"How to Save Money on Warhammer 40K" Topic

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Amicalement
Armand

The best way to save money is not to play it at all. Beat you to it, Mithmee.

the article reminds me as being much the same words as that of a crack dealer might use when offering a free rock to a new customer

Fanatik, I think the words you're looking for are:

"The best way to save money is not to play it at all."

True, true and in my case way more true for historicals than for 40K.

As a WH40K crack junkie, I say turn away from the horror! Lol. I already have 5 different WH40K armies. Ugh. I need to get foam for the last two of my armies, though. What a mess.

Blake

Pictors bought a Wellington figure for $30 USD and a Napoleon figure at $50 USD but his Cuesta figure was a steal at $3. USD His British line infantry came in at a buck apiece but the Riflemen cost him $5 USD each. HE took out a mortgage on his house just to buy the French imperial guard, but he could not afford to buy the cavalry. Murat alone was the cost of a second home,not to mention Davout.

I have never seen historicals fig pricing based on the perceived combat value on the gameboard…it comes down to sculpt quality, and the amount of metal. When I see a fig, of standard human size cost 5-10 dollars more than a grunt of the same size, just because its a personality…I know the fanboys are going to spend a lot more money than I ever will!

They buy crack, I buy single malt whisky.

40k miniature pricing is not based on perceived combat value. If you disagree you could show some examples which will no doubt be shot down by current tournament results.

"Pictors bought a Wellington figure for $30 USD USD and a Napoleon figure at $50 USD USD but his Cuesta figure was a steal at $3. USD USD His British line infantry came in at a buck apiece but the Riflemen cost him $5 USD USD each. HE took out a mortgage on his house just to buy the French imperial guard, but he could not afford to buy the cavalry. Murat alone was the cost of a second home,not to mention Davout."

I didn't. I spent about $2 USD a figure for infantry and $5 USD a figures for cavalry. For my Carlist War stuff alone that sets me back about $1,600. USD

Same for my Successor states stuff, except there I have elephants too, which were about $15 USD a pop.

I have about $2,700 USD or so sunk in just figures on those.

Even my largest GW armies don't cost that much.

Factor in the painting cost and historicals are WAY more expensive than GW will ever be.

If that isn't true for you Mick, you probably aren't doing them right.

If the "fanboys" are spending more money than you on their fantasy games you aren't buying single malt" whisky", you are probably actually buying Mad Dog 20/20 and just can't tell the difference.

and in my case way more true for historicals than for 40K

That's true in my case as well, Pictors. I've spent much more in recent years on miniatures for Bolt Action and Team Yankee than 40K.

A box of high quality Perry plastic medieval troops costs about $30 USD-40 depending on how good a deal you can find.

One box is generally sufficient to do an entire Knights and Knaves house/faction (about 30-40 figures on 10-12 Stands). If you want mounted/foot mix you may have to buy two boxes or supplement with metal figures. Still you should be able to stay under $100.00 USD.

So much depends on the Game System your building armies for esp. whether it lets you select your own figures (so you can buy from competing companies seeking the best price/quality – its called capitalism).

Knights and Knaves covers both fantasy and historical but the principle is the same for both genres. We just put out an Olde World Expansion so you can dust off your old Warhammer figures and once again set out to conquer the Olde World.

Having said all that let me emphasis – its their/your money. People can spend it as they like. Its not a moral issue. Buy and play what you like but be aware of the rich variety of gaming opportunities that are out there.

Thomas J. Thomas
Fame and Glory Games

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Centurio,

One quick look at the GW website shows two figures of a librarian and a captain for 60 euros, 5 cataphracterii Terminators for 52 euros, and 10 Primaris Reivers for 45 euros and 10 mkiii space marines for 40. All man sized and not terribly more ornate a sculpt. Why is the Captain 30 euros while a lowly trooper 4? Back years ago I quickly put back some very clean sorceress in a simple dress with staff which was priced at $20 USD, a more ornate sorceress from reaper cost me 4.

Pictor .certainly never spent 7.5 times more per figure for a carlist leader compared to the trooper on the stand next to him.

My beef is not how much you spend in total on figures, it's how much you need to spend on a single figure. GW charges come from subjective aspects of a figure's "coolness", some of which certainly comes from how effective the piece might be on the table. Historicals may require more volume of figs…but on a per fig basis my gripping beast and perry plastic skirmish games are a whole lot cheaper.

If you show up to a Warhammer game and you have reaper stand in figs, you get thrown out even if you are a kid just getting started. I have seen it done, the business plan is not that much different than protecting your street corner from other dealers. Hook em and make sure they can't buy from anyone else.

