Games Workshop Pricing Feedback Thread

[duffybear1988]

Anyone else think the new plastic hero kits are crazy at £8 each? Maybe I would buy one if they were half that price... I mean they must cost like 5p to actually produce, so what is the other £7.95 spent on?

I remember the good old days when a space marine combat squad was a fiver... oh how I miss them.

It's scary when you look at the garden of mor and believe that it is worth its price when in reality it isn't, it's just that everything else is so expensive.

[eldargal]

Good lord no, not the Dark Elf Sorceress anyway. Along with Lelith Hesperax in my opinion THE nicest character kit GW have released.

Actually if the mould cost, say, thirty thousand pounds conservative estimate, then for the kit to pay back its money at 5p production cost they would have to sell, what, 600000 units? Hell Jes Goodwin said at GD Chicago he didn't think a Space Marine librarian kit would be viable, and SM account for 40% of GW Sales

[shelfunit.]

Good lord no, not the Dark Elf Sorceress anyway. Along with Lelith Hesperax in my opinion THE nicest character kit GW have released.

Actually if the mould cost, say, thirty thousand pounds conservative estimate, then for the kit to pay back its money at 5p production cost they would have to sell, what, 600000 units? Hell Jes Goodwin said at GD Chicago he didn't think a Space Marine librarian kit would be viable, and SM account for 40% of GW Sales

The size of the new plastic wizards moulds means either they were all on a single large sprue, or were moulded individually, meaning the cost would be far, far below £30K - the individual wizard sprues being very small compared to the "normal GW sprue size. Also I very much doubt he was asking the price to be reduced to 5p eldargal, £4 yes, but then they'ed only have to sell about 3-4000 of each wizard to recoup costs, far less hyperbolic...

[eldargal]

I doubt they were all on one sprue, that means for every sorceress you produce you get one of each of the others, if some sell better than others you get a lot of unnecessary stock.

Fact remains the price is consistent with both GW kits and other non-GW kits of similar quality (AoW for example).

[EmperorNorton]

I have that Dark Elf Sorceress on my painting table right now and it is a very nice model, no question about it.
Still, £8 is quite a lot of money for one plastic character.
I doubt the cost for a mould that small will be more than £5000. So if only £1 of each Sorceress sold went towards paying for the mould I'm sure they'd have recouped those costs within less than a year.

That the price is consistent with other GW kits simply means that the prices of those other kits are way too high as well.

[SunTzu]

Fact remains the price is consistent with both GW kits and other non-GW kits of similar quality (AoW for example).

Perrys in plastic (granted, units not individuals) and Hasselfree in metal would like to disagree with you there.

Though to be fair I don't think £8 for a character model is outrageous... it's not a bargain by any means, but not outrageous in context. £8 for a R&F mini of which you need 5+ or 10+, though, or £12 for a character infantry model... that's ridiculous. Put it this way, if I wanted, for example, a plastic Necromancer and felt he was £4 overpriced, in my whole army I'd have overspent by £4. Not the end of the world, doesn't bother me. If I wanted 10 plastic Beastmen (say) and consider them to be £8 overpriced (which they are... at least!) then in a whole Beastmen army I'd have overspent by hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I do have problems with GW prices, but £8 for a character model is the absolute least of my worries... a drop in the ocean.

[Tymell]

Personally, yeah, I do think those new characters are over-priced. £4 would be about right to me, £5 at the most.

I do think the Garden of Morr is reasonable, even ignoring their other prices. I'd say it's about right for how much you get in it.

[Chaos and Evil]

Actually if the mould cost, say, thirty thousand pounds conservative estimate

Thirty grand would get you a pretty large and detailed frame, like a fully complete troops sprue the size Mantic uses (Bigger than GW's modern troop frames).

These were done in-house, probably in aluminium because they won't need to be steel (Steel's only needed for higher volume production), and probably cost £2000-£4000 each dependant on how GW's internal accounts work out.

