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 Albino Squirrel wrote:
I wouldn't say they got it sorted out. If I order on the weekend of pre-order, I'll have no idea whether I'm going to get my order on release, or have to wait several months for it. I don't think I'd want it knowing I had to wait several months for it. But I'll have to order having no idea if I'll have to wait several months or not.

it's going to be fairly straightforward to have a pop up or similar once the 'in hand' stock is sold out

and if they don't they'll be swamped with 'where is my order' questions from those who don't read the small print so i'm sure they will do so

now if they're opening it up to independants stores too that's where the problem will be as they'll have to keep an account of who ordered when, and stop staff handing over boxes to their mats or just whoever moans loudest when customers come in to collect them

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, WD is prepared some months in advance, so that may not be hugely significant in itself.

With the way GW goes about the simplist of things you could be right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Patriarch wrote:

Too soon...

The interesting thing for me is the whole “looking into stuff for other releases”.

Given Beast Snaggas contained a limited edition (but unnumbered) Codex? That could be a hurdle, as getting a reprint done is going to be the slow bit, compared to finding production time to pump out new sprues.

But it’s a good step. I’d genuinely like nothing more than for GW to make the Loot Group largely defunct, because it means Scalpers are heavily dissuaded.

I welcome this step, just like I welcomed the early confirmation that the Octarius box would not include exclusive miniatures. The less ways to get FOMOed in the ribs, the better.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:


Printing the tiles, even in limited/short runs could not have been that expensive. Printing can be expensive, but never that expensive, additionally, with the demand for the game, they could have gambled on a larger order of tiles to bring the cost down and acquired more other elements to make full games for a Made to Order run.

My guess on the whole situation is, there was a major F up somewhere along the lines in regards to ordering/manufacture, GW believes the supplier is in the wrong, the supplier believes GW are in the wrong and the silence is because lawyers are drawing battle lines currently and have instructed GW to do so.

What makes me laugh is that they quite happily carried on printing Blackstone Fortress instead, even though it's an older game thats had its run. If they could only do one game, surely it would make sense to allocate the resources to the newer product instead?

Couldn’t scalpers just cancel their orders if they don’t get their product in the first release? If so, they can still sell to the impatient if the scalpers get stuff first. Then someone who would pay more and preordered but wants it now just cancels their order if it’s taking too long to arrive.

haha, so all the scalpers will have copies on release day, but everyone else gets their 6 months later?

Way to break the system, GW!

Yeah but scalpers aren't going to get anywhere with that. Sure they have copies earlier but if you've paid the money and you have to wait a month or 3, are you going to say to your dumb idiot self, "HEY, this isn't good enough I'll buy from this scalper I hate and give them more money instead of waiting a bit".

If scalpers then cancel their orders that just moves people up the queue.

It's a good move. Life must be great for you if GW is all you have to bitch about.

 privateer4hire wrote:
Couldn’t scalpers just cancel their orders if they don’t get their product in the first release? If so, they can still sell to the impatient if the scalpers get stuff first. Then someone who would pay more and preordered but wants it now just cancels their order if it’s taking too long to arrive.

It’s still reducing their market - and what sort of mark up they might be able to get away with.

Because if can pay £125 and wait, would I really pay double that just to get it now?

The most sought after aspects of the box are the DKoK. You also (if you have a bit of common sense) will not be able to get a hold of enough of them at a reasonable price to build that Krieg army you want from just this set alone, meaning you are already in the waiting game to build your new force, and since they're getting released separately in the future, you will also be inclined to wait to see what else comes with them.

Scalpers are daft to think they will actually make money from this, or even enough to make the effort worthwhile, and anyone who actually goes against the grain (not being patient) and purchasing from them, they are just as much of a problem for the hobby as the scalpers themselves.

SamusDrake wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:


Printing the tiles, even in limited/short runs could not have been that expensive. Printing can be expensive, but never that expensive, additionally, with the demand for the game, they could have gambled on a larger order of tiles to bring the cost down and acquired more other elements to make full games for a Made to Order run.

My guess on the whole situation is, there was a major F up somewhere along the lines in regards to ordering/manufacture, GW believes the supplier is in the wrong, the supplier believes GW are in the wrong and the silence is because lawyers are drawing battle lines currently and have instructed GW to do so.

What makes me laugh is that they quite happily carried on printing Blackstone Fortress instead, even though it's an older game thats had its run. If they could only do one game, surely it would make sense to allocate the resources to the newer product instead?

How do you know they’ve done another print run on Blackstone? They could be just selling from stock. How do you know the parts are coming from the same suppliers? Can’t just flip at the drop of a hat.

