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JWBS wrote:
That's potentially like saying SC GSC is 250pts and the CP BA is 500pts. Comparison makes no sense, the factions are different. It's highly (and very obviously) selective.

That's what I said. Also SC! Thunderstrike Brotherhood is over 1000 pts.

JWBS wrote:
How many points is SC Maggotkin?

485. 100 short. Daemons is 440.

 CMLR wrote:

JWBS wrote:
That's potentially like saying SC GSC is 250pts and the CP BA is 500pts. Comparison makes no sense, the factions are different. It's highly (and very obviously) selective.

That's what I said. Also SC! Thunderstrike Brotherhood is over 1000 pts.

JWBS wrote:
How many points is SC Maggotkin?

485. 100 short. Daemons is 440.

Right, but it's not really indicative of a problem with Vanguard (which I think is what you're arguing) if it's so volatile between the various SC boxes themselves. The relevant comparison would be between SC nurgle and Vanguard nurgle, and even then it's an argument about points values that is likely irrelevant unless you're also willing to apply it to the highest point SC and the lowest point SC (and then it would still arguably be unuseful given that this isn't how armies are priced with regards to points per currency value).

 CMLR wrote:
- SC! BCR nets you exactly 750 points.

Sorry, I don't recognise the acronym - BCR?

Beast Claw Raiders

Rihgu wrote:
Beast Claw Raiders

Ah, they've merged the Ogres back into one option on the GW site, which would explain why I didn't see anything where BCR applied.

 Overread wrote:
Eh the problem is those kind of purchases become pointless. 2 squigs can't be fielded so now you've got to buy several packs - you might as well either just save and get one regular box or multiple boxes at once to actually "use" them in the game.


If one is push fit, limited on options or such then that's going to be less popular.

You may probably be right but I think theres something here that you may have not considered. For example not all buys are with the intent to "Play" so if you have a range of blisters say with 2 squigs, another with a river troll, other with a fanatic etc
I could see myself getting a full range of these just to paint, convert, build own warbands for RPG and mess around with.
Not everything is about building a legal army with x number of units and models, theres a full GW hobby outside GW gaming.
Potentially people would simply pop in more to GW stores at lunch just to get that cheap blister because of reasons rather than once a month to get the big box they planned and been saving for.
GW is all about getting people into their stores and this for one would be a reason to do so.

 Overread wrote:
Hachette is a good example of lower prices working, however at the same time its important to note that its different to a main release. It's essentially just a very drawn out christmas bundle release of two armies. Not the entire product line; not everything and each release is a fixed number of issues (expanded but still always a fixed number; its not produced until demand is gone).

So in general its not the same as making all your prices lower forever; its a short term lower price to generate fast sales which then should translate into more sales of higher value items for more profit later

Also its probably a logistical nightmare to keep a magazine and split sprues in stock.

But we are just armchair talking here, for fun, but I did miss going to the GW store and getting something on a cheaper price bracket. I think the way GW is going with the new bigger boxes is that cheap pick up things are not part of what they want on the menu.

Yeah apparently the majority of miniatures bought from GW are never used to play games. In my case, most of them are never even built let alone painted (I used to consider myself a painter but I've come to the realisation I'm basically just a collector that paints maybe 10% of the stuff I buy). I think Kirby once said "Most of our customers just really like buying miniatures" or something along those lines.

I think I've mostly moved on to 3d printing files now.

...I build and paint about the same, buy at least it doesn't occupy space when unbuilt ^^

JWBS wrote:
Yeah apparently the majority of miniatures bought from GW are never used to play games. In my case, most of them are never even built let alone painted (I used to consider myself a painter but I've come to the realisation I'm basically just a collector that paints maybe 10% of the stuff I buy). I think Kirby once said "Most of our customers just really like buying miniatures" or something along those lines.

I'm in this post and I don't like it.

Accurate, though.

Collector. Paints at least 50% of it.
Plays with 10% of it maybe..

JWBS wrote:
Yeah apparently the majority of miniatures bought from GW are never used to play games. In my case, most of them are never even built let alone painted (I used to consider myself a painter but I've come to the realisation I'm basically just a collector that paints maybe 10% of the stuff I buy). I think Kirby once said "Most of our customers just really like buying miniatures" or something along those lines.

Source?

 Togusa wrote:

JWBS wrote:
Yeah apparently the majority of miniatures bought from GW are never used to play games. In my case, most of them are never even built let alone painted (I used to consider myself a painter but I've come to the realisation I'm basically just a collector that paints maybe 10% of the stuff I buy). I think Kirby once said "Most of our customers just really like buying miniatures" or something along those lines.

