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Just returned from GW Helsinki. They received a total of ONE Gallowfall box, which was obvsly reserved already. Welp, tleast I tried


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 GiToRaZor wrote:

 tauist wrote:
Well, if you can get one mutation per turning point, and KT21 games typically last for 4 turning points, I'd say you're looking at 4-5 mutations per game max

Man, I kind of wish they'd revisit the Gellerpox team rules and added a similar mechanic to them.. Although Gellerpox seem kind of OP in IttD missions as is.. maybe limit the mutations to just open world missions, hmm?

I disagree, the article says you already get 1 per turning point number, so 1, 2, 3 and finally 4 mutations.

Plus your leader (or whoever that demagogue operative is) will generate a mutation on its activation, hence up to another 4. Every player will keep that one hidden.

And on top you can get one for every (!) cc where your model doesn't die. An remember you can fight twice once per round. I'd imagine you can clean up about 3 models easily per game that way.


So if you don't pick the healing option, we look at 17 mutations. You will really need to have the box twice just to have enough models to cover the possible results.

17 mutations sounds like a lot. I dont like the mechanic where you get a mutation just for surviving one fight action, I hope that one comes with some caveat

 tauist wrote:
Just returned from GW Helsinki. They received a total of ONE Gallowfall box, which was obvsly reserved already. Welp, tleast I tried

What's the definition if insanity?

Store I know ordered 50. Got 2.

So after a brief respite since the Cursed City fiasco we back to hardcore FOMO sales model?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Store I know ordered 50. Got 2.

Two is pretty close to fifty so it's all good, right?

Seems that I just managed to order an Arbites box from an independent. I imagine that box will be perpetually out of stock for the next six to twelve months.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
So after a brief respite since the Cursed City fiasco we back to hardcore FOMO sales model?

More like 'Betting the house on the Leviathan box' release model

Tsagualsa wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
So after a brief respite since the Cursed City fiasco we back to hardcore FOMO sales model?

More like 'Betting the house on the Leviathan box' release model

To be fair, there's some logic to it. Leviathan is there to get as many people as possible to commit to investing in GW's premier game and most important moneymaker. The Kill Team boxes are supplements for a niche game. It's just completely different levels of sales. I'm sure GW would like to make more money off them if they had the production capacity, but not at the expense of 40k. It's not really a gamble prioritizing 40k.

 Geifer wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
So after a brief respite since the Cursed City fiasco we back to hardcore FOMO sales model?

More like 'Betting the house on the Leviathan box' release model

To be fair, there's some logic to it. Leviathan is there to get as many people as possible to commit to investing in GW's premier game and most important moneymaker. The Kill Team boxes are supplements for a niche game. It's just completely different levels of sales. I'm sure GW would like to make more money off them if they had the production capacity, but not at the expense of 40k. It's not really a gamble prioritizing 40k.

I'm not saying that it isn't a pretty safe bet, but betting the house is still betting the house. It's hard to quantify the amount of goodwill and customer satisfaction they're sacrificing here, but i'm confident that that sort of bad blood with the community, and especially side-game communities, will persist for a very long time. It gets exacerbated by their usual approach of 'Don't ask - don't tell (the customers anything, ever)' - if you did not happen to catch that one sentence in the Warhammerfest Q&A or are following the community closely, you have no idea why they're unable to meet demand and have gakky service suddenly, and a lot of retailers and customers are fed up with that and will move on.

I'm really not sure what the point of creating and advertising a product is if you can only fulfill a few % of demand. Literally only a few % going by examples of stores that wanted 50 and got 2. It would probably go over better with customers if you said "We're stretched thin with the 40k reboot, side games are on pause until autmn" rather than hype up demand and then spectacularly underprint.

Google "scarcity marketing" or studies into "scarcity effect" (for example https://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/scarcity-effect.htm )

The result of what is happening is that customers now percieve this box as much more valuable than it really is. Consequently, the inevitable release of separate contents of the box should see appropriately increased demand.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Store I know ordered 50. Got 2.

Which is basically money out of the retailer's pocket. I don't know that the profit on 50 boxes of Gallowwhatever would be but for a game shop I imagine it's not small change.

And that money won't come back.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Store I know ordered 50. Got 2.

Which is basically money out of the retailer's pocket. I don't know that the profit on 50 boxes of Gallowwhatever would be but for a game shop I imagine it's not small change.

And that money won't come back.

Outside of the direct earnings, it also has reputational aspects: 'The store where you can't actually order anything/ can't get you your order' is usually not long for this world.

