I'm not normally one to bitch and moan about hobby pricing. My view is largely that it is a discretionary purchase and you can either afford it or not.
However GW recently made cost an issue - that is if you accept the line that the introduction of Age of Sigmar was partly to address the barrier to entry that WHFB provided.
Here in NZ we have the following AoS costs (USD equivalent price in brackets):
- Starter Set $250 ($165)
- 5 Stormcast Liberators $100 ($66)
- Lord Castellan - Single plastic on foot $65 ($43)
The starter set is the most expensive starter GW have released, yet in past the sets have had included the mini rulebook. Yes the rules are included or can be downloaded for free - but the entry cost is 15% more.
Withe the Liberators we have a new price point created. $20 per rank and file model while with the Castellan any previous price point has been blown away.
I'm struggling to see the lower entry barrier here. People will say you need less models to play a game but at this pricing 20 Liberators plus a Hero is quickly near $500 locally (US$330).
The open ended nature of the game "Bring Your Whole Model Collection" encourages escalation. Sure you can play the game with 10 models but you could play WHFB with 5 Chaos Knights, 10 Chaos Warriors, 20 Marauders, 10 Hounds and a Lord on foot for $40 less (eaten up by Army Book I guess).
I'm skeptical of just how much the entry barrier has been lowered.
Posted with Blogsy
Its a lower entry point for everything but the Stormcast Eternals, in essence one box is someone set, then it escalates. I am not even looking at them as a force for AoS partially because of the price, partially because I want to use a different army.
ReplyDeleteWe dont know that yet. Most of the existing range will not survive.
DeleteThe new scale first introduced with the Blight Kings is an indication of where it may be heading. They where 5 models for $120ish
I would think that the races that got updates within the last two years are all decent on the model front, Skaven as well. Though Skaven are probably the safest of the options from the Warhammer stuff due to the fact that they are almost uniquely GW in creation.
DeleteThis makes sense. Sorry, Pete, you're still thinking 8th ed. Consider it in the light of a miniature company producing a use-what-you-like, easy access rule set.
ReplyDeleteNo-one will ever field 20 Stormcast Eternals (except, maybe in 30K). GW has identified that painting ranked units is a chore. Their goal is that people will buy a handful of their favorite units and paint them. AoS lets this happen- it's waay more fun to buy a whole second unit (or at least 5) of some other model rather than paint a second or third rank of something you already have. Very few gamers enjoy the grind that is producing fully painted armies of what is, in many cases, the same figure. AoS gives you the freedom to paint all sorts of cool stuff and still be usable. Too bad the rules are poop.
Alternatively you can view the pricing as joining in another hand when giving the finger to WHM players around the world, which may also be GWs goal if you interpret their recent activities differently.
If Age of Sigmar was a Skirmish game with a model cap of say 10 to 15 models you would be right, you could buy one box of Liberators and a Lord Castellan and call it an army. You can still do that but it would be a short game and you really should be playing Mordheim instead.
DeleteUntil GW gives us some way to build army lists games of AOS have no limit on the amount of models that can be in them, and if you wanted to do an army of Stormcast with a equal model count to the average 8th edition 1k point army then you best start saving now
GWHQ accountants are laughing maniacally whenever a Techpriest Dominus is sold in NZ as well.
ReplyDeleteActually the techpriest is better value than the Lord Castellan.
DeleteIt has 2x the plastic sprues the LC has
Not that that makes up for the $70 price tag...