Source?

Here's a forum post about it from 2015:

https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/gamers-only-20-percent-of-games-workshops-customers.279401/

Short version, according to an investor their inquiry was answered by GW's representative that GW's customers were 20% gamers, 80% collectors.

To my knowledge there has never been further confirmation of it, nor evidence against it. It's not something that was attributed to Kirby directly as far as I'm aware, but because it very much sounds like something he would say and as the CEO at the time, one may not be inclined to make a difference between the official company line and the CEO's thoughts and so it's often recalled as "Kirby did it".

Of course it's a completely ridiculous statement if we draw on something Kirby did say, namely that market research is otiose in a niche market and they know their customers. Without utilizing even as simple a tool as a survey GW could not possibly have any data to back those numbers.

 Sacredroach wrote:

JWBS wrote:
Yeah apparently the majority of miniatures bought from GW are never used to play games. In my case, most of them are never even built let alone painted (I used to consider myself a painter but I've come to the realisation I'm basically just a collector that paints maybe 10% of the stuff I buy). I think Kirby once said "Most of our customers just really like buying miniatures" or something along those lines.

I'm in this post and I don't like it.

Accurate, though.

yeah me to - trying to get my stuff painted or buy painted now.

 Geifer wrote:

Of course it's a completely ridiculous statement if we draw on something Kirby did say, namely that market research is otiose in a niche market and they know their customers. Without utilizing even as simple a tool as a survey GW could not possibly have any data to back those numbers.

On the other hand, continued success of 40k and AoS, two barely-games designed purely to dump your collection on the table and bash against the other players' figures does suggest there's something to it. No one *needs* 5k of marines to play the game yet people regularly buy and sometimes even paint absurd amounts of toy soldiers. GW "hobby" is collectibles with a game attached from that perspective.

And yet when GW leaned into that whole "people just collect models" the market died for AoS on launch. Granted that wasn't the only aspect, but it wasn't the all singing dancing sales they thought.


Behind many collectors is a person who wants to play who perhaps just doesn't get the chance, but the like the idea of it. It provides a focus and structure to the collecting and perhaps an end of year objective or such. Take that fully away and it loses all context and drive.



Also don't forget GW's metric for playing is based mostly on data from their stores. It doesn't (and can't) account for all the basement/garage and casual play that happens at small groups clubs and such. GW can only measure playing metrics on the public stuff - the stores, events, clubs that register, facebook etc...

Also because the collector/painter market overlaps the gamer market the former will always be larger than the latter because the former includes most of the latter within the same bracket of users.

I never said they should just pivot towards collectibles (they're licensing that off nowadays instead), but in the grand scheme of things, unless you play every week regularly, you spend much, much more time collecting than playing. You're a collector that plays with the models. It's a mixed hobby, but if people only bought what they needed to play, GW would go bankrupt in a year.
GW sells models to collectors that sometimes play games with the models. The game is the ostensible reason for the collection, so you can't really discard it, but you don't have to focus too much on it as long as it provides structure to the collection (because us nerds love segregating our things into sub-collections). If the game mattered *that much*, again GW would be forced to write rules that aren't the shallowest, most imbalanced rules on the market.

In the end, GW is right to think that what it sells is the collectible experience, but without the game aspect, people have no impetus to collect in the first place.

Cronch wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

Of course it's a completely ridiculous statement if we draw on something Kirby did say, namely that market research is otiose in a niche market and they know their customers. Without utilizing even as simple a tool as a survey GW could not possibly have any data to back those numbers.

On the other hand, continued success of 40k and AoS, two barely-games designed purely to dump your collection on the table and bash against the other players' figures does suggest there's something to it. No one *needs* 5k of marines to play the game yet people regularly buy and sometimes even paint absurd amounts of toy soldiers. GW "hobby" is collectibles with a game attached from that perspective.

For context this was during the death throes of Kirby's regime after the AoS launch failed pretty substantially. GW had to announce ever declining profits year after year before that and at that point it seemed likely they'd actually start posting losses. The whole 20% gamers thing was connected to GW's appeasement of investors to allay fears that ending Fantasy (with all the uproar that caused) and failing to find a market for AoS would finally push them in the red.

Actual customer behavior, aside from just not buying enough GW product anymore, has nothing to do with it.