A captain in itself is not more effective than the things you mentioned. The reason the captain is more expensive is because they will sell approximately 1 captain for every 100 troops, but the setup costs the same for a trooper or a captain. They have to sell the captain for more than a troop to make it worth their while.

Horse pucky, if such were the case my Napoleon fig would cost me 300 to the cost of a lowly trooper.

In the next 40k FAQ they are supposed to raise the cost of Astra Militarum infantry because they are overpowered for their point cost and armies based on that unit have been dominating the tournaments. The Astra Militarum infantry (Cadian shock troops box) costs $29 USD, absolutely one of the lowest priced squad boxes they make. If cost was based on cost effectiveness, then they would have certainly raised the cost of that squad.

The costs are based more on the economics of the quantity they will sell than the "coolness" or combat effectiveness.

Rubbish, again…I doubt that seriously. The setup costs compared to sales don't seem to affect the makers of Napoleons and Wellingtons which might sell one fig of the leader compared to 300-1000 other figs. A scots grey regiment doesn't cost more than a generic dragoon regiment, yet most folks will only field one of those compared to the numbers of other regiments out here.

You are just rationalizing it. If you like the coolness pay for it by all means, but please do it with your eyes open. My dollars will be spent more cost effectively.

Are the Napoleonic leaders plastic or metal?

Metal.

See, its not that I'm rationalizing it, its that you don't know what you are talking about. Look up the cost of a plastic injection mold designed for mass production, compare that to the cost of a rubber mold for a spincaster, and that may help you understand the economics of these things.

As a Metalsmith, I do know what I am talking about. I understand economy of scale. The plastic vs metal argument doesn't apply.

The setup of a injection mold for a single figure certainly would cost more than one setup for 5 if a single sprew is the goal, but it certainly doesn't cost more to make 5 sprews of that captain that are then divided and sold individually.

If you buy Perry plastic sprews or Victrix, the riflemen come two to sprew and are thrown into the box with 30 or so line soldiers. Did those riflemen cost more in the end?

Keep believing it, but it is coolness not manufacturing that makes the price what what it is, plastic or metal, the initial sculpt and setup costs ratio of a figure are the same, production costs, the same, if both of the same type be it plastic or metal.

last of all, who was it that set the ratios of the fig types in the lists by minimum troop requirements? If they want to sell more captains they just tweak the lists.

More conspiracy theory. You are not required to use ANY troops in a 40k army.

40k and Warhammer is expensive. But the prices are NOT set based on combat effectiveness. Individual character miniatures and sculpted to be cool, generally, and they tend to have an entire frame, which would normally hold several normal miniatures. In addition these miniatures will sell less volume.

I could set up a spincaster this weekend (because its so cheap to do so) and crank out metal napoleons all day, then melt the extras down later and reuse the metal if they don't sell. I could even put them on a mold with troops. So this is possibly why companies that sell plastic ranges normally have metal leaders.

Plus…GW shouldn't have much of a problem only making the captain in metal and selling it for LESS if your argument held, but they didn't even whentheir plastics were rare.

A unique librarian or captain fig always cost more than a dozen spacehulk plastics. He even cost more than a terminator in metal.

Character models will always sell less and therefore they have been priced higher, in metal or plastic. Its recently when they went to all (mostly) plastic, that the characters really bumped up in price. I looked up the price of injection molds for plastics. Its a lot.

"My beef is not how much you spend in total on figures, it's how much you need to spend on a single figure. GW charges come from subjective aspects of a figure's "coolness", some of which certainly comes from how effective the piece might be on the table. Historicals may require more volume of figs…but on a per fig basis my gripping beast and perry plastic skirmish games are a whole lot cheaper."

Well then your point is pretty much moot. You can play little skirmish games with historicals, but as I suspected you're drinking Mad Dog 20/20 and thinking it is "whisky."

I get a good looking and fun GW game with 100 figs a side or so.

For a Horse and Musket game I need 3 or 4 times that.

If I want to do a GW skirmish game it would cost me $40. USD

Like Centurio Prime says, you simply don't know what you are talking about.

Also the historical leader figures SHOULD cost more.

I spent about twice as much to make my Kosciuszko Uprising character pack as I did to make my Polish marching pack. With the Polish marching pack head swaps also made a Russian marching and Lithuanian marching pack for only a little more.

Yet because of your thinking and people's expectations I have to sell the character pack for the same price as the rank and file pack. Yes there are fewer figures in it.

Because of that I will NEVER sell enough of it to recoup my investment in making it.

I have to make this pack to get people to buy the other stuff.

