I would just like do that.
Alas you cant just magicaly re-grow a leg its a ludacris comparison.. What even is this conversation anymore..

That wooshing sound was the point. The point isn't that losing a leg is equivalent to losing the ability to afford a hobby you enjoy, it was that it's arrogant and unreasonable to try to police other peoples' feelings and tell them what is or is not reasonable for them to feel sad about losing.

It's also remarkably tasteless and out of touch to be going back to the old "just fire up the job cannon and get another job" line at a time when there are literally hundreds of millions of people all over the world unemployed as the result of a global catastrophe.

yukishiro1 wrote:
That wooshing sound was the point. The point isn't that losing a leg is equivalent to losing the ability to afford a hobby you enjoy, it was that it's arrogant and unreasonable to try to police other peoples' feelings and tell them what is or is not reasonable for them to feel sad about losing.

No the point was quite clearly you mad ea comparison between loosing a leg and not being able to afford a specific brand of something you liked.

You realise the logical basis of what you've just suggested is that all problems anyone may have that are in any way related to a lack of finances can be simply solved by earning more money?

You do understand how tenuous that argument is?

EDIT Clearly you did, as you've now edited your post.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Chamberlain wrote:
Thankfully even after the "loss" of no longer being able to afford the warhammer brand you still have things you can do about it. And they are way easier than trying make life work with a prosthetic leg.

Telling other people their feelings of loss are wrong and unreasonable is typically neither effective nor compassionate.

If someone is sad that they can't afford GW products any more because they genuinely loved them, I don't see any reason to try to demean them for feeling that way. Why not just let them have their feelings, instead of insisting on piling onto them and saying "not only have your lost something you loved, but you're also wrong and a wimp to let it bother you!"

It feels especially silly to be policing the reasonableness of peoples' feelings about a hobby that literally involves spending large amounts of money on tiny toy soldiers.

If someone finds they can no longer be a consumer of a brand they can have all the bad feels about that they want.

Then they can ask themselves whether or not they are interested in continuing on with the hobby or if being a consumer of a brand was what they were really interested in all along. If they want to continue in the hobby then huge vistas are about to open before them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:
arrogant and unreasonable to try to police other peoples' feelings and tell them what is or is not reasonable for them to feel sad about losing.

When i stop and think about it, it might not actually be reasonable to emotionally suffer because you no longer get to be a consumer of a brand. Especially when we are talking about GW raising prices and pricing them out and it not being emblematic of a personal financial calamity. They still have the money to spend at the previous lower price. After they decide that GW isn't something they can justify buying any more, it's not like their only option is to drop the hobby entirely.

So if you want to keep going with this attempt at morally shaming people about GW prices you can, but I don't think it's going to really land with most people.

 Chamberlain wrote:
If someone finds themselves priced out of a particular brand but they mistakenly think that they need that brand in order to participate in the hobby, then it's actually their own thinking that is standing in their way.

For plenty of people, it is quite difficult to impossible to participate in wargaming without GW products.

stratigo wrote:

 Chamberlain wrote:
If someone finds themselves priced out of a particular brand but they mistakenly think that they need that brand in order to participate in the hobby, then it's actually their own thinking that is standing in their way.

For plenty of people, it is quite difficult to impossible to participate in wargaming without GW products.

And one of the options they have is to now only use 2nd hand models. This happened to a guy in my gaming group. He lost his job and his new one paid just a bit worse. He decided no more new stuff, joined some facebook buy/sell groups, set up ebay notifications and regularly checks craigslist/kijiji. Every few months he gets a score like $300 for an entire 2000 point army. He then splits that up and sells it unit by unit at half retail until he breaks even, keeping the rest of the models.

I guess he could have just given up and quit. In the end though, he now has larger armies than any of us who buy new.

I'm not trying to shame anyone over GW's prices, just the opposite in fact. I was specifically calling out people who try to shame people for complaining about being priced out of the hobby by GW's prices. It just seems a bit craven to be kicking someone while they're down, telling them their feelings of loss are unreasonable. Especially when GW's whole business model is centered around cultivating a feeling among its customers that it is more than just a brand. When a brand trades on that kind of "more than just a company" image, it's especially unreasonable to mock people who buy into it until they literally cannot buy into it any more.