I don't call it out as a ridiculous statement because I have certain ideas how customers like to justify buying toy soldiers, but because GW at the time had no scientific basis for throwing out such numbers. It would have been propaganda aimed at investors at best and guesswork on which they based their struggling business at worst. And to any investor following the situation and Kirby's earlier statements closely, it should have raised a red flag. Even if it turned out that GW guessed the ratio and customer categories correctly and made the best business choices* if only by accident, it would still have been dumb to base business strategy on a guess and try to sell investors of your luck based plans.



* Which Kirby's GW evidently did not. As it turns out, Rountree took the company to unprecedented heights and little of his success was out of reach under Kirby if only he had chosen similar action.

Holga Clovenhorn Available next Saturday

 DaveC wrote:
Holga Clovenhorn Available next Saturday

Spoiler:

FINALLY!

Hey, she's pretty cool. Although I think I'd prefer to clip the other horn too for a more Hellboy-like look.

Missed this bit Battleforces are happening

Be sure to join us on Thursday the 18th of November, when we’ll be revealing all of this year’s Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar Battleforces in preparation for the holiday season. Not only do they save you money compared to picking up the constituent units separately, but each Battleforce will provide the perfect start – or significant reinforcements – to any collection.

On the collectors vs gamers point it should be noted that the games only exist to provide a framework for collecting. The story is that way back when Brayn Ansell noticed army sets like "King Dorin's Throng" sold well so asked Rick Priestley to make some rules so people could use these "Armies". 100% of GW customers are collectors.

Nah, without the games Warhammer dies. The overwhelming majority 'collect' to play the game. We've seen multiple times across the years that when the game improves sales go up, significantly. It may have been arguable in the past, but after the AoS launch and 40k 8th it isn't really up for debate anymore.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nah, without the games Warhammer dies. The overwhelming majority 'collect' to play the game. We've seen multiple times across the years that when the game improves sales go up, significantly. It may have been arguable in the past, but after the AoS launch and 40k 8th it isn't really up for debate anymore.

Agreed. We literally saw GW quickly circling the drain from Aos 1st edition and 40k 7th. It took essentially 2 new editions to bring the company back up, and with 9th and 3rd it's doing better than it ever has.

 Albertorius wrote:
Hey, she's pretty cool. Although I think I'd prefer to clip the other horn too for a more Hellboy-like look.

As a huge Hellboy fan, I love that idea. Honestly, I'm trying to figure out how she would have lost one horn without damaging the other. I feel like anything damaging one horn would probably have to at least nick the other

 GaroRobe wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Hey, she's pretty cool. Although I think I'd prefer to clip the other horn too for a more Hellboy-like look.

As a huge Hellboy fan, I love that idea. Honestly, I'm trying to figure out how she would have lost one horn without damaging the other. I feel like anything damaging one horn would probably have to at least nick the other

To my eyes it looks like it was broken off rather than cut.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nah, without the games Warhammer dies. The overwhelming majority 'collect' to play the game. We've seen multiple times across the years that when the game improves sales go up, significantly. It may have been arguable in the past, but after the AoS launch and 40k 8th it isn't really up for debate anymore.

9th is a horrible mess that removed all manner of on-table interactions in favor of buffs, auras and on-paper only effects like stratagems, and yet it's basically the best edition ever in terms of sales.

GW games basically need to be minimally-viable products that let you play something resembling a coherent game to work as a vehicle for collecting.

IMO it goes like this: new person sees cool mini, fantasy or 40k. Maybe buy a box, maybe just research. If there was no game, that'd be it. But there is a game, now they have a reason to buy more models to collect. So they do. At that point, the game becomes an excuse to collect more, even if they have 10,000 points and literally do not have the space to put them all to table at once. The game needs to exist, but that's more or less all it needs to do- it provides a structure to the collecting.


Also, that chaos lady might be the first AoS model this year I've considered buying, if she's priced sensibly I might get her, the design is great.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The overwhelming majority 'collect' to play

Or collect to 'play'

Today's new word is interpassivity.

It isn't a consistent sample to compare pandemic figures with non-pandemic figures regardless of how that comparison hashes out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The overwhelming majority 'collect' to play

Or collect to 'play'

Today's new word is interpassivity.

If you had a valid point you wouldn't need to snip a small part of my post out of context to make it.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
It isn't a consistent sample to compare pandemic figures with non-pandemic figures regardless of how that comparison hashes out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The overwhelming majority 'collect' to play

Or collect to 'play'

Today's new word is interpassivity.

If you had a valid point you wouldn't need to snip a small part of my post out of context to make it.

I can google it for you when I get off work if that helps?