2000 AD Online Forum

Am I the only one that thinks Games Workshop miniatures are a complete rip off? Look at the size of them! They're plastic! Detailed, sure. But how can you justify ?5-?10 for a small plastic/ metal figure? And get this....if you buy a figure which acts as a hero/ main character (more point value in the game)it'll cost you MORE money EVEN THOUGH it's blatantly obvious it cost no more money to produce.

I've never seen such a rip off. You can forget your motorway service stations, Warhammer is THE rip off!

Well, yeah. Not so very expensive back in the early days of the hobby when a single miniature cost between 40p and 60p, the cover price of 2000ad at the time, more or less.

The sound Warhammer makes is 'ker-ching!', the sound of an old-fashioned cash till.

I'm amazed at how they manage to redesign ordinary troop types and races almost every year and get people to buy the new updated version.

That's where eBay comes in very handy. You can pick up miniatures with outmoded appearance but of the same armies currently produced, at only a fraction of the cost.

Well, Foundry produce their small 2000AD miniatures for a fiver each.

I agve up on Games Workshop a long time ago when White Dwarf bacame a glossy catalogue of their games.

WD used to be a great mag, but as soon as they started on their 'all our games are  better  than all the others' line of thought I just gave it up.

I remember letters in WD at the time mentioning this.. their reply was "Games Workshop don't make poor games".

meh!

White Dwarf was a very nice magazine for the games hobby. A pity it became a full-time promotional tool for Games Workshop. But they're in it to make money and not to do anyone favours. It was good while it lasted, and it covered my FRPG years well enough.

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

you pay for the quality of the sculpt not the material. Most GW hobby centers run at a loss.

that's why there are so few independant model shops, they don't make much money unless they do mail order as well, which you don't need a shop for

Surely if they do run their shops at a loss (which I find hard to believe) its due to the fact they alienated a lot of people in exactly the same way - I was another who got into gaming through the Dredd RPG and jumped the gaming ship when WD turned into a GW only product mag.

And the increasing prices didn't help.    

If you like Sci-fi & fantasy miniatures you don't have to pay GW's rip-off prices for their lame-o game.

There are tons of cheaper, better alternatives - both in terms of game systems & miniatures.

 

Link: Alternative Miniatures Reviews

finally, somewhere to post this..... kind of.

Caption anyone?

helps if I post the picture!

the shops run at a loss but the company makes a profit, they keep the shops running to interest people in the games, and keep hobbiest active and ordering from mail order

Ephrael Stern! Where's my fucking royalty?

Cheers

Jim

But how can you justify ?5-?10 for a small plastic/ metal figure?

Easy: people pay it.

And get this....if you buy a figure which acts as a hero/ main character (more point value in the game)it'll cost you MORE money EVEN THOUGH it's blatantly obvious it cost no more money to produce.

It costs more to design; character models are typically more detailed than average troopers so they take longer to sculpt.  They're typically more complex and come in more components, which means you get fewer from one casting run.  And it will sell far fewer because nobody needs more than one, whereas you need anywhere from 5-30 troops for every unit, so recouping the development costs takes longer.

The new multi-part plastic characters for Warhammer avoid a lot of these problems, and there you'll get two characters equipped however you like for under a tenner (I think, price might change by release).

Pretty much none of the price of a Citadel miniature goes towards materials.  You're paying for the concept artists, game developers, sculptors, the guys who paint them for the promotional materials, manufacturing and packaging, warehousing, the retail chain, and all the hundreds of support staff that make it all work.

they keep the shops running to interest people in the games

As long as you're the right kind of person, it seems. I went into GW in Northampton with Cait a couple of years ago, and *everyone* in there stopped what they were doing and glowered at her until we left.

I also might have inadvertently set off the alarm that detects if someone entering the shop doesn't live at home still and has actually been with a lady.

Heh. My most recent GW experience was visiting a gaming shop in Tasmania a couple of years back. The only reason I went in was because I knew that they stocked comics as well, but it was one of the chilliest receptions I've ever had. The guy behind the counter stared at me every moment I was in the shop, and the chap at the front of the store painting miniatures actually stopped painting when I came in & didn't start again until I left!

Before that the last time I actually visited a proper GW store would probably have been back in the late 80s / early 90s when I was in Edinburgh. ISTR that being a far more pleasant experience - relatively busy shop, with a decent mix of customers and friendly staff.

well I pay for em, and there's a new version of my main army(40K Eldar) coming out over the next few months, all redesigns of models I already have, now I can use my old models but getting the newer better detailed ones is the way to go for me(my paintings better now so they'll look better painted too).
You guy's have got to remember, its a Hobby people pay silly amounts of mony on their hobbies. What do we pay for our comics, A$6.70 seems a bit steep to some people for just a few pictures and words.  Value is relative.

