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The Start Collecting! sets have been applauded as an example of GW turning things around, by lowering the cost of entry into their games.

While its good news that some minis are cheaper than they were, the price of various kits now seems highly inconsistent.

Start Collecting! Ironjawz is one of the most extreme examples, as unlike most other SC! sets it includes some new for AoS kits (which tend to be a higher price).

It includes:

1 Warchanter (£18.50 individually) New kit
3 Goregruntas (£48 individually) New kit
10 Ardboyz (£32 for 15 individually, so £20ish for 10) Old kit

So, for £50 you get approx £86.50 worth of miniatures.

A few thoughts on this:

1) I would never buy warchanters, goregruntas or ardboys separately.
2) As this set came out after the initial release, I would think twice about buying any minis immediately after release - in case they were cheaper in the near future.
3) If I wanted to add a weirdnob shaman (£20), I would think more than twice as he now seems extremely expensive in relation to the rest of the force.

The SC! boxes are not the only example of this - the extra heroes for Silver Tower, Gorechosen game and others have the same issues.

Yeah, I find it a little funny because I held off on picking up Ironjawz as I figured they would end up "lowering the price" (aka Sale) with a Start Collecting! box at some point.

The reason I find it funny is because when I worked as a US Store Manager I remember them saying that they do not do sales, lower prices, or telegraph releases in advance because they found that customers will just wait for the products to get cheaper.

Well, I'm doing that now, and it seems like others are too. On a second look I actually decided to not get into AoS, at least not right now. I can't justify the cost to myself, maybe in a year or two when my finances are a little better I'll give it another look.

I agree that their pricing is extremely confusing. Why would I buy 3 Crisis Suits for £45, when I could get the Tau SC set for £50, and get a squad of Fire Warriors and an Ethereal too?

Very inconsistent indeed. As to the reason why, I have no clue

G.A

Look at the start collecting nid box. A ht, warriors and gargs. Ht is about 50 buck warriors are 30 thats 80 before you even add the gargs.

Point the first: GW is a "premium" model company, and much of the image and share price is based on that idea- so price drops on units is not really feasable.

Point the second: The cost of production for plastic kits is rather low on a marginal scale, so once initial releases have paid for the molds, the extra is profit

Point the third: A majority of the new bundles are a marginally higher price than the most expensive unit contained within (with one or two exceptions) so is a way to "upsell" while giving a better unit value of the contents within.

Point the fourth: new bundles are new SKUs, not price adjustments of existing ones, so does not violate point 1. Thus we can see oddities like the new Deathwatch character sets and vehicles being an existing kit with an added upgrade sprue for either a marginal increase in price plus additional contents (Land Raider containing LR, Crusader upgrade sprue, and DW upgrade sprue for only $5 more than the base Land Raider) Or actually a price drop compared to similar recent products (Terminator clampack with upgrade sprue for $5 less than most other clampack SM characters)

Point the fifth: bundle boxes can be used to include kits that are weaker in sales, allowing for a clearance of stock of particular kits, and support for the production run, justifying the creation of certain kits with expected weak demand- especially special characters. Without Overkill, how many sales could a plastic Cassius model expect? Eldrad in Death Masque allows for far more "sales" of the model from players buying the box set than could be expected by a single release targeting new Eldar players and the ones intending to add the model or replace the old version.

Point the sixth- Getting started boxes are functionally acting as loss leaders, a better value set to get players to start or expand an army. But unlike actual loss leaders, GW is still making a profit on the boxes, just not as high a margin as on the individual kits.

Nobody's mentioned "Start Collecting! Seraphon" yet? It's literally the same price as the standalone Carnosaur that it contains. Without some kind of discount on the Carnosaur, it's pretty much invalidated as something that people would want to ever buy.

It's not really inconsistent. It's more of a modern selling strategy. They are only truly bargains if you were already going to buy them. If it encourages you to start a new army then GW wins because then once they have hooked you, they hope you will then pick up the newer more expensive or older numerous models.

In effect the Start Collecting box sets are full of old or poorly selling sets that in effect GW are willing to take less profit on (or have alredy made their money on and are rinsing the last few pounds out of the molds.

The Lizardmen set is full of old models, all that likely have paid for themselves many times over
The Black Orcs set has the flight controller and bearded boar boys that were generally poorly received with an old box set (Note the new popular parts of the range are not included).
Wood Elves are old sets with one new command model
The Sigmarines are all models you can get in the starter set (so demand for these models will be low).
Tau Starter set is full of models that are relatively new but are really only tweaked versions of the old models (so hence demand overall will be low)
etc, etc.

You make these sets eyecatching price wise, hook you with a new army then GW reels you in with the more expensive models; that's there idea.

Remember something is only a bargain if you were going to buy it in the first place, if not then you are actually spending more than you ever intended.
Note this goes for all shopping from those discounted designer jeans you were never going to buy until you saw the sale icon to the buy 3 for 2 cans of beans from your supermarket (when you never went there to buy any beans)

It's a marketing ploy nothing more

I understand that lots of box sets have lower margins to entice people into GW's portion of the hobby.

I suppose my issue is with the obvious manipulation of the margins.

A customer in a GW store/website could be understandably confused when looking at a game with four Khorne heroes costing £35 and a set of three with no game costing £54.

