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New releases are supposed to be a hype generator for a community, and they where playing it more like a board game.
Since some players still feel they haven’t been updated to the new rules yet.
TBF for anyone who is casually interested in Kill Team, being told the last few boxsets sold out in 5 minutes is a hype generator. So next time they are looking at a individual release from one of the sets, they will be encouraged to buy by FOMO.
El Torro wrote: GW's biggest issue (and it has been this way for years) is not having enough production capacity to keep up with demand. Which is why it's puzzling that they release these boxed sets at all.
To sustain demand. FOMO is real and GW figured out how to tap into that a loooooong time ago.
I didn't think this was quite this bad, I managed to get a couple of the kill team boxes lately without issue. I think this one must've been ultra low volume due to the printed and cardboard components.
I checked with my local GW. They are getting precisely ONE box next Saturday. The store opens at ten, first come first served. 3 people had already asked before me.
The store manager said please keep any fights confined to outside the store...
ChargerIIC wrote: If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
Went live at 1255 EST. Sold out by 1258 EST. Thats wild man.
Whats up with the HH legion specific contemptors? Every single one was out of stock when the preorders went up? Did the US distribution centers just not get them in time?
I was ready and raring to go, refreshing the page from about 12:50-1:00pm, the item came up exactly at 1:00:00, I hit "buy," and it was already sold out.
Think I might just let this purchase go, I'm not about to pay some scalper more for these items. Hell, it probably makes more sense just to convert my inquisitorial weirdos.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/05/20 17:19:32
Then I see that it went quickly out of stock and this always seems to happen and people are selling for twice the price on Ebay already. And this seems to be a conscious GW tactic.
If this is your only source for that conclusion then I'd park that thought. GW has a limited supply and can't seem to figure how to get that into the hands that matter. Selling out to scalpers is not good in the long run for GW and they know it. Their only real solution (an actual pre-order which would determine print runs some time in the future) isn't viable since this isn't an important release and all their other production is tied up in things that actually matter, ie. the 10th edition launch.
What GW really needs to do is address the damage these splash releases do to the brand they are released for. Maybe this as easy as releasing the "cardboard" parts separately or as a reduced price digital download at the same time. We all know the Inquisitorial henchpeople will come later with no old model "discount". But as it is GW makes these throwaway* releases that get them big cash for little work and minimal long term damage.
* They aren't really throwaway, but they are inconsequential to the actual game. The parts will be available later without the big box price/discount.
Thanks for that, all food for thought. My journey to it was Youtube videos saying 'Great value' and then looking at some of the models and thinking 'Yeah, can use them for DnD or Frostgrave if I don't like the game'. Then having a look at 0955 and clicking buy now.
I can see how this would get irksome over multiple releases, I've been reading other threads on other box sets. I am curious how much GW care? Or what they could do.
Considering it's a persisting problem I think it's safe to say that they don't care enough. It's not particularly odd for them to keep going like that either. They frequently sell out within a very short amount of time and any discontent that causes does not manifest as a drop in sales and profit. Which is mostly down to demand outstripping production by so much that they simply don't have to please as many people to remain at maximum profitability because enough other customers are ready to take the place of ones who are fed up. So unfortunately they can do pretty much as they please, with a result as predictable as you would expect of a company with shareholders.
Until that changes, whatever they could do is not relevant because they have no incentive to change anything.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/05/20 17:42:34
Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone?
It's not deliberate, and it's not some sort of conspiracy. These things can easily be explained by one of two perfectly reasonable problems:
1. As many have suggested above, they may simply not have enough production/warehousing capacity to make enough of everything, particularly with the very important 40K 10th edition launch in the offing.
2. Poor forecasting. Like every similar company does, I assume the GW has business intelligence folks who are responsible for predicting demand of upcoming products. Guessing too high can be disastrous, as the company can be stuck with unsold inventory, which cuts into the product profitability or even lead to a loss. Guessing too low is more of a missed opportunity, because you're leaving money on the table. Ideally, you want to make slightly less than the actual demand, to engender that feeling of FOMO, but not leave some large percentage of potential customers out in the cold, as we saw here. Of course, these forecasts must be made many months in advance, due to the time it takes to produce and ship the product..
It's easy to say "this keeps happening," and I'm sure it does. But what we don't see so are the times when they forecasted too high and overproduced a product. That can take quite a few months to become apparant.
"The larger point though, is that as players, we have more control over what the game looks and feels like than most of us are willing to use in order to solve our own problems"
It's a shame as we don't even know that the actual narrative campaign stuff *will* get released separately.
I do think demand forecasting is always going to be nigh on impossible for GW though with any release that is catering to multiple groups. Like, they can't even know how many actual Kill Team players there are as none of the boxes appeal purely to KT players. Every box has crossover appeal with something else and at that point it's pretty much impossible to measure it.
