crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Doooom
Feb 26, 2018 6:05:08 GMT
via mobile
Post by crimsyn on Feb 26, 2018 6:05:08 GMT
The question of model quality is actually an important one. I have had some not-fun times with assembly lately, and had to send for replacement on one of my minicrate models because of a poor quality casting.
I would definitely pay a bit more if it meant I didn’t have to deal with the frustration of mold lines and assembly on the last unit of WGRC that I bought. However, I am a hobby gamer at heart, and I feel like a lot of PP’a customers quite frankly don’t care about the model quality or the sculpt, because they’re just using it as a game piece, and because of the prevalence of unpainted models in the hobby, it’s not really going to make a difference to them if their grey plastic army has mold lines or not.
Of course, quality means overhead in tooling and engineering costs, and I think PP is in a tricky spot because it’s hard to compete with GW on that when volumes are lower and GW can afford top-notch fancy injection molded tooling and spread the cost over more units.
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Lanz
Junior Strategist
Posts: 685
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Doooom
Feb 26, 2018 6:14:11 GMT
Post by Lanz on Feb 26, 2018 6:14:11 GMT
That was Tau and Tempestus Scions. The fact of the matter is that the model costs are still pretty similar. A basic tank in 40k is still about as or more expensive as a basic warjack in WMH. A unit of 10 metal troops in WMH might run close to $80, but it will represent potentially a quarter of your list instead of 5-10% of your list in 40k where some units still price in the similar range. If you're buying into 40k via special deal boxes, 40k can be pretty reasonable (and this is definitely an area where PP can learn a thing or two), but if you're buying what you want instead of just what's cheap, a full army in 40k is still way more expensive. It's potentially even more expensive than buying both your WMH lists, depending on how much overlap there is between those two lists. What 10-man, ~28-point unit are you referring to that takes up a quarter of the standard ~115 point list (after you include jack/beast points and free solos)? Oh, sorry, 1/5th. That's still more than 1/10th last time I checked. Does anyone on the "PP are cheaper" side want to defend €50-60 for a 12 man units of monopose models made of crap material? Cuz I'd like to hear it. Probably not since it's a strawman that I don't see anyone arguing in the first place.
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Doooom
Feb 26, 2018 6:24:15 GMT
Post by mcdermott on Feb 26, 2018 6:24:15 GMT
What 10-man, ~28-point unit are you referring to that takes up a quarter of the standard ~115 point list (after you include jack/beast points and free solos)? Oh, sorry, 1/5th. That's still more than 1/10th last time I checked. Does anyone on the "PP are cheaper" side want to defend €50-60 for a 12 man units of monopose models made of crap material? Cuz I'd like to hear it. Probably not since it's a strawman that I don't see anyone arguing in the first place. Its an impossible thing to argue as it depends on where you live. Its cheaper in the US, its more expensive in the UK and parts of the EU. AFAIK its about the same in aus/nz because they're equally a million miles from either company.
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regleant
Junior Strategist
Sometimes things go right
Posts: 267
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Doooom
Feb 26, 2018 6:38:23 GMT
Post by regleant on Feb 26, 2018 6:38:23 GMT
and I feel like a lot of PP’a customers quite frankly don’t care about the model quality or the sculpt, because they’re just using it as a game piece, and because of the prevalence of unpainted models in the hobby, it’s not really going to make a difference to them if their grey plastic army has mold lines or not. Finally, someone understands me.
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Doooom
Feb 26, 2018 7:25:25 GMT
Post by Charistoph on Feb 26, 2018 7:25:25 GMT
Does anyone on the "PP are cheaper" side want to defend €50-60 for a 12 man units of monopose models made of crap material? Cuz I'd like to hear it. I don't think anyone will deny that PP model quality is far inferior to Games Workshop, who have always been ahead of the curve in terms of quality. But its not quite relevant when discussing which game is cheaper to get established with. And it isn't like PP products are lemons. A lot depends on how you are defining "established". Not everyone plays 2000 points in 40K any more then everyone plays 75 points in WM/H. Time is often a factor, so smaller games are played during the week. If you really want to talk a scary consideration for "establishing" yourself in a game, WHFB was designed for the 2000-3000 point range. You usually had to run 2-4 Core units, and each unit usually required 3-4 boxes to be "useful" in battle because of how effective ranking was in that game. $20 a box doesn't seem bad until you realize that you need 6, and probably more, just to get them on the field so they don't die to a stiff breeze. And then there's the painting. If you're running rats or skeletons, you either learn the advantage of base & dip/wash or you start hating your brushes. Even most of the units outside of Chaos Warriors and Ogres usually required a significant number of models, and the Elves and Empire don't look as good with the base & dip method. Aside from the difficulty of choosing which army to go with (Beastmen, Tomb Kings, and Bretonnians always caught my eye, with the Wood Elves and Dwarfs also being mild attractants), those two factors were why I never started Warhammer Fantasy.
