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 Shooter wrote:
Do people think Skaventide is likely to be around for a while, or sell out soon? Roughly on a scale of 0 (Sold out before it's even gone 10am) to 10 (Dominion)

I think it will be around for a while but it will sell out eventually. It also depends on where you are. It's selling very well here in Japan where the Japanese version sold out in two days, pretty well in the UK, decently in America but not well at all in Italy and Germany. As an example Alchemist workshops had a hundred copies left a couple of weeks ago but has now sold out so it's still selling. If the Skaven and Stormcast reveals are great and everyone wants to collect those armies, it will probably sell a bit faster.
The GW store will sell out last as everyone wants a discount. Their token offer expires on Halloween so it's possible they'll stop selling it then. I'd put it at about a 6 on the Cursed City to Dominion scale.

In Japan? Really? That's interesting, i didn't think wargaming had much of a foothold there. Especially GW's hyper expensive stuff.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
In Japan? Really? That's interesting, i didn't think wargaming had much of a foothold there. Especially GW's hyper expensive stuff.

In their recent financial report they said Asia was one of the their fastest growing regions. They've definitely been opening quite a few new stores recently including a Warhammer cafe in Tokyo.

Japan has a huge scale modelling community, Gundam, Tamiya, all from Japan. Plus a huge potential otaku audience. Tokyo has multiple Warhammer stores, and the flagship store in Akihabara is huge, about the size of the Warhammer World shopping area.

yeah it's not a surprise to learn that warhammer is big in Japan, especially since there aren't any major model properties that fill the same niche. gundam is bigger and painting is an optional step, and the final result has a very different feel

Oh i was aware of the scale modelling, Gundams and such is huge over there. I just didn't think there was much of a crossover for the gaming side of things.

AoS in particular appeals to Japanese/asian audiences, over the top western mythic "gonzo fantasy" is big in Asia. Stormcast (especially the more modern 3rd/4th style) are a very approachable aesthetic for Japanese and Chinese audiences.

The game also works well on smaller tables which is relevant to the space constraints typical of many Asian cities.

Also also, the Akihabara warhammer Cafe has a go go curry like right next to it. Good reason to visit.

Warhammer might be increasingly popular in Tokyo (which, IIRC, is where all the GW shops are), but I really don't think it's that popular in the rest of the country. In the few places where I've seen it stocked, it is usually ridiculously expensive and seems to be keeping the shelves warm. That said, I have seen the new AoS set advertised in Japanese modelling magazines, so maybe it's gaining traction.

Well, we are of course speaking in relative terms. I don't think anyone is claiming that it's as big as Gundam or anything, just that AoS has a certain level of appeal

 Shooter wrote:
Do people think Skaventide is likely to be around for a while, or sell out soon? Roughly on a scale of 0 (Sold out before it's even gone 10am) to 10 (Dominion)

It's going to be an 11.

Like a "Maybe AoS is a specialty game?" level disaster. Or, "We're moving to two-year editions for 40K!"

In the US, it's still available at GW, with the marker token promos.

The store I like, AZ Gamer's Guild, shows their inventory at 359 units in stock, down from 360 last week. At this rate, it'll sell through in five years or so.

I'd imagine that, given Dominion hung around the entire edition for less than the cost of a mid-level starter kit, they dialed back Skaventide production. The fact that it's moving so slowly is a really bad sign.

I like AoS and think it is home to some of GW's best miniature designs, but it's depressing that such a good-value box is dribbling out of the gate.

Again, discussed as above depends entirely where you are. Leviathan never sold out either, but people don't doompost about that.

I quite enjoy not having to be on the website within 3 minutes of release or miss out.

I, too, like being able to buy discount boxes without having to set up a bot army.

I also enjoy investing in game systems that I feel confident will continue to be supported by their makers and the player base. The slow start of Skaventide, following the Dominion debacle, has me worried about the latter issue!

I hope the game thrives, and the fact that they relaunched Old World gives me hope that they're happy with their fantasy franchise, but as someone who remembers the End Times, I'm a little nervous!

So where's the nervousness for 40K when their boxes don't sell out?

It's a game GW can't win

If the box sells out its a disaster because GW under-estimated the sales volume and didn't satisfy everyone. The game is dead because GW won't invest enough into it to allow it to grow

If the box doesn't sell out its a disaster because GW overproduced and that means the game isn't selling as well as we hope and that means GW might kill it or lower investment.


Both extremes are kind of things we've seen before. The thing is I think people panic too fast - it takes more than 1 box for that to happen and it takes a LOT of other factors and there's the scale of things too. There's a whole lot more sales and info that we need data on that we don't have.



In the end I fully expect skaventide to perhaps not sell out but certainly there wil lbe a peak time where the split sets and halves will be at their market lowest price whilst stock is abundant. Then prices will steadily rise and rise as stock dwindles out more and more and is more in the hands of traders than gamers etc.

As I've said before I expect this to happen for Skaven faster than Stormcast.

I said at the start of this i would have been very surprised if it sells out. It just gets tiring seeing the same doomposting over and over again. As far as i can see, it's done very well in some places, not so in others. As anybody would probably expect.

I do expect however that once the full army reveals for the rats and Stormcast come out, it's going to create a second wind as people want access to those units for cheaper.

Fully agreed.

