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Soggy Chips
Sep 26, 2006

Fear is the mind killer

Dulkor posted:

So this was posted in the Fantasy thread.


Goodnight sweet prince.

Actually in hindsight this seems more accurate.

Soggy Chips fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Jan 18, 2015

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Business Gorillas
Mar 11, 2009

:harambe:



Imagine a triceratops floating endlessly through space.

HiveCommander
Jun 19, 2012

Business Gorillas posted:

Imagine a triceratops floating endlessly through space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rzDXNQxjHs

Sydney Bottocks
Oct 15, 2004


Given GW's execution, though, it's probably more like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecpBU06aXZw&t=23s

:v:

Sydney Bottocks fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Jan 18, 2015

HiveCommander
Jun 19, 2012

I too would run away terrified from 9th edition.

ijyt
Apr 10, 2012

Pretty sure you guys are taking a metaphor literally.

Cyberpunkey Monkey
Jun 23, 2003

by Nyc_Tattoo

NTRabbit posted:

that poo poo right there

That poo poo, right there.

Phoon
Apr 23, 2010

Wait the slann have the power cosmic? Is galactus involved?

Daedleh
Aug 25, 2008

What shall we do with a catnipped kitty?
Yo Skaven and Lizardmen refugees, I'm on the dev team for Kings of War 2nd edition. We are going to be making official lists for all the missing WHFB armies (Tomb Kings debatable because there's already an Undead list). They won't be written into the fluff of KoW and won't be allowed in tournaments or in the worldwide campaign but will be completely legal for casual and unofficial tournament play. We're getting ready to launch a public beta of 2nd edition at the moment, and once that's done we'll be starting on the "Armies of Legend" lists so at the very least they'll be in public playtesting when 2nd ed launches. Unless there's exceptionally high demand they won't get a printed copy, but will be up for download alongside the rest of the rules.

HiveCommander
Jun 19, 2012

I assume the unofficial nature is to avoid legal troubles, but that's still really cool that you're looking after the refugees.
I do like this idea though:

Pyrolocutus posted:

Mantic should go full troll-mode with the lore.

"Stargazers speak of a great flame that appeared in the sky. Soon after, new cities full of the lizard people appeared from the wilderness."
...to of pick up where GW left off, with the discovery of a 'mysterious race of dinosaur-people arriving from the stars' or something like that. Making the namechange from Lizardmen to Weresaurs or something should be enough to differentiate from WFB, provided there's no illustrations. Then you can literally have an army of dinosaurs riding dinosaurs :yayclod:

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

HiveCommander posted:

I assume the unofficial nature is to avoid legal troubles, but that's still really cool that you're looking after the refugees.
I do like this idea though:

...to of pick up where GW left off, with the discovery of a 'mysterious race of dinosaur-people arriving from the stars' or something like that. Making the namechange from Lizardmen to Weresaurs or something should be enough to differentiate from WFB, provided there's no illustrations. Then you can literally have an army of dinosaurs riding dinosaurs :yayclod:

Scaliens? Dinomen? Lizardfolk? Lizard Men?

HiveCommander
Jun 19, 2012

I really like Scaliens. I vote for that one

Daedleh
Aug 25, 2008

What shall we do with a catnipped kitty?

HiveCommander posted:

I assume the unofficial nature is to avoid legal troubles, but that's still really cool that you're looking after the refugees.
I do like this idea though:

...to of pick up where GW left off, with the discovery of a 'mysterious race of dinosaur-people arriving from the stars' or something like that. Making the namechange from Lizardmen to Weresaurs or something should be enough to differentiate from WFB, provided there's no illustrations. Then you can literally have an army of dinosaurs riding dinosaurs :yayclod:

It's more because Mantic want KoW to stand on its own rather than being seen as "just" a WHFB clone. They want to be doing their own armies, like the Basileans or Forces of Nature, rather than WHFB duplicates.

