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 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Is it not much simpler and more reasonable to assume a multi-million corporation simply tried to create artificial scarcity, as countless before them had done countless times, than to try to come up with a convoluted explanation to why they somehow misjudged the demand for a cheap to produce product, which proved to be extremely popular, by several magnitudes, despite years of experience that should've made it blatantly obvious the demand is going to be huge?

Creating FOMO sales via artificial scarcity only works if the potential customers know of such scarcity. Misleading the customers to think the artificially scarce product is not scarce is utterly counterproductive!

One of the worst things about all this, to me, is all the “influencers” that got free review copies but don’t actually give a gak about the game. They didn’t even request the review copies, GW just sent them one.

Those could have been in the hands of paying customers who ARE actually interested in the game but may not have been able to secure their own copy.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
One of the worst things about all this, to me, is all the “influencers” that got free review copies but don’t actually give a gak about the game. They didn’t even request the review copies, GW just sent them one.

Those could have been in the hands of paying customers who ARE actually interested in the game but may not have been able to secure their own copy.

So they should be blamed because they got free stuff ?

Besides, some amongst them actually gave back their copy through a lottery amongst their followers. And some actually give a gak about the game (pretty sure Ash from Guerilla Miniature Games does, since he loves the Warhammer Quest series).

Anger is understandable, but there's no point to direct it against people who have nothing to do with this. The influencers didn't have any control nor information about the real state of the stock GW had at that time.

Sarouan wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
One of the worst things about all this, to me, is all the “influencers” that got free review copies but don’t actually give a gak about the game. They didn’t even request the review copies, GW just sent them one.

Those could have been in the hands of paying customers who ARE actually interested in the game but may not have been able to secure their own copy.

So they should be blamed because they got free stuff ?

Besides, some amongst them actually gave back their copy through a lottery amongst their followers. And some actually give a gak about the game (pretty sure Ash from Guerilla Miniature Games does, since he loves the Warhammer Quest series).

Anger is understandable, but there's no point to direct it against people who have nothing to do with this. The influencers didn't have any control nor information about the real state of the stock GW had at that time.

I’m not angry at them for getting free stuff, I’m angry that GW just sends these out for free to people who aren’t interested in it then says “oh sorry paying customer who is interested in it, we’re not making any more because it’s not profitable”.

 Nostromodamus wrote:

I’m not angry at them for getting free stuff, I’m angry that GW just sends these out for free to people who aren’t interested in it then says “oh sorry paying customer who is interested in it, we’re not making any more because it’s not profitable”.

So what ? GW should knock at the door of the influencers and say "sorry but could you give us back the copy we gave you and that you opened / built / painted so that we can sell it to one of our needy customers ?" ?

If it's simple incompetence and grossly underestimation of the demand, it makes sense these copies were part of the plan GW made for hyping the market and have basically "free advertisement". Yeah, they fethed up badly, which is why we have this mess IMHO. Getting angry because of the frustration of not being able to have one box ? Sure, I can totally relate. But getting angry specifically about the copies being sent to influencers...I think it's a bit misplaced.

Think what you fething like I didn’t ask for your approval

So I got my stores last copy.
My guess is they umderepected how many would sale
We will see it again no contest

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So I got my stores last copy.
My guess is they umderepected how many would sale
We will see it again no contest

We won't see it again.
And they didn't "umderepected how many would sale", they simply went for artificial scarcity as always.

Just spend your money elsewhere people. If GW how they wana do things... I mean... Cmon. By all mean send them an email with a receipt showing off what cool things you bought from another company if it makes you feel better. I think it might.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
And they didn't "umderepected how many would sale", they simply went for artificial scarcity as always.

FOMO only works if you know it's limited.

I can understand the argument that GW tries to boost FOMO, but this really felt like a product they'd use to exploit FOMO to sell lots rather than using it to induce more FOMO.

They went to the effort of making a website, doing lots of articles and sending out kits pre-release to youtubers and website owners such that even though I never searched for Cursed City on YT and don't often watch the official GW YT channel, I was still getting Cursed City videos on my recommended list.

It just seems like an odd move for a product of which they didn't want to sell bucket loads.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
One of the worst things about all this, to me, is all the “influencers” that got free review copies but don’t actually give a gak about the game. They didn’t even request the review copies, GW just sent them one.