GW wants people to switch to their online shop, this is the best way to do it

 kodos wrote:
GW wants people to switch to their online shop, this is the best way to do it

except their online shop sells out faster than anywhere that isn't doing "pre-pre-preorders"?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 kodos wrote:
GW wants people to switch to their online shop, this is the best way to do it

except their online shop sells out faster than anywhere that isn't doing "pre-pre-preorders"?

Also, being the best among a range of extremely bad options is still not actually a good thing.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
So after a brief respite since the Cursed City fiasco we back to hardcore FOMO sales model?

More like 'Betting the house on the Leviathan box' release model

To be fair, there's some logic to it. Leviathan is there to get as many people as possible to commit to investing in GW's premier game and most important moneymaker. The Kill Team boxes are supplements for a niche game. It's just completely different levels of sales. I'm sure GW would like to make more money off them if they had the production capacity, but not at the expense of 40k. It's not really a gamble prioritizing 40k.

I'm not saying that it isn't a pretty safe bet, but betting the house is still betting the house. It's hard to quantify the amount of goodwill and customer satisfaction they're sacrificing here, but i'm confident that that sort of bad blood with the community, and especially side-game communities, will persist for a very long time. It gets exacerbated by their usual approach of 'Don't ask - don't tell (the customers anything, ever)' - if you did not happen to catch that one sentence in the Warhammerfest Q&A or are following the community closely, you have no idea why they're unable to meet demand and have gakky service suddenly, and a lot of retailers and customers are fed up with that and will move on.

While I'm sure this is a popular sentiment, all evidence points to it not being popular enough to make GW reconsider their practices. GW has proven to be highly resilient to some types of customer dissatisfaction. It's unfortunate, but holding out hope that enough people are fed up with supply issues is much the same as hoping for the latest price increase to be the final straw. Not enough people break away and the customer pool remains large enough so GW still can't satisfy demand.

Eventually that may change, but so far these things have happened gradually and let GW correct course easily enough.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 kodos wrote:
GW wants people to switch to their online shop, this is the best way to do it

except their online shop sells out faster than anywhere that isn't doing "pre-pre-preorders"?

well, classic "pre-orders" are there for shops to check the demand, technically a pre-order should not sell out

the combination of very short release windows with high volume of releases, expensive prices that make discount bundles attractive as investment and the missing information if those things will ever be available after leads to the point we are now

question is just how long it will take until the "want to have everything" will be replaced by the "don't care anymore" but by now it looks like that this won't happen very soon and customer dissatisfaction is replaced by the shiny new thing coming next week

so this is not a problem for GW, more people buying directly from their shops means more profit, everything selling out means more profit, annoyed customers still buying the next release means more profit, why should they change something
(if missing on the one KT Box Set would lead several gaming groups to switch from KT to Deadzone, this would be a problem but as long as those still play KT or any other GW system, there is no problem)

I think it's more a case of 40k new edition production taking priority over these sets. What remains to be seen is if the new 40k box set will also sell out in record times...

Not going to lie, but has annoying as it was in the past I find that if a company does not want to sell me plastic toy soldiers then its their loss and move on. How many times have you guys wanted a specific box that was sold out and then only to find out you totally lost interest on the same split content months later?

GW projects sales of x units and then they sell out. GW sees this as a target achieved and based of the amount of interest they will raise slightly the price for next x units, either by giving less in the box or raise prices, or both or making people buy direct...

With all that said Im quite interested on the Votann minis but will wait several months for the individual box. As it stands its a GW loss today.

Could be Leviathan, but it could also be GW not liking how long boxes they ran made-to-order for were sat on shop shelves. Or both.

It's been over 10 hours since the latest Warcry box went on preorder, still not sold out.. Either Warcry is a lot less popular than KT21, or something is off with GW's production capacity..?

 tauist wrote:
It's been over 10 hours since the latest Warcry box went on preorder, still not sold out.. Either Warcry is a lot less popular than KT21, or something is off with GW's production capacity..?

I'd wager it simply is less popular by a wide margin, even. Kill Team has taken off really well to the point of having a budding international tournament scene and has a larger audience through the 40k IP. Warcry, meanwhile, seems to be doing just fine but not storming any trading lists beyond kitchen tables.

Kill Team featuring new units that are proper squads for 40k as opposed to Warcry's more... eclectic style of gang that have to be squeezed into AoS probably adds a bit as well.

Plus this box is half Stormcast, and a bland unit to boot. This is like the Moloch set for KT, with half being Reivers or whatnot. Just not the same level of excitement at all.

