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 Jidmah wrote:

If 40k sales started dying and competitor game systems with cheaper kits started rising in popularity, I think we'd see GW's first ever price reduction.

Sure, but I doubt that I will live to see that.

Me neither, GW has a very loyal fan base and a self-reinforcing majority that's growing.

Let's not pretend a box of Space Marines is absolutely incomparable to a box of German Panzer Mechs or whatever.
Just like you can compare Apple's phones to Samsung or Nokia to compare similarities so can you with 40k.

You can believe that someone is charging you far more than the object is worth, whilst still paying for it.
Like scalpers buying up PlayStation 5s and selling that at 2x retail price.

 Jidmah wrote:


If 40k sales started dying and competitor game systems with cheaper kits started rising in popularity, I think we'd see GW's first ever price reduction.
Sure, but I doubt that I will live to see that.

I think eventually the reality of 3d printing will start to rear its head. Currently the flimsiest of flimsy DMCA claims is the only thing holding independent 3d designers back from being able to just completely replicate GW's designs.

I honestly thought it was absolutely impossible that what I'd be able to print using a 200$ machine would be comparable to GW's minis, but...I was just wrong. The only thing that gates it is the quality of the sculpt, and you can find plenty of stuff that is basically indistinguishable from a kitbash type conversion.

And if someone is sculpting the thing from scratch, using the model as a reference but not doing any kind of physical scans or copying, and then they're giving that model away for free, how the hell can you conceivably challenge that? All they've got going for them currently is the fact that 3d model sharing platform X doesn't want to go to court with Games Workshop over it, so they just dutifully take down anything GW DMCA's no matter how spurious the claim is.

Compared to GW's pricing, my printer setup "paid for itself" with the FIRST HALF LITER of resin I put through it. and that stuff costs 30$. For 30$ I can make "hundreds of dollars of miniatures" going by GW MSRP.

This business strategy of just putting on your horse blinders, cranking up the prices and trying to milk the whales more and more and more is just old GW with a fresh coat of paint.

GW kinda needs to do the later to recoup their investment from the second production facility.

I do agree though, when the first mass produced easy to use 3d printers get around to be done that can also produce decent quantities at once we will see gw under pressure.

It's not just about games, but about miniatures (and paint, and books, and materials). There's a ton of people out there buying the miniatures to paint with the game being an afterthought at the most, and completely irrelevant most of the time. They're successful because the GW Hobby manages to cover so many different hobbies (fluff, role-playing, wargaming, painting, modelling, collecting, etc). 3D printers only cover a small segment of that Hobby, and while I love my printed miniatures I pretty much always think of how much better they would be in GW-quality styrene plastic.

Not Online!!! wrote:
GW kinda needs to do the later to recoup their investment from the second production facility.

I do agree though, when the first mass produced easy to use 3d printers get around to be done that can also produce decent quantities at once we will see gw under pressure.

3d printers are already at that point honestly. Forgeworld already uses printers to make its masters and i've seen some crazy clean results come from relatively cheap resin printers (200-300$-ish). As soon as i move out of my small apartment, i'm getting one and its goodbye GW from then on.

The only reason its not as popular is that most people still think filament printers are the only kind (or don't even know 3d printing exists) and that people think theyre complicated to use.
I fully expect that by 2025 GW is gonna make some sort of move against 3d printing, no idea what it would be but theyll do something.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Let's not pretend a box of Space Marines is absolutely incomparable to a box of German Panzer Mechs or whatever.

If you want intercessors to play 40k with, you are not going to buy German Panzer Mechs. It's as simple as that.
95% of the time I see people buying third party models, it's not because they are cheaper, but because they like the sculpts better.
The other 5% are mek guns or other insanely expensive models. So clearly there is a point where even GW models are too expensive to buy. And that's why I don't own any citadel mek guns

Just like you can compare Apple's phones to Samsung or Nokia to compare similarities so can you with 40k.

