cornixt:
I’m building cardboard armies for my kids.
zobo1942:
Hmmm… even MORE economical… That is a very good idea.
Do you think that a significant number of people are looking for alternatives to ‘high price’ GW miniatures (ie. Mantic, cardboard, etc…) for large scale games, or maybe moving into skirmish-style games which use fewer miniatures?
GRNDL:
Do you think that a significant number of people are looking for alternatives to 'high price' GW miniatures (ie. Mantic, cardboard, etc....) for large scale games, or maybe moving into skirmish-style games which use fewer miniatures?Nope, I think they've already found them. At least locally, down here in Niagara, business in non-GW systems is flourishing once lines of distribution have been found. Let's face it, there's tons of rules systems out there, much better than Warhammer Fantasy/40K, with deeper, more varied rulesets, cheaper, etc. Some even for free. Warhammer itself is a brand name product. People like it/play it because its usually the first thing they run into, but after awhile peeps look for new thrills.
zobo1942
beefcake:
Before moving into wargaming. My brothers and I, when we were really young used to use lego blocks representing different units etc. Those really long blocks were awesome. 
entombet:
Hehe some years ago i was thinking, damn those FW minis are nice but damn pricy, now most gw plastics cost more than fw resin ;]
Discoking:
My friend runs a shop with a tables area for tournaments & club games etc.
He sells a variety of models/games, WH, 40k, hordes, warmachine, AoW, Mantic, Perry minis, Malifaux, Raging Heroes, to name but a few.
When he started stocking GW products they would ask how many promo games he had done & starter/learner games etc.
But nowadays (this price hike included), they just talk about money, how many sales were made & how much stock there is.
Another friend of mine works in GW, he came out of the meeting with his boss informing of the price rise… Just shaking his head in disbelief.
Would they make more money by lowering prices?
By essentially selling more stock for less, would equate to more than less stock for more?
What’s happening to GW! Lol
spineyrequiem:
I saw someone on Warseer who’d made ‘pocket 40k’ using epic models on some very, very small bases. You could probably do the same with Warmaster models, that would be an awful lot cheaper… and easier to carry, of course!
Willmark:
GW price increases?
For me I don’t care. I stopped buying their models years ago. For the ocassinal stuff I need it’s VultureBay.
Barring that if I need a new CD army its of to Titan minis.
inkpwn:
Just had to go through this weeks order for my friends store, battle forces are going up by about £10 each and alot of unit boxes are going up by about £4 each and that’s at cost!
We stocked up on the popular items before the price bump, £70 rrp for a battalion? $od off G-dub. >.<
Oh, also, hardbound warhammer army books are going up to £27 rrp. I like to think of this as hours work to gameplay, at my current average pay rate of about £6.10 an hour I have to work just under five hours to afford a army book, I’m never going to get value for money out of this hobby. I will just finish my chaos dwarf army and my blood bowl team and I think I’m calling it quits on anymore G-dubbery.
Willmark:
GW is getting to the point of near mutiny IMHO.
1) for them customers are interchangeable in a one to one manner. Old gamer leaves replace with a 10-year old playing space marines.
2) the overall success of 40k is self reinforcing. Why “waste” money on other lines and/or minis when they can make X more from 40k. This limits scope no different then say Kodak in film being reluctant to move to digital.
GW is headed to a point very much like akin to TSR/WoC. They are the 800 lb gorilla in the room, but one that no one is affraid of anymore. Whereas their dominance was once unquestioned there are a number of small players where they had once, nearly, strangled off all competition. Pathfinder outsells 4e D&D now.
They have to keep up with the price increases because the customer base is not expanding to any great degree. That failure will leave them wanting down the road.
This is of course to say nothing about the fact that people have many other options for their disposable income.
beefcake:
A lot of the armies I have for Warhammer are GW free. I have about 2-3000points of Warriors of Chaos using Privateer Press, Heresy, Hasslefree and Reaper Miniatures. All in metal yet still about half the cost of GW plastics. I’ll probably start up an Ogre army soon with Mantic releasing there ogre range next year.
zobo1942:
Pathfinder outsells 4e D&D now.Wow, really? That's amazing! I always enjoyed reading the 'Adventure Paths' in Dungeon magazine - I'm really impressed they have become so popular!