Nobody likes the guy who responds to someone's feelings of loss with "suck it up, it's not really a loss anyway, maybe it's even a gain, stop being emotional." It is a good idea in life to strive not to be that guy.

 Chamberlain wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 Chamberlain wrote:
If someone finds themselves priced out of a particular brand but they mistakenly think that they need that brand in order to participate in the hobby, then it's actually their own thinking that is standing in their way.

For plenty of people, it is quite difficult to impossible to participate in wargaming without GW products.

And one of the options they have is to now only use 2nd hand models. This happened to a guy in my gaming group. He lost his job and his new one paid just a bit worse. He decided no more new stuff, joined some facebook buy/sell groups, set up ebay notifications and regularly checks craigslist/kijiji. Every few months he gets a score like $300 for an entire 2000 point army. He then splits that up and sells it unit by unit at half retail until he breaks even, keeping the rest of the models.

I guess he could have just given up and quit. In the end though, he now has larger armies than any of us who buy new.

Okay, I have to ask, are you defending GW's prices or just kind of wandering into a cul de sac of "Well akshully"?

yukishiro1 wrote:
Especially when GW's whole business model is centered around cultivating a feeling among its customers that it is more than just a brand. When a brand trades on that kind of "more than just a company" image, it's especially unreasonable to mock people who buy into it until they literally cannot buy into it any more.

I'm not sure someone being duped by marketing makes any anguish they have because GW raised prices on a kit more reasonable.

Nobody likes the guy who responds to someone's feelings of loss with "suck it up, it's not really a loss anyway, maybe it's even a gain, stop being emotional." It is a good idea in life to strive not to be that guy.

I'm beginning to think that society might actually benefit with more people like that. Pandemic, economic upheaval, social unrest all might mean we might need to re-calibrate our reactions and no longer being able to be a consumer of a brand might just not rate as a real loss in such a climate. If it is a result or emblematic of a larger financial reversal, then that's a different story though. If it's "I have $100 for a start collecting, but GW will only sell me one at $115" then yeah, maybe that isn't something to get upset over. Maybe in that case, "suck it up, it's not really a loss anyway, maybe it's even a gain, stop being emotional."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

stratigo wrote:


Okay, I have to ask, are you defending GW's prices or just kind of wandering into a cul de sac of "Well akshully"?

GW's prices range from okay to terrible. We know from their financials that they care about maintaining margins, so existing products get bumped up in price to meet their targets. And they're going to keep doing that.

So now what?

If you have 50GBP for a start collecting but GW will only sell it to you for 60, what are you going to do about it? Realize there are other options? Realize there are ways to get it or something like it for less?

Nah, just quit. You're priced out, so it's all over right? Hobby gone right?

Wow, so much rancor about people being upset for something a company did.

I think most people here "gets" that GW is a private company, not a charity, and that they can set their prices however they want to.

I think many people here should also get that there's people that can feel upset when a company does that, and even say as much, online or otherwise.

It doesn't even have to do with whether you can afford it or not, but rather with being disappointed with a company, or because they're feeling somehow betrayed by the move (due to the aforementioned company's efforts trying to convince everyone that they have changed, maybe), or because the rises make them realize that what they have bought over the years wasn't worth the price they paid for, either... probably there are as many reasons as people upset by the move.

I don't think anyone needs to be told "but you can just buy less, or not buy, or buy second hand, or use other stuff"... I mean, does anyone really not know that already? You can know that, and still be upset.

That is well said and largely my position. I will admit that I only became more inflammatory after the example of someone losing a limb and moral appeals to having compassion made it just a bit too ridiculous for me. Though I'm actually not sure just how wide spread money saving techniques are known to people. People may know on some conceptual level that they could theoretically switch some of their purchasing to 2nd hand, but I don't know if it's something they know in a practical sense. And it is one technique among many if price becomes an issue.

And I am against the equation of the hobby with the buying of a single brand.

 Argive wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
You could say the same thing about getting your leg chopped off. If that makes you sad about what you've lost out on the ability to do, then it's actually your own thinking that is standing (ha, ha, I crack me up!) in the way, because there's still plenty of other things you can do even without a leg.