Apples to oranges. A phone has clear functional requirements in regards to size, speed, memory, battery lifetime, camera and what apps and interfaces are available.
I use an iPhone for work. I would never use a Samsung or Nokia because they don't fulfill certain functional requirements I require for my job.
I use a Nokia as a private phone, and I would never use and iPhone because it doesn't fulfill my personal requirements. I don't use a Samsung because the Nokia is objectively the superior choice for my requirements.

Models are just a matter of taste. Either you like a model, or you don't. You don't compare model benchmarks or features across multiple companies to see what the optimal choice for your daemon prince is.

You can believe that someone is charging you far more than the object is worth, whilst still paying for it.
Like scalpers buying up PlayStation 5s and selling that at 2x retail price.

I believe the proper proverb is "more money than sense". If someone is paying 2x retail price he clearly believed having the PS5 now rather than later is worth that much.
"Worth" isn't just raw material + labor + production costs. It's what people are willing to pay for something - which might be far above production costs for some things like 40k, apple products or scalped PS5s.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
GW kinda needs to do the later to recoup their investment from the second production facility.

I do agree though, when the first mass produced easy to use 3d printers get around to be done that can also produce decent quantities at once we will see gw under pressure.

3d printers are already at that point honestly. Forgeworld already uses printers to make its masters and i've seen some crazy clean results come from relatively cheap resin printers (200-300$-ish). As soon as i move out of my small apartment, i'm getting one and its goodbye GW from then on.

The only reason its not as popular is that most people still think filament printers are the only kind (or don't even know 3d printing exists) and that people think theyre complicated to use.
I fully expect that by 2025 GW is gonna make some sort of move against 3d printing, no idea what it would be but theyll do something.

Yeah. I 1000% admit to being wrong on that - my only experience with resin printing was like 2012-ish when I was in the middle of college, and I thought the results I had been able to achieve with that was because it was like a 4000$+ machine and the prices were crazy for the print material (like 5x what they are right now for the fancy low-odor resin I use)

There's a learning curve to using it, but its nowhere NEAR the learning curve for, for example, painting your figures...I went from knowing nothing to getting basically perfect prints every time in a month.

One of our new players wanted to start DKOK and, after looking at the prices, decided to get three resin printers instead. If you exclude the warlord titan he has printed at 150% size, he is at 7k points of imperial guard now.

Granted, WW1 soldiers with gasmask aren't exactly hard to find sculpts for, when we tried to find a nurgle chaos lord to print, finding something that matches GW aestetics was much harder.
It's also worth noting than many of the better templates already cost money today, and depending on what kind of printer you have you also need to invest manual work (and clean your printer of failed experiments) before you print any given template for the first time.
So printing isn't as cheap as it seems.at first glance - essentially it's a separate hobby on its own.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
GW made 17 lieutenants cuz they're lazy. coulda just made 2-3 and given them options included in the kit. but they'd rather "make" you buy (X) different kits.

I wouldn't say GW is lazy. Misapplying their energies and over focusing on Marines, sure, but not lazy. Making 17 kits instead of one is the opposite of lazy.

Considering that they are most likely using the same 3D sculpt again and again(my guess is Zbrush) and just changing pose and some insignia I wouldn't say that this is a lot of work. It's actually a low hanging fruit that provides them with an easy sale with collector's and promotion for various venues. This is quite literally the easiest thing they could do compared to making an actual new sculpt.

While GW has shown they maintain a library of elements to speed sculpting over a range, they've also added new elements to each Lt. I feel like the community likes to go out of its way to claim "laziness" on something that still took time to design, test print, get approved, design the sprue, make the mold, paint, make packaging for and sell. Even if it was "lazy" it still required hours upon hours of work to sell a model people might buy one of.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if we learned all those Lts where done at the same time but they're trickling them out over time instead.

This isn't a defense of GW making more Marine releases than has been reasonable, just a disagreement on someone's work being called "lazy" just because it isn't what the community wanted. I honestly like those models. I didn't want them, but I think the sculpts for the Lts have been solid examples of a wide variety of junior officers you can pick one out of fit nearly any chapter.

Honestly though I hope people spent a lot of time this year sculpting other things because damn do I want some large non-Marine army releases to bring Xenos more up to date with modern model tech.