Don’t get me wrong, they deffo fethed up the Cursed City release, but supply and manufacturing is a bit more complicated than “just make more duh”.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
The most sought after aspects of the box are the DKoK. You also (if you have a bit of common sense) will not be able to get a hold of enough of them at a reasonable price to build that Krieg army you want from just this set alone, meaning you are already in the waiting game to build your new force, and since they're getting released separately in the future, you will also be inclined to wait to see what else comes with them.

Scalpers are daft to think they will actually make money from this, or even enough to make the effort worthwhile, and anyone who actually goes against the grain (not being patient) and purchasing from them, they are just as much of a problem for the hobby as the scalpers themselves.

It’s made it so that scalping carries a real risk of not making money. Before this announcement, they’ll have lost a bit on some releases, made bank on others, but clearly a general profit. This makes the sums much harder.


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"It took us a few years and lots of insta-sold out boxes to get our gak together, but we think we've finally got it sorted out!"

Now, does such a guarantee apply to all places where this can be ordered, or just those coming from the company store GW website?

99% this will be from their website only. Any other way is a monster of a logistical nightmare.

GW finally catches up with what the point of pre-orders should be

I was actually quite confident I'd be able to place my preorder in time, but this is very good news to everyone who is stuck with a smaller distributor.

MaxT wrote:


How do you know they’ve done another print run on Blackstone? They could be just selling from stock. How do you know the parts are coming from the same suppliers? Can’t just flip at the drop of a hat.

Don’t get me wrong, they deffo fethed up the Cursed City release, but supply and manufacturing is a bit more complicated than “just make more duh”.

Because I contacted GW last november if BSF was discontinued( everyone and their dog believed it had been so, and I was told "nope, you won't get a copy now - its gone. You've missed out." ) and they replied "we are printing more copies as we speak and hope to have them available this side of christmas". I got my copy in time for christmas.

Since then its constantly been in and out of stock, which is safe to assume they have carried on printing new copies as they did last november.

And MaxT, it is not a case of "just make more, duh." I posed an intelligent question; why carry on printing a game past its sell by date in favour of a new product, especially one that ties in with a new AoS faction?

SamusDrake wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:


Printing the tiles, even in limited/short runs could not have been that expensive. Printing can be expensive, but never that expensive, additionally, with the demand for the game, they could have gambled on a larger order of tiles to bring the cost down and acquired more other elements to make full games for a Made to Order run.

My guess on the whole situation is, there was a major F up somewhere along the lines in regards to ordering/manufacture, GW believes the supplier is in the wrong, the supplier believes GW are in the wrong and the silence is because lawyers are drawing battle lines currently and have instructed GW to do so.

What makes me laugh is that they quite happily carried on printing Blackstone Fortress instead, even though it's an older game thats had its run. If they could only do one game, surely it would make sense to allocate the resources to the newer product instead?

they may well have had a stock of the difficult (ie paper stuff they don't make in house) in stock, so all they needed to do was make more sprues which isn't a huge deal especially if there was machine time booked for a cursed city reprint that got scrapped as seems likely

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:


they may well ave had a stock of the difficult (ie paper stuff they don't make in house) in stock, so all they needed to d was make more sprues which isn't a huge deal especially if there was machine time booked for a cursed city reprint that got scrapped as seems likely

Hmmm...yes, that certainly could be a possibility. Must have been a hellva stock they had lying around.

The CC mess does have a lot of hallmarks of a contract dispute on the bits GW don’t make tbh:

-Complete radio silence on anything to do with it and quiet withdrawal of the marketing. GW have understocks all the time and they usually say something about it.
-The fact that initially the Social Media team seemed to have no idea what was going on.
-The rumours of partial boxes lying all over GW’s warehouse [maybe filled with just the bits GW make?]
-The sudden appearance of the enemies for sale with the SGL release when it took ages before the released the BSF ones and when they were already releasing another version of the boss. [maybe to sell the overstock of models vs boxes?]

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
So, they KNOW about Scalper bots, but don't implement anything to prevent them?

Technically making a lot of boxes available will make scalping less profitable and fix the issue..

So the solution to what is not possible to fulfil on the initial stock is to start another production wave, that can take several months.

I guess it's another baby step in the right direction? Awaiting months is not something Im willing to do though, sorry.

I really could care less about multimillion dollar companies that produce toys but struggle to figure out demand, its their problem so fix it. As a client I want to go to X store or online and pick up say Killteam or cursed city or whatever games from normal instore stocks... Going into longwinded efforts to secure a copy of a silly game on a particular time period and then potentially waiting several months is just not worth my time.

