If you check over the prices on the new Games Workshop release you are going to be blown away. GW keeps raising prices with no end in sight.
The Khorne Lord of Skulls is $ 160. A massive kit for sure. But the highest price ever for a Games Workshop new release, by a factor of almost 50% (The Wraith Knight at $ 115 didn't keep that record for long). I am sure the Chaos minions will buy these up, but it will be interesting to see how popular this kit is. The Necron Tesseract Vault is the same price. I think both these kits will find their places in big armies. But you won't see multiples like you did previously with Baneblades.
The Baneblade, originally released in 2007 at $ 90 (a record at that time, when Land Raiders were $ 50) is now up to $ 140. A 50% increase in 6 years. Certainly no justification in raw material prices or inflation. I have 3 Baneblades. I would be hard pressed to justify buying them now.
The Collectors and Gamer Editions are both priced at a hefty $ 250. It will be interesting to see what is in them. I bought a Gamer's edition of 6th. And I will probably get one of these. But seriously, I am happy I will get away under $ 400 for everything I need.
40K is pricing people out of the game. And they are going to War Machine. I hear it every day. Go to any game store and you will hear the same thing. And GW, despite their policy of no online storefronts, pushes local gamers to online discounters, because they simply cannot afford to pay full GW retail.
Look at your units and they have all gone up 50-100% in a matter of 5 years. And why? Well, GW is a public company and at the very least, needs to show profit growth every year. And maybe, this is all part of the rumored GW sale, setting GW up to be acquired.
And Apocalypse? Well last time many of us ramped up our armies because of Apoc. I built 80,000 points over the last 4 years just to play Apoc. Would I do that now?
Probably not. At this point, Forge World prices arent that out of hand.
Loken
I've been feeling the same. I would love to add the new kits to my Wall of Martyrs but at those prices it's about twice the cost to add the new kits as I did for the original, not cool GW.
ReplyDeleteGW pricing is starting to become a serious issue to my mind. people have always moaned about prices but for most of my 20+ year journey in wargaming and i might have been tempted to agree with them, in the end though i would have still argued, 'this is a hobby, its frivolous at its very core. you can afford to pay for it, you just don't want to.' sadly, with the last few codex/army book releases i've been pushed to the other side of the argument. i genuinely can't afford to buy into the hobby any more. just buying the latest edition of the rulebooks is a serious investment, let alone buying new releases or even models just to make your army legal!
ReplyDeleteI hear ya tainly. I just got my wall all painted. its like gw knows I won't be buying a superheavy, and they made something else I'm almost compelled to buy cuz I've been saving for this launch and I want my plastic crack.
ReplyDeleteI understand what you're saying, but I disagree completely. Especially where Warmachine/Hordes are concerned. They are certainly not priced more competitively on a model-by-model basis.
ReplyDeletehttp://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery/convergence-of-cyriss/colossals/prime-axiom
The Prime Axiom is significantly smaller than the Wraith Knight, yet costs over $30 more. A ten man unit of Obstructors (a basic model on a 30mm base) costs $50, compared to less than $40 for an Eldar Guardian or Space Marine tactical squad. The difference between the cost of playing those two games is one of scale not price. Warmachine uses a significantly smaller number of units (and smaller unit sizes) but their individual models are actually more expensive. If you want to play similar sized games, 40K is actually significantly cheaper. Most people simply play bigger games of 40K than they do of Warmachine.
80k in four years? Wow that is impressive, where do you find the time to paint that much? Its taken me 20 years to reach 12k.
ReplyDeleteYeah i think i will be skipping this release. My 2 gaming partners have quit the game and i havent played apoc since.
40k might be reasonably priced model by model than other systems, the rules keep enlarging armies making collecting a viable army less and less attainable. And although i intended to be a 40k gamer till im 80 the truth is the hassle, time and cost is becoming unmanageable and i dont even have kids yet. Also im lucky to play 1 game a month, making the investment even less logical. But i am still a fanboy and havent shaken off the shackles just yet. So i understand people switching or even giving up.
I try not to compare as they are apples and oranges. GW is my favorite game of them all and imam thankful i have enough to play without starting all over. That being said the prices are outrageous. I am forced to pick and choose very carefully. I will by the basic apoc book and that will be about it. Holding out the space marine codex.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this is a US only problem. (just like availabillity, nothing on backorder here in germany ever). Your currency got depricated around 20% in the last years, add that to import tax and it matches the GP/€ pirice. When the Banblade came out it was 90 euros... its 95 now! (but they might ad to that on saturday)
ReplyDeletevery true.