I dont think 3d printing is the main challenge to GWs dominant position. Their mainstream design direction, lack of proper game design and unreasonable pricing model will push away enthusiasts and leave the market wide open to another wargame product with more heart and a more fair buisness model. Some other company will make compelling and affordable plastic miniatures with an actuall fun game attached to it and then GW will have dug their own grave too deep to compete. That's my theory at least.

Eventually giants fall.

Karol wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

I didn't want to trigger an arguement, just wanted to point out that different kits made with different technology, with different mold tooling, and likely different wages aren't really 1:1 comparable for cost.

But for the company they are. GW ain't an eastern european charity organisation. If they set up a rule that box of this type of units are suppose to cost not less, then the prices are going to be what ever they are. And one kit could be plastic dire avangers and the other kit could be ancient resin models, yet somehow both end up costing the same.

I don't know what I am doing wrong here. Do people think that I like the fact that GW generates or seems to generate their prices the way they do? Because I do not. I just don't understand why people think that GW with the way the company prices stuff, would go on and decide that something that costs them the same to make (probably more, they re use a lot of assets making marines and primaris) as a box of marines, but will bring in less money, but will take up the same shelf space should cost less. Aside of course to make the players that want to buy the box happy.

I already gave the example of the elite box and the necron warrior box. In polish currancy the boxs cost practicaly the same. But one has just the warriors and the scarabs, while the other has a character and the whole marine part of the box.

Karol, as someone who has at least a small knowledge on how pricing works, the time the product was made matters a lot for it's cost.

For any company making goods like GW there is a lot that gets factored into the price: wages for all the work done to make the product is factored in (from sculpting to painting to designing the packaging to the instructions to the printing of packaging and even the process of packaging), as is the cost of the mold and materials, the depreciation on the tooling and injection equipment that must be paid off, facilities costs, as well as shipping, storage and once they have that sum they divide it by a target sales number and then add a profit margin on top (which may be different based on product). Once that target number is hit that product becomes pure profit, but that number of products sold is likely in the hundreds of thousands at the least.

So yeah, there is a big difference between a kit sculpted in GS in three ups before GW upgraded their casting equipment and one made today. Wages are higher. The equipment is more expensive. The number of kits they expect to sell is higher, and generally everything is more expensive than it was 15+ years ago driving costs up. GW pays it's employees well, but that's because every hour they work is accounted for in the products we buy.

We can argue if they're unfairly cranking up the profit margin on the kits, but I'm willing to wager that one new kits that number isn't as high as we think it is.

Gitdakka wrote:
I dont think 3d printing is the main challenge to GWs dominant position. Their mainstream design direction, lack of proper game design and unreasonable pricing model will push away enthusiasts and leave the market wide open to another wargame product with more heart and a more fair buisness model. Some other company will make compelling and affordable plastic miniatures with an actuall fun game attached to it and then GW will have dug their own grave too deep to compete. That's my theory at least.

Eventually giants fall.

That sums up what people have said for best part of 2 decades. I remember when Mantic launched and Ronnie was going to save the day by being freed from the shackles of GW and it would be amazing because the armies would be so cheap in comparison, but you weren't forced to use their minis. They've not toppled GW yet, or even got near.

 Jidmah wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Let's not pretend a box of Space Marines is absolutely incomparable to a box of German Panzer Mechs or whatever.
...
Just like you can compare Apple's phones to Samsung or Nokia to compare similarities so can you with 40k.

Apples to oranges. A phone has clear functional requirements in regards to size, speed, memory, battery lifetime, camera and what apps and interfaces are available.

I think you've missed the point. You can absolutely compare kits like that - number of models, quality of sculpts, number of options, etc.
Personal taste is different. I can believe that a pink phone is the same value as a black one even if I personally prefer the black.
GW is, objectively, ripping us off. They're putting out kits costing far more than they need to to turn a profit.
The fact that you still think it's worth paying for (and in some cases I do too) doesn't change that.
Perhaps we just have different definitions of a "fair price" and that's causing the confusion.