I still think the scalpers are the issue though. GW may well be forecasting demand accurately with regards to people that want to own the box, but if they're snapped up by people that don't actually want them (i.e. scalpers) the players are going to miss out.
I think the Narrative Campaign supplement, cards and tokens might get an individual release, but it'll be at least 3-4 months as usual
Automatically Appended Next Post:
cerebaton wrote: I still think the scalpers are the issue though. GW may well be forecasting demand accurately with regards to people that want to own the box, but if they're snapped up by people that don't actually want them (i.e. scalpers) the players are going to miss out.
Problem is, scalping is not illegal. I don't know if there is anything GW can do about it, aside from MTO-releases.. And their current release churn strategy leaves no viable way to do MTO-only boxes if new stuff needs to flow out every week
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2023/05/21 07:28:54
"The larger point though, is that as players, we have more control over what the game looks and feels like than most of us are willing to use in order to solve our own problems"
cerebaton wrote: I still think the scalpers are the issue though. GW may well be forecasting demand accurately with regards to people that want to own the box, but if they're snapped up by people that don't actually want them (i.e. scalpers) the players are going to miss out.
Problem is, scalping is not illegal. I don't know if there is anything GW can do about it, aside from MTO-releases.. And their current release churn strategy leaves no viable way to do MTO-only boxes if new stuff needs to flow out every week
GW could throw out fewer boxes but make more of the ones they do release. Keep them in production longer. No need to pay scalpers' inflated prices for something that is available from the manufacturer at normal MSRP and from retailers at a discount. But that's not as profitable for GW. They'd hit saturation at some point and get fewer sales out of a product before it's replaced by the next one whereas lower production runs of entirely new items released in rapid succession are guaranteed to sell out each time.
You can think of scalpers as scumbags (as it is occasionally put) and blame them all you like, but when it comes down to it they're a problem of GW's making. GW wants limited product, and limited product attracts scalpers.
Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone?
Even if they don't want to print more copies, there are software solutions that they could be putting back in place to at least limit the impact of scalpers - the queue system, for example, seemed to be helping with that.
If they could manage an "n per address" restriction for products (ignoring GW stores for that purpose), and maybe doing a CAPTCHA of some form (if they're still working against bots - I'm not 100% either way) they could really make a dent in the percentage of a release that's going to scalpers.
Sure, without increasing production those steps might only extent the availability window by an hour or so, but at least then things wouldn't be selling out before the pre-order officially opens!
I'm not blaming the WHC guys at all, but how daft do they look putting up articles in the afternoon to try to get people to pre-order a product which sold out hours earlier?
Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.
Kanluwen wrote: This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.
Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...
tneva82 wrote: You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something...
As I said on the previous page, go onto ebay, and casually look at a few of the other items ebayers are selling who are selling this.
Seems to be quite a few people with quite a few higher demand FOMO items from many different avenues, e.g. limited release Nikes of late etc.
It is branching out to the resellers who quite literally try to make a living off of this, so have all sorts of means to secure items quickly (bots). This is different to scalpers within the community, these people are basically professional scalpers. Combined with the low production etc, this is a problem.
I've seen facebook and instagram ads off reseller 'coaches' who were saying how you 'missed out' on gallowdark etc.
I expect leviathon may not be as smooth running as people expect if there's a good amount of people from outside of the hobby trying to get their bit.
I really really really wish people wouldn't buy off eBay for inflated prices, kill the profit and the problem will go away.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/05/21 08:27:50
My hobby instagram account: @the_shroud_of_vigilance My Shroud of Vigilance Hobby update blog for me detailed updates and lore on the faction:
Blog
We feel that we need to address some issues that are coming to light due to the current Games Workshop release issues as there seems to be a lack of perspective accompanying peoples rightly felt disappointment at missing out, please consider the following:
1. Games Workshop has seen unprecedented growth with the fallout of COVID and returning lapsed hobbyists to the fold that no one could have forecast.
2. Games Workshop is 6 months behind with new releases meaning they have had no time to produce more of items coming out in advance due to lead times being truncated. Not to mention they are taking up storage space needed for Leviathan.
3. A lot of these releases contain printed material not just models and these items come from China as it is far cheaper to print there and is the industry standard.
4. Games Workshop is devoting well over 80% of its manufacturing power to producing copies of Leviathan and if our sources are correct there are 4 times as many as the total number of Indomitus even after Cast on Demand.
5. This is very much a lesser of two evils choice from Games Workshop with Leviathan having to take priority due to it being a core product needed for the new edition
As a result of this and the fear mongering that seems to be ever present on social media, we are being inundated with emails etc regarding Leviathan that we just cannot answer. So, we will address the main points here:
1. No, we cannot do a pre-pre-order especially when we do not know the price.
2. We do not know the release date or any numbers for stock.
3. We have looked at sales numbers from Indomitus to get a rough idea of what we need.
4. There will be plenty of stock to go around of Leviathan
5. We don’t know anymore than you do and get our information on Sundays like you all for any pre-order
6. There’s no point doing an interest list as people sign up to multiple places meaning they are not a fair reflection of interest.