The problem is not fixed its just extended. Meanwhile they have my money there.

I missed the Beast Snagga Box two times and now they're telling me this?

I don't care if it needs time, this year I waited 4 months for my DG Codex to arrive and 6months for a made to Order Nazgul (actually I've been waiting about 10years for that model to be available again ) . My pile is big enough to bridge times like that .

Lord Zarkov wrote:
The CC mess does have a lot of hallmarks of a contract dispute on the bits GW don’t make tbh:

-Complete radio silence on anything to do with it and quiet withdrawal of the marketing. GW have understocks all the time and they usually say something about it.
-The fact that initially the Social Media team seemed to have no idea what was going on.
-The rumours of partial boxes lying all over GW’s warehouse [maybe filled with just the bits GW make?]
-The sudden appearance of the enemies for sale with the SGL release when it took ages before the released the BSF ones and when they were already releasing another version of the boss. [maybe to sell the overstock of models vs boxes?]

Exactly, and such contracts it's not actually that easy or in your best interest to just sign a contract with another company to make the specific bits, most likely there's an exclusivity clause beyond all but the most unforeseen circumstances that the supplier will make those parts i.e. if the factory burned down, they'd be allowed to go elsewhere. So if GW did go to a new supplier, they'd probably find themselves in a counter legal battle...

However, in regards to your final point, I've been patiently waiting for the heroes to be released also and they have not been, so it may not be that (or the heroes were always going to be game exclusive but the enemies were not?)

 NAVARRO wrote:
So the solution to what is not possible to fulfil on the initial stock is to start another production wave, that can take several months.

I guess it's another baby step in the right direction? Awaiting months is not something Im willing to do though, sorry.

I really could care less about multimillion dollar companies that produce toys but struggle to figure out demand, its their problem so fix it. As a client I want to go to X store or online and pick up say Killteam or cursed city or whatever games from normal instore stocks... Going into longwinded efforts to secure a copy of a silly game on a particular time period and then potentially waiting several months is just not worth my time.

The problem is not fixed its just extended. Meanwhile they have my money there.

If only demand was so easily judged.

Look at GW’s recent financials (freely published and freely available).

Then understand they order stuff waaaaaaay in advance - especially when elements of the overall set are coming from overseas (COVID be damned, that’s an idiot Brexit Bonus).

Supply is inherently reactive, unless you don’t care about unsold stock - and no business wants unsold stock, because that’s just lost money. And when you’re seeing the growth GW has seen? Yeah. Good luck getting that right, outside of the topic of this very thread.

 privateer4hire wrote:
Why would they implement anything that keeps away scalper money? The important part of that phrase is money. Why would they care where the cash comes from?

Scalpers do hurt GW's income.

See a Scalper buys a limited product at X price.
They then put it up for sale at 4X price.


Any customer who buys the 4X price product was obviously willing to give GW the same X price. So GW gains no additional revenue.
However the customer who pays the 4X price now has 3X of income which isn't going to GW, its going to the scalper. That's 3X of money that most likely would have been spent on other GW products.


So GW doesn't lose money on the product itself, they lose money on the other products the customer would have bought with their money. This, of course, assumes that not every buyer of scalped products is money rich to the point where the price has no impact on their spending rate. Which I'm sure does apply to some, just not very many, customers.


The other impact is that the more stock they run out of the more money GW has to spend paying support staff to answer tickets and deal with social media fallout and such. Which is a minor loss of income considering most of those are long term contracts, but it is a working cost.





In the end this scheme allows GW to produce for the market demand, esp in these times where GW's ability to predict market sales rate is clearly hampered. This plan works greatly in GW's favour as when the sales are high GW gets to make maximum sales; whilst if/when the sales spike they are on starts to dwindle as people "get back to normal life"; it scales down instantly for GW. So its a win win for GW. Customers willing to wait months for Indomitus has clearly shown GW management and accounting that its a viable option which doesn't harm their long term sales potential and indeed might help it. Even if they have to wait, a customer who has Indomitus in the bag is going to grab the codex and support products even whilst waiting. Meanwhile the customer who missed out on a one time order is a customer more likely to be a bit jaded/bitter and not to spend out.



This is a win win for everyone (save the scalpers) involved Great move by GW!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
So the solution to what is not possible to fulfil on the initial stock is to start another production wave, that can take several months.

I guess it's another baby step in the right direction? Awaiting months is not something Im willing to do though, sorry.

I really could care less about multimillion dollar companies that produce toys but struggle to figure out demand, its their problem so fix it. As a client I want to go to X store or online and pick up say Killteam or cursed city or whatever games from normal instore stocks... Going into longwinded efforts to secure a copy of a silly game on a particular time period and then potentially waiting several months is just not worth my time.

