Resisting the Siren's song

[Erion]

That Mega Dredd is constructed entirely of things that are awesome.

[sethohman]

That Mega Dredd is constructed entirely of things that are awesome.

 

And honestly not that expensive, as far as FW stuff goes.

[Nanite]

That Mega Dredd is constructed entirely of things that are awesome.

 

And honestly not that expensive, as far as FW stuff goes.

 

The arms are sold separately, but yeah, just nosebleed-expensive. Not anyurism-expensive.

 

I've been on a 40K painting binge lately, it's wierd. But nice that I bought things when I had money, so I can have fun with them when I don't. Invest in lead!

[Nanite]

Woah, what happened here (imperial guard heads pack):

 

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/...odId=prod40009a

 

Looks like it was sculpted by an intern.

 

The Tank Stowage is criminally overpriced too:

 

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/...odId=prod40008a

[Lars Porsenna]

For stowage, go resin IIRC I bought Verlinden's M8 Stowage set for around $15, and while some parts were pre-formed for the M8 armored car, the other useful bits come in at around 3 times more than what GW gives you...

 

Damon.

[Nanite]

I like Pig Iron, and Alpha Forge's stowage bits too.

 

So I've been enjoying the GW blog posts on the gamesday UK board, but the admonition must have been, "No non-GW building materials." I don't even think they get to use sheet styrene:

 

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/...sp?aId=4400095a

[Lars Porsenna]

New 40K movie in-the-works! See my Blog: bookslikedust.blogspot.com

 

Damon.

[robertsjf]

That's along the lines of what the BL said they might do: CGL direct to video type of affair. With the DoW intros as a testbed to show it's feasible. Hope the plotline is a little better than, saw, the Assault on Black Reach novella. But if it's not, I'm cool.

[Nanite]

I just got most of an epic emperor titan in a bits auction. Anyone know where I can find the instructions? I can identify the big parts, but I'm not certain if some of the other chunks go with the model?

[Erion]

Have you tried stuff of legends?

[Nanite]

Yeah, but they don't seem to have it covered. Also the collecting citadel archive.

 

Edit, I think I figured it out.

 

Oh and I have no use for it, but am still impressed by the Big Dumb Fortress:

 

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/...dId=prod340014a

[SaintRigger]

GW is certainly the biggest player and has been for a long time, but that doesn't keep the up-and-comers from nipping away at their market share. And no way is GW as nimble as they'll need to be when the top echelon of their managment finally realizes what's going on.

 

<snip>

 

But there are plenty of contenders with their own proprietary forces, be they Pan-Oceania or Viridians or whatever, who are taking individually small bites out of GW's pie that are starting to add up.

 

I'm fully of the beleif that once one of the other major players releases an OGL minis game system that translates well to WFB and 40k and catches on, GW is going to see a major hit to their pocket book.

 

I disagree with this strongly - and here is why

 

People *LIKE* the GW models. Hell I love 'em and I hate the games. Also, people like being able to walk into a store and play with someone. CUrrently every plays the GW games. I've played some amazing fantasy and sci-fi rule sets - but trying to get someone to gear up for a new game is tough, especially when they've invested in a game system already and can walk into just about any game store and can get a pickup game of warhammer or 40k.

 

I personally use my 40k figures with a set of rules called Trench Wars and it works great - but I still buy guardsmen and tanks to suppliment my armies.

 

GW's paints and the like are also pretty ubiquitous - and the pots suck, so people keep comming back because they get used to certain colors and need to replace them. I am a huge fan of the foundation paints and washes, however. That was some great marketing - especially for army painters - who I think you need to cater to to get larger number of sales.

 

One can produce a stunning vampress model - but how many will a person buy? One, maybe two to paint up and look nice. If you are catering to army players - they'll need like 30-40 skeletal warriors, or knights to fill our their ranks. You've got an initial cost per model - so if you have a model that players would require more of, you pay off that initial setup cost of quicker and it becomes profitable faster... so lets say it takes 100 sales to pay off the cost of a mold, and you have an audience of 50 players.... your vampire might sell 50-75 models, and you are at a loss where as you knights might sell 300-400 which makes it profitable.

