GW - House of Money

On 9.2.2022 GW announced that with 7th of March, the prices of its ranges will increase. That is what they said about the price increases in detail.

In many cases, this will be about 5%. So, as an example of what you can expect on most kits, a box of Space Marine Intercessors will go up just £1 from £35 to £36.*A few things are going up about 10% (e.g. books, scenery, resin miniatures), and there are a couple of outliers (e.g. Blood Bowl teams and metal miniatures) which are going up around 20%.

Like probably any other player/customer I was not happy. But I think this topic is more complex than just ranting about higher prices. So I tried to formulate a more detailed personal response. As always, this is my opinion and I am open for other ones ;)

I do not think it will change GW nor even that this message will reach them. Nonetheless it felt "right" to voice my opinion and maybe I am not the only one with it.

Note: I am also acknowledging that high miniature prices are a luxury problem. A lot of people have more serious problems to face. And while I certainly do think about this too, this is a Hobby Blog and I write about my thoughts and opinions with the hobby. 

Reasons why it could be valid to increase price...

Everything becomes more expensive

The sad fact is, that GW indeed will have higher costs because everything currently gets more expensive - thanks to the ongoing Corona crisis and the war in Ukraine. So it is not a surprise that at some point this had an effect on us customers. Some say we are even lucky that GW waited for that long to forward the increased costs.

GW is a corporation

GW is corporation after all. And that sadly means that it is not a priority to offer good services, considering the customers or support the hobby. No, it is first and foremost about money and pleasing shareholders. Now, of course every company has the target to earn profits, stay in business and bring the owners money. But an incorporated or other business form, has more freedom and there is designated group of owners with the power to  set priorities. But as soon as a company goes public and shareholders are involved, this changes. If the management of a company cannot deliver constant growing and profits, the shareholders can replace them or the company value will drop. So being a corporation, they are forced to make constant higher profits.

Its not only about MESBG

And as a last point, it is not just MESBG which sees increasing prices but rather the whole GW sortiment. So we are in the same boat as WH40k, AoS and the other smaller systems.

And why I think they do not matter

It was already expensive

One of the things I like about MESBG is the relative cheap entry. A blister of heroes, one or two boxes of warriors and you are ready to go. Add some additional stuff and you might be tournament ready for less than 100 € (depending however heavily on the army you wanna play). Of course this does not factor in the many colors, brushes and other tools you need to make them battle ready. So yeah, it is cheaper than GWs other systems but it still is an expensive hobby. 

Also, if we go back to the announcement message, we read that plastic will only increase slightly but that resin and especially metal miniatures will see 10 and 20 %  increases respectively. 

Not that much of a problem you say? Sure, if you play one of the mainstream factions like Isengard, Minas Tirith, Rohan or Mordor you won't notice much since a lot of it is plastic.

But factions with a lot of resin or metal like Laketown, Khand, Thranduils Halls etc do not hurt your wallet, they burn a hole into it.

12 Gundabad Orcs or Laketown Guards cost you 60 €. A mere double blister of Riders of Khand cost 31.5 €!

GWs profit increased over the last years

So I have to say I am not a finance or stock expert, so take the following numbers with a grain of salt.

But after an investigation I found this two interesting charts:

Chart Source

GW Share value of the last three years: Chart Source

The first chart tells us the worldwide revenue of GW since 2014. The second chart tells us the share value of GW over the last three years.

And they clearly show us that GW was not hurt by the Corona crisis or any other negative global development. In fact they were able to greatly increase both their revenues and their share value.

So why is that important? Now if GW had suffered over the last years - like being in the red numbers, having production problems, declining sales etc - I would have been willing to readily accept the price increase. After all we want the company which produces our miniatures not to go bankrupt.

But like this? They easily could have swallowed the increasing costs and still increase their profits. And yes, I am totally aware this is a luxury problem and no one is forced to buy miniatures from GW or buying miniatures at all. And GW is a company and therefore wants to earn money and is not the welfare.

BUT would it have been that bad to put the customers into focus instead of forward every additional cent of costs to us? To say - hey folks, we do see an increase in costs and if the trend continues, we will have to increase our prices. But we want to support the hobby and not further increase the entry barrier for new players or prohibit existing ones from extending their hobby. 

Maybe I am naive to having hoped for that but I am pretty sure the community would have reacted very positive and it would even help to increase the sales.

GW will not decrease the prices after the current crisis

Last but not least, I think everyone knows that GW will never reduce the prices after the current crisis and the transport, resources costs etc went back to normal. 