The attitude of Mantic turned around this year from being an alternative source of GW minis into standing on their own two feet. There's a lot of crossover appeal between their games and GW's, but the attitude now is to make a model or unit because they want to, rather than as a proxy for a GW unit.

Edit: There's already unofficial fanlists for the Skaven, Lizardmen and Warriors of Chaos which were written by Matt Gilbert, who's now also on the development team. They are well balanced and more than playable in 1st ed. I expect we'll use them as a base for writing the 2nd ed ones.

Daedleh fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jan 18, 2015

Not a viking
Aug 2, 2008

Feels like I just got laid

HiveCommander posted:

Hopefully KoW do a list for Dinosaur-riding Lizard-dudes, so that Lizardmen at least have a gaming system to use their models in.
Poor Poochy :smith:

https://wargamerama.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/manticopenday08.jpg

Count-as cavalry unit from an official KoW tournament.

E:

Daedleh posted:

Yo Skaven and Lizardmen refugees, I'm on the dev team for Kings of War 2nd edition. We are going to be making official lists for all the missing WHFB armies (Tomb Kings debatable because there's already an Undead list). They won't be written into the fluff of KoW and won't be allowed in tournaments or in the worldwide campaign but will be completely legal for casual and unofficial tournament play. We're getting ready to launch a public beta of 2nd edition at the moment, and once that's done we'll be starting on the "Armies of Legend" lists so at the very least they'll be in public playtesting when 2nd ed launches. Unless there's exceptionally high demand they won't get a printed copy, but will be up for download alongside the rest of the rules.

This is awesome fan service for the GW "refugees" and a great way to introduce them to a game where the developer doesn't actively try to gently caress its fans at every turn.

VVV

Its a toy, but there is no reason not to put your already existing dinosaurs on a base to represent a unit of ogres or whatever.

Not a viking fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Jan 18, 2015

HiveCommander
Jun 19, 2012

Now we're talking!
Where can I get one of these?

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Daedleh posted:

It's more because Mantic want KoW to stand on its own rather than being seen as "just" a WHFB clone. They want to be doing their own armies, like the Basileans or Forces of Nature, rather than WHFB duplicates.

The attitude of Mantic turned around this year from being an alternative source of GW minis into standing on their own two feet. There's a lot of crossover appeal between their games and GW's, but the attitude now is to make a model or unit because they want to, rather than as a proxy for a GW unit.

Edit: There's already unofficial fanlists for the Skaven, Lizardmen and Warriors of Chaos which were written by Matt Gilbert, who's now also on the development team. They are well balanced and more than playable in 1st ed. I expect we'll use them as a base for writing the 2nd ed ones.

Make one for generic egyptian Crock Men and Anubites, all lead by Necrosphinxes. I want to have a reason to maybe rescue the thing off Ebay once balls touch.

Zark the Damned
Mar 9, 2013

HiveCommander posted:

Now we're talking!
Where can I get one of these?

I don't think it's the exact same toy, but you could convert up one of these - https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/papo-green-running-t-rex/

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010

Business Gorillas posted:

Imagine a triceratops floating endlessly through space.

Four reality balls on the edge of a cliff.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers

Pierzak posted:

Four reality balls on the edge of a cliff.

:golfclap:

Phoon
Apr 23, 2010


This was counts-as the monster unit in the twilight kin (dark elves) list - abyssal beast or something

Daedleh
Aug 25, 2008

What shall we do with a catnipped kitty?

Phoon posted:

This was counts-as the monster unit in the twilight kin (dark elves) list - abyssal beast or something

Nope was a regiment of Knights. Absolutely beautiful army and sound chap to play against :)

Phoon
Apr 23, 2010

Oh that's weird imo, but it is a pretty good idea to make up for the lack of big monsters.

radlum
May 13, 2013

Daedleh posted:

Yo Skaven and Lizardmen refugees, I'm on the dev team for Kings of War 2nd edition. We are going to be making official lists for all the missing WHFB armies (Tomb Kings debatable because there's already an Undead list). They won't be written into the fluff of KoW and won't be allowed in tournaments or in the worldwide campaign but will be completely legal for casual and unofficial tournament play. We're getting ready to launch a public beta of 2nd edition at the moment, and once that's done we'll be starting on the "Armies of Legend" lists so at the very least they'll be in public playtesting when 2nd ed launches. Unless there's exceptionally high demand they won't get a printed copy, but will be up for download alongside the rest of the rules.