CU Radbacker

Mini Bolt went through a phase not long ago with GW. He got a starter set and did a bit of modelling. He never got as far as painting his figs but did go and spend a day at the Brum GW on a starter day actually playing the thing. He liked it enough that he hasn't bothered with it since.

Shame, but that's the way it goes. He had a tester to see if it suited him as much as EMO.

My point is that I agree with Radbacker. This is just a hobby, as is comics with the rest of us. Some of us are actively involved in making comics for small-press, which can cost quite a bit in both time and money.

Some of the models available for the GW Space marines are flippin' awesome though aren't they?

Bolt-01

Without sounding like an apologist for sky high prices, if you get the chance - go and spend time at Warhammer Workd in Nottingham - the staff are probably the nicest bunch of guys you could wish to meet, taking time to chat about anything (and I mean anything!), give you advice on painting and gaming, take the piss when you lose (which I tend to do a lot) and then spend their lunch playing pool with the customers in the bar (which is themed round a dwarf drinking hall and do a mean steak ciabatta).
Not to mention the amount of artists and writers I've bumped into in there - Dabnett, Jes Goodwin, John Blanche, I may have even spotted a certain Mr Rennie in there once.....

Ah, John Blanche - loved his stuff all those years back...

It may be that they've chosen to run a very high cost "quality" company with lots of designers and invisible back room staff bumping up the prices, but surely you have to draw the line somewhere - say at the point your shops aren't making any money?

One thing that really gets me is the fact they are too embarassed to put prices on most of their stick - Surely thats reason enough that people don't buy anything - It certainly looks suspicious to the new comer (or old comer for that matter!) when you are met with a letter to hide the cost...

If you've reached the stage where you find it hard to publicly show the price of your product (which I think is a  bigger turn off than showing high prices, IMO) then you really ought to consider if you've not spent a bit too much on producing it.

I don't know if the prices are a rip-off, because I have no idea how much it costs to make the product.

However, I fell out of love with Games Workshop, like others, when White Dwarf became a product catalogue: a move so unpopular with readers that the letters page was soon ditched and has never returned.

I also dislike products that insist on a lifetime commitment of cash if you get hooked.  Magic, The Gathering, for example.  They keep reinventing it so that (as with new generation mobile phones), they can keep consumers consuming again and again:  when really, there was nothing wrong with the orginal version, which could have lasted for years.

New, Whiter Than White, Quad-Bladed, Must Have, Shinier Than The Last, Can't Live Without It ...

"What rolls down stairs alone or in pairs
Rolls over your neighbor's dog?
What's great for a snack and fits on your back?
It's Log, Log, Log!
 
It's Log, Log, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's Log, Log, it's better than bad, it's good!
Everyone wants a log! You're gonna love it, Log!
Come on and get your log! Everyone needs a Log!"

The letter page did return last year - and until recently, they had a message board on GW's website.

That was until the new editor took over and royally fucked up the magazine AGAIN... to the point where he was receiving death threats - they pulled the message board last month after a massive 2000 posts attacking the poor quality of the old Dwarf.

In other Warhammer related news....
WARHAMMER 40K #1

Written by Dan Abnett, drawn by Greg Boychuk.

It all begins here! A violet, bloody intergalactic planet-spanning science fiction franchise comes to BOOM! Studios! They are the Black Templars -- mankind's greatest hope fighting the ravening hordes of invading Necrons, battering back the enemy with power gauntlet, chain sword, and bolt rifle! Elite of the elite, they are The Chapter of the Eternal Crusade, dedicated to serving their Emperor for the glory of the Imperium! World-shaking space marines who cleanse entire planets of their enemies, they are the heart of Warhammer 40K ? from the Battle of Carrion Gulf all the way through the Torment Crusade.

Centering on a new recruit to the Templars, to an advance warrior Sword Brethren, and all the way to an ancient man-machine Dreadnaught soldier, Warhammer 40K #1 serves as an accessible opening chapter introducing new and old readers alike to this bloody, dark, ravaged universe of science fiction and fantasy! Gods of War and Ancestors, bless us now, for we go to war...

32 pages, $2.99.

Can't say Im that excited by the concept art though... Thin Space Marines?

As an addict to the pre-painted plastic crack foisted on us by Wizards of the Coast, I think GW followers have it easy!  USD$80 for an out-of-print Aurra Sing figure, a character who 0.25 seconds screen time in the Phantom Menace!  Fer feck's sake!

Is that $80 WOTC's price or eBay's, though?

Oh its EBay's price, alright, but with randomised product you're going to spend a lot more than that hoping to pick up a specific Very Rare mini in successive 7-mini booster packs - assuming the damn things were even still in pront.  There's more than one way to make a buck off miniatures.  The fiends.