 Scottywan82 wrote:
Plus this box is half Stormcast, and a bland unit to boot. This is like the Moloch set for KT, with half being Reivers or whatnot. Just not the same level of excitement at all.

We run in wildly different worlds for AoS, I guess. I've seen a lot of hype over the new Stormcast on social media stuff, since it's basically a "Chamber Heroes" set allowing for you to build a Lord-Castellan in Thunderstrike Armor(lantern+halberd), a Lord-Relictor in Thunderstrike Armor(hammer, skull mask, extra goodies), and the various event only Knight-Questor models/loadouts that people might have missed(I know that I never was able to get the Shadowstrike model with the glaive as it was a store anniversary model that C19 cut off).
The previous WarCry sets for the season also didn't sell out immediately.

It feels a little bit more like some people are treating KT sets almost like stocks right now, much like Black Library novels.


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 Shakalooloo wrote:
Kill Team featuring new units that are proper squads for 40k as opposed to Warcry's more... eclectic style of gang that have to be squeezed into AoS probably adds a bit as well.

As opposed to the KT sets with upgrades that can't be used or are ignored/skipped over? Kasrkin can't even take a sergeant with a hellgun in 40k proper, despite it being a build+roster option in the kit.

They've been doing better this season with WarCry to AoS than they have with KT to 40k, in my opinion.

It’s that simply you can sell the individual teams from the Kill Team boxes for like £50-60 each.
The one unique scatter sprue for like £10-15.
Then there’s still terrain and books.
So no matter how much of the box you want, you can make back and it’s worth getting it for the bits you do want.

 tauist wrote:
It's been over 10 hours since the latest Warcry box went on preorder, still not sold out.. Either Warcry is a lot less popular than KT21, or something is off with GW's production capacity..?

You can still get 4 of the 6 AoS Christmas bundles on 3rd party sites, not to mention the 3rd edition launch box for nearly 50% off!

I like AoS, think the models are some of the best GW produces, but it seems like it's 1/10th as popular as 40K. It must be meeting their targets given they're reviving the old world and seem to be investing in big refreshes, but it's striking how the product just sits. I think the comment about the KT teams being pretty close to 40K units while AoS has oddball chaff makes sense, but it's not like Arbites or Beastmen or even the Votann specialists would be usable in 40K.

Who is responsible for these brain trust decisions...

Didn't they learn the hard way from Cursed City?

It's like someone in GW is allergic to online and basic sales 101, while the advertising department is going full steam with full boilers.

It really doesn't do them any favors, and reeks of incompetence.

 tauist wrote:
It's been over 10 hours since the latest Warcry box went on preorder, still not sold out.. Either Warcry is a lot less popular than KT21, or something is off with GW's production capacity..?

When do other war cry boxes usually sell out? If they tend to sell out fast, then I think the big reasoning is that the warbands in this box might not be that exciting to many people. I feel like the box before this one, with the tzeentch and Nurgle guys was a lot more exiting than this one.

 flaherty wrote:
I think the comment about the KT teams being pretty close to 40K units while AoS has oddball chaff makes sense, but it's not like Arbites or Beastmen or even the Votann specialists would be usable in 40K.

Arbites have 40k stats and the kit is particularly stacked so you can build them all with shields or shotguns, ie. unified equipment you'd want for a 40k squad.

 flaherty wrote:

 tauist wrote:
It's been over 10 hours since the latest Warcry box went on preorder, still not sold out.. Either Warcry is a lot less popular than KT21, or something is off with GW's production capacity..?

You can still get 4 of the 6 AoS Christmas bundles on 3rd party sites, not to mention the 3rd edition launch box for nearly 50% off!

I like AoS, think the models are some of the best GW produces, but it seems like it's 1/10th as popular as 40K. It must be meeting their targets given they're reviving the old world and seem to be investing in big refreshes, but it's striking how the product just sits. I think the comment about the KT teams being pretty close to 40K units while AoS has oddball chaff makes sense, but it's not like Arbites or Beastmen or even the Votann specialists would be usable in 40K.

40k is bigger than AoS, but it also has more history. It's easy to sell Kill Team boxes just like Blackstone Fortress on the strength of oddball units that haven't had models or dedicated rules since the Nineties, but that are prominent enough in the fluff that people have spent years or even decades wanting to see them in miniature form (again).

AoS doesn't have that. I reckon the closest you'll come is if a Warcry box was the first release of Malerion elves. That might be a comparatively big seller since people have basically been waiting for that since day one. Sigmarines and Flesheater Courts aren't bad for what they can provide to their respective armies, but old heroes in new armor and a handful of extra models for an army starved for new models doesn't seem like it has wider appeal.