The Empire Speaks

GW's CEO has responded to the questions about the new Trade Terms. His response can be seen at the GW farcebook page. It is nice for him to respond to the uproar about the new terms. His basic point is that local retailers (GW or Trade) support the hobby by recruiting and events while the internet sales just freeload on this expensive endeavor. This is a fundamental issue in current gaming retail world but really does not have much to deal with the actual issue here.

The UK resellers should not be able to deliver the products at a profit to AU at half the cost of what GW charges if GW was running a rational operation in AU. Shipping should be about the same. GW disadvantage is that more than likely the import duty and taxes of about 15% are probably not being paid. I have heard comments that AU has high duties but for most things it is 5% if you are not getting accused of dumping which GW certainly could not be at its prices. GW AU or the local stores should probably file some complaints with AU customs about that but by having the retail cost very high they make this worse on themselves. Ofcourse this also affects NZ which does not have duties. As a note the AU customs and taxes appear to be lower than the 20% UK VAT.

Do the AU rogue traders have better wholesale rate if the cost of business is so high there or the standard 50% of retail cost? I doubt it. I am sure the retailers would like the product to have a lower retail price. They would not like a price drop but since this difference was 4 years in the making they could have just not got the annual price increases that the rest of the world got. We all know that this is not a product that you buy just what you need plus a little extra like food or gas. We buy essentially as much as we can afford as addicts. How many players do you know who have just that 1 completed army and how many do you know that have 2-5 armies all in various stages of completion from painted to MIB.

Tac squad is 23 pounds so (11.5 cost to retailer) and is 62 AU dollars (31 from retailer which is like 20 pounds at the current rate(.66)). So GW is essentially saying that it costs them twice as much to deliver this product in AU than in UK. If this is actually the case they really need to get to work on their logistics. I think UPS has a service for that. Back when the exchange rates were .4 pounds per AU dollar they were delivering at a cost of like 12.4 pounds so like 3 extra AU dollars for the tac squad at the wholesale level so the wholesale price should now be like 17.5 plus 3 so about 20.5 AU dollars or like 41 retail cost. So that cut the cost down by like 33% which really closes that gap and would probably have allowed them to maintain their local sales volume. You could still do better online but it would not be the huge gap it is now.

This problem really goes back to the dual nature of the company. Are you a manufacturer or a retailer? If your stores are really a marketing tool should you be expecting them to make a profit or just to break even. Are they an affective marketing tool since they make up probably 75% of the cost of the company? Could you spend a quarter of that and still make the same profit through sales through just independent stores? Sure independent store sales bring less cash but they also have lower costs. You say that the Stores are your wall against the competition but you cut their hours and service to levels where they cannot run demo games with one man stores. You move them from high visibility areas to strip malls. Should not your wall against your competition be the quality and value of your products. Would a happy customer base serve you better as a recruiting tool and more importantly retention tool? You spend so much money recruiting players with this retail chain while appearing to have very little interest in long term customer loyalty.

Same Old Same Old

So I was on a little vacation and I get back and see that GW manages to make their annual price rise announcement even more annoying to there fans by both announcing that their shift to resin-plastic from metal comes with a price increase even though the material is cheaper and that they will no longer allow retailers to ship to certain areas where they have set the prices to such outrageous levels that it is like half the cost to order from UK than buy down the street.

The price rise is standard operating practice, many items did not get increased but those that did saw a large rise of 10-20%. I have yet to find a good description of their decision structure about what to increase or not. Some of these items look like thet just went up last year. Would it be better to have a few percent across the board increase as opposed increasing random kits large amounts each year. I know the big jumps help to move those items at the current prices to meet you end of quarter targets.

As someone who has really step away from GW in the last year, I am not surprised by any of this. I am going on 9 months without buying anything from GW and still doing fine. Other hobbies and interests have filled in the gap. I never played enough to really warrent my huge investments anyway. The idea of building a new army and the 1K it would now is pretty scary.

Happy Easter

Target had an Lego Mini AT-ST Polybag in with their easter basket items so I decided to take the idea and run with it.



Little Easter Theme Lego MOD. T

Garage Sale: 40K, Warhammer, Fortress America, Computer Parts

I am interested in moving along some stuff that is just gathering dust in my basement. No time to start any of these projects so if you see something your interested in make me an offer that includes the shipping cost at eriochrome on the traditional hotmail address.

Cut Black Reach Ork Set.

Battle for Skull Pass Rules and Booklet.

Orc Army Book.

Skull Pass Gobbos: Mainly Primed Black. 2 Metal Gobbo Fanatics.

5 Dwarf Slayers. Dwarf Slayers Command. 6 Models total. Metal Dwarf Runesmith. Metal Dwarf Engineer. Metal Dwarf Hero: White Dwarf. 2 Old Style Metal Witch Elves. Here we have a Creative Audiology 2 ZS platinum with Interface box and the cables and software. PCI interface. It worked when I last used it but did not transfer it over when replacing machine since I never used any of the fancy features.

I also have a Radeon X800 Pro AGP card which can go along with a ATI TV Wonder PCI and Remote Wonder Control that got left behind when I last upgraded since I wanted a PCIx16 board for future upgrades and get a Nvidia card which did not work with the TV Wonder.

Newest Creation

My wife posted the big news on her blog so I have it here also. So here we have our newest creation which will be limiting my hobby time in the near future. With this little one on the way, I really need to get that basement finished so the baby will have bedroom instead of an office.

We are really excited as we have been hoping to expand our family for a few years now. The new one is due in the beginning of August so we will end up with a 5 year gap between our daughter and the new baby.