7. We will offer the best price we can as always
Hopefully, this allows some tempering and understanding of both your anger and disappointment of missing out on the last few releases but we can very much imagine you all would be more upset if you missed out on copies of Leviathan.
As always, we love each and every one of you and are so thankful that you allow ourselves to support your hobby journey.
We feel that we need to address some issues that are coming to light due to the current Games Workshop release issues as there seems to be a lack of perspective accompanying peoples rightly felt disappointment at missing out, please consider the following:
1. Games Workshop has seen unprecedented growth with the fallout of COVID and returning lapsed hobbyists to the fold that no one could have forecast.
2. Games Workshop is 6 months behind with new releases meaning they have had no time to produce more of items coming out in advance due to lead times being truncated. Not to mention they are taking up storage space needed for Leviathan.
3. A lot of these releases contain printed material not just models and these items come from China as it is far cheaper to print there and is the industry standard.
4. Games Workshop is devoting well over 80% of its manufacturing power to producing copies of Leviathan and if our sources are correct there are 4 times as many as the total number of Indomitus even after Cast on Demand.
5. This is very much a lesser of two evils choice from Games Workshop with Leviathan having to take priority due to it being a core product needed for the new edition
As a result of this and the fear mongering that seems to be ever present on social media, we are being inundated with emails etc regarding Leviathan that we just cannot answer. So, we will address the main points here:
1. No, we cannot do a pre-pre-order especially when we do not know the price.
2. We do not know the release date or any numbers for stock.
3. We have looked at sales numbers from Indomitus to get a rough idea of what we need.
4. There will be plenty of stock to go around of Leviathan
5. We don’t know anymore than you do and get our information on Sundays like you all for any pre-order
6. There’s no point doing an interest list as people sign up to multiple places meaning they are not a fair reflection of interest.
7. We will offer the best price we can as always
Hopefully, this allows some tempering and understanding of both your anger and disappointment of missing out on the last few releases but we can very much imagine you all would be more upset if you missed out on copies of Leviathan.
As always, we love each and every one of you and are so thankful that you allow ourselves to support your hobby journey.
Kindest Regards
The Manager
Thanks for bringing it up, but that mail is some grade-A nonsense in my opinion - it's all fine and dandy to speculate about reasons and happenings at GW, i do it myself all the time and a lot of it is not really speculation as much as extrapolation from known sources, but it rankles me a bit when stuff gets presented as 'facts' or 'information from sources', with concrete numbers like 'There is 4 times as much... 80% of their capacity...' when you're later on admitting the single salient point in all of this:
5. We don’t know anymore than you do and get our information on Sundays like you all for any pre-order
Again, i understand why independent stockists want to cover their behinds and at the same time keep relations with GW amicable and professional (i.e. can't blame them or criticize their practices too openly) but the above is all Ouija-boards and tea leaves.
Similar posts have been coming from other retailers as well
some even going further speculating that this is now intended and not because of pandemic, warehouse and war, as it already happened before
some retailers also wrote that they only get sets that don't sell via GW shops, like the high demand KT sets they can only pre-order 1-2, while some AoS sets they must order 10 on release (after pre-order on the online shop)
we will only know if Leviathan and the upcoming Codex books are handled differently
cerebaton wrote: I still think the scalpers are the issue though. GW may well be forecasting demand accurately with regards to people that want to own the box, but if they're snapped up by people that don't actually want them (i.e. scalpers) the players are going to miss out.
but boxes scalpers sell are still available on the market
and people who are willing to pay GW prices, a litte more makes no difference as it is a luxury hobby overall and it is not like as GW is the budget option (if price for a game is a problem, don't play GW games or buy GW models to play your games)
and scalper prices will be cheaper than the stand alone release anyway, if there is one, so you are still save
but assuming there are enough boxes for everyone if 3rd party sellers would not get them, does not have a valid base as there are way to few available from re-sellers
so even if you are willing to pay the higher price, no guarantee that you get a copy
hence the problem is GW, their marketing, sales technique and forecast.
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
None of that stops GW from going “we saw that there was exceptionally high demand for this product, so we are opening a one week MTO window for anyone who couldn’t get a copy, but it may take an extended period (6-months?) for these to be delivered.”
This would solve so many problems; we get our product, GW get a bunch of cash in the bank they otherwise would leave on the table and the scalpers get fethed…
They’ve done this before in recent years; heck my Goff rocker only just arrived from an order last year!
Zed wrote: *All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
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