As for 3d printing - imo GW already has pretty strong controls in place to mitigate that. Firstly events and in-store gaming requiring 100% GW product massively curtails the appeal of 3rd party pieces for a lot of people. Plus, zealously pursuing their copyright ensures a lot of people are unwilling to stray too close. Copyright is a strange area of law, especially for the layperson, where due to the expense of hashing it out in court it matters less what's actually legal and more what people move to enforce.

Perhaps GW won't reach diamond corporation levels of summoning value from nothing for their miniatures, but I believe they'll still do well even after 3d printers gain more and more traction.

 kirotheavenger wrote:


As for 3d printing - imo GW already has pretty strong controls in place to mitigate that. Firstly events and in-store gaming requiring 100% GW product massively curtails the appeal of 3rd party pieces for a lot of people. Plus, zealously pursuing their copyright ensures a lot of people are unwilling to stray too close. Copyright is a strange area of law, especially for the layperson, where due to the expense of hashing it out in court it matters less what's actually legal and more what people move to enforce.

Perhaps GW won't reach diamond corporation levels of summoning value from nothing for their miniatures, but I believe they'll still do well even after 3d printers gain more and more traction.

don't most people play in their garage or non-GW stores?
And copyright doesnt change the fact that you can find 3d models for basically anything in 40k right now. Once something is on the internet,you can't really make it dissapear.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
GW is, objectively, ripping us off. They're putting out kits costing far more than they need to to turn a profit.

I don't think that's objective at all. I feel like people just see the price tag and assume that's all profit, but that's not really how it works. Like I outlined to Karol, a lot of stuff goes into the cost of a product that drives up the cost of the product, even if the materials used to make the product are cheap.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
GW is, objectively, ripping us off. They're putting out kits costing far more than they need to to turn a profit.

I don't think that's objective at all. I feel like people just see the price tag and assume that's all profit, but that's not really how it works. Like I outlined to Karol, a lot of stuff goes into the cost of a product that drives up the cost of the product, even if the materials used to make the product are cheap.

to me its not even about the profit margins, its purely about a quantity/quality point of view. Banshees and Incubi are the biggest offender lately and i can't help but compare them to intercessors and find that they come short on every aspect.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
GW is, objectively, ripping us off. They're putting out kits costing far more than they need to to turn a profit.

I don't think that's objective at all. I feel like people just see the price tag and assume that's all profit, but that's not really how it works. Like I outlined to Karol, a lot of stuff goes into the cost of a product that drives up the cost of the product, even if the materials used to make the product are cheap.

to me its not even about the profit margins, its purely about a quantity/quality point of view. Banshees and Incubi are the biggest offender lately and i can't help but compare them to intercessors and find that they come short on every aspect.

I don't disagree the kits are underwhelming with the lack of extra options when compared to other kits released in the last couple years, I'm just saying that the cost of the kit is likely a lot less unfair than people think it is, but that doesn't mean we can't argue about value since that isn't related to cost. And when it comes to value, they come up short.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
GW is, objectively, ripping us off. They're putting out kits costing far more than they need to to turn a profit.

I don't think that's objective at all. I feel like people just see the price tag and assume that's all profit, but that's not really how it works. Like I outlined to Karol, a lot of stuff goes into the cost of a product that drives up the cost of the product, even if the materials used to make the product are cheap.

I would agree, except...
GW is far from the only company in the miniatures business. Other companies are putting out similar products at far cheaper, despite also expecting fewer sales from their playerbase.
GW could match those prices and turn an even greater product per item (since larger volume of sales means setup costs et all are less significant). Instead they charge 2-4x as much for a similar product, and often set their rules up to force sales more than other games.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
GW is, objectively, ripping us off. They're putting out kits costing far more than they need to to turn a profit.

I don't think that's objective at all. I feel like people just see the price tag and assume that's all profit, but that's not really how it works. Like I outlined to Karol, a lot of stuff goes into the cost of a product that drives up the cost of the product, even if the materials used to make the product are cheap.

I would agree, except...
GW is far from the only company in the miniatures business. Other companies are putting out similar products at far cheaper, despite also expecting fewer sales from their playerbase.
GW could match those prices and turn an even greater product per item (since larger volume of sales means setup costs et all are less significant). Instead they charge 2-4x as much for a similar product, and often set their rules up to force sales more than other games.