Updated to note that it is a boy so I have a better chance of passing on my gaming geekery. My wife does not alway approve when I try to pass it on to our daughter. "But she will have the pick of the nerds." is not really a good argument from her point of view.

Tantive IV

This was one of my fun Christmas presents, Lego Star Wars Tantive IV, certainly better than the socks I also got. This is a 1400 piece set of one of the most iconic star wars ships as the first one to appear on screen.


My little helper was also very excited by this set. The best thing for her was that out of the 5 minifigures one was Princess Leia.


Here are all the parts bags dumped out on the floor. The bags are not labeled so you have to open them all the start sorting before really starting the build.


This is the ship half built. You start with the main undercarriage then build up the rest of the ship around this center part. The main axis of the ship is pretty strong since it is made of long bricks with the holes thru them which have the snap fit linkers. The then get cover above and below with other pieces. The ship is not going to split into two with play.


Here my little helper shows of the completed ship. It is pretty heavy so she could not hold it up well enough to get a picture. It also is slightly tricky to hold since their are many parts on the underside which can be knocked off.

Here is the bottom side. You can see the turbo laser turrent and the concussion missile launcher but it is not detailed like the top.

The ship comes with an opening cockpit into which 2 minifigures, Captain Antilles and a Rebel Trooper pilot the ship. The cones seem to come loose fairly often with handling.

The middle section is removable with its turbo laser turret and other smaller cannons. The turbo laser turret is also part that I have found gets knocked off wih handling.

This is the interior section of the ship as a control room or communication center. Room for 3 minifigs. I had problems with the sides of this coming loose during handling since the lower pieces push up against them. I reinforced them with an extra bracket on each side and now they stay on significantly better.


Next interest point is a stowage section that holds a little hoverlift which is covered by a enclosure.

Here we see the rebel trooper moving some cargo under the direction of Princess Leia.

The Tantive IV also includes two detachable escape pods located aft of the stowage section. Here can go the 2 droids wanting for their escape. Since the droids naturally go here, I would have liked to get 2 more troopers to go in the communication room. Also which they had some blasters to repel imperial boarders.

Here is the classic rear view of the ship.

All told I think it took me about 6 hours to get this together while watching some football games with the "help" of my little one. This is a nice kit but definately more for display than play. Younger kids even when they strong enough to carry it will have a very hard time handling it without shedding parts.

This ship has started a little fascination with Lego Star Wars. I am now building up a proper fleet to defeat the Empire.

Oscillating Interests

I have not posted much recently due to getting no games in and having no motivation to work on any gw stuff after what they did with the nids book and the current meta game.

I am current fixated on Lego Star Wars kits after getting a couple for my daughter and myself around Christmas time. Might post something on those just to fill the space.

Speak the Truth Brother

Penny Arcade today is just perfect. So true, so true.

Barter Bucket: Looking for Epic and Blood Bowl

Still looking to transfer some 28 mm to 6 mm. Space saving and all that.
Specifically I am looking for Epic Space Marines, Squats, and Eldar plus everyone loves Titans. I have put up to offer some stuff I bought to start fantasy (skull pass, army books and some metal dwarves) that never quite got going plus access to my bits bins.

Here is my listing:

Generally Epic items: Space Marines, Eldar, Squats, Titans

Specifics:

• Epic Eldar Phoenix Bomber
• Epic Eldar Cobra Super Heavy Tank (Old Style)
• Epic Squat Gyrocopters (2)
• Epic Squat Leviathan
• Epic Space Marine Drop Pods
  
• Epic Space Marine Dreadnoughts (Rogue Trader Era style)
• Blood Bowl Amazon Team
• Blood Bowl Orges
• Blood Bowl Trolls
  

Available for trade:

• Blood Bowl Nurgle's Rotter Team (NIB)
• Blood Bowl Individuals: Chaos Beastmen, Nurgle Beastmen, Nurgle Rotter, Khemri Mummies, Khemri Skeletons, High Elf Linemen, High Elf Blitzers
• Blood Bowl 2ed Miniatures: *Lots* Just ask about what you are looking for.
• assorted Space Marine Bits (Plain, Black Templars, Dark Angels, older SW, and Chaos Marine backpacks)
• Assault on Black Reach Orcs: 2 Full Sets
• WHFB Battle for Skull Pass (Whole Set): Most Models Primed Black
• WHFB Orcs and Goblin Army Book
• Dwarves Army Book
• assorted Metal WHFB Minis (year on model) as follows:
• x2 Witch Elves ('99, '00)
• Dwarf Rune Priest ('96)
• Dwarf Engineer ('05)
• Troll Slayer Banner ('96)
• Troll Slayer Musician ('96)
• Troll Slayer Daemon Slayer ('96)
• x8 Troll Slayers
• Dwarf Character: The White Dwarf ('96)
• Deathwing assault cannon
• Terminator heavy flamer
• SM meltaguns
• Ravenwing TL assault cannons

Even if none of this stuff interests you go by the bucket (button on the upper left) to see what people are looking for.

Isle of Blood Reference Sheet

GW has apparently decided to provide a reference sheet for people to summarizes the model stats. Well, I guess printing that 1 extra page in the little booklet was going to cut into there profit margin to much so you have to go to their site to get the info. Seems like they are treating Skaven weapon teams as a Flame Thrower and Stone Thrower but that seems like a problem as they are now solo 1 wound models with T3. Atleast they got Heavy Armor. They are listed as infantry. Can Infantry join another unit as all the characters are listed that way.

Maybe they will now write up some real training missions also.