Deleteyep, in Europe the GW stuff has always been expensive. I used the chance and looked up some prices from german WD2 (in WD1 there are no prices...) February 1995:
ReplyDeleteWh40k starter box: 120DM
Space Marine tactical squat (10 marines): 49.90DM
Space Marine Cybot: 64.90DM
using a ratio of 2:1 changing from DM to € and a normal escalation of 2% per year as well as a €/$ exchange rate of 1.3 we get some interesting results:
calculated value / present price (€)
85.7 / 78 for the starter box
35.6 / 30 for the marine squat
46.3 / 36 for the cybot
calculated value / present value ($)
111.4 / 99 stater box
46.3 / 37.25 for the marine squat
60.3 / 46.25 for the cybot
so in conclusion, I have to admit prices look rather stable to me from a German point of view.
If the prices in US increased significantly, I guess GW tried (successfully?) to enter the US market using low prices...
@Matthew:
ReplyDeleteThe WMH colossals are also made of different materials, more detailed, and usually amount to about 1/3 of the points of a normal sized army. A wraithknight is about 1/6. Compare a rhino at 35 points for 37.25 to almost anything and it is insane.
Not to mention the fact that as PP has been releasing units in plastic they're actually CHEAPER - something GW has never ever done. Winter Guard Infantry were about $75 for a whole unit. They released it in plastic for $50.
The local game shop has gone from zero Warmachine to running demos. Several people have started selling off their GW armies to reinvest in Privateer Press.
ReplyDeleteI really think price increase is a fail in marketing strategy. Sure GW want to increase their profit, but the best they could do is listen their Customer. My 2 cents: they should do standard price for standard player (more causal and for kid) build a new generation of gamer (long run view of business you cant go wrong). In another hand they could make money on special, collector edition, codex supplement, apocalypse stuff (mainly for veteran) and incorporate FW model in there apocalypse line. I Hope i will be read by someone who can change things
ReplyDeleteP.S WTF with their model size standard Avatar V.S DP
Wraithknight VS Greater demon
Ahh, the complaints about pricing. Welcome to Australian pricing, where it's been that bad for about 15 years.
ReplyDeleteSomeone said releasing a unit in plastic, GW never went cheaper. I can think fo at least 2 examples off the top of my head where that is wrong.
First, the original tactical squad box set actually went down in price when it moved from metal to plastic. Secondly, and much more recent. Wraithguard.
I politely disagree with the comment that the WMH Collossals/ Gargantuans are better kits than something of equivalent size for GW.
I do agree that GW are getting stupid with their prices though. I wonder if they realise that they are going to very quickly hit market tolerance for pricing (to be honest, I think they already have). But I agree with Mister.Lee's comments regarding pricing vs scale as well.
From what I've heard, they've repackaged the Baneblade/Shadowsword kits into one kit. Honestly that's not a bad deal if it's true.
ReplyDeleteIts a terrible idea cheaper for them and you can only build one tank but you have to pay for the extra parts
ReplyDeleteOh shut up and stop whining about the prices.
ReplyDeleteI'll never switch to warmachine because its community is just a bunch of 40k drop outs with no dedication to the hobby, and it shows when 99% of the armies at my local huge FLGS' grand tournies with about 15-20 people have armies that aren't even half painted.
One thing to keep in mind is that this is still a hobby. Whether you're into miniatures, radio control, ham radio, trains or any other hobby, it's important to remember that having a hobby is a luxury that requires time and money.
ReplyDeleteTruthfully this is a addictive hobby, the stories inspire us, the models stimulate our senses, and the game challenges us to solve problems and overcome the enemy, but in the end it is still a hobby.
This hobby, this luxury we enjoy, isn't immune to economics, and eventually those other hobby/game companies will want to grow and expand as Games Workshop has and will require the financial backing to continue to do so, and when that happens you should expect those prices to increase too and you WILL find your self saying "I remember when the war machine starterbox was 70 now it's 99".
I remember when gas was only 2.50 a gallon, I remember when I could get a plane ticket from California to Pennsylvania for 300 round trip, I remember when Disneyland was 50 for a ticket and 200 for a deluxe pass.
I remember when things cost less too, but I still do the things I enjoy and partake in the hobby I like because it is a hobby and I'm never going to expect it to be cheap.
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