Are you trying to say GW is too expensive because smaller companies who have spent less on the same mold tech GW has (often making metal or resin casts instead which are FAR cheaper) don't charge as much? That's not a fair comparison at all. And I'm not even dipping into the number of employees in those companies versus GW.

 Jidmah wrote:
One of our new players wanted to start DKOK and, after looking at the prices, decided to get three resin printers instead. If you exclude the warlord titan he has printed at 150% size, he is at 7k points of imperial guard now.

Granted, WW1 soldiers with gasmask aren't exactly hard to find sculpts for, when we tried to find a nurgle chaos lord to print, finding something that matches GW aestetics was much harder.
It's also worth noting than many of the better templates already cost money today, and depending on what kind of printer you have you also need to invest manual work (and clean your printer of failed experiments) before you print any given template for the first time.
So printing isn't as cheap as it seems.at first glance - essentially it's a separate hobby on its own.

It takes me vastly less time to remove and clean a model out of my printer than it takes for me to even begin to clip a unit off of a GW sprue. the total active time it takes me to prepare a model for printing (adding supports manually, because I am picky) and remove it and clean it and set it up in the curing station *might* be equivalent to the time it takes me to clip and assemble a GW model, but I dunno.

The fact that the cheapest GW models cost 5$ per normal-sized model and every model I 3d print is just about 50c makes that a fairly compelling proposition to me.

I haven't had a failed experiment to clean up since the first two weeks I owned the thing. Once you get the settings right and figure out how to put the supports in properly, it basically never messes up. It's a skill you learn, and a way faster skill than ruining a model by painting it poorly.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
One of our new players wanted to start DKOK and, after looking at the prices, decided to get three resin printers instead. If you exclude the warlord titan he has printed at 150% size, he is at 7k points of imperial guard now.

Granted, WW1 soldiers with gasmask aren't exactly hard to find sculpts for, when we tried to find a nurgle chaos lord to print, finding something that matches GW aestetics was much harder.
It's also worth noting than many of the better templates already cost money today, and depending on what kind of printer you have you also need to invest manual work (and clean your printer of failed experiments) before you print any given template for the first time.
So printing isn't as cheap as it seems.at first glance - essentially it's a separate hobby on its own.

It takes me vastly less time to remove and clean a model out of my printer than it takes for me to even begin to clip a unit off of a GW sprue. the total active time it takes me to prepare a model for printing (adding supports manually, because I am picky) and remove it and clean it and set it up in the curing station *might* be equivalent to the time it takes me to clip and assemble a GW model, but I dunno.

The fact that the cheapest GW models cost 5$ per normal-sized model and every model I 3d print is just about 50c makes that a fairly compelling proposition to me.

I haven't had a failed experiment to clean up since the first two weeks I owned the thing. Once you get the settings right and figure out how to put the supports in properly, it basically never messes up. It's a skill you learn, and a way faster skill than ruining a model by painting it poorly.

How long does it take to print a dude, or rather, how long to print 10 and prep for painting? You've also got your electric bill on top which seems daft but will add to costs.

I don't have the cash to lay out on a printer myself, never mind all the extra stuff that goes on top for the curing station. If I did I don't have a convenient place to put it. If I did my other half would no doubt whinge it was on all the time and making noise etc.

There's still a strong place for just going in and buying something off a company.

Dudeface wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
Whenever this discussion comes up I always have to laugh because of the Marine players agreeing with the central issue people raise, while still saying that they're buying all the new releases anyway.

Well, why shouldn't they? It's not their fault they get given new stuff.

I noticed we had a random metric of marines getting 80% of the releases earlier on here as well which is incredibly incorrect in terms of models, it's easily ess than 50% of 40k releases off top of my head?

Well what did SM's get this and last edition? The entirety of the Primaris range of models, that by itself is dozens of new units. Just searching "primaris" on GW's page brings up 55 results, some aren't new units and some are combinations but you are likely talking about 40+ brand new models.