The inconsistency between the two, highlights to the customer the 'artificial' level of the price.

Previously this has been less obvious, as the cheaper models were in the core starter boxes and were not always the same standard as the rest of the range (pushfit etc.).

I can only hope when someone comes in looking for goregruntas that staff always point them in the direction of the SC! set.

Edited for spelling and apostrophes.

These box sets have got me hook line and sinker on starting a new army.

Quite ridiculous profit they're making from me now lol

Grabbing a copy of Open Combat, Song of Blade & Heroes, or one of One Page Rules' great games and then these Start Collecting boxes makes for a great first and last GW purchase. It's all you need for hours of modelling and gaming. GW might want you to play huge games with tons of models and all sorts of huge monster kits on 120mm bases and also get into buying their higher priced items where the cost of a single character is a solid way to another Start Collecting box, but you don't have to. The best way to get the best value out of GW's offerings is to stick to products like these Start Collecting sets and completely ignore the marketing tools they pretend are game rules.

I understand that they're not willing to lower prices and introduce bundles instead. I don't quite get the pricing of new releases, though. Sylvaneth was okay-ish, the ckampack was less than the latest few before here AFAIK but the dryad dreadnought ia almost as much as a treeman and Alarielle can only be called "more affordable" compared to the likes of nuArchaon. The Ironjawz on the other hand had more expensive characters and the eyewatering gore gruntas. It seems the price hike isn't as clockwork as the new releaes in 7th and 8th were, but still more than they should be. Missed chance IMO, even though they sold out both Ironjawz and Sylvaneth (unknown quantities so no proper comparison possible to other releases).

The SC are mostly fine, but I remember the good old battalions that actually had four full regiment boxes before they started crap like" 2 less Pegasi knights but FOUR more archers". Sigh. But their upsell is strong and I bought one already (sold the char, got plague drones for free with the stuff I wanted, basically) and several others are tempting me. They got my brother into Sylvaneth. With UK importing I can get one for less than 50 € which is my cut off point for non-starter boxes or othrr pile-o-minis things.

They need to bring out more cheap bundles though or keep new releases at lower prices for me to really get excited.

Unfortunately it's regionally inconsistent as well. Like, the Lizardmen Start Collecting set is great value in most countries because it costs the same as a Carnosaur but comes with the Saurus and Cav thrown in. But in Australia, the Lizardmen SC box is 40% more than the cost of a Carnosaur, so it's not really great value unless you really want exactly 1 Carnosaur, 12 Saurus and 8 Cav, if you don't want exactly that you're better off buying separately.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
Point the first: GW is a "premium" model company, and much of the image and share price is based on that idea- so price drops on units is not really feasable.

Point the second: The cost of production for plastic kits is rather low on a marginal scale, so once initial releases have paid for the molds, the extra is profit

Point the third: A majority of the new bundles are a marginally higher price than the most expensive unit contained within (with one or two exceptions) so is a way to "upsell" while giving a better unit value of the contents within.

Point the fourth: new bundles are new SKUs, not price adjustments of existing ones, so does not violate point 1. Thus we can see oddities like the new Deathwatch character sets and vehicles being an existing kit with an added upgrade sprue for either a marginal increase in price plus additional contents (Land Raider containing LR, Crusader upgrade sprue, and DW upgrade sprue for only $5 more than the base Land Raider) Or actually a price drop compared to similar recent products (Terminator clampack with upgrade sprue for $5 less than most other clampack SM characters)

Point the fifth: bundle boxes can be used to include kits that are weaker in sales, allowing for a clearance of stock of particular kits, and support for the production run, justifying the creation of certain kits with expected weak demand- especially special characters. Without Overkill, how many sales could a plastic Cassius model expect? Eldrad in Death Masque allows for far more "sales" of the model from players buying the box set than could be expected by a single release targeting new Eldar players and the ones intending to add the model or replace the old version.

Point the sixth- Getting started boxes are functionally acting as loss leaders, a better value set to get players to start or expand an army. But unlike actual loss leaders, GW is still making a profit on the boxes, just not as high a margin as on the individual kits.

Point the seventh: Since GW often makes decisions about what to produce, sell, and stock based on what they can actually fit in their own stores' shelves, the new SC boxes let them save shelf space by putting that box on the shelves, and removing the boxes for some of the things that come in the SC box.

 General Annoyance wrote:
I agree that their pricing is extremely confusing. Why would I buy 3 Crisis Suits for £45, when I could get the Tau SC set for £50, and get a squad of Fire Warriors and an Ethereal too?

Very inconsistent indeed. As to the reason why, I have no clue

G.A

It gives them ability to make prices tad more reasonable without reducing prices of existing boxes they have sworn to their investors not to do.

It results in odd prices? Who cares. They still sell crisis boxes alone for sure and even if not GW cares not where money comes as long as it comes. It's better for them for you to spend 50£ for SC than 45£ for CS. Extra sprues are nickels anyway and box size wise is 1 SC box smaller(in shelves) than the individual boxes? If yes yet another reason to prefer SC boxes. Less store space and less warehouse space which costs money(which is why AOS starter sets in USA were sold by independent stores for less than they paid themselves. It's literally cheaper for them to sell them at loss than to keep taking space at shelves).