The problem is not fixed its just extended. Meanwhile they have my money there.

If only demand was so easily judged.

Look at GW’s recent financials (freely published and freely available).

Then understand they order stuff waaaaaaay in advance - especially when elements of the overall set are coming from overseas (COVID be damned, that’s an idiot Brexit Bonus).

Supply is inherently reactive, unless you don’t care about unsold stock - and no business wants unsold stock, because that’s just lost money. And when you’re seeing the growth GW has seen? Yeah. Good luck getting that right, outside of the topic of this very thread.

Exactly. GW's sales last year DOUBLED at the very least with some products going way beyond that. GW had no way on Earth to predict the Pandemic nor that the reaction to it would be a mammoth sales spike beyond anything they've ever seen. Even without factory limitations, their sales rate has been insane over the last year and a half or so. All totally unpredictable and its likely to remain so for a good few more years before things settle. Sure GW might have known that hobbies do well in a disaster, but nothing like as well as they have done during the Pandemic.

The other addition to the above is, killteam is a game, that they want people to invest in, if the entry to it is far too high, there are people that will never enter into it, meaning that potential customer is not tapping into another of their potential revenue streams, or the first stream that could lead to additional streams.

There's a reason they've been throwing absolutely loads of money at AoS and producing frankly better models than 40k, they want the 40k crowd to finally buy in... I'm honestly nearly tempted to do so, finally just on the quality of the models... However, if for some reason scalpers had control of the start collecting boxes, or dominion or whatever, there is no chance I will ever dive in, and if I do dive in, that will end up being thousands of pounds of revenue coming their way over the next 5 years, just from me.

This isn't concerts and gigs where ticket sales have to be finite due to venue restrictions on crowd sizes, if the demand is there, in theory GW should and will want to supply it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
So the solution to what is not possible to fulfil on the initial stock is to start another production wave, that can take several months.

I guess it's another baby step in the right direction? Awaiting months is not something Im willing to do though, sorry.

I really could care less about multimillion dollar companies that produce toys but struggle to figure out demand, its their problem so fix it. As a client I want to go to X store or online and pick up say Killteam or cursed city or whatever games from normal instore stocks... Going into longwinded efforts to secure a copy of a silly game on a particular time period and then potentially waiting several months is just not worth my time.

The problem is not fixed its just extended. Meanwhile they have my money there.

If only demand was so easily judged.

Look at GW’s recent financials (freely published and freely available).

Then understand they order stuff waaaaaaay in advance - especially when elements of the overall set are coming from overseas (COVID be damned, that’s an idiot Brexit Bonus).

Supply is inherently reactive, unless you don’t care about unsold stock - and no business wants unsold stock, because that’s just lost money. And when you’re seeing the growth GW has seen? Yeah. Good luck getting that right, outside of the topic of this very thread.

Like I said its not my problem to solve is it? Thats why theres experts to be hired by those highly successful companies... Besides this problem has been a thing before current particular environment.
Im a simple client and this communication seems to think Im willing to, say thank you, for GW efforts to hold my money for undetermined number of months...

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
So the solution to what is not possible to fulfil on the initial stock is to start another production wave, that can take several months.

I guess it's another baby step in the right direction? Awaiting months is not something Im willing to do though, sorry.

I really could care less about multimillion dollar companies that produce toys but struggle to figure out demand, its their problem so fix it. As a client I want to go to X store or online and pick up say Killteam or cursed city or whatever games from normal instore stocks... Going into longwinded efforts to secure a copy of a silly game on a particular time period and then potentially waiting several months is just not worth my time.

The problem is not fixed its just extended. Meanwhile they have my money there.

If only demand was so easily judged.

Look at GW’s recent financials (freely published and freely available).

Then understand they order stuff waaaaaaay in advance - especially when elements of the overall set are coming from overseas (COVID be damned, that’s an idiot Brexit Bonus).

Supply is inherently reactive, unless you don’t care about unsold stock - and no business wants unsold stock, because that’s just lost money. And when you’re seeing the growth GW has seen? Yeah. Good luck getting that right, outside of the topic of this very thread.

Like I said its not my problem to solve is it? Thats why theres experts to be hired by those highly successful companies... Besides this problem has been a thing before current particular environment.
Im a simple client and this communication seems to think Im willing to, say thank you, for GW efforts to hold my money for undetermined number of months...

And those experts have advised this course of action.