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Doooom
Feb 26, 2018 9:06:26 GMT
Post by unded on Feb 26, 2018 9:06:26 GMT
I don't think anyone will deny that PP model quality is far inferior to Games Workshop, who have always been ahead of the curve in terms of quality. But its not quite relevant when discussing which game is cheaper to get established with. And it isn't like PP products are lemons. A lot depends on how you are defining "established". Not everyone plays 2000 points in 40K any more then everyone plays 75 points in WM/H. Time is often a factor, so smaller games are played during the week. If you really want to talk a scary consideration for "establishing" yourself in a game, WHFB was designed for the 2000-3000 point range. You usually had to run 2-4 Core units, and each unit usually required 3-4 boxes to be "useful" in battle because of how effective ranking was in that game. $20 a box doesn't seem bad until you realize that you need 6, and probably more, just to get them on the field so they don't die to a stiff breeze. And then there's the painting. If you're running rats or skeletons, you either learn the advantage of base & dip/wash or you start hating your brushes. Even most of the units outside of Chaos Warriors and Ogres usually required a significant number of models, and the Elves and Empire don't look as good with the base & dip method. Aside from the difficulty of choosing which army to go with (Beastmen, Tomb Kings, and Bretonnians always caught my eye, with the Wood Elves and Dwarfs also being mild attractants), those two factors were why I never started Warhammer Fantasy. I was an avid WHFB player before moving to WM. I had 6 armies, and refused to play unpainted. I feel I've become much lazier since going to WM - I still only play painted, but now feel like painting a 10-man unit (or even worse, a 5-man cavalry unit) is a nightmarish task, while I used to be quite comfortable with painting up a 20-man unit one week before an event. (Ok, painting 60 skavenslaves was soul-crushing, but that's to be expected) -und_ed
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joedj
Junior Strategist
Posts: 513
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Post by joedj on Mar 2, 2018 16:41:52 GMT
Our venue currently has ~8 ACTIVE WMH players, with 4-5 'occasional' to 'rarely' players. 5 experienced mostly competitive list players, 3 newer learning the game/armies. Approx one year prior to the demise of the PG program, we had a Journeyman League with 28 players participating, and SR tournaments with 16-24+ players. The change to MK3 with its initial problems definitely caused a reduction in players.
We used to have two PGs, shared the load of organizing, and the rewards. Continuously organizing a gaming 'club' is a labor of devotion. The model reward system was an incentive to maintain that devotion. I would hypothesize that most current 'organizers' devote the time NOT because they have a sense of charitable duty. Rather they may be venue employees (rewarded by pay) or fans of the game attempting to maintain a robust player base (rewarded by themselves having a steady stream of local play 'mates').
Employees do quit/move on or don't know the game. Fan-organizers may lose faith in a stagnating player environment. The advantage of the PG program was that the fans were the organizers and were also rewarded for devotion, dual incentivized! Legal fears, and organizational hassles notwithstanding, I suspect the end of the PG program has been a blow to the overall dissemination of the game.
Due to a schedule conflict I won't get to go to Lock&Load this year. But I will be curious to see, through friends' assessments, if THIS attendance is an indicator of the health of the fan ('organizer' types) base.
