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Post by Blargaliscious on Jul 19, 2017 22:15:24 GMT
Keep in mind that GW has had the time to expand its market, money to fund capital projects, and unfair market practices to give itself an advantage that *NONE* of the other game companies have:
Economies of Scale
GW makes (comparatively speaking) a huge number of kits that it sells all over the world, with a much deeper market penetration than what is seen by Privateer Press. Because they sell *so many* kits they can afford to spend the money for plastic injection molding tooling. It is only recently that PP has started to convert their product over to plastic injection molding, and that is because they have found a cheap production house over in China. They could have probably done it sooner, but the costs would not have been covered by the sales and PP would have lost money.
That is the reason why almost all wargames start off with pewter miniatures - the tooling costs are small (negligible compared to plastic injection molding) and in line with the volume of miniatures that you will probably sell. The rubber molds that are used have poor dimensional stability, but that had not been a complaint until GW started producing gaming minatures in plastic.
Pretty soon I'll bet PP's problem will become lack of ability to design new replacement designs quick enough.
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Post by Blargaliscious on Jul 19, 2017 22:30:19 GMT
Lead was dropped by most miniature companies anyway long before that became a rule. The few who didn't got around it by labeling their products with ''This is not a toy''. The state of New York had passed a law several years ago banning the sale of any products that contained lead. The fear of losing sales from New York, and the possibility that other states would adopt similar laws, prompted the entire gaming industry to switch from lead over to pewter. One of the old guys at Iron Wind Metals (formerly Ral Partha) said he was glad they switched to pewter because it had a much lower melting point than lead, had a hard phase change from solid to liquid instead of turning into a syrup that dropped in viscosity like lead, and pewter didn't require monthly blood tests to see if you were getting lead build-up in your body. The funny thing is that New York never put the ban of lead products into effect. The automotive industry reminded the state government that lead weights were required to balance car wheels, and the ban would have made it so no cars would have driven smoothly or safely.
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Post by Cryptix on Jul 19, 2017 22:57:31 GMT
The only PP price points that I find objectionable are for Units. $50US for a 10-man unit cast in resin (yuck!) is very disappointing compared to a $40US equivalent GW unit cast in high-quality plastic. And don't get me started on the cost of PP's cavalry- $100US for max Uhlans is fairly jaw-dropping... Don't even get me started. I got back into Cryx only spending $150 for a 75 point list because of the Flesh Eater Courts bundle gave me a unit of mcthralls+3 brute thralls for 40 bucks.
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Post by dmorktry on Jul 19, 2017 23:17:08 GMT
The only PP price points that I find objectionable are for Units. $50US for a 10-man unit cast in resin (yuck!) is very disappointing compared to a $40US equivalent GW unit cast in high-quality plastic. And don't get me started on the cost of PP's cavalry- $100US for max Uhlans is fairly jaw-dropping... The price creep in character jacks/beasts has been pretty iffy for what are mono-build, might as well be mono-pose minis made from material that's just average but they do need to make their price back somehow. I believe they're repacking the jack boxes to include updated versions of the blister only character jacks but they weren't the problem.
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Post by catulle on Jul 19, 2017 23:20:19 GMT
"The automotive industry reminded the state government that lead weights were required to balance car wheels, and the ban would have made it so no cars would have driven smoothly or safely." ...which is a lie, promoted by a local industry that doesn't want to absorb the costs of changing over like European manufacturers did more than a decade back.
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marke
Junior Strategist
Posts: 187
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Post by marke on Jul 20, 2017 2:38:29 GMT
Indeed. However it still hardly is an excuse. Outlaw or whatever the new owner is(wild west exodus) is able to produce pretty high quality plastic with fair prices. Not cheap, but owning few models of theirs, they're very good imo. Then there's wyrd, but their pricing per miniature is a lot steeper, although manageable due to skirmish size game.
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Post by Cryptix on Jul 20, 2017 2:47:25 GMT
I found the whole "pay for usefullness" thing to be daft considering that 10 mechanithralls and brute thralls are 80 bucks.
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Post by souleater on Jul 20, 2017 7:28:56 GMT
I do find the prices off-putting. I am not sure if part of that is my age. Having been a wargamer for thirty odd years I have seen prices for stuff go up and down/(talking about all things - bread, computers, houses)
Partly I wonder if my eyes water at the cost of e.g. Azrael being £40 because of this.
Then there are ten man units costing just as much...i can't help but compare that to other companies. And that isn't just GW but smaller companies such as Wyrd, Mantic, etc.
Wed changed over to hard plastic with a few hiccups but they are nowhere near GW's size.
With themes I feel that I have to buy more models because stuff my not be eligible in another Theme.
All of which would be more palatable if the model quite was higher.
