One issue for a GW semi-loyalist such as myself is, “When does the prices pass the pain threshold for would-be newcomers to the hobby?” Or for veterans. The recent two years’ price hikes seem to have passed said threshold, with the poor performance of GW’s Hobbit game as opposed to its older Lotr game during the movie years as a stark sign.
Small grudges about codex creep, scuppered bitz service and pricing policy aside, I’ve long received good value for my investments into the (GW-controlled non-historical) wargaming hobby, and I want GW to remain strong in the long term. One don’t need to slavishly follow the book to appreciate what GW have provided for the hobby, and though I understand that GW again turns a decent profit, their current price policy might at worst eat their heart out in the future by alienating potential new hobbyists and old veterans alike.
Have Games Workshop passed the price pain threshold? Where does that threshold lie, and are Forgeworld’s good sales in part due to GW main’s rapidly rising prices?
It’s gone passed mine. I look at what I have and just think “I can play perfectly fine with this, nothing new needed”. I have a load of army books and rule books that work fine for 6th-7th edition, enough figures to switch out, and so I will play with what I have and nothing more.
I’ve sold most of my miniatures, and got rid of most of my warhammer rulebooks (v. 6 - 8) a week or two ago. I still like the ‘fluff’, but my days of collecting miniatures are over, I think - although I really like the price point of the Reaper ‘Bones’ miniatures.
I've sold most of my miniatures, and got rid of most of my warhammer rulebooks (v. 6 - 8) a week or two ago. I still like the 'fluff', but my days of collecting miniatures are over, I think - although I really like the price point of the Reaper 'Bones' miniatures.
zobo1942
Please excuse my curiosity, but do you plan to keep a core collection of your favourite miniatures, and perhaps even favourite army? Miniature collections may be forever, even if they are not added to, and even if prices currently makes one sick, one never knows if one wants to make some kind of return to the hobby in the future.
I’ve pretty much stopped buying anything but books from GW.
I do still buy the odd model that I really like but most of those are from Forge World these days. I’m not planning any more miniature purchases at all until at least the new year.
I like many had extensive army collections and I am in the process of slowly thinning out my collection on ebay. I’m going to hang on to a couple of armies for 40K and WHB but the constant price rises have effectively priced me out. I would not consider starting a new army just because of the financial outlay.
I stopped participating on the GW price increase treadmill years ago.
I’ve said it for years that eventually GW will force themselves from the market with their ever increasing price changes. I still believe that. The only question is where each person draws that line.
In my case take my current army: Nippon. All eBay or trades for it means GW gets precisely zilch for my purchases.
Personally I have little to no sympathy for them as a company with their ridiculous price gouging. They need to remember they sell a non-essential product, but looking at their pricing? They sure seem to think otherwise … As always YMMV.
I remember a few years ago there was uproar when someone (I can�?Tt remember who though) in the Annual Report stated that GW customers are price insensitive and will buy the new models regardless of price increases.
It seems that they genuinely believe this and are doing their level best to prove it.
The price got too high years ago. That’s also one of the reasons 've only been playing mordheim and blood bowl for years.
GW does make the best miniatures and their games are the best. But there’s more and more cool alternatives out there. Kings of War and Russian Alternative etc.
One thing is the constant price increase, I don’t like the way thing are “getting bigger”. All armies suddently has to get big stuff - and alot of it doesn’t fit the setting. Demi-griffons, necrosphinx and khorne super tank in 40k. It’s just too silly.
I have bought my last minis used or old sprues people have lying around. My next project will be a Dogs of War army, this I’ll also be able to build from used miniatures.
I will say this though - you still get value for money. It might be expensive, but looking at the time it take to build, convert, paint and play with the miniatures it’s still cheap. Compared to the money I spend going to the cinema, hitting the pub and so on.
We also have to remember they actually lowered the price some years ago, because plastic got cheaper. Still too expensive for me though.
At a point price becomes a deal breaker or at least it becomes a hobby of a small segment of society. One could argue we are now there or past it .
Without getting too political it’s not a cheap hobby from the time or investment standpoint. Yet GW keeps going full to oblivion. “What’s that? Reports of icebergs ahead?” "Add more speed."
People like to think that everything has permanence. In the business world particularly RPGS/war gaming that is not so. That’s to say that there is only so much money that goes into the disposable income/hobby bucket of peoples finances.
Now dies that mean that teenagers who GW seems most keen on attracting are price sensitive? Probably not, but their parents might be. And if not you add in the distraction factor of video games for instance.
This isn’t 1988, yet in many ways GW acts like it is. I think the path of GW will continue to be one of a long decline if for no other reason then changing tastes on the part of the customer.
I could be wrong but with ever increasing overhead and their money bring made on the figures not the rules? Imagine when an average home user can recast their minis in a 3-d printer of sufficient capability and at low cost…
Like Willmark I haven’t purchased a new GW mini in many years…more than 15 years in my case. Their pricing was nutty then…now it’s hard to even fathom. That said if you have the armies you want and rules you like then I don’t see any reason to stop playing…just stop buying! I play rules that were published in the 80s with figures from the same time period…if you get out if the organized tournament scene you can do whatever you want with the aorta if the hobby that you like and you can forget about the rest.
Yeah was always surprised there wasn’t as much division in the game as say D&D editions. I get the reasons why in terms of the dynamics there, the history of Gygax, his departure etc, I lived through those times too. The D&D splits have been pronounced each time, some more some less.
Maybe- perhaps the fact that there largely hasn’t been too much rancor is why there hasn’t too much of a division in warhammer.