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Doooom
Mar 2, 2018 17:16:38 GMT
Post by Charistoph on Mar 2, 2018 17:16:38 GMT
I was an avid WHFB player before moving to WM. I had 6 armies, and refused to play unpainted. I feel I've become much lazier since going to WM - I still only play painted, but now feel like painting a 10-man unit (or even worse, a 5-man cavalry unit) is a nightmarish task, while I used to be quite comfortable with painting up a 20-man unit one week before an event. (Ok, painting 60 skavenslaves was soul-crushing, but that's to be expected) -und_ed And how expensive was it to create those armies? How early in the game system did you start? Did you have a supportive group to help you threw the growing pains? I ask because, I started looking in to Warhammer during Fantasy's 6th Edition, but still couldn't decide on an army. I was finally going to go in to Beastmen with Chaos Knights in support when they released Hordes of Chaos and Daemons of Chaos, and so that army concept lost all of its support, and still required a lot of Gors and Unbors to play. If I wanted to play Tomb Kings, I needed to play in higher ranges because the army REQUIRED at least 2 Characters, the General and the Heirophant. Bretonnians required a LOT of knights to play because of the Lance Formation. Very few people were playing small games (I think I saw one, once, that was under 1000 points). That is intimidating to the new hobbyist. Especially when I can just go to 40K, get Tau or Space Marines, and only need 3 squads of Troops, a couple Elite Squads and Vehicles, and you're good. WHFB was not a game for the new hobbyist (unless you wanted to learn to paint on skeletons/rats/beasts). It was as intimidating as hell, either because of numbers, challenging painting, or both (Empire State Troops, anyone?). WM/H's saving grace is that while the models are intimidating to paint for their detail (my brother-in-law just got his first battlebox a few months back, and we lucked out on a large Trollbloods collection for $80, but he just barely bought his first set of paints), the number of infantry models one needs is relatively small. Even if you go crazy with Sea Dogs, you won't be buying or painting as many as you would Empire State Troops or High Elf Spearmen.
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Doooom
Mar 2, 2018 17:56:03 GMT
via mobile
Post by HereComesTomorrow on Mar 2, 2018 17:56:03 GMT
I was an avid WHFB player before moving to WM. I had 6 armies, and refused to play unpainted. I feel I've become much lazier since going to WM - I still only play painted, but now feel like painting a 10-man unit (or even worse, a 5-man cavalry unit) is a nightmarish task, while I used to be quite comfortable with painting up a 20-man unit one week before an event. (Ok, painting 60 skavenslaves was soul-crushing, but that's to be expected) -und_ed And how expensive was it to create those armies? How early in the game system did you start? Did you have a supportive group to help you threw the growing pains? I ask because, I started looking in to Warhammer during Fantasy's 6th Edition, but still couldn't decide on an army. I was finally going to go in to Beastmen with Chaos Knights in support when they released Hordes of Chaos and Daemons of Chaos, and so that army concept lost all of its support, and still required a lot of Gors and Unbors to play. If I wanted to play Tomb Kings, I needed to play in higher ranges because the army REQUIRED at least 2 Characters, the General and the Heirophant. Bretonnians required a LOT of knights to play because of the Lance Formation. Very few people were playing small games (I think I saw one, once, that was under 1000 points). That is intimidating to the new hobbyist. Especially when I can just go to 40K, get Tau or Space Marines, and only need 3 squads of Troops, a couple Elite Squads and Vehicles, and you're good. WHFB was not a game for the new hobbyist (unless you wanted to learn to paint on skeletons/rats/beasts). It was as intimidating as hell, either because of numbers, challenging painting, or both (Empire State Troops, anyone?). WM/H's saving grace is that while the models are intimidating to paint for their detail (my brother-in-law just got his first battlebox a few months back, and we lucked out on a large Trollbloods collection for $80, but he just barely bought his first set of paints), the number of infantry models one needs is relatively small. Even if you go crazy with Sea Dogs, you won't be buying or painting as many as you would Empire State Troops or High Elf Spearmen. It doesn't help when one box of WMH infantry is three times the cost of a WHFB box of infantry. Which is besides the point because look at how well WHFB is doing now. Oh right, it isn't.
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Doooom
Mar 2, 2018 18:19:51 GMT
Post by Charistoph on Mar 2, 2018 18:19:51 GMT
It doesn't help when one box of WMH infantry is three times the cost of a WHFB box of infantry. Which is besides the point because look at how well WHFB is doing now. Oh right, it isn't. Being 1/3 the cost doesn't matter when you need 4-6 boxes to have the same outcome for proportion of the army. WM/H can get away with having only 2 of a unit, but WHFB often needed 2-3 of a Core unit, and up to 6 boxes for each unit, an imbalance is noted. In 6th, you could usually get away with melee Empire State Troops being 20 in size (25 in 7th), while in 8th, you usually wanted 40-60 for Horde and depth. At 8-10 models per box, that gets intimidating in price, and they have enough detail to compare to the Sea Dogs. Skeletons and rats are easier to paint and came more to a box, but one usually wanted larger units as well with those. Of course, while you can have an unlimited number of Sea Dog units up to the point tally, they are only as effective as their support units and solos provide, necessitating a limit to fielding them to 2 or 3 (unless you like to collect Friendly Souls). Steelhead Halberdiers aren't much better in that respect, only having far fewer dedicated support solos and units to work with.