It's not wrong, but it's silly and inaccurate to the extent it seeks to portray a loss as not a real loss. One can overestimate the importance of a loss, but a loss is still a loss. Being unable to afford a brand you used to be able to afford is a loss even if you can still afford a cheaper brand, and it's reasonable for someone to be sad over that loss.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat......... I mean ... whaaaaaaaat......???????

Being priced out of GW models is somehow similiar to loosing a leg... Ok I have officialy been stunned... Need a second there to collect myself.

Its not a loss if you a haven't got it... It would be a loss if NOBODY would be able to buy GW models coz they stop making miniatures. Then there is physicaly no way to get new GW minatures.

You can always get a second job to afford that GW hobby if you need it so much it feels like loosing a leg... If I had lost a leg and could magically fix it by earning more money / having extra £2.50 to buy that box of troops.... I would just like do that.
Alas you cant just magicaly re-grow a leg its a ludacris comparison.. What even is this conversation anymore..

I think you so missed the point. If you used to have something and now don't, it's a loss.

'Go out and get a second job for the extra £2.50 if you're so desperate for GW models?'
Wow. Such compassion.

You do realise a vast amount of UK workers (many now called 'key workers') have had either 0% or close to 0% pay rises for an entire decade. Inflation is at close to an all time low, but GW feel the need to bunk up a lot of prices by 15-20% (yearly). Your solution... go get another job? Jeez.

If there was such thing as the Hobby Ombudsman, GW would never leave court.

Considerable price increases when a good chunk of the world is entering an economic down turn. Absolutely terrible value proposition for players (have mercy on the poor gits trying to start an IG or Orks army) but I guess GW thinks they can pull more money out of their wealthier patrons and stabilize with higher margins. I think GW is continually pricing themselves out of reach of younger players and the lower middle class but then again they seem to be doing ok considering how many people seem to just buy anything they release without hesitation. Their pricing structure is probably going to help them in the short to medium term but might weaken them in the long term with a potentially shrinking their current user base and creating a higher barrier to entry for new customers..

Strange decision.

My inbox is full of Covid-29 "thank you" promotions from other gaming companies celebrating the return to semi-normality.

Maybe this is how GW celebrates with their base customers?

Most other conmpanies are not beholden to their 12-month (?) strategy and shareholder pressure.
GW is in a strange place in the wargaming world being the behemoth it is. Most other companies can handle the customer base they have, but GW has to handle the worldwide marketplaces they have their stores. So much presence means a lot of contradictory decisions to be made.


So, price rises were promised to investors last year, and changing that would cause stockmarket problems, I expect.

[I made all of that up, as I am not in the industry at all.]

yukishiro1 wrote:

I've never understood the strange way some people think that "it's the free market" is a response to a moral argument. The fact that GW doesn't care about anything besides making money is not a refutation of someone's charge that they are behaving badly; if anything, it is a confirmation of it.

Wow, I'm sorry, but there are an awful lot of problems with your argument, as you seem to be conflating several different ideas and assuming they are equivalent. I've highlighted two of the main issues above ^.

1) The free market point is *not* about morals. It's not a moral argument. Sure, you can make it a moral argument in the sense that 'capitalism=bad', but really, we're not going to bring down capitalism any time soon, so you really do need to move beyond the overly simplistic argument that rising prices is somehow immoral. After all, following your logic, everything should be free. And that of course, is a logical impossibility as the world as we know it would simply stop working.

2) Building on point #1, your second false assumption is that any sort of price rise is in somehow 'bad', and that GW are 'behaving badly'. Of course, 'bad' here is a relativistic argument. The point here is that everyone has choices. Just because GW (or any other company for that matter) raises prices, doesn't mean they are deliberately out to hurt you personally. They're certainly not 'behaving badly'. It's just economics.

I can give you a more detailed lesson on all of the above if you like, but I don't really want to bore everyone.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

'Go out and get a second job for the extra £2.50 if you're so desperate for GW models?'
Wow. Such compassion.

You do realise a vast amount of UK workers (many now called 'key workers') have had either 0% or close to 0% pay rises for an entire decade. Inflation is at close to an all time low, but GW feel the need to bunk up a lot of prices by 15-20% (yearly). Your solution... go get another job? Jeez.