The other would be GW over-ordering and potentially having too much stock that doesn't sell. Whilst GW have a huge safety net in that their products generally don't devalue and are not required to be fast sellers. If they get too many shelved products that means there's a LOT more money for them sitting on shelves not selling. If that happens too often it means their cash flow slows down even if their sales are good. Slower cash flow means less money to actually get enough orders to produce supply; it means less money for side projects; for core products and more. So it hamstrings them.

for GW this is actually worse because they typically avoid any form of loan. So they won't just get a loan to cover short term cash flow issues, they just wait or scale back until they muscle through it. Short term that means losing sales; long term it means they are in a robust condition whenever there's a downturn as they can just scale back without issues; whilst if you take out big and many loans you can end up with lots of repayments you have to keep making and can't scale back on.

Well I'm happy for this, I'm hopeful on getting it from the FLGS on the morning, but I know now I can 100% get a copy if I'm not fast enough, and if its the same as the 40K box my FLGS might be able to get it on discount for that as well.

 Overread wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
So the solution to what is not possible to fulfil on the initial stock is to start another production wave, that can take several months.

I guess it's another baby step in the right direction? Awaiting months is not something Im willing to do though, sorry.

I really could care less about multimillion dollar companies that produce toys but struggle to figure out demand, its their problem so fix it. As a client I want to go to X store or online and pick up say Killteam or cursed city or whatever games from normal instore stocks... Going into longwinded efforts to secure a copy of a silly game on a particular time period and then potentially waiting several months is just not worth my time.

The problem is not fixed its just extended. Meanwhile they have my money there.

If only demand was so easily judged.

Look at GW’s recent financials (freely published and freely available).

Then understand they order stuff waaaaaaay in advance - especially when elements of the overall set are coming from overseas (COVID be damned, that’s an idiot Brexit Bonus).

Supply is inherently reactive, unless you don’t care about unsold stock - and no business wants unsold stock, because that’s just lost money. And when you’re seeing the growth GW has seen? Yeah. Good luck getting that right, outside of the topic of this very thread.

Like I said its not my problem to solve is it? Thats why theres experts to be hired by those highly successful companies... Besides this problem has been a thing before current particular environment.
Im a simple client and this communication seems to think Im willing to, say thank you, for GW efforts to hold my money for undetermined number of months...

And those experts have advised this course of action.

The other would be GW over-ordering and potentially having too much stock that doesn't sell. Whilst GW have a huge safety net in that their products generally don't devalue and are not required to be fast sellers. If they get too many shelved products that means there's a LOT more money for them sitting on shelves not selling. If that happens too often it means their cash flow slows down even if their sales are good. Slower cash flow means less money to actually get enough orders to produce supply; it means less money for side projects; for core products and more. So it hamstrings them.

for GW this is actually worse because they typically avoid any form of loan. So they won't just get a loan to cover short term cash flow issues, they just wait or scale back until they muscle through it. Short term that means losing sales; long term it means they are in a robust condition whenever there's a downturn as they can just scale back without issues; whilst if you take out big and many loans you can end up with lots of repayments you have to keep making and can't scale back on.

Sorry I dont know if experts advised this or something else because they are not the ones making the final decisions are they?

Regarding your hypothesis yes it could be something like that or maybe its something else, I mean, I dont work for GW so I dont pretend to know how they are operating or even what their bottom-line goals and challenges are... Does their internal struggles influence my purchases? No, I dont have shares either.
If you want people playing a game you need to sell the game and make it widely available in the first place, failing that for whatever reason and they lose my money.

Like@ endlesswaltz123 said this is not a gig ticket that only makes sense on one Saturday morning preorder and if you miss it you cant play KT for god knows how long or if at all.

more open longer lead time.
Allow people to pre-order
make anough to meet demand.

Its almost like what a logical company would do..

I actually think there will be PLENTY of copies of kill team, and it will be a minority that will be waiting a few months for their order.

As I said in the other thread, the real hot topic items in it are the DKoK and you will need a hell of a lot of them to do an army with anyway, most people will wait, not many will be buying multiple sets of this, mainly because of the amount of terrain and how much that is a part of it's fairly high price.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Argive wrote:
more open longer lead time.
Allow people to pre-order
make anough to meet demand.

Its almost like what a logical company would do..

The only improvement for us as customers would be to do a 3 month pre-order window, but then, many people will bail out before then, and GW would struggle to keep the hype going into release, which isn't an improvement for GW so we get this and...

I like this method, make a lot of copies to meet demand, however, if demand is exponential, there is a way for customers to still play the game. It would be especially good if they released the rules to these players digitally and gave them a voucher to redeem a measuring thingy in a GW store for free so they could play the game with other kill teams till the box set actually arrives.