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Doooom
Mar 2, 2018 18:41:09 GMT
Post by unded on Mar 2, 2018 18:41:09 GMT
I was an avid WHFB player before moving to WM. I had 6 armies, and refused to play unpainted. I feel I've become much lazier since going to WM - I still only play painted, but now feel like painting a 10-man unit (or even worse, a 5-man cavalry unit) is a nightmarish task, while I used to be quite comfortable with painting up a 20-man unit one week before an event. (Ok, painting 60 skavenslaves was soul-crushing, but that's to be expected) -und_ed And how expensive was it to create those armies? How early in the game system did you start? Did you have a supportive group to help you threw the growing pains? I ask because, I started looking in to Warhammer during Fantasy's 6th Edition, but still couldn't decide on an army. I was finally going to go in to Beastmen with Chaos Knights in support when they released Hordes of Chaos and Daemons of Chaos, and so that army concept lost all of its support, and still required a lot of Gors and Unbors to play. If I wanted to play Tomb Kings, I needed to play in higher ranges because the army REQUIRED at least 2 Characters, the General and the Heirophant. Bretonnians required a LOT of knights to play because of the Lance Formation. Very few people were playing small games (I think I saw one, once, that was under 1000 points). That is intimidating to the new hobbyist. Especially when I can just go to 40K, get Tau or Space Marines, and only need 3 squads of Troops, a couple Elite Squads and Vehicles, and you're good. WHFB was not a game for the new hobbyist (unless you wanted to learn to paint on skeletons/rats/beasts). It was as intimidating as hell, either because of numbers, challenging painting, or both (Empire State Troops, anyone?). WM/H's saving grace is that while the models are intimidating to paint for their detail (my brother-in-law just got his first battlebox a few months back, and we lucked out on a large Trollbloods collection for $80, but he just barely bought his first set of paints), the number of infantry models one needs is relatively small. Even if you go crazy with Sea Dogs, you won't be buying or painting as many as you would Empire State Troops or High Elf Spearmen. Honestly they were much cheaper than my 4 WM/H armies, but it's not really a fair comparison. (4 of those armies were second-hand, and 12+ years ago minis were one hell of a lot cheaper than they are today) I did have a cool supportive group, started beginning of 6th Edition (anyone remember the Ravening Hordes set of army lists? that was my start to tabletop mini gaming). I didn't find it all that intimidating, but I had nothing to compare it to so take that for whatever it's worth. It did take me 11 months after I bought my first minis before I was prepared to go into a club to play, since it took me that long to get up to a painted 2000 point army, but I couldn't bear to bring unpainted toys when I was looking at fully-painted minis from other players. -und_ed
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Doooom
Mar 2, 2018 19:29:16 GMT
Post by Charistoph on Mar 2, 2018 19:29:16 GMT
Honestly they were much cheaper than my 4 WM/H armies, but it's not really a fair comparison. (4 of those armies were second-hand, and 12+ years ago minis were one hell of a lot cheaper than they are today) I did have a cool supportive group, started beginning of 6th Edition (anyone remember the Ravening Hordes set of army lists? that was my start to tabletop mini gaming). I didn't find it all that intimidating, but I had nothing to compare it to so take that for whatever it's worth. It did take me 11 months after I bought my first minis before I was prepared to go into a club to play, since it took me that long to get up to a painted 2000 point army, but I couldn't bear to bring unpainted toys when I was looking at fully-painted minis from other players. -und_ed Fair. And if you have a club where everyone is bringing painted armies, it is even more intimidating to be bringing in a grey legion, even if nobody says anything about not playing against grey legions. Part of it is having a pride in YOUR army. But as I like to point out, a lot of this is a hobby. I don't consider X-Wing to be a hobby like WHFB, 40K, or WM/H are, simply because no hobbying is needed with the models coming built and painted. A lot will depend if you are looking for a hobby, a game, or both. I got in to the Warhammers and WM/H because they are both, and I can't get in to X-Wing because it is just a game (and I also have concerns about the game's creative limits).