Those could have been in the hands of paying customers who ARE actually interested in the game but may not have been able to secure their own copy.

If you know of anyone who is looking for a copy of the game, my FLGS has one copy remaining. No mark ups. Have them contact me and I'll give them the store contact info.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So I got my stores last copy.
My guess is they umderepected how many would sale
We will see it again no contest

This is my feeling, when I went in to the FLGS today to ask if anywhere left the store owner told me that another shipment would be out in May. Our store has one copy left, no mark up so if you know anyone still wanting a copy let me know and I'll give the store info.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I can understand the argument that GW tries to boost FOMO, but this really felt like a product they'd use to exploit FOMO to sell lots rather than using it to induce more FOMO.

They went to the effort of making a website, doing lots of articles and sending out kits pre-release to youtubers and website owners such that even though I never searched for Cursed City on YT and don't often watch the official GW YT channel, I was still getting Cursed City videos on my recommended list.

It just seems like an odd move for a product of which they didn't want to sell bucket loads.

Saw this on a Reddit post today.

"The issue apparently was tariffs on the Chinese made printed materials in the box. It exceeded 30% of the allowable content, so it couldn't be shipped out of the UK without heavy tariffs. The thinking is GW sold the boxes it had already ordered/manufactured prior to the new Brexit trade deals to recover costs.

Whether they shift all production (not just the models) to the UK and reprint and release expansions isn't known yet. Everything, including this, is speculation until GW releases an official statement. Those familiar with the UKs import/export situation have pieced this together."

Two of the publishers I edit for that are based in the UK are going through the same thing (and probably won't survive it.)
It's a really unfortunate situation that no one could really plan for as we weren't made aware of the tariff changes that would happen after the finalisation of brexit and if something isn't done, soon, it's going to have a massive effect on British publishing, as a whole.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
One of the worst things about all this, to me, is all the “influencers” that got free review copies but don’t actually give a gak about the game. They didn’t even request the review copies, GW just sent them one.

Those could have been in the hands of paying customers who ARE actually interested in the game but may not have been able to secure their own copy.

The number of copies that go to 'influencers' is trivial.
They'll lose more copies to damages and theft.

Voss wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
One of the worst things about all this, to me, is all the “influencers” that got free review copies but don’t actually give a gak about the game. They didn’t even request the review copies, GW just sent them one.

Those could have been in the hands of paying customers who ARE actually interested in the game but may not have been able to secure their own copy.

The number of copies that go to 'influencers' is trivial.
They'll lose more copies to damages and theft.

Yeah, I really don't get the hate on the influencers. Total how many kits go out? Like 10? No more than 20. A drop in the bucket compared to how many are produced.

I'm just hoping that after the Summer, past a lot of the stuff that's higher priority for GW, they'll reprint more. We'll see.

If this was such a limited run, I don’t see why they did the huge marketing campaign. They could have dropped this without warning and it would have sold out.

There will be more.

 Togusa wrote:


Saw this on a Reddit post today.

"The issue apparently was tariffs on the Chinese made printed materials in the box. It exceeded 30% of the allowable content, so it couldn't be shipped out of the UK without heavy tariffs. The thinking is GW sold the boxes it had already ordered/manufactured prior to the new Brexit trade deals to recover costs.

Whether they shift all production (not just the models) to the UK and reprint and release expansions isn't known yet. Everything, including this, is speculation until GW releases an official statement. Those familiar with the UKs import/export situation have pieced this together."

If this is the case, they really shouldn't have assembled this box in the UK for non-UK markets. I guess (hope) they've got people now running the cost analysis for exporting plastic to the States (or Europe - LOL at the Brexiteers) and putting it into packaging from outside the UK for this kind of mixed-origin product. I know I'd be strongly considering two product streams (domestic and export) at this point if I were in their Operations organization.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
There will be more.

I tend to think the same, though I wouldn't be surprised either way.

The tariff thing remains a nonsensical explanation. Heavy tariffs can damage your quarterly and yearly earnings, they don't make high overhead, high margin products unprofitable. Not to mention they're selling this thing all over the world, not just to the EU. And it would effect all of their products with pamphlets, booklets, cardboard, or playing cards, so by logical extension they'll all be cancelled too now (obviously they aren't).