What have Xenos as an entire monolithic entity got in that same time frame? Orkz and Necrons got new releases...who else? honest question because I am drawing a complete blank and feel rather silly for it but regardless, I think its fair to say Space Marines are receiving more than their fair share of support.

Well aside from space marines there was an ork release, stealer cults, ad mech, necrons, entire sisters range, custodes, new knights and chaos knights, 2 waves of daemons, chaos space marine wave and the full death guard faction.

Oh I forgot the eldar and dark eldar units, ill lump them grudgingly into an aeldari release.

I asked about Xenos And i mentioned Orkz/crons, so GSC got new models (a faction really) and that is it, everything else you mentioned is Imperial or Chaos.

This kind of goes hand in hand with an earlier comment. Basically SM's are the heroes, all other imperials are supporting characters, Chaos and Demons are hte bad guys and Xenos are NPCs. Don't get me wrong its not even close to a perfect analogy but its rather amusing and it does follow the macro trends within 40k.

SemperMortis wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
Whenever this discussion comes up I always have to laugh because of the Marine players agreeing with the central issue people raise, while still saying that they're buying all the new releases anyway.

Well, why shouldn't they? It's not their fault they get given new stuff.

I noticed we had a random metric of marines getting 80% of the releases earlier on here as well which is incredibly incorrect in terms of models, it's easily ess than 50% of 40k releases off top of my head?

Well what did SM's get this and last edition? The entirety of the Primaris range of models, that by itself is dozens of new units. Just searching "primaris" on GW's page brings up 55 results, some aren't new units and some are combinations but you are likely talking about 40+ brand new models.

What have Xenos as an entire monolithic entity got in that same time frame? Orkz and Necrons got new releases...who else? honest question because I am drawing a complete blank and feel rather silly for it but regardless, I think its fair to say Space Marines are receiving more than their fair share of support.

Well aside from space marines there was an ork release, stealer cults, ad mech, necrons, entire sisters range, custodes, new knights and chaos knights, 2 waves of daemons, chaos space marine wave and the full death guard faction.

Oh I forgot the eldar and dark eldar units, ill lump them grudgingly into an aeldari release.

I asked about Xenos And i mentioned Orkz/crons, so GSC got new models (a faction really) and that is it, everything else you mentioned is Imperial or Chaos.

This kind of goes hand in hand with an earlier comment. Basically SM's are the heroes, all other imperials are supporting characters, Chaos and Demons are hte bad guys and Xenos are NPCs. Don't get me wrong its not even close to a perfect analogy but its rather amusing and it does follow the macro trends within 40k.

Meh, the chaos revamps were and still are much needed compared to some xenos even. Eldar are winning that crown easily, nids I'm a little conflicted on because they have old models but I'm not sure £32.50 for 10 gaunts is attractive for anyone.

Dudeface wrote:


Meh, the chaos revamps were and still are much needed compared to some xenos even. Eldar are winning that crown easily, nids I'm a little conflicted on because they have old models but I'm not sure £32.50 for 10 gaunts is attractive for anyone.

There are a number of Chaos/Eldar/Ork revamps that are much needed...compared to say....making the 207th new Primaris LT model, this one with a neat hand pointing to the horizon while holding a sword.

And that is honestly the problem. The old expression which rings true is "perception is reality". And since we have factions without a meaningful update in sometimes a decade while SM's receive a new model literally more than once a month, the perception is that GW doesn't care about these other factions and would rather just bloat the market with more and more primaris.

Speaking personally, I've been playing 40k since 3rd edition, but I haven't actually bought a single model since 8th started, not bought anything at all from Games Workshop since then either. My main factions being Necrons, Imperial Guard and Eldar. The new Necron release seemed interesting, but a lot of the units are redundant copies of other units already in the book (see Doomstalker to Doomsday Ark, Ophydian Destroyers to Wraiths etc). But, more importantly, they failed to fix the once issue I had with getting invested again: the rules. Since Necrons never got a Psychic Awakening, they were kinda already on catch-up, and the new rules were very bland, uninspiring or just straight up bad (see Reanimation or the Cryptek Arcana). As for Imperial Guard, they've had very little releases, and I already have a very sizable force already, so I have no reason to ever purchase anything new for them. I imagine I don't even need to comment on Eldar. In reality, I haven't really played, built or painted any models in nearly 18 months since the Marines 2.0 Codex dropped, and feel I'm just falling out of the hobby at this point.