I think the “old hammer” movement that is starting to gather steam could be the first sign of it. Time will tell.
Also this is a war gaming topic so off to there with it! Woosh!
They passed it for me a long time ago. I only buy from Wayland or ebay now and Wayland are at my limit as well now so one more increase and i wont even buy from them. Even the paints are becoming unaffordable. Like a lot of other people ive thinned down my collection over the past few years to my core favourites and wont be buying much more or starting any new armies.
I've sold most of my miniatures, and got rid of most of my warhammer rulebooks (v. 6 - 8) a week or two ago. I still like the 'fluff', but my days of collecting miniatures are over, I think - although I really like the price point of the Reaper 'Bones' miniatures.
zobo1942
Please excuse my curiosity, but do you plan to keep a core collection of your favourite miniatures, and perhaps even favourite army? Miniature collections may be forever, even if they are not added to, and even if prices currently makes one sick, one never knows if one wants to make some kind of return to the hobby in the future.
Admiral
I have a few miniatures left, but I have sold/given away nearly everything. I've become a lot more interested in skirmish-style games - mostly because they require a LOT fewer models and the same amount of terrain scratch-building, which I really enjoy and is a VERY inexpensive hobby.
I have been very tempted by the reaper 'Bones' line:
I picked up a few of those just to check them out, and I think they may represent a 'reset' as it relates to miniature pricing. They have less detail, but they are so dramatically less expensive that I can get past that.
Regarding 'The Hobby': I still find it interesting - mostly seeing what other creative people do with their miniatures - but when I see the prices of some of the models, I just can't justify spending that. It's not that the games or miniatures aren't awesome - they are - but there are a lot of other things I would rather do with my money.
My next project is what to do with my 'White Dwarf' magazines. I think I may go through them and take out the articles that interest me, and recycle the remainder. I rarely look through them anymore, and they just take up too much space.
I hardly buy GW items anymore either. It’s all because of the prices, or rather what you get for what you pay.
There are a few boxes that are still on my “want” list, but they’re all older boxes, such as a box of Wood Elf Glade riders �,�20,- (with discount) for 8 cavalry isn’t too bad, but still high enough to prevent me from buying it on impulse. There’s a lot of GW boxes out there that I would have to think hard about buying even if they were half price and that’s saying something! If the new Witch Elves were �,�22,50 for 10 I still wouldn’t buy them.
I think there’s only two things that keep GW running. The first is that it’s still by far the best known brand and is easiest to find in stores. I’m certain that there’s a large group of people who have never really seen much of the competition. The second reason is that they have a very complete range of miniatures. It’s convenient to be able to buy and field all the unit options.
However, I think both of these strong points are diminishing. GW has always tried to pretend that they are the only ones in the miniature market. This thing called the internet didn’t do them any good in that regard and more and more companies are popping up and quickly expanding their ranges.
Games Workshop does not make the prettiest miniatures, nor do they have the best game system. I think it’s only a matter of time before Warhammer suddenly isn’t the most played game in tournaments or most available in shops. I think Games Workshop will fall pretty hard when that happens.
It’s crazy how it works really. Imagine a new hobbyist looking at a display cabinet in a store and he can either choose between spending �,�40,- on 20 GW Skeletons or �,�30,- on 40 Mantic Games Skeletons. With both being well-painted I just cannot imagine the majority of people picking Games Workshop. It’s a shame you never see that match-up.
They passed it for me a long time ago. I only buy from Wayland or ebay now and Wayland are at my limit as well now so one more increase and i wont even buy from them. Even the paints are becoming unaffordable. Like a lot of other people ive thinned down my collection over the past few years to my core favourites and wont be buying much more or starting any new armies.
Pyro Stick
^ this.
As you get older it gets more pronounced. I know it did for me. I've refused yo buy GWs over inflated paint prices for 20 years.
Also in my case I'm not crazy rich, but I'm not poor either. I'm also past the time of having 7 armies. So in a sense I'm not a target customer because (as we've noted in the last) their business model is predicated on 10-16 (maybe older) boys. The cont cater or look to longer term customers as because said target market (10-16 year old boys) is more or less interchangeable as far as they are concerned.
Y’know, I always find the price-moaning a bit silly and of late its actually started to irritate me. Sure, they charge a lot for their stuff - so don’t buy it if you don’t think its worth it. I don’t take it personally when something is more expensive than I am willing to or can pay, and if I like something a lot I will pay a lot to get it. I refuse to believe people are so poor they can’t afford a £35 boxed set once every few months. I can and I live in London, where absolutely everything is overpriced. So presumably people feel that the minis should be cheaper for some reason?
I particularly dislike the notion that because something is plastic, it should be cheap. The opposite is true. Metal and resin are ridiculously cheap to work with. I don’t run Kickstarters or anything yet Titan Wargames is very much in profit with next to no start-up costs or overheads. But I can only dream of plastics as the moulds costs tens of thousands of pounds per sprue and produce lighter models that don’t chip and are easier to build, paint and transport. People moan that plastic Witch Elves are £3.50 each, yet 3 years ago metal Witch Elves were around £3.30 each - models that cost a teeny tiny fraction of the plastics to produce and were far less convenient in pretty much every way. Just saying.
Many of GW’s competitors actually have similar prices or higher anyway but somehow don’t seem to get the same flak.
I could be wrong but with ever increasing overhead and their money bring made on the figures not the rules? Imagine when an average home user can recast their minis in a 3-d printer of sufficient capability and at low cost…
I don’t look forward to a 3D printer revolution. I can’t help but feel it will hurt the sculptors, artists and small companies the most.
