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All of Conquest (the first partwork) was produced in coloured plastic, so clearly couldn't have been from sprues sitting around.

Both Mortal Realms and the current Stormbringer partwork contain Warhammer Underworlds sprues which were originally produced in coloured plastic for that game, but are in grey in the partwork. All the evidence is that the sprues are made for the magazine specifically.

The advantage they have is that these partworks are planned out well in advance and have fixed numbers associated with them. And those numbers are large. GW may well be sitting on huge piles of Stormbringer sprues right now, but that'll only be because they made them all at the start of the year when the magazine launched, before production all switched to focus on Leviathan They're probably the easier part of production scheduling to deal with. Though of course they absolutely do take up capacity.

I guess the risk for GW is that they might have to wait for the partworks to go through its test phase/demo issues before they are a confirmed release. So GW might not be able to produce too much in advance as the total number of magazines might be decided upon only after its completed its test phase and such.

Another thing is warehouse space. GW doesn't seem to have any spare so they likely don't want mountains of sprue just sitting there taking up space. Partworks might also be the same, they might not have huge amounts that just sits there.

These two things could mean that sometimes GW gets a big sudden order which isn't synced with their regular production and systems. So instead of getting to make during a lull, it appears right when they are gearing up for a new edition or game launch or christmas.

The other thing is there might not be the potential to do it all in one big go; so they have to spread it out so that impact on production is over a long period of time.

I've never ordered direct from GW simply because of the lack of discount, but getting something on release date isn't that big of a deal for me, I usually expect it within the week of release.

Preorders dont mean the same these days. I learned my lesson on some kits I preordered back then for the Votann release, from third parties, and both GW and this store had literally no stock for specific items. It took more than a month.

So for me Preorders are just the chance to get things on time but not guaranteed at all.

Jaxmeister wrote:
This seems weird to me, in the past if I placed a preorder with them then it arrived at my home on day of release. In that vein I pre-ordered Tyranid codes and other bits and pieces from the new preorder list. However Saturday comes and nothing same on Monday, not even a confirmation email with order on way.
I got on their site chat and asked why and was told going forward all pre-orders will start to be processed on the Monday following the release, unless it's a bank holiday so gets processed on next working day. What the fetch is this about? You place an order a week before going on sale and they don't even start to process until days after it goes in store. The exception is that if you get it delivered to a store instead you get it on release day. As a disabled person I find this intolerable, so guess who won't preorder from them again. I've been very loyal to them since before Rogue Trader and never used independent stores which was financially stupid. However from now on anything I get won't be from them. Another stupid way to lose customers. I double checked this answer both by phoning them and on a chat with another worker and told by all that it's now standard practice to do it this way.

You mention that you're a disabled person. You could consider telling them that you find the policy discriminatory, if you feel that's the case, since somebody able to visit a store is able to have their order delivered for release day. I don't know if this would meet the legal definition for discrimination, or if anti-discrimination laws would be relevant in this area anyway, but most companies nowadays wouldn't want to risk the perception.

Originally I used the chat on website on Monday and was told my order was in final stage of dispatch, so I thought fair enough. To me that means in box, addressed and ready to go to carrier.
Fast forward 2 days and late this afternoon saying order is being prepared for dispatch. Which is it? Already prepared or being prepared, can't be both. Always been a supporter of them but it's stupid to be caught in a lie. I'm assuming on Monday they couldn't handle orders so just told lie to put me off. They have a week inost cases after taking your money to prep orders and they don't even start
I had thought things were getting better after Kirby went, but seems to be heading in same awful, we don't care about customers after we have their money situation.

Stockist store in Canada here.
We received our Tyranids yesterday (Tuesday after release)
Our Rep said it was a wide-spread problem.
This is the first time an initial release has been late.
Now restocking.... That's another issue.

Greenfield wrote:

Jaxmeister wrote:
This seems weird to me, in the past if I placed a preorder with them then it arrived at my home on day of release. In that vein I pre-ordered Tyranid codes and other bits and pieces from the new preorder list. However Saturday comes and nothing same on Monday, not even a confirmation email with order on way.
I got on their site chat and asked why and was told going forward all pre-orders will start to be processed on the Monday following the release, unless it's a bank holiday so gets processed on next working day. What the fetch is this about? You place an order a week before going on sale and they don't even start to process until days after it goes in store. The exception is that if you get it delivered to a store instead you get it on release day. As a disabled person I find this intolerable, so guess who won't preorder from them again. I've been very loyal to them since before Rogue Trader and never used independent stores which was financially stupid. However from now on anything I get won't be from them. Another stupid way to lose customers. I double checked this answer both by phoning them and on a chat with another worker and told by all that it's now standard practice to do it this way.

You mention that you're a disabled person. You could consider telling them that you find the policy discriminatory, if you feel that's the case, since somebody able to visit a store is able to have their order delivered for release day. I don't know if this would meet the legal definition for discrimination, or if anti-discrimination laws would be relevant in this area anyway, but most companies nowadays wouldn't want to risk the perception.

Not sure that would work.

As I mentioned above, my advance order to be collected in store was also dispatched after the release day and this was explicitly mentioned in the email.

FROM GW WEBSITE-

New products are available to pre-order on our webstore almost every Saturday. Pre-Orders dispatch after the launch day.

Please Note: We will endeavour to get all pre-orders dispatched as soon as possible after the launch day, deliveries may be disrupted locally depending on regional conditions and policies.

DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS

“After” used 2x

They don't want people getting them "early" and thus would rather you have them late. They want you to come into their stores to get it, no one else's.

It's why stockists here get them on the Thursday. Very hard to ship around the country a day and a half before the weekend (no standard weekend mail over here). So it's either go into a store, or wait until Tueday/Wednesday (depending on where you are) before you get your "pre" order. Or later, if you work for a living and get home after 5pm as every post office closes at 5pm.

Sometimes I get lucky and the parcel pick-up boxes are empty enough that they slot it in one of those and send me an SMS so I can grab it after I get to the station. If not through I'm stuck waiting until a day when I'm working from home so I can use my lunch break to pick it up, or rush to the post office before they close on Saturday (where they're only open for a small part of the day, because why would a post office ever want to be convenient to anyone...).

Occasionally you get lucky and someone breaks street date and you get it a couple of days before release date. Or sometimes you have a store that has a different distribution method, so Australia/NZ delays do not affect you and you get them when everyone else does.

I miss the good old days where you could go into a GW store on a Thursday and get the new releases early so you could have them built and painted for Saturday gaming.

Thing is, this is not isolated to just GW. Everything gets delays in distribution. Maybe some people forget there's still a war in Europe happening and there's still a lot of troubles with China as well. And the rest (like it or not, Covid hasn't disappeared, even though a lot of dumb people make their best to act as it has).

There's no "going back to normal" as long as this situation is still the same worldwide.

The only thing not having delays is everything without a physical release like video games...and even though, some delays still manage to happen there.

Get used to it like climate change. It's here to stay.

TBH I'm disliking more and more that "pre-order culture". Now if I can, I just get it when it is physically in store and I pay it only when I get the product in hand. And if it's "definitively unavailable" meanwhile, well I didn't really need it anyway.

GW makes their models in the UK. Apart from the big scenery and the odd other bit.
So offshore (China) printing holds their realeases up a lot, but there are ways they could get around that.

But worldwide distribution, yeah, there's not a lot they can do about that.

Giving this a little bump, curious to hear from others if they have the same experience, but around here the GW supply situation has gotten so awful that new releases may take up to a month(!) to reach independent retailers now..

This week will be the test - stores should be getting their Marine pre-orders so there's a weeks 'buffer' before release.