I could see some combination of: manufacturing difficulties in China, massive shipping delays and extra scam fees due to the shipping crisis coming out of China, a new plan to start printing in the UK, higher tariffs for products made in China going to the EU, highly disconnected management without strong leadership or vision, and gross executive incompetence all combining into somebody at the top going, "Well getting this limited print run together was a nightmare, let's just not worry about making anymore and move on to other things." Of course, with absolutely no connection to their own community and fanbase, or likely even an understanding of tabletop gaming, to guide their thinking.

drbored wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
One of the worst things about all this, to me, is all the “influencers” that got free review copies but don’t actually give a gak about the game. They didn’t even request the review copies, GW just sent them one.

Those could have been in the hands of paying customers who ARE actually interested in the game but may not have been able to secure their own copy.

The number of copies that go to 'influencers' is trivial.
They'll lose more copies to damages and theft.

Yeah, I really don't get the hate on the influencers. Total how many kits go out? Like 10? No more than 20. A drop in the bucket compared to how many are produced.

I'm just hoping that after the Summer, past a lot of the stuff that's higher priority for GW, they'll reprint more. We'll see.

Again, I’m not hating on influencers. Try reading my fething posts.

Due to the pandemic, they just don't actually know when they'll be able to get another run sorted to start selling. Remember the indomitus pre-order run after it sold out in a day, maybe that was more problematic than they perceived and they want to be more cautious this time.

There's also a copyright infringement rumour milling about as well.

 Crimson wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Is it not much simpler and more reasonable to assume a multi-million corporation simply tried to create artificial scarcity, as countless before them had done countless times, than to try to come up with a convoluted explanation to why they somehow misjudged the demand for a cheap to produce product, which proved to be extremely popular, by several magnitudes, despite years of experience that should've made it blatantly obvious the demand is going to be huge?

Creating FOMO sales via artificial scarcity only works if the potential customers know of such scarcity. Misleading the customers to think the artificially scarce product is not scarce is utterly counterproductive!

They’ll know for the next box and make double sure they get their preorder in, and hey if they miss the next one too then just buy some different toys with the money anyway.

How many times does this need to happen before people accept that this is done on purpose? The work people are putting in to dispute this clear explanation is staggering. The company has said directly it wont return and people are still here saying they think it will, its insane.

Luke82 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Is it not much simpler and more reasonable to assume a multi-million corporation simply tried to create artificial scarcity, as countless before them had done countless times, than to try to come up with a convoluted explanation to why they somehow misjudged the demand for a cheap to produce product, which proved to be extremely popular, by several magnitudes, despite years of experience that should've made it blatantly obvious the demand is going to be huge?

Creating FOMO sales via artificial scarcity only works if the potential customers know of such scarcity. Misleading the customers to think the artificially scarce product is not scarce is utterly counterproductive!

They’ll know for the next box and make double sure they get their preorder in, and hey if they miss the next one too then just buy some different toys with the money anyway.

How many times does this need to happen before people accept that this is done on purpose? The work people are putting in to dispute this clear explanation is staggering. The company has said directly it wont return and people are still here saying they think it will, its insane.

Where exactly, did GW make a statement? I thought you guys said there was no communication and that's part of why you're mad about this. Now you're saying there is a statement and that it definitively says they will not be making more. Which is it? The work that people are putting in to dispute this clear explanation is staggering.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
There will be more.

I tend to think the same, though I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Thing is, might as well stop arguing about it. As those who think more are coming can’t win the argument.

If they don’t do more, they never were going to.
If they do more, it’ll be they didn’t plan on it but quickly produced more. Rather than just had a next wave coming.
If it ends up being permanent, it “wasn’t meant to be and they changed plans” as opposed to being like every other Quest anyway.

Well i’m not mad about it, as i wasn’t overly interested in picking the game up, but i do find the surrounding mayhem entertaining, in particular the desire for people to avoid any acceptance that this is an engineered scenario from a company that makes its money by selling its brand rather than toys and games... forced scarcity (and high prices) are all a part of this.

You can see for yourself a ways back someones screen grab of a reply from the warhammer community team, take a few moments to do so please.

Luke82 wrote:
Well i’m not mad about it, as i wasn’t overly interested in picking the game up, but i do find the surrounding mayhem entertaining, in particular the desire for people to avoid any acceptance that this is an engineered scenario from a company that makes its money by selling its brand rather than toys and games... forced scarcity (and high prices) are all a part of this.