If I were going to sell it for what I need to make my cost back that pack would be 5 times what my other packs cost but no one is going to pay $20 USD for 3 15mm Historical figures.

The Napoleon figure should cost significantly more than the average trooper and maybe with Napeleonics you might sell enough to get your money back as it is big but apply that to lesser periods.

How many 28mm Francisco Solano Lopez figures do you have to sell to make your money back on getting him sculpted, getting its part of a master mold made and then getting the production mold made?

Sculpt: $450 USD
Portion of master mold: $6 USD or so
Production mold: $75 USD

So $530 USD for that one figure, I guess less if you put him in a mold with the rest of a command or character pack and reduce the production mold cost concomitantly, but still around $470. USD

And this is if it is an infantry figure. You aren't going to be able to do head swaps or minor changes to make him into anther figure if you want a stand-out character model.

Yet you are going to be stuck charging $15 USD a pack or whatever because that is what the rest of your packs cost.

Centurio Prime is correct, the cost of a figure does not correlate to its combat effectiveness in the game. There are figures that are much more powerful than the current heralds for cheaper per figure.

Okay, it's been awhile so maybe they don't have minimum troops anymore.
But you have another fallacy belief about metal costs and spin casting…dead stock metal remelted for reuse is not much of a savings…it is this very thing that makes plastics more cost effective in the long run. High startup cost, but longer runs at a cheaper price per fig later. Labour per fig is less, cost per fig is less, the only detriment is the higher initial cost of setup.

But we really should not be arguing merits of metal vs plastic but the cost of a plastic figure vs the cost of another plastic of the same size and complexity. If expected sales are to be in a certain ratio, the production is tailored to that ratio…on the sprews…which are subdivided upon creation into what ever form of packaging is required. One fig occupies the same overall space on the master as any other if they are both the same size. One fig might only be a tenth of the master while others are repeated, but the production is done in multiples based on the master sprew. Do you really think they only setup a master for just the captain when you buy it? No, they have chopped up and divided the sprew into different packages. To take advantage of economy of scale.

Anyways, I have had enough of this since you have wandered into fanboy blindness calling my arguments conspiracy theory. Coolness has a value,wine and beer sell better when they have cool labels, figs too. Are Raybans really that much better than the 10 dollar sunglasses?

I like coolness as much as the next guy and will pay for it….but I don't delude myself about it being a manufacturing cost when I can see something sold for a lot less that is basically the same thing.

Guys,come on… my Valhallan DCCLIII regiment is complete,i am the gamesday guard regiment.

Pictor, the problem with your carlist leader is pretty far off the scale. A carlist army will have a hard time being much more than a vanity production. There simply isn't that great a demand for it to be able to spread your sculpting costs out. I dare say, if you slapped a bit of green stuff onto one of your other sculpts to make Lopez, no one is going to be much the wiser. In any case loss leaders are just that, they sell the whole line

This certainly is not the problem GW has to face for a captain figure. I bet they sell more of just captains then all the carlist figures for sale by all makers everywhere put together. I bet they sell more than 1 for the 100 other figs they sell too.

I'll concede that actual game value and a figure's actual price is not distinctly pegged. I believe that for quite a few buyers of GW games who lack desire to play in tourneys, or are may be seriously creating their armies by bang for the buck, some of these might equate coolness with combat ability. Probably most of them. I always said "perceived combat value". My kid never could quite figure out mass has it's own quality when he was building an army of elites and elephants and kept getting defeated by my big levies and cheap skirmishes in our fantasy/ancients games.

It still remains coolness that drives the price, not cost to prototype or percentage of the companiy's line as a coefficient. The prices of all GW stuff exceed that of comparable historical plastics, and they have much larger market share and production runs to spread prototyping cost throughout.

"This certainly is not the problem GW has to face for a captain figure. I bet they sell more of just captains then all the carlist figures for sale by all makers everywhere put together. I bet they sell more than 1 for the 100 other figs they sell too."

You still don't get it.

The Carlist figure is a perfect example. It is actually a very good one.

My Kosciuszko one is probably even better. I am going to sell probably 100 Russian infantry marching figures for every Kosciuszko, actual numbers are higher than that but 100 to 1 is a pretty decent ratio.

This is probably even more true in a macedonian army. I have something like 240 pikemen. I have 1 Alexander.

I have 4 other generals. But each one is unique. Many of the pikemen are different but different based on a couple of different base sculpts.

Which brings us to this

"This certainly is not the problem GW has to face for a captain figure. I bet they sell more of just captains then all the carlist figures for sale by all makers everywhere put together. I bet they sell more than 1 for the 100 other figs they sell too. "

This may be but there is scale in play here too.