Dudeface wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
One of our new players wanted to start DKOK and, after looking at the prices, decided to get three resin printers instead. If you exclude the warlord titan he has printed at 150% size, he is at 7k points of imperial guard now.

Granted, WW1 soldiers with gasmask aren't exactly hard to find sculpts for, when we tried to find a nurgle chaos lord to print, finding something that matches GW aestetics was much harder.
It's also worth noting than many of the better templates already cost money today, and depending on what kind of printer you have you also need to invest manual work (and clean your printer of failed experiments) before you print any given template for the first time.
So printing isn't as cheap as it seems.at first glance - essentially it's a separate hobby on its own.

It takes me vastly less time to remove and clean a model out of my printer than it takes for me to even begin to clip a unit off of a GW sprue. the total active time it takes me to prepare a model for printing (adding supports manually, because I am picky) and remove it and clean it and set it up in the curing station *might* be equivalent to the time it takes me to clip and assemble a GW model, but I dunno.

The fact that the cheapest GW models cost 5$ per normal-sized model and every model I 3d print is just about 50c makes that a fairly compelling proposition to me.

I haven't had a failed experiment to clean up since the first two weeks I owned the thing. Once you get the settings right and figure out how to put the supports in properly, it basically never messes up. It's a skill you learn, and a way faster skill than ruining a model by painting it poorly.

How long does it take to print a dude, or rather, how long to print 10 and prep for painting? You've also got your electric bill on top which seems daft but will add to costs.

I don't have the cash to lay out on a printer myself, never mind all the extra stuff that goes on top for the curing station. If I did I don't have a convenient place to put it. If I did my other half would no doubt whinge it was on all the time and making noise etc.

There's still a strong place for just going in and buying something off a company.

It takes the same time to print any given height off the build plate - so printing one guy or printing 6 (usually what I end up doing for normal-sized, fully assembled figs is 6 at a time) it's the same.

Usually it takes between 5 and 10 hours, depending on height. I've got a big winged dnd creature on there currently that took 11 hours, that's I think my current record. And yeah, I understand there's machine upkeep periodically, there's added electrical costs for having the thing running, and there's obviously the time and effort you need to put in to get decent files, but it'd need to be a HELL of a lot to come anywhere close to not being monetarily worthwhile compared to buying from GW at MSRP. Take for example my biggest project so far, an Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan with all but one of its weapon options (which i can't find, and doesn't seem particularly good so I don't care.) It cost about 12 bucks of resin to make over 5 print runs. To get everything I got for it from GW and forgeworld would be over TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS.

I'm absolutely no stranger to the value proposition of "time is money" and the whole idea of "you can get things good quality, good price, or easily, and you get to pick two" but at a certain point you have to look at just the sheer bonkers amount of how overpriced things have become, and you have to realize that a model that's the same size as a riptide with a half dozen weapon options just should not add up to the cost of a brand new...I dunno I'm spitballing here let's say a brand new 3d printer, to give a random example of what you could get for two hundred bucks.

Certain kits? Yeah, absolutely. Not really worth the time and effort and money for me to spend 2 print runs making up I dunno a wave serpent, or a Rhino for my thousand sons, or some terrain for 40k. and I suspect there'll be plenty of models I just love the aesthetics of and can't find an alternative that's nearly as good.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Then again GW also managed to resell marine players their own army again with primaris.

Oh no, how terrible. What an Eeevil dastardly plan! GW has made more models I like.... Lucky them/me as I wasn't likely going to be building/expanding any more loyalist Marine forces.
And it's not really selling me my same army again as each of my Marine forces are built & play differently.

RT/2e - I built SW. Mostly shooty, some melee (mostly from characters), all drop pod based/or DS able.
3e - I built DA. Mechanized 3rd Co., almost entirely shooty. No Death/Raven Wing present.
4e - I built the UltraMarine 9th Co. (shop project). 100% shooty.
5e - I built Doom Eagles - a fully jump pack melee assault squad focused force. Plays alot like a BA assault force - just sans BA rules....