What do you mean by "missing WHFB" armies? Do you mean any army that will end up squatted by 9th edition (Bretonnia, Lizard Men, elves as separate armies, etc.) or you mean Dogs of War/Chaos Dwarves?

Daedleh
Aug 25, 2008

What shall we do with a catnipped kitty?
As in the armies that don't already have an army list in KoW.

Rulebook Heavily
Sep 18, 2010

by FactsAreUseless

Daedleh posted:

It's more because Mantic want KoW to stand on its own rather than being seen as "just" a WHFB clone. They want to be doing their own armies, like the Basileans or Forces of Nature, rather than WHFB duplicates.

The attitude of Mantic turned around this year from being an alternative source of GW minis into standing on their own two feet. There's a lot of crossover appeal between their games and GW's, but the attitude now is to make a model or unit because they want to, rather than as a proxy for a GW unit.

Edit: There's already unofficial fanlists for the Skaven, Lizardmen and Warriors of Chaos which were written by Matt Gilbert, who's now also on the development team. They are well balanced and more than playable in 1st ed. I expect we'll use them as a base for writing the 2nd ed ones.

This attitude is admirable but given this GW shift it might not be the best possible timing. Still, it'll be interesting to see if you can do both: cast the net wide enough to catch the people falling off the train, make it unique enough to be appealing on its own.

Indolent Bastard
Oct 26, 2007

I WON THIS AMAZING AVATAR! I'M A WINNER! WOOOOO!

NTRabbit posted:

For my Elvish infantry I was planning on making the front two ranks solid, but then have the third and fourth ranks thinner as though from attrition, maybe some casualties on the ground, etc. My Scouts I was going to thin right out into a full on hiding in the trees style diorama. That's as far as I've managed to plan out.

I think it's, depending on the army/unit, a line between being frugal/artistic and being one of those people that you need to judge on your own merits.





thiswayliesmadness posted:

This is the example someone had posted earlier in the Mantic thread I believe:


I'm kinda curious what's considered acceptable numbers of troops for bases like this compared to their full unit numbers. 5 dwarves representing 40 would look visually off, but for my marid basing I'd like to do organized lines coming up out of the coast with quantity of troops being more of a spacing issue.

Do KoW bases have a specific dimension for units 5x4 for Ghouls, 8x2 for Dwarf Muskets, or something like that?

Daedleh
Aug 25, 2008

What shall we do with a catnipped kitty?

Indolent Bastard posted:

Do KoW bases have a specific dimension for units 5x4 for Ghouls, 8x2 for Dwarf Muskets, or something like that?

Yes. Regular infantry is either 5 models wide for units less than 30 models and 10 models wide for 30 or more (Hordes). Cavalry is 5 wide for less than 20, 10 wide for 20 or more, Large Infantry and Large Cavalry is 3 models wide for less than 12 and 6 wide for hordes of 12+.

Units have fixed sizes so for Zombies you can buy units of 20, 30, 40 or 60 models while a more elite unit might only allow unit sizes of 5, 10, 15 or 20 models.

NTRabbit
Aug 15, 2012

i wear this armour to protect myself from the histrionics of hysterical women

bitches




Also worth mentioning that individually most infantry are 20x20mm, medium infantry ie Orks are 25x25mm, and large infantry are 40x40mm, so a 5x4 unit regiment of Elvish bowmen is 100mm x 80mm, a 5x4 regiment of Orks is 125mm x 100mm, and a 3x2 regiment (large infantry are ranks of 3 instead of 5) of Ogres is 120mm x 80mm

NTRabbit fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jan 18, 2015

BULBASAUR
Apr 6, 2009




Soiled Meat

Pierzak posted:

Four reality balls on the edge of a cliff.