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Post by fistedbyhalaak on Jul 20, 2017 12:35:23 GMT
Perhaps it's because I came into the game when Warhammer Fantasy died, but the cost has been notably lower. Not just from the models to play the game perspective, but to get a 1-2 of everything in a usable quantity perspective. Units in Hordes range from $50-80 per box, but you get something useful out of one box, which is 10-12 figures for full units. Warhammer was $30 for 10 infantry, but that also wasn't a usable amount. Units were more like 25-40, so you were buying $120 for a unit, and repeating it for every individual unit you wanted. Characters (equivalent of solos) are an odd case, since the smaller ones (like foot solos) are much cheaper in Hordes, but the mounted ones are closer in price ($30 for Hordes vs. $40 for Warhammer) And none of this factors in that even a very unit heavy army only gets to 6 full units plus 1-2 smaller ones. Most armies are playing with maybe 2 or 3 full ten man units. Beasts and Jacks take up the vast bulk of the points you're spending in your army, and they are markedly cheaper than their equivalent in WFB ($40-60 for a beast/jack, while you are starting at $60 and up for large monsters)
Maybe 40K is a closer comparison, but I haven't brought much stuff at retail for that game in decades. I do know as a quick comparison the large infantry from PP is cheaper-- $45 for the new piggybacks vs. $50 for a terminator squad. Same number of figs, and I'll bet you'll use way less piggies or cataphracts in armies carried by them than you would terminators in a deathwing army. This also doesn't factor in that I can get 25% off Warmachine all day every day
I'm not saying Warmachine is a cheap hobby (though when I look at how much I payed since I got a PS4 for my wife last fall, and it's in close line to what I payed for Warmachine stuff if not a bit more) but it is on the cheaper side of minis games that I can get consistent play with. Guildball basically doesn't exist around here (and if people want to make single fig comparisons, it's way worse than anything I've seen) and Malifaux is roughly in the same category. X-Wing does well, but you also know it's going to age like milk when Disney does a re-license.
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Post by Blargaliscious on Jul 20, 2017 18:55:55 GMT
"The automotive industry reminded the state government that lead weights were required to balance car wheels, and the ban would have made it so no cars would have driven smoothly or safely." ...which is a lie, promoted by a local industry that doesn't want to absorb the costs of changing over like European manufacturers did more than a decade back. Admittedly all I did was repeat an anecdote that was told to me, possibly poorly, so I can't verify or argue about the validity of the story compared to your reply after it was edited. I will say, though, that here in the United States a lot of decisions are made based upon some sort of a financial cost-benefit analysis, more so than what I have seen done by Europeans. Sometimes it is for the better, sometimes for the worse.
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Post by Blargaliscious on Jul 20, 2017 19:21:27 GMT
Indeed. However it still hardly is an excuse. Outlaw or whatever the new owner is(wild west exodus) is able to produce pretty high quality plastic with fair prices. Not cheap, but owning few models of theirs, they're very good imo. Then there's wyrd, but their pricing per miniature is a lot steeper, although manageable due to skirmish size game. I never said it was an excuse, more of an observation. *Anybody* can get gaming miniatures made via plastic injection molding. Those that do just need to make sure that they make the money that the put into the tooling costs, which are typically pretty high, back on what they sell. If you don't, well, you'll be out of business and sitting on some debt. I'm assuming that increasing sales, improving knowledge about hard plastic manufacturing, cheaper / easier CAD programs, being able to find an inexpensive Chinese manufacturer, and having an improved monetary exchange rate have made it so PP can start changing over to plastic injection molding.
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Post by The 1336 on Jul 20, 2017 19:42:40 GMT
The thing I notice about pp pricing is that while something may be expensive, even if I don't feel it's a great deal (60bucks for a character jack? ), Once I buy it I'm usually done. Sometimes there's a UA but that's it. There's none of this having to buy multiple boxes of models just to get a single core unit for my army.
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Post by souleater on Jul 20, 2017 20:10:08 GMT
I think that's a fair point. I hadn't played WHFB since 5th edition but I remember seeing a box of ten bog standard Orcs for twenty five or thirty quid and wondering how on earth a new player was expected to build an army.
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Post by Morganstern on Jul 20, 2017 20:26:25 GMT
I think that's a fair point. I hadn't played WHFB since 5th edition but I remember seeing a box of ten bog standard Orcs for twenty five or thirty quid and wondering how on earth a new player was expected to build an army. This is part of the reason WHFB failed. In comparison Age of Sigmar is much cheaper. A 1000 points will cost about £100-£150 depending on your army.
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Post by W0lfBane on Jul 20, 2017 21:34:12 GMT
I think that's a fair point. I hadn't played WHFB since 5th edition but I remember seeing a box of ten bog standard Orcs for twenty five or thirty quid and wondering how on earth a new player was expected to build an army. This is part of the reason WHFB failed. In comparison Age of Sigmar is much cheaper. A 1000 points will cost about £100-£150 depending on your army. true but age of sygmar is garbage. The most uninspiring of garbage in my personal opinion
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