Along the way over the years? I've also built the following as stuff has accrued in the collection;
*1st Co. - All termies, a few Land Raiders. Never really set out to build it, but as I got & kept things from Ebay lots.... Eventually I had enough.
* March of the Dreadnoughts! - Inspired by a bit of lore in a long ago WD about a group of Dreads holding the field. I like the box Dreads, they've always been on of my favorite models. And then FW got into the dread business. Even better, 8th let me actually field my dreads as a force.
*Mentor Legion - This is the catchall force for random Marine things I like that don't fit into my vision of one of my other Marine forces. Lots of one off units & some conversions. Something doesn't fit elsewhere for some reason? Then it gets painted up in the Green & White....

Now there's enough Primaris models that I like the look of I can form them into their own distinct force. Or maybe I'll just stick to 1 unit of each that I like & add them to my Mentors. Undecided as of yet.
Conveniently the Indom box contained many of the Primaris units I liked the look of. That + the Necron 1/2 = easy sale.

A lot of the recent Imperium focus is a matter of the Primaris revamp which is a direct reaction to the success of Stormcast. My hope is we'll see Chaos get a similar focus that we've seen in Sigmar with each of the 4 chaos gods built into its own line.

Xenos are tough. I think GW were really hoping to consolidate Eldar into something more manageable to revamp but it didn't really come together. We've seen a LOT of experimentation in Sigmar that I think will shape the Eldar... eventually. They probably need it the most. Ork's are a close second but seem to be getting a slow feed of new releases. I imagine GW is trying to decide a decent way to handle a new Boyz kit.

And to circle back on Imperial oversaturation, I think there's just a need for consolidation. Pulling most of the chapters into the main book is a big help and I'd not be sad to see the same done with a few of the other factions to get down to 4-6 real factions to focus on.

Gitdakka wrote:
I dont think 3d printing is the main challenge to GWs dominant position. Their mainstream design direction, lack of proper game design and unreasonable pricing model will push away enthusiasts and leave the market wide open to another wargame product with more heart and a more fair buisness model. Some other company will make compelling and affordable plastic miniatures with an actuall fun game attached to it and then GW will have dug their own grave too deep to compete. That's my theory at least.

Eventually giants fall.

There's plenty of great games out there with strong, well-written rulesets and good, decently priced miniatures already. Quality of their games (or rather, lack thereof) is absolutely not why GW is the market leader. Even at their worst, GW was still pulling in a profit in the millions. The problem is that the expansion of those games is usually dependent on GW making series' of mistakes which alienate a decent enough portion of the fanbase, but even then, those customers into other games are limited, because almost all of them will run back to GW with open arms as soon as the next 'BESTIST EDITION EVER' is announced and they see their mates all playing it.

 LunarSol wrote:
A lot of the recent Imperium focus is a matter of the Primaris revamp which is a direct reaction to the success of Stormcast.

I don't think Sigmarines were anywhere near the success GW banked on them being. Sure they're popular, but they hold a similar position to Warriors of Chaos and High Elves did in Fantasy - one of the most popular armies, but not by such a wide margin that they can get away with pumping the majority of models, lore and general focus upon them (even if they're still the poster boys). AoS itself was probably about trying to make lightning strike twice with Ground Marines than anything else and that they've not seen a release in almost three years should tell us they're not akin to Primaris in that they'll make five times the money of literally any other army release. AoS 1.0 was at least as saturated with Sigmarine focus as 8th/9th have been with Marines, but they actively slammed the breaks on that leading up to 2.0 - which overall was probably healthier for the game itself, but I imagine GW would be much happier being able to funnel the majority of their design/production focus into one faction like with 40k. Compare that to 40k, where the Marine saturation has only been getting worse with no signs of letting up beyond what they can introduce as a Villain Of The Week to be thwarted by the Primaris.

Stormcast have issues like bad rules that keep them from being quite as nuts with. Which is even sadder since they've seen the most updates in AoS.