Two naked goons standing near a Games Workshop

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Anecdotal stuff time.

A box of Marines costs $40, which is about ¥4700, yet in Japan they cost ¥5700, no exceptions.

X-Wing Starter pack, costs $39.95 on FFG website, which would translate to ¥4690. On Amazon, it's ¥8000. Price in the hobby store I talk about? ¥4800.

gently caress GW with a power rake.

ocrumsprug
Sep 23, 2010

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
In the nineties, the Canadian dollar was about 30% lower than the USD which lead to about a 30% difference in the price of GW between the countries. This difference evaporated until the two currencies hit par in the 2000's.

Three guesses as to whether GW adjusted their now 30% overpriced stock.

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



ocrumsprug posted:

In the nineties, the Canadian dollar was about 30% lower than the USD which lead to about a 30% difference in the price of GW between the countries. This difference evaporated until the two currencies hit par in the 2000's.

Three guesses as to whether GW adjusted their now 30% overpriced stock.

Of course GW adjusted their stock prices. They always adjust them upwards and only upwards. The question is did they stop adjusting prices upwards so the costs evened out over time? (I'm going to guess no to that?)

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
When the pound was weak there was a time when buying poo poo from the GW online store and paying shipping from the UK was cheaper than buying from the US webstore.

KamNZ
May 4, 2009

At least I'm warm...

JcDent posted:

A box of Marines costs $40, which is about ¥4700, yet in Japan they cost ¥5700, no exceptions.

As a New Zealander, I have the unique privilege of paying $75 NZD ($58 USD) for the exact same box of marines.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Oh hey! It's time for another Leper-splanation!

First, let me preface this by saying very clearly: I am not arguing that Games Workshop's prices are good or fair or reasonable in any given country.

OK. Let's talk about : exchange rates vs. purchasing power parity.

The exchange rate between two countries is the amount of one country's currency that international money exchangers are willing to pay for another country's currency. These rates fluctuate every second of every day during open trading hours (which I think are now 24/7 but I'm not sure about that). Currencies exchange on foreign exchange markets, also called FOREX, where huge banks - including the national banks of various countries, which serve as proxies for national governments - shift millions or billions of dollars, pounds, euros, yen, etc. back and forth in a gigantic, poorly-regulated high-stakes shell game.

But what does that actually represent?

Much of the time, foreign exchange trades are made for investment purposes. This is the same reason people or companies or governments buy stocks and bonds (collectively called equities): they are either speculating (buying or selling with the intention of making money on future gains or drops in value), or hedging (buying or selling with the intention of managing the risk they have undertaken in some other transaction). Effectively, a hedge is a "bet" that runs against some other bet you've already made, perhaps a bet you couldn't avoid making, or a bet that you wanted to make but which carried a bit more risk than you wanted to carry. We'll ignore hedging for now, because effectively it is the same thing for the purposes of this explanation. If I am a FOREX trader in Europe, and I decide to buy US dollars for Euros, most likely I'm doing it because I think that dollars are going to gain value against the euro in the future. Or that the euro is going to lose value generally, and I think dollars are going to lose less, or gain some... essentially, I think dollars are going to outperform euros in the future.

There are a lot of factors that influence the market's valuation of a currency. Just like with an equity that is publicly traded, markets determine the valuation of a currency for exchange purposes by buyers and sellers getting together and making bids/asks; where a bid and an ask intersect, a trade can happen. And just like with equities, the vast majority of holders of the currency aren't willing to sell at the latest spot price, while the vast majority of propsective buyers aren't willing to buy at the latest spot price: that price represents a small minority of the market who are satisfied to trade at a specific price. The weight of those disinterested buyers and sellers, and their long-term consistency in their assessment of what price would attract them to buy or sell, provides long-term stability in the exchange rate. When the spot price shifts rapidly, this is volatility, representing a significant portion of the market changing their minds about what price they're willing to accept for a trade.