 

I mean, it is much more complex than that - and I totally distracted my train of thought - but I don't see any small press games comming in and knocking GW from their spot anytime soon. Now - perhaps there is a scenario of death by 1000 papercuts, where if lots of companies can lure enough gaming $$s away from their base, you can cause them to topple.

 

Um... what were we talking about again?

[Erion]

You won't get any argument from me that GW has a monolithic wall to be scaled before someone will be able to compete with them on a level playing field.

 

But if they keep doing stuff like $49.50 for 10 greatswords (or 20 stormvermin. I think that's $0.50 less than the equivalent metals would have been a few months ago) or offering "deals" like the whopping 7% discount you get for buying their new $750 imperial terrain set for 40k (essentially 2 free bastions), and people are going to start looking elsewhere. And they're going to start liking what they see. And sooner or later GW isn't going to be the gateway drug to wargaming that they have been for decades.

 

Don't get me wrong. GW's stuff is ridiculously cool. Heck, I'm talking to somebody at the LGS to see what kind of discount they'd be able to work out for me on the aformentioned $750 terrain set. But I'm not buying nearly as much of it as I once did, and I won't even think about finishing the High Elf Army I started a few years ago now that a single 5-man rank of special or rare infantry costs me $25.

[Lars Porsenna]

I don't think $5 per figure is that bad (and the boxes are actually IIRC 24.25 or something -- the website is down right now). I just looked at Reaper Warlord, and a single dwarf kneebreaker is $4.99. Granted Reaper discounts them if you buy in volume (something GW should really do...though the boxed set is now the "basic" purchase), but its not hard to get that pricepoint down (my FLGS gives me a 10% discount as a loyal customer, and I think Hobbytown does this; that $25 box now comes to $22.50 or a reasonable-for-fantasy $4.50 per, or get them from The Warstore at $20 per box or $4 per figure, all very good prices for high-profile fantasy figures). Pricing out a unit of 20 High Elf Swordmasters compared to a Warlord unit of Dwarf kneebreakers, I get $100 compared to I $89.96, savings of a little over $10 (IOW not a huge saviings in my book). I won't get into plastics as the savings there are significant.

 

Really in the end it's all about whether you like the figures. If you don't like the High Elves enough that $4 per figure is not attractive anymore, that's your choice. I personally think the High Elves are some of the best elves on the market (and yes, much MUCH better than the Klockenbooty elves...sorry) save the spearmen and archers (though kitbash the two and they make really awesome armored archers!), and the Wood Elves are equally awesome. While Warlord might be a cheaper game, it's apples to oranges as Warlord is a skirmish game while WHFB is a larger scale game (implied figure scale is 1/20 based on groundscale).

 

Damon.

[kristof65]

GW is certainly the biggest player and has been for a long time, but that doesn't keep the up-and-comers from nipping away at their market share. And no way is GW as nimble as they'll need to be when the top echelon of their managment finally realizes what's going on.

 

<snip>

 

But there are plenty of contenders with their own proprietary forces, be they Pan-Oceania or Viridians or whatever, who are taking individually small bites out of GW's pie that are starting to add up.

 

I'm fully of the beleif that once one of the other major players releases an OGL minis game system that translates well to WFB and 40k and catches on, GW is going to see a major hit to their pocket book.

 

I disagree with this strongly - and here is why

 

People *LIKE* the GW models. Hell I love 'em and I hate the games. Also, people like being able to walk into a store and play with someone. CUrrently every plays the GW games. I've played some amazing fantasy and sci-fi rule sets - but trying to get someone to gear up for a new game is tough, especially when they've invested in a game system already and can walk into just about any game store and can get a pickup game of warhammer or 40k.

 

TBH, I think that the fact people like GW minis will be part of why I think GW take a hit in the pocket book. They won't notice the "problem" as fast as they would if no one liked their figures.