Willmark
And with their kickstarter campaign:
PATHFINDER ONLINE
they are posed to go even further.
wallacer:
Pathfinder outsells 4e D&D now.That's because Pathfinder is fantastic.
Willmark
Parish:
Something incredible is that , they also sell some LOTR minis , that part of their selling is ( Just need to see who is still buying them ) not really profitable . Even with low priced mini .
Knowing that they will produce a new wave of minis with the Hobbit coming out in december .
They will be subject to that rising price (they already are ), I don’t know what is their aim but , they can’t really make money out of that sector of their market , even if people are quite stimulated by the movie .
I mean Lotr minis don’t really interest people anymore , and the situation might be worse with those price .
Anyway concerning WFB ebay is the best place imo .
beefcake:
Although in my opinion the LotR minis are much superior in realism (if not sculpting quality). But I only ever bought one bunch of second hand stuff really cheaply and then sold them all off about 3 weeks later making about 3 times the money back.
Willmark:
Doesn’t hurt that WoC simultaneously shot themselves in the foot with the Open GL and releasing 4e which dispite what the 4e fans will tell you was a commercial flop. How do I know? Easy. There is no way WoC would have released 5th edition D&D Next 4 years after 4e debuted to meh sales. Paizo publishing was smart and used the OGL to the hilt and replicated the rules and stole a huge swath of fans from WoC. Plus the rules meant that those that liked 3.0/3.5 could use everything they bought previously for D&D. Now WoC is left with two groups who will potentially buy D&D Next… Those that bought 4e and those players who still play Basic, 1st or 2nd. Problem is that neither group has much in common with the other. I don’t really see 3.0/3.5 devotees abandoning Pathfinder. So with only two camps to draw from (and the old school camp hostile to WoC their prospects are limited).
GW in the other hand has been smart or at least lucky enough to avoid edition wars. Their problem is that no one has yet pathfinder(ed) them… Yet. IMHO it could be done with Warhammer but no one has taken on the effort yet. There are enough talented folks here that could do it. I’ve seen some attempts arround the web but it hasn’t got compelling enough for the average GW customer to jump ship… Again that’s yet. You can’t copyright to the rules contrary to GWs claims, you an copyright the fluff, and why you describe the rules. I think one reason for GWs hyper vigilance in the Legal Office is they realize how precarious that perch they currently occupy is.
I should add to bring this full circle that the money is not in the rules it’s in the minis. And people are getting just as good, if not better at sculpting as GW.
Bitterman:
I should add to bring this full circle that the money is not in the rules it's in the minis. And people are getting just as good, if not better at sculpting as GW.Not just sculpting, but distribution.
Willmark
20-25 years ago, if an independent sculptor came up with something awesome, how would he sell it? Who would he sell it to? People knew of GW... they didn't know about anything else. You could buy models from shops, but those shops were almost always GW-only anyway, and there really wasn't any other way of doing it. Even simple mail order was risky - I still remember the line drawings in wargames magazines that were often all you had to go on (no digital photography) so you didn't even know what you were buying, half the time!
Now, the same sculptor could do the same thing... mention it on Facebook... maybe someone there mentions it on Warseer... next thing you know, thousands of people are placing orders via a website.
If anything is killing GW, it's that IMO.
Vardan Painkiller:
whats killing GW is GW
recent price policy
game rules policy
its their own fault, besides they use it as an excuse to get more money
rpitts2004:
I will continue to play with GW as long as it is around to play.
Vogon:
The main reason I stick with GW is there are few viable alternatives around where I can get to game and eve more importantly use the models.
The local gaming store is a GW store and the local club is a GW affiliated club. While I would love to expand my repertoire and already have many non-GW models the reality is that only the GW stuff gets used because that’s the only place I regularly get to play.
I’m very tempted by doing a chaos army based around the Avatars of War miniatures but I know if I did they’d just live in a box because I wouldn’t have opportunity to use them.
I tried to go a little further afield to get games in but it meant getting back home far too late for me to be able to get up at a reasonable time for work the next day (damn that real life thing) so I had to reluctantly abandon that in favour of GW and a reasonable amount of sleep on a work night.
I will continue to love my gaming but will more and more look for cheaper alternatives to buying directly from GW for their own product.
Cheers
Vogon