The most important factor affecting FOREX valuation of a currency is the trustworthiness of the nation with regards to its debt.

Virtually all countries do two things that have a huge impact on the valuation of their money: they print money, and they borrow money. I don't want to get too deep into the weeds when it comes to how countries issue new currency - most countries use a process called fractional reserve banking - but suffice it to say that, because economies usually grow, the money supply must grow at at least the same rate in order to prevent deflation. Most countries create money at a rate intended to cause modest inflation, of perhaps one to three percent a year, which is very widely regarded as the best way to balance the terrible things that happen to an economy under deflation vs. the terrible things that happen to an economy under rapid inflation.

Borrowing money is typically done primarily through the issuance of government bonds. The amount of money a government has borrowed is its national debt; the ability of a country to service its national debt is a major factor in how the market perceives the country's currency, because if the country finds itself unable to pay back its debt easily, politicians have historically been sorely tempted to print money in order to make up the gap. And when you print money, you devalue the currency, which in turn devalues the debt instruments. E.g., if I have loaned your country a million dollars (valuated in your currency), with your promise to pay me back 1.01 million dollars in five years, and you print a fuckload of money in the meantime, that 1.01 million dollars won't be worth as much as the 1 million I lent you in the first place.

So, FOREX traders care about how well a government manages its debt and its money supply because these two factors have enormous influence on what that currency is worth.

But the financial stability of countries is itself dependent on many factors: political stability, the value of its most important exports, and how well its economy is doing generally (remember, the government must find money to pay its debts, and that money mostly comes from its citizens, in the form of taxes - if the economy is poor, the citizens pay less taxes, and the government's revenues may suffer). The country's historical response to difficulty is also very important, because it's generally been the case that countries that have managed problems well in the past, are more likely to manage future problems well.

So, the United States of America has not defaulted on its debt, ever. OK, the Confederacy did, during the civil war, but the North never did. The US has the largest economy in the world, and the US government - despite what conservatives and tea partiers would have us believe - is considered by economists and financiers globally to have a reasonable amount of debt (and ongoing borrowing) that it is quite capable of servicing indefinitely. Consequently, US debt is considered the surest bet on Earth. It is the #1 go-to choice of governments and huge banks everywhere; if you have some extra money, and you absolutely do not want to lose it, but you aren't satisfied with sitting on cash (which, due to the modest inflation you are hopefully experiencing, loses a little value every year), you buy US treasury bonds. Due to this popularity, the US government borrows money extremely cheaply - that is, it pays a very, very low interest rate on its debt.

But you can only buy US government debt with US dollars.

The United States also has the world's largest economy. That means Americans buy and sell more poo poo than everyone else, on a total-sum (not per-capita) basis. And that means that if your country makes poo poo, you probably send a lot of it to the US, where you sell it (for dollars). What do you do with all those dollars? Well, you can trade them back for your own domestic currency of course, and a lot of businesses (and countries with nationalized industry) do that. You can also buy US government bonds with it. Or you can invest it in other US-denominated equities and securities and even real estate.

The US also exports stuff, of course; but the US imports more than it exports, and that's the US trade deficit. And that means that most countries that make stuff have a trade surplus, with regards to the US. Which means that they wind up with more dollars every year that they need to do something with. Consequently, the US sells a lot of treasury bonds to foreign entities, and also, a lot of dollars get traded for foreign currencies in order to repatriate profits.

These factors have enormous influence on the US dollar's exchange rates! For similar reasons, these factors affect the currency exchange rates of every other currency. Well, nearly. Because there are some currencies that are not allowed to freely "float" - that is, the national governments of a few countries have decided that they will not permit buyers and sellers of their currencies to negotiate prices. Instead, these countries have fixed exchange rate systems, whereby the government "pegs" their currency to some other thing - almost always, another currency, such as the US Dollar or the Euro.

