A Wallet Punch

So here we go again. Games Workshop have raised their prices again but this time its a pretty large rise. This is great for our hobby. Yep you heard it I think it is fantastic. This is the best move GW has made for us gamers in a long time. Of course on their behalf it is stupid, really stupid. Now maybe from a purely numbers point of view it makes some sense to them, it may even be an ievitable price rise due to materials becomig more expensive. I still think they should have tried not to make the rise quite so big.

For us gamers this means that a lot of Games Workshops range is priced unreasonably, especially when compared to some competitors. While I think Mantic Miitures are really terrible, quite like GW's miniatures from the nineties, they are value for money. At some point a decent manufacturer will release a really kick ass range I hope. However there are still alternatives and hopefully we will see these come to the table more and more often. I am looking forward to the day when some one takes out a really individual army at a tournament for me to play against. So in short this price rise will give other manufacturers a boost in sales and hopefully enable them to raise their own quality a little.

For Games Workshop it would seem that they are secure in their high street prescence in most towns and cities we know. This allows them to sell to impulse shoppers very easily. What twelve year old child(well male child at least) can resist checking out whats inside a GW store. I kow I couldn't. So Games Workshop will still sell plenty of Space Marines to passing traffic. The change in their poverseas selling policy is also interesting as this will promote brick and mortar retail stores (more likely it will just mean each area gets an internet superstore like Maelstrom). I can't say it is a bad thing, anything that supports local games stores is good but I do see the rise of the gaming super store driving a lot of these stores out of business and I don't see that this policy helps that much at least in the longer term. We shall see...

This price rise and the combination of eigth edition Warhammer Fantasy means a lot of lost players. I notce in my local games club that while 40k has been played almost every week that I have only seen one game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle there ever. I am not sure how this is going in my club back in Dublin but I am assume Warhammer may be on the decline there too. I wonder is there now any chance of getting these people back. Is their investment but finacially and emotionally in Warhammer now finished with? I know to an extent mine is. I like the game and the background. The miniatures are great. I can't really afford a new army any more. Or maybe I can't justify the cost of one is a better way to express what I feel. I can keep my Dwarves up to date and collect the new miniatures. I guess that means some spending every seven years or so when a new book with new toys is released.

There is a good post here worth reading. You will find a lot of handy liks to other cheaper manufacturers. Here is the link to the Space Marine picture I used above.