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Doooom
Mar 2, 2018 19:44:05 GMT
via mobile
Post by HereComesTomorrow on Mar 2, 2018 19:44:05 GMT
It doesn't help when one box of WMH infantry is three times the cost of a WHFB box of infantry. Which is besides the point because look at how well WHFB is doing now. Oh right, it isn't. Being 1/3 the cost doesn't matter when you need 4-6 boxes to have the same outcome for proportion of the army. WM/H can get away with having only 2 of a unit, but WHFB often needed 2-3 of a Core unit, and up to 6 boxes for each unit, an imbalance is noted. In 6th, you could usually get away with melee Empire State Troops being 20 in size (25 in 7th), while in 8th, you usually wanted 40-60 for Horde and depth. At 8-10 models per box, that gets intimidating in price, and they have enough detail to compare to the Sea Dogs. Skeletons and rats are easier to paint and came more to a box, but one usually wanted larger units as well with those. Of course, while you can have an unlimited number of Sea Dog units up to the point tally, they are only as effective as their support units and solos provide, necessitating a limit to fielding them to 2 or 3 (unless you like to collect Friendly Souls). Steelhead Halberdiers aren't much better in that respect, only having far fewer dedicated support solos and units to work with. My point wasn't YET ANOTHER argument about which is cheaper. My point was that WHFB died because of its pricing. PP has similarly prices for units and those prices will kill it. Look at this from an outsiders perspective. Would you rather buy into a game where €60 A SINGLE UNIT or one like Malifaux or Infinity where €60 can buy an entire full roster. Moreover, how do you explain to that new player that his €60 unit can only be used in one type of list and he probably needs to buy a second identicle unit? WMH doesn't have to weight of shops on the high street to draw kids and their parents money in, nor did it have the time of being the only game in town in order to foster a fiercly loyal fanbase. It doesn't have the advantage of being able to rest on its laurels after the influx of spurned WHFB and 7th Ed 40k players which I suspect is a contributing factor to a lot of the issues the game is facing. They're currently pricing themselves out if the market (especially compared to not GW games) is what it comes down to basically and they're not really in a position to do that.
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Doooom
Mar 2, 2018 20:01:46 GMT
Post by Charistoph on Mar 2, 2018 20:01:46 GMT
My point wasn't YET ANOTHER argument about which is cheaper. My point was that WHFB died because of its pricing. PP has similarly prices for units and those prices will kill it. Then I guess you have missed my point. Part of it was the intimidation factor of buying in to the game. WHFB's problem wasn't so much the price of the kit, but that you had to get so many of them that it intimidates by overwhelming volume. Look at this from an outsiders perspective. Would you rather buy into a game where €60 A SINGLE UNIT or one like Malifaux or Infinity where €60 can buy an entire full roster. Moreover, how do you explain to that new player that his €60 unit can only be used in one type of list and he probably needs to buy a second identicle unit? WMH doesn't have to weight of shops on the high street to draw kids and their parents money in, nor did it have the time of being the only game in town in order to foster a fiercly loyal fanbase. It doesn't have the advantage of being able to rest on its laurels after the influx of spurned WHFB and 7th Ed 40k players which I suspect is a contributing factor to a lot of the issues the game is facing. They're currently pricing themselves out if the market (especially compared to not GW games) is what it comes down to basically and they're not really in a position to do that. Largely agreed. Warmahordes used to be considered the skirmish game, but since WHFB suicided, Warmahordes is now the big fantasy game. Malifaux, X-Wing, and Infinity are now the skirmish games to the old skirmish games. And I think that this partly what prompted the Company of Iron development. Imagine if you will, if Company of Iron set itself in scope to the number of models those 3 operate in. Remember the old 2-model blisters used to expand the unit kits from 6-10? Those would be perfect for this set up. In fact it would be perfect for setting up people to gradually get in to the game, and allow for people who either don't have time or the budget for the 75-point Steamrollers. Speaking of this level, what rough size of a CoI Platoon do you all think would be needed to compete against the average 0-point Battlegroup?
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