Last week, Switzerland suddenly and with no warning de-pegged the Swiss Franc, which had been fixed to the Euro. This triggered a sudden and massive shift in the exchange rate as FOREX markets scrambled to reach a new consensus valuation for the currency; and because many FOREX traders utilize large amounts of leverage in order to profit on very small changes in exchange rates, a bunch of traders found themselves up poo poo creek without a paddle in very short order!

China is the biggest country with a fixed-rate exchange policy, and this has been the subject of much political tension and wrangling over the last few decades. Because, an artificially cheap Yuan means that Chinese goods are artificially cheap to purchase, which means that they can compete more effectively with goods priced in other currencies, which supports a larger Chinese export market, which floods domestic markets with cheap Chinese goods, which makes it harder for domestic industries to make profits, which they took er jerrrbs.

But that takes me to the point of this whole rant, which is that foreign exchange rates are partially decoupled from purchasing power parity.

For the average schlub like you and me, the exchange rate between two currencies affects us almost entirely around what and how much we can buy or sell. If you live in the US, and you take a trip to Japan, you will probably want to buy some stuff there, but probably most or all of your money is in the form of US dollars. So, you exchange some dollars for some yen, and then you go and look at prices and say "holy fuckballs poo poo is expensive in Japan!"

That's because the US dollar is "weak" against the Yen.

Of course, a lot depends on what you're buying. Goods and services domestically produced in large quantity in Japan, but not produced at all in the US, may actually be cheaper to buy in Japan than in the US. That's because in order to buy it in the US, you probably have to pay for the cost to ship that thing to you (on top of the currency exchange). But Japan is a smaller country than the US, and it's also an island nation. In the 1980s, Japan made some stuff for cheaper than America: most notably, small cars and consumer electronics. But these days, there's hardly anything Japan makes that can't be gotten cheaper either domestically, or from another country (mostly China).

The cost of a specific good in a specific place, then, has a lot more to do with domestic production factors: the cost of labor, the feasibility of producing that good in that country (it's much easier to make pineapples in Hawaii than in Norway), government subsidies (many countries around the world subsidize food production, for example), transportation costs (strawberries cost more in Alaska than they do in California), and so on. And the cost of imported goods is affected a lot by transportation costs as well: it costs a lot more to ship avocados from Mexico to Australia, than it does to ship them from Mexico to Texas, for obvious reasons.

What's more, countries can affix tariffs on imports and exports. Many countries, for example, put tariffs on raw goods from other countries; stuff like steel, which - due to cheap labor as well as available iron deposits - is much cheaper from China than from America. To protect a domestic market, a tariff is intended to make a given import more expensive. Some tariffs are punitive, intended to redress an imbalance... for example, China has widely been accused of dumping goods like steel on foreign markets, by subsidizing steel so that it can be sold internationally for less than its actual cost to produce. Huge international trade agreements are hammered out by international trade organizations like OPEC and the WTO. Often the stated goal is "free trade," that is, trade unencumbered by tariffs, intended to prevent these back-and-forth punitive tariff wars. But domestic subsidies still happen.

OK so what's this got to do with Games loving Workshop prices?

Well, hopefully by now you're starting to understand that the foreign exchange rate that you pay when you trade your domestic currency for some other country's currency is not a direct comparison of "actual cost." Purchasing power parity is an attempt to evaluate the actual "cost" of goods and services in different countries. Essentially, you take the income of the average schlub, and compare that to the cost of a basket of "essential" goods and services that pretty much everyone on Earth buys or relies on, directly or indirectly. Stuff like staple foods, rent, fuel, that sort of thing. You can then compare those values across national borders, and in that way, you can find out if a given thing is actually more expensive or cheaper. You can also use PPP to compare currencies, to get an idea of a "true" or "fair" exchange rate, unencumbered by FOREX traders' evaluation of creditworthiness of national govermnents, the interference of tariffs and the costs of shipping, etc.