This has nothing to with compassion. If you want to continue with your hobby, which is nothing but pure luxury, find a way to do so. Cut luxury spendings elsewhere, get another job, buy second hand models, sell painted models, learn how to recast/model/papercraft/3D print. Keep playing with the miniatures you have, paint models for other people, sell your pile of shame, make a plan for when you can buy which models. There are so many options.
If you tried all those, and still can't afford to stay in the 40k hobby - you simply can't afford it. Just like I can't afford joining a yacht club or collecting sports cars.
That's just how life is and there is nothing wrong with not being able to afford a luxury good - because you don't need any of them.

You deserve compassion if you can't afford food, clothing, housing, education for your kids or proper healthcare. But for a hobby which has always been an expensive luxury good and which I could not afford myself for large parts of my life? Nope. None.

For a lot of people, GW, or 40K, is the hobby. Not "mini wargaming".

It's not just building, painting and playing. It's investing in the world, reading about it, reading the novels, following all the GW stuff on Twitch and on Warhammer Community. Getting excited about new releases, etc.

If priced out, one could potentially start a new hobby, try and do the same thing for another brand. But it would be difficult as most brands don't put out as much stuff as GW do, there's not quite the volume to "get in to". Plus there's the whole sunk cost thing. Sure, these other games are cheaper, but I'm starting from square one, I don't have anything, that initial outlay is still going to be steep, and not ideal if I've just been laid off.

The flip side of this is that if you're of a certain mind, you can continue to engage with the GW hobby even if you can't afford to buy anything new. You can still consume all the free online content, you can still get into arguments on Dakka about what new rules are overpowered, and you can still make a list of minis you want to get when you can afford it again. But for some it'd just be frustrating to be finding out about all this stuff you can't afford.

I know so many people who buy Chinese recasts (I would never do that, I hate that they do that, I don't agree with it at all, but hey you don't have a huge pile of people with whom to play, so you just can't be too picky, else you jst don't have enough people to play with), I wonder if that could contribute to the decision of GW to increase prices, to maintain profit.

I don't know elswhere in the world how things go, but over where I play, Chinese recasts are really costing them a good chunk of sales

 addnid wrote:
I know so many people who buy Chinese recasts (I would never do that, I hate that they do that, I don't agree with it at all, but hey you don't have a huge pile of people with whom to play, so you just can't be too picky, else you jst don't have enough people to play with), I wonder if that could contribute to the decision of GW to increase prices, to maintain profit.

I don't know elswhere in the world how things go, but over where I play, Chinese recasts are really costing them a good chunk of sales

A large chunk of people don't even know you can buy cheaper from independents and only buy direct from GW. For all the doom and gloom, recasters are probably a pretty tiny of people amount overall even when locally it might seem to not be the case.

deano2099 wrote:
For a lot of people, GW, or 40K, is the hobby. Not "mini wargaming".

Yeah, for me too. It's not the single hobby I have but I'm not into mini wargaming, I'm only interested in 40k, more specifically in 40k orks. I also own a SW army but with the primaris releases, which I can't stand, I'm not going to update it.

It shouldn't sound that strange and it applies to many other hobbies and passions: for example I love football but I mostly watch the games involving the team I support and my national team, I don't give a damn about Liverpool, Barcelona or Brazil games even if they are the best expression of that sport at the moment. Another example is about videogames: I'm only insterested in 5-6 franchises as I just love to play 1-2 games a year, including old ones that I have finished 10+ times before. Now, if those sagas get a new episode I may play it, otherwise I couldn't care less about videogames even if I adore a few of them. Same with 40k: if the interest in my beloved orks dies then the entire mini wargaming dies for me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

This has nothing to with compassion. If you want to continue with your hobby, which is nothing but pure luxury, find a way to do so. Cut luxury spendings elsewhere, get another job, buy second hand models, sell painted models, learn how to recast/model/papercraft/3D print. Keep playing with the miniatures you have, paint models for other people, sell your pile of shame, make a plan for when you can buy which models. There are so many options.
If you tried all those, and still can't afford to stay in the 40k hobby - you simply can't afford it. Just like I can't afford joining a yacht club or collecting sports cars.
That's just how life is and there is nothing wrong with not being able to afford a luxury good - because you don't need any of them.