Certainly it wouldn't cost *me* any more than that to have a plastic frame of that size made, and I'm just a random chump without an entire in-house tooling studio.

If they're not in profit a good time before they hit 1000 sales, I'd be surprised.

[winterdyne]

I don't for one second assume that the new characters are moulded individually. It's likely that the production mould consists of each of the characters on a single sprue which is broken up for packaging. The cost is ridiculously high for what's basically a small plastic kit. For things like heroes which should sell in roughly equal quantities across a number of hobbyist targets, a shared sprue for production is just sensible.

[Sgt John Keel]

I don't for one second assume that the new characters are moulded individually. It's likely that the production mould consists of each of the characters on a single sprue which is broken up for packaging. The cost is ridiculously high for what's basically a small plastic kit. For things like heroes which should sell in roughly equal quantities across a number of hobbyist targets, a shared sprue for production is just sensible.

Perhaps I'm poorly informed, but I would have thought that the primary cost of making the die would be the actual cutting of the mould, which doesn't really seem to lend itself to cost savings by volume.

[winterdyne]

I do assume that there's a minimum or standard die size for the injection moulding machine. Since the standard GW sprue size appears to be roughly the size of a battleforce box (usually folded or snapped in half to fit in a standard box) I'd guess this is the cheapest size for them to mass produce. Casting more than one character at a time (on a single die) seems efficient to me.

[Sgt John Keel]

I do assume that there's a minimum or standard die size for the injection moulding machine. Since the standard GW sprue size appears to be roughly the size of a battleforce box (usually folded or snapped in half to fit in a standard box) I'd guess this is the cheapest size for them to mass produce. Casting more than one character at a time (on a single die) seems efficient to me.

If that's the case, there should be a noticeable fracture surface on the outside of the sprue, no? Perhaps someone who bought one can enlighten us.

[EmperorNorton]

If that's the case, there should be a noticeable fracture surface on the outside of the sprue, no? Perhaps someone who bought one can enlighten us.

I checked for that when I assembled my Dark Elf Sorceress, but could not find anything to suggest that the frame was cut/broken off of anything.

[winterdyne]

I guess that explains why they're 8 quid each then.

[Wintermute]

I guess that explains why they're 8 quid each then.

Err, since when has the production cost had that much influence on the retail price? They are priced at £8.00 each because GW believe people will pay that for them.

[eron12]

Anyone else think the new plastic hero kits are crazy at £8 each? Maybe I would buy one if they were half that price... I mean they must cost like 5p to actually produce, so what is the other £7.95 spent on?

Supporting British retail stores.

[Foolish Mortal]

[QUOTE=duffybear1988;5690088]Anyone else think the new plastic hero kits are crazy at £8 each? Maybe I would buy one if they were half that price... I mean they must cost like 5p to actually produce, so what is the other £7.95 spent on?.....
/QUOTE]


Totally agree with you.

I liked the look of the Chaos Sorceror model, but £8.00 for one PLASTIC model, with no options like extra head or weapon, no thanks.

I would go £5.00, maybe even £6.00 at a push, but not £8.00.

[yabbadabba]

GW aren't the only one fleecing our antipodean cousins

[Satan]

I must be mentally challenged or something, because I think the prices for the new plastic characters is totally OK, since it's a the same level for the metal ones we had here many, many years ago.

[Chaos and Evil]

I don't for one second assume that the new characters are moulded individually.

I don't see why they wouldn't be.

GW already cast plenty of sprues of similar size on an individual basis, for example the Epic & BFG plastic sprues.

In a plastic injection casting machine you place the small mould into a smaller "frame" within the larger casting rig.

It's likely that the production mould consists of each of the characters on a single sprue which is broken up for packaging.

Highly unlikely.

The cost is ridiculously high for what's basically a small plastic kit.

Now, that might just be the first accurate thing you've said.