 

First off, I see the scenario as happening like this - someone, (we'll call them Company X) who either already has a proven track record with one or more games and/or has the financial backing to push their game to popularity, will release a game system that gains decent acceptance. It will probably be a fantasy game, at least at first. But what will really propel the game to stardom will be that it was either released as OGL, or was made OGL as it started gaining popularity, and because of that, a few smaller mini companies release their own minis/factions under that OGL license - and Company X will spend a lot of time and/or money encouraging that. During this phase where the momentum of the game is accelerating, not only will more and more minis manufacturers start offering stats for their minis, at some point, some fans willl have done the WFB/40k armies as factions for this OGL game.

 

GW probably won't have taken notice of the game yet as a real threat - other than maybe some cease/desist letters to various fan sites to remove the offending OGL army lists - because on the surface, it isn't affecting their sales, as people are still buying loads of GW minis.

 

I've watched GW grow over the last two decades, and frankly, they've gotten to the point that they pretty much ignore the rest of the gaming industry unless a) someone is infringing on their property or b) it's someone they can license something to in order to make more money. They call it the "GW Hobby", they don't really participate in the larger gaming hobby by directly supporting local cons and other things like that. They are the 300lb Gorilla, they can be that way. Their marketing of their games drives their miniature sales. Prices of miniatures/units are determined by their value in the game - the more valuable it is in the game, as well as the higher the "cool" factor, the more the miniature costs to buy. But we all know this.

 

At this point, I'd guess that anywhere between 85-95% of GW minis are purchased to play GW games - at least at first - gamers may then move onto to other games with those figures. Now, back in my scenario, assuming that GW maintains their smug superiority and disregard for the rest of the industry, they will do what they've always done - when miniature sales start slipping a little bit, they'll trot out a new edition.

 

Only this time, there will be a fast growing, popular alternative supported by a multitude of manufacturers/publishers to GWs new edition - the aforementioned OGL game by Company X. Oh, the cool new minis GW trots out along with their new edition will still sell, but to the amazement of the GW bean counters in control, they won't sell in the familiar patterns they've come to expect and worse, the new edition of the game won't sell as well as past editions. Now the miniatures are selling more in relation to their value as miniatures, not to the game they support. How badly GW is hit at this point depends on how many of these were set up as loss-leaders. My guess is that nothing other than their initial box sets are truly loss leaders, but hero and special type units probably have a much higher profit margin than regular grunts do.

 

I'm sure GW will be quick to recognize the cause of this change - but what is completely up in the air is how they will react to it. Because, for the first time in a long time, a new edition won't be as good as revitilizing the line, and their miniature sales will be affected by a significant outside factor they haven't had to deal with in a long, long time. And this is where I think GW will wind up taking the major hit to their pocket book - I predict that should this scenario ever come to pass, GW will react in such a negative way that will polarize many gamers against them, instead of trying to figure out how to capitolize on the situation. Something truly boneheaded, like raise prices to offest poor sales, or sue somebody who will become a rallying point for gamers to gather round. And their pocketbook will suffer for it, at least short term.

 

All of this supposition, of course, relies on the assumption that an OGL minis game will be released, and will gain enough popularity among gamers and small press game publishers/mini manufacturers to gain a significant foothold of it's own. Right now, I think an OGL system that gains popularity is the only real threat GW will face for awhile, unless somebody major just keeps throwing money at a minis game/figure line until they've beaten GW into submission. I don't see it as an inevitable thing, only a possibility.

 

The most effective counter to this would, of course, be GW making the 40k/WFB system a limited OGL system before any other system has a chance to gain a foothold - virtually overnight they would control the market more completely than they do now. However, I don't see them even letting one little bit of control go, nor letting any third parties ride their coat tails without some sort ofa direct payment to their bank account from those parties. And should an OGL based system from someone else threaten them, the most effective counter would be to embrace it somehow - like by producing army books for it -but, again I don't see GW doing this at all.