You deserve compassion if you can't afford food, clothing, housing, education for your kids or proper healthcare. But for a hobby which has always been an expensive luxury good and which I could not afford myself for large parts of my life? Nope. None.

100% agree with that.

deano2099 wrote:
For a lot of people, GW, or 40K, is the hobby. Not "mini wargaming".

 Blackie wrote:
It's not the single hobby I have but I'm not into mini wargaming, I'm only interested in 40k, more specifically in 40k orks.

I think it is important to point out that even if people stick with a single brand, it still is the miniature wargaming hobby. Whether GW or other popular games like Infinity, Bolt Action, Kings of War, Frostgrave and myriads of other fantasy and historical games they're all related and share the same general methodolgy in that you're pushing painted models around a table to simulate the field of battle.

 zedmeister wrote:

deano2099 wrote:
For a lot of people, GW, or 40K, is the hobby. Not "mini wargaming".

 Blackie wrote:
It's not the single hobby I have but I'm not into mini wargaming, I'm only interested in 40k, more specifically in 40k orks.

I think it is important to point out that even if people stick with a single brand, it still is the miniature wargaming hobby. Whether GW or other popular games like Infinity, Bolt Action, Kings of War, Frostgrave and myriads of other fantasy and historical games they're all related and share the same general methodolgy in that you're pushing painted models around a table to simulate the field of battle.

I understand your point, but kind of disagree.

I read 30K/40K books, I watch YouTube channels dedicated to 40K, and buy/paint/play with 40K mimiatures. If 40K somehow went away, I would not be seeking to replace it with other games because I am not invested in their lore, and don't have the time or inclination to become so. For me, playing the wargame is just a byproduct of my interest in the setting.

I was similarly invested in The Old World, but when WFB ceased to exist, I simply stopped playing; the AoS lore doesn't work for me.

 addnid wrote:
I know so many people who buy Chinese recasts (I would never do that, I hate that they do that, I don't agree with it at all, but hey you don't have a huge pile of people with whom to play, so you just can't be too picky, else you jst don't have enough people to play with), I wonder if that could contribute to the decision of GW to increase prices, to maintain profit.

I don't know elswhere in the world how things go, but over where I play, Chinese recasts are really costing them a good chunk of sales

With the recent financials I suspect recasts are doing next to no damage* to GW, and are just a straw boogeyman (see aaa video games smoke and mirrors regarding the same thing)

*as per the rules im not cheerleading for ip theft its very much a personal choice

 harlokin wrote:
I understand your point, but kind of disagree.

I read 30K/40K books, I watch YouTube channels dedicated to 40K, and buy/paint/play with 40K mimiatures. If 40K somehow went away, I would not be seeking to replace it with other games because I am not invested in their lore, and don't have the time or inclination to become so. For me, playing the wargame is just a byproduct of my interest in the setting.

Out of curiosity, why is that? Have you learned about other wargames' settings, or were you never interested? If some settings that you are already interested in (from, say, a book, TV show, movie) is made in a wargame that becomes very popular, would you be likely to play it?

 harlokin wrote:

 zedmeister wrote:

deano2099 wrote:
For a lot of people, GW, or 40K, is the hobby. Not "mini wargaming".

 Blackie wrote:
It's not the single hobby I have but I'm not into mini wargaming, I'm only interested in 40k, more specifically in 40k orks.

I think it is important to point out that even if people stick with a single brand, it still is the miniature wargaming hobby. Whether GW or other popular games like Infinity, Bolt Action, Kings of War, Frostgrave and myriads of other fantasy and historical games they're all related and share the same general methodolgy in that you're pushing painted models around a table to simulate the field of battle.

I understand your point, but kind of disagree.

I read 30K/40K books, I watch YouTube channels dedicated to 40K, and buy/paint/play with 40K mimiatures. If 40K somehow went away, I would not be seeking to replace it with other games because I am not invested in their lore, and don't have the time or inclination to become so. For me, playing the wargame is just a byproduct of my interest in the setting.

so your hobbies are reading, watching YT videos, miniature painting and wargaming and you prefere the Warhammer 40k Franchise for all of those over other themes