You can see for yourself a ways back someones screen grab of a reply from the warhammer community team, take a few moments to do so please.

GW sells its product on the quality of the product, not on the strength of the brand (which is in itself dictated by the quality of the product anyway). When they release some garbage, as they do from time to time, people don't just say "Ah well this looks bad but it's prolly good because it's GW im gonna buy it anyway ". Why TF you'd base any bizarre theory on what a warcom employee has tweeted speaks to the strength of the theory (ie piss poor).

Luke82 wrote:
Well i’m not mad about it, as i wasn’t overly interested in picking the game up, but i do find the surrounding mayhem entertaining, in particular the desire for people to avoid any acceptance that this is an engineered scenario from a company that makes its money by selling its brand rather than toys and games... forced scarcity (and high prices) are all a part of this.

You can see for yourself a ways back someones screen grab of a reply from the warhammer community team, take a few moments to do so please.

You mean the one that says nothing of the sort and says they cannot confirm or deny reports that the game is coming back for a second run? All from a team that a lot of those arguing this point say isn't reliable in the first place?

It's okay to admit when you don't know. I don't know either what the real explanation is. Insisting it's some grandiose scheme to somehow make money off FOMO when it has been shown that 10 X more money would have been made with a larger stock pool is just as nutter as Alex Jones chattering about gay frogs.

angryboy2k wrote:

 Rick_1138 wrote:


Steel injection molding molds usually come to some hundred of thousand £ each, but last along time so recoup cost over time.

One off models or short runs they use Aluminium molds, which are much cheaper to make but don't last nearly as long as its, a, softer metal.

The manufacture process of steel molds became substantially cheaper with the advent of CADCAM. I'd be extremely suprised if any of the molds for Cursed City cost more than £15k.

Then I stand corrected

 frankelee wrote:
The tariff thing remains a nonsensical explanation. Heavy tariffs can damage your quarterly and yearly earnings, they don't make high overhead, high margin products unprofitable. Not to mention they're selling this thing all over the world, not just to the EU. And it would effect all of their products with pamphlets, booklets, cardboard, or playing cards, so by logical extension they'll all be cancelled too now (obviously they aren't).

I could see some combination of: manufacturing difficulties in China, massive shipping delays and extra scam fees due to the shipping crisis coming out of China, a new plan to start printing in the UK, higher tariffs for products made in China going to the EU, highly disconnected management without strong leadership or vision, and gross executive incompetence all combining into somebody at the top going, "Well getting this limited print run together was a nightmare, let's just not worry about making anymore and move on to other things." Of course, with absolutely no connection to their own community and fanbase, or likely even an understanding of tabletop gaming, to guide their thinking.

The 'tariff thing' seems to be a very good explanation to me, but of course other factors might contribute too.

The product does not have to be unprofitable per se (ie losing money) to be pulled. It might be enough if earnings are impacted in a way that the product looks so bad compared to others that it spoils the overall performance.

The proportion of UK and non-UK contributions to the product will be measured in costs. They do the plastic inhouse, which per unit is pretty low-cost, and it might not be possible to attribute much of the fixed overhead and ramp-up costs here (development, website, maybe even plastic-related stuff like molding etc.). That's why third-party components costs could look inflated in this calculation. Also, maybe they tried to do it more favourably and got called out after the first shipments, at which point they decided not to continue. It will make a difference for export to most countries if the product tariff-wise is considered UK-origin vs eg. Chinese-origin. Other printed products would also be affected by this, but maybe they are not sold out yet?

Anyway, if that's the case they will have to shift printing to somewhere else (UK, maybe EU works for most export destinations, even outside Europe, under the UK's roll-over trade deals). Depending on how fuzzy they are with quality and qualifying every last ingredient for non-toxicity and sustainability (paper stock, inks, varnish), this might take a while - but products would return eventually.

Brexit-related issues might also explain their silence. This is very political, and GW is probably conscious not to be seen complaining about Brexit or the UK government's handling of it, as taking sides (either way) could alienate large parts of their UK customers.

On the other hand, saying that 'big corporations are crap and GW management are laughing all day because they pulled one on their customers who are now angry and cannot buy their stuff' just does not cut it. That's not how things work.