Think of it this way: if there were no borders or costs to moving goods and services around the world - a truly "frictionless" international trade economy - PPP would be 1:1 between all goods and services. It would have to be, because if a given good was more expensive in one place than in another, buyers would always buy the cheaper good: that increase in demand would reduce supply, while the demand in the higher-priced area would fall. Because prices are affected by supply and demand, eventually the prices would have to equalize.

Due to the "friction" between national marketplaces, though, PPP disparities exist. So if you want to know what a fair price for a box of Games Workshop dolls is in Australia, you can't just compare prices using the international exchange rate!

You need to adjust for PPP. A fair price for dolls in Australia has to adjust not only for the price of shipping, but also for the "true" valuation of the Australian dollar, to Australians. But, measurement of PPP is difficult. Australians don't buy exactly the same stuff as the British. The "Law of one price" says that the comparison of purchasing power for a specific good doesn't tell you the overall PPP for a basket of goods. So the fairest way to measure how expensive Games Workshop miniatures actually are, in Australia, is to compare them to other miniatures sold in Australia, and then compare those other miniatures' prices to their prices in the UK.

But hold on: even that isn't necessarily fair. Reading about the so-called Big Mac Index:

quote:

However, in some emerging economies, Western fast food represents an expensive niche product price well above the price of traditional staples—i.e. the Big Mac is not a mainstream 'cheap' meal as it is in the West, but a luxury import. This relates back to the idea of product differentiation: the fact that few substitutes for the Big Mac are available confers market power on McDonald's. For example, in India, the costs of local fast food like vada pav are comparative to what the Big Mac signifies in the U.S.A. [10] Additionally, with countries like Argentina that have abundant beef resources, consumer prices in general may not be as cheap as implied by the price of a Big Mac.

The PPP comparison for Big Macs suggests they're 12% more expensive in Australia than in the US (presumably because beef is more expensive there, and perhaps also due to a higher minimum wage).

So is it fair to compare GW miniatures to those from Privateer Press? Well, we should expect their prices to be different, just based on different manufacturing centers and origins of shipping. But the comparison will tell us whether they're actually more expensive, for an Australian, in a way that comparing Australian prices to British prices using a conversion factor completely based on foreign exchange rates for the two currencies cannot.

I will leave that comparison as an exercise to the reader. My point, which I hope I have not overly belabored, is that foreign exchange rates shouldn't be used as a method for comparing how much a given product costs between two countries, especially if one is interested in claiming that a given product is over- or under- priced.

GW is ripping us all off, but if you want to claim they're ripping you off even more, please use a PPP comparison.

KamNZ
May 4, 2009

At least I'm warm...
Nice one Leper, your contributions to this thread continue to go above and beyond what I would normally expect from dolly forums in terms of quality :)

Is interesting that when comparing PPP measures for other 'luxury' goods such as iPads - NZers pay around 12% more than the US (Big Macs are actually cheaper here, no doubt because of cheap beef prices) but for my space mans I pay 45% more...

Sadsack
Mar 5, 2009

Fighting evil with cups of tea and crippling self-doubt.

Leperflesh posted:

Loads of good poo poo.

This thread is giving me the economics and international trade knowledge that my school education sadly missed out on. More posts like this please.

scuba school sucks
Aug 30, 2012

The brilliance of my posting illuminates the forums like a jar of shining gold when all around is dark
Yes, echoing this, I'm interested in warhams but hardly ever post, and the last few pages have been some of the best and most informative discussion on ANY subject I've ever seen on these forums.

Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth

Network Pesci posted:

Yes, echoing this, I'm interested in warhams but hardly ever post, and the last few pages have been some of the best and most informative discussion on ANY subject I've ever seen on these forums.

Yeah this thread is getting way too informative and reasonable and it's making me uncomfortable. Better get hollismason on here to spout some garbage so we can return to the status quo.

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Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

You guys need to spend more time in BFC! There are a lot of really good discussions there along these lines.

I just re-read my post and I think there are some minor inaccuracies here or there, although basically I've got it right. I'm not an expert in any of this stuff, I've just done a fair amount of reading about it the last few years.

I'm glad some of you find it interesting or useful.

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