GW Rants Just Seem to Write Themselves These Days

Due to all the commotion with the new imperial knights model, I was looking through the GW 40K online store for the first time in a while.  I followed the Space Marines release pretty closely, buying nothing, then pretty much ignored everything since.  I remember hearing that new nids were released and seeing a couple of pictures on various blogs so I went to take a look.



My second army for 40K is nids and it is mainly normal bugs as I got the models before the 5th ed codex dropped.  I got part of the way through converting some warriors to Hive Guard (see above) and Fexes to tervigons but never really finished due to codex induced apathy so I started looking at the big bugs.  Tervigon and Trygon kits at 57.50 are pricey but I remember that fexes where like 45 dollars when they came out and both are larger so not that bad.  The new tryant is also not so bad at 53 since it was like 45 also and now comes with wings, but the new bugs for 6th prices are just crazy.

Haruspex lists at 73 but looks to be the same size as the Tervigon if I am looking at it right.  The flyer at 80 does not seem even as big as a Valkyrie which is now 66 dollars.  That pretty much squashed any interest in even getting the lower price monstrous creature kits.

Now I used to be someone who had a pretty significant GW habit with 50-100 dollars a month coming home with me.  I have more than a significant blood bowl collection where I have every team GW has ever produced except 2nd edition Halflings and 2nd Edition snotlings(That statement implies I have 5 human blood bowl teams to get an idea of what I mean by significant).   I am just the customer GW should want to keep since I have a compulsive collecting thing (Don't call it Hording).

Now I have to struggle to remember the last time I bought a 40K miniature.  If I had to guess it would have been a metal Venomthrope I bought in like July 2010 as a bonus to a store who was giving me a free epic blister due to a special order shipping mix up.  Other than that I did get 2 dark vengeance space marine characters from Sandwyrm after that set came out.  And since they stopped producing specialist games minis no purchases there either for more than 6 months.

While I complain about the rules balance and such, specifically Allies and flyers both of which could probably be adjusted slightly to make them acceptable (Allies no Battlebrothers+ named character limits, Flyers after first turn on board free game for shooting) , it really does seem to be the prices that keep me away.  It is not that I could not afford to pay them,  if I wanted to I could order a pile Knights tomorrow from Chaos Mail Order on my credit card and have no problem paying the bill and all my normal bills at the end of the month (other than the wife killing me for wasting that money).   I just do not see the 140 (112 discounted) in even 1 Knight let also the 75 dollar rules books and 40-60 dollars codexs, etc.  While I hear that the production values for the new books is high, at the end of the day these are still just a way to facilitate the purchase of more extremely high margin plastic.  They will get solid use for a year or two before people switch to a different army then intermittent use for a year or two before it is replaced and then just used for very occasional reference.  Both my 4th and 5th ed space marine codexes are still in usable condition and they were 20 and 30 dollars retail not the 60 that the current one is.

I got my 4th ed mini rulebook in the 40-45 dollar starter box, I got a full size hardcover one for like 30 dollars at Borders, I got my 5th ed mini rulebook in a 48 dollar after discount starter box.  Now it is retail 75 dollar hard cover or 100 dollar starter box just to keep playing and I hear talk of a new edition after only like 2 years.  The current starter box should be like 75 dollars.  That makes it 25% higher than Black Reach which is well above inflation over that time.  With a discount that is like 60 which does not seem so unreasonable since I only would be interested in like half the models and do not really need them and would have to heavily convert them anyway.  The core rulebook should go back down to like 50 dollars tops.  That 100+ dollar toll to stay current in the rules so I can keep playing with my plastic toys just makes me not really want to get more plastic toys.

Ofcourse GW did not do the across the board price increase last year (instead putting significant price increases into the new kits) and had a significant revenue drop so I am guessing they will take the wrong lesson from that and do another price increase this year.