My goals for my Kosciuszko line are different from GW's goals for its Stormcast line and it has to be.

I never expect to make a living from Uprising Miniatures. It is a hobby, a side project that funds itself and hasn't actually done that yet, it is a straight up loss so far.

GW can't do that. Not only that but they have profit targets for each boxed set. The cost of production for the Darkoath Princess or whatever she is higher than for a Chaos warrior.

For most of the troop boxed sets there are four or five variants of which hand and head swaps make many more varieties. For the character there is only the one and you can't slap a "bit of green stuff" to make a dynamic character model that people want to lead their army.

There is increased cost in selling a single unit per a boxed set of figures.

Call Old Glory and ask them how much a Napoleon figure is, see how much they will sell just their regular 28mm Napoleon figure for. I bet they tell you that one figure will cost you $26. USD

Unless you have the army card.

"The prices of all GW stuff exceed that of comparable historical plastics, and they have much larger market share and production runs to spread prototyping cost throughout."

This is true but it also true that they have much bigger overhead costs and this factors into the price of the product and in some cases these costs are desirable from a consumer point of view.

Many people like that in any town that has a hobby store they can find GW stuff. Part of that is a result of marketing, including the pretty boxed sets, the magazine they advertise with and the fact that GW runs websites and has a PR department. Stuff that most historical companies do not have to anywhere near that scale.

And the biggest thing about the price is that the price of a product is essentially what the market will bear.

GW prices are not higher than their fantasy competitors, in some cases they are lower. Their characters are more expensive but their rank and file are often much cheaper than some of the same quality level competition, depending on how you buy them half the price.

>The cost of production for the Darkoath Princess or whatever she is higher than for a Chaos warrior.

No it is exactly the same. Each costs the same to model, and set up. The only difference is how much of the master the is devoted to one figure, there may be one princess, and 11 warriors on that master sprue but the cost to set up each FIGURE is exactly the same. How that master sprue gets subdivided into packages, can drive up the cost…but again that is just another way to justify an extreme markup for the lesser quantity production figures.

> these costs are desirable from a consumer point of view

That's what I have been saying…some the coolness factor is created with all that marketing overhead.

>nd the biggest thing about the price is that the price of a product is essentially what the market will bear.

That is what I have been saying all along…fans of the figs who are addicted to canonic orthodoxy and got to have the kewl figs (which may or may not be more effective in the game but are possibly perceived as such) will pay more for them then the rest of us. Classic supply and demand price structure…and all this crap about it costing more to make and sell just the one figure vs 10 of the others remains rationalization. It is a vicious circle. I am sure GW doesn't worry about captains costing more than grunts…they get their profits by selling whole lines and plan production accordingly. It's just like the guy who makes and sells you a suit, he makes his money on the shirt, belt and ties. He might even convince you to buy an expensive designer tie, which costs the same to make, but is so much subjectively cooler.

>GW prices are not higher than their fantasy competitors, in some cases they are lower. Their characters are more expensive but their rank and file are often much cheaper than some of the same quality level competition, depending on how you buy them half the price.

I haven't found that to be the case, new reaper figs are almost cheaper and the new oathmark plastic line is much much cheaper. Of course some bargains can be had…almost every citadel/GW fig I have was bought from the cutout bi

By the way, a 28mm Napoleon figure from Essex cost 2.80 British pounds. A standard foot soldier is only 1.95, only 50% more compared to 700% more for a GW captain vs grunts.

Nuff Said.

"No it is exactly the same. "

No it is not. I've already explained this. Character models cost more to produce. Go up and read my other posts.

"By the way, a 28mm Napoleon figure from Essex cost 2.80 British pounds. A standard foot soldier is only 1.95, only 50% more compared to 700% more for a GW captain vs grunts."

And that probably isn't enough. GW characters aren't overpriced, historical ones are under priced.

You have something like 200 line infantry for every Napoleon sold. So if you paid $300 USD for the foot soldier and $300 USD for napoleon you would have to sell about 75 Napoleons to get your cost back.

But the other thing is the gamer needs 200 infantry for each Napoleon.

GW players do not need that many figures so the comparison isn't valid. The price has to be higher because for each Darkoath Warqueen you are selling you are only selling 20 Marauders and 16 Chaos warriors and 8 knights and a chariot and monster and a wizard or something.

In addition to those 200 line infantry, you need grenadiers, dragoons, cuirassier, horse artillery, foot artillery, hussars, lancers and on and on and on. And many of them.

This is why historical armies cost more than fantasy ones on average. This is why historical manufacturers can make leaders for about the same price as regular figures.

"Nuff Said." about how you misunderstand the two markets.