What they could do

So in my opinion the price increase was unnecessary and a wrong reaction. But Hey maybe I am totally wrong and it is without alternative to increase prices. However there are things they could do in general and especially now that the price increase happened - in order to justify and give reason for players to still support MESBG. You want to increase the prices? Fine but I want to see more support for our system!

Not increasing the prices could have send a signal

MESBG sees increasing interest - more and more content creators, a return of old players and a lot of new ones. The system is probably on the peak of success since the release of the current version in 2018. 

And even though MESBG is comparably cheaper than GWs other systems, it is not a cheap hobby. So by increasing the prices even further, this also increased the entrance barrier for new players.

Keeping the prices also could have been a reward and motivation for existing players. Because lets be honest,  we are the reason that this systems is still relevant after 20 years since it started and after 17 years since it saw its height after the third Peter Jackson movie came out. And even though GWs actions and support showed that we are not as important as WH40k or AoS, we stayed and kept it alive.

Increase prices only on the cheap and most common armies

Now that might not be a popular idea. But if GW would increase their prices only slightly for the most common and popular armies like Minas Tirith, Rohan, Isengard, Mordor, Angmar etc - than they could have kept the prices for already expensive armies like Khand, Iron Hills, the Shire etc.

Because the popular armies are also the cheapest ones, having 1-5 € more wouldn't hurt much. While having a price increase from up to 6.5 € on Khand models, makes them pretty much noncollectable.

Add more support for MESBG miniatures in the "Citadel Color" app

A lot of our MESBG miniatures do not have any color information on the website. Even less are supported in the "Citadel Color" app. Now it is true that a lot of people wanna do their own colour schemes. But still a lot of people want to paint their miniatures to match the official colors. E.g. the Necromancer, multiple units of the kingdom of Khazad-Dum, etc have no info about their colors. So you have to ask around and hope that someone knows the scheme and sometimes even if you find it, it is so old that the color names no longer exist.

And adding this information to the app cannot be that much work. Really, it is not.

Show presence at GW stores

It still baffles me that GW stores no longer have any support for MESBG and that a Pelennor Fields Starterset is already the most you can expect to  find there. Yeah the system is still the smallest out of GWs three main product lines (the others being WH40k and Age of Sigmar) but it cannot be denied that MESBG sees increasing popularity. Additionally the upcoming Amazon show - no matter if GW directly interacts with it or not - will bring back the public interest to Tolkiens work. 

It is true that most shopping happens online nowadays. But Tabletop is one of these things were a lot of people still like to physically see and touch something before they buy it. And a GW store is not only a place to buy miniatures. It used to be a hub where players met, chatted with each other and the shop keeper about the game, the boxes could be taken and inspected, games could be played to test miniatures in real games before buying and to check news and if something new arrived in the assortment.

Now someone might be already a tabletop player or knows somehow of MESBG and would like to check it out. Now they go to GW stores and won't find anything related to it. What kind of impression will this produce? Rightfully the potential customers will question if the system is just before dying or not supported.

I mean, even the smallest boardgame/tabletop shops I visited had MESBG miniatures in their assortment.

If you must, increase the prices. But I wanna see some value increase for that money and not just keeping the status quo. To at least have MESBG miniatures back at GW stores, would be a first step.

Stop creating artificial bottlenecks

But I think reintroducing MESBG to GW stores is not enough. I say - Give us back the full range! Stop selling only half of the  miniatures from a faction (Moria), stop selling only one or two miniatures from a faction (Far Harad) and definitely stop removing entire factions (Arnor)....

Stop creating artificial bottlenecks with MTOs and limited availability. Heck, why do you limit metal Easterlings and the metal Fellowship when they are clearly favoured by the players? Why is such a basic model like a Captain of Dale, an MTO?!

I think its actually crazy that I have to request a tabletop system owner, to give me access to all miniatures of his tabletop system... Like shouldn't this be natural state?

I mean shouldn't the number of orders and the speed of things being sold out, tell them there is a wanting for these things?

The only effect of this bottlenecks is that the players will make use of third party miniatures. Its not a coincidence that there are so many third party models for Arnor, Numenor, Far Harad or Khand...

Conclusion

It felt good to write this post but I hope it did not became too much of a rant ;) Higher prices hurt everyone - except for GW shareholders^^ I hope it won't start a negative trend. The community is strong and only time will tell which path our hobby will take. Maybe I was at least able to express what a lot of you feel.

The Castellan keeps his watch and happy hobbying until the next time =)