I expect we'll see a surge in demand that will eat up a bunch of stock when the reveals happen as people grab cheap entries into new armies that they want for the new shiny things.

So I'd fully expect to see places like ebay show a jump in prices over the weekend, esp for skaven stuff as they have their preview first

Honestly I think it's a bigger indictment of TOW than AoS. How dare the supposed legions of Skaven players not buy truckload of Skaventide boxes to build their armies. I was told my the TOW group on Facebook that it's bigger than AoS!

And don't forget, wise men wait for the army book.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly I think it's a bigger indictment of TOW than AoS. How dare the supposed legions of Skaven players not buy truckload of Skaventide boxes to build their armies. I was told my the TOW group on Facebook that it's bigger than AoS!

I'm reminded of something a staffer told me a fair while back in that Skaven were never actually a popular army. They just had a very loud, vocal minority.

That... sounds like a staffer, alright. Pulling whatever they need out of their bumhole to justify themselves in the moment.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly I think it's a bigger indictment of TOW than AoS. How dare the supposed legions of Skaven players not buy truckload of Skaventide boxes to build their armies. I was told my the TOW group on Facebook that it's bigger than AoS!

I'm reminded of something a staffer told me a fair while back in that Skaven were never actually a popular army. They just had a very loud, vocal minority.

The Skaven were one of those armies where you had to absolutely love them to play, because they were absolutely going to blow up in your face. Self-destructing Skaven was a feature, not a bug.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly I think it's a bigger indictment of TOW than AoS. How dare the supposed legions of Skaven players not buy truckload of Skaventide boxes to build their armies. I was told my the TOW group on Facebook that it's bigger than AoS!

I'm reminded of something a staffer told me a fair while back in that Skaven were never actually a popular army. They just had a very loud, vocal minority.

The Skaven were one of those armies where you had to absolutely love them to play, because they were absolutely going to blow up in your face. Self-destructing Skaven was a feature, not a bug.

Well that and painting 500 nigh-identical models.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly I think it's a bigger indictment of TOW than AoS. How dare the supposed legions of Skaven players not buy truckload of Skaventide boxes to build their armies. I was told my the TOW group on Facebook that it's bigger than AoS!

I'm reminded of something a staffer told me a fair while back in that Skaven were never actually a popular army. They just had a very loud, vocal minority.

I mean, with 15 playable armies (I think), in WHFB 8th, even a perfectly balanced distribution of players would mean any faction has quite a small minority as a playerbase. (And gods, isn't the "vocal minority" argument not really tired and boring for something for which we don't have data and anything can be argued?)

I also wouldn't be surprised if many TOW Skaven players (however few or many there are of those these days, especially as a Legacy army with a possibly more uncertain future?) would just pick up the few models they want from eBay instead of getting the full box. Big artillery has no direct equivalent in WHFB (could be used as a warp lightning cannon most easily I suppose), don't think the mounted warlord has any particularly nice proxy option in TOW, and with slaves being dropped in TOW, anyone with an existing Skaven collection may well have too many clanrats already (if that's not complete heresy to suggest ), rather than wanting another 40. Leaves Rogres (great), jezzails (excellent to finally have in plastic), and some characters, of which Grey Seers are certainly less useful to have many of compared to other armies which can have lower level wizards. Oh, and the entire other half of the box is pretty useless if interested in TOW and playing in more of an TOW bubble. So yeah, despite stylistic and scalewise compatibility between the old and new Skaven sculpts, and while I'm sure some players would have gotten the box, I'm not sure if it would be the most attractive box possible for veteran WHFB Skaven players anyway.

one problem with Skaven was that the style of the various units was rather different and with various ages not easy to get a cohesive looking army

add in that the special units you needed were either OOP or metal/finecast

so most existing players already have enough core infantry for 2 armies but miss out on specialist like Ogres and Jezzails, so they are not going to buy 2 core boxes each to get the 6 Jezzails they want and adding another 80 infantry to throw away as no one needs them

much easier to get 3D printed/resin ones that fit the old style models for TOW while in AoS most are going to wait for the army book before they decide if or what they want (and not like the only sales numbers we ever got from GW showed that new model boxes only sell well if combined with a book release)

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
Oh, and the entire other half of the box is pretty useless if interested in TOW and playing in more of an TOW bubble.

I could see some small possibility to turn Stormcasts into some Chaos Champions etc., possibly Slaanesh ones, but yeah, it is probably too minor to even consider.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Well, we are of course speaking in relative terms. I don't think anyone is claiming that it's as big as Gundam or anything, just that AoS has a certain level of appeal

That's a fair interpretation. AoS's high fantasy is a bit closer to how many Japanese IPs depict western history/mythology than TOW is.

 flaherty wrote:
I also enjoy investing in game systems that I feel confident will continue to be supported by their makers

Supporting, like, for hypothetical example, adding really nice looking, universally praised magic/ranged/cavalry/monster expansion to their failing flagship faction, then squatting it without a word next edition so completely there are zero even remotely close alternatives to count it as, turning said flagship faction back into troglodyte 'walk forward slowly and hit them with a stick' one trick pony that was so unpopular during the first edition?

Just asking for a friend

Are you ready for some ratsomeness? Starting soon...yes, yes!
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/08/10/the-slaughter-at-hel-crown-global-campaign-the-winner-revealed/

Good lord, those are some phenomenal models