|
lilljonas posted:It makes perfect sense because having stock in storage is financial poison for companies like GW. If they leave some money on the table (the margin scalpers take) but get 100% of their stock off the shelves on day one, that's an amazing deal for them. It's like outsourcing your storage to a bunch of rando's basements and closets. Having excess, unsellable stock is like poison. Having zero stock left over and lots of unsatisfied demand is money they missed out on, pissing off some customers enough that some leave entirely or seek out alternatives to reduce their reliance on gw. This isn't a slam dunk for gw, selling out in minutes is a lot of potential sales they just gave up. Their manufacturing and supply must be so hosed, I'm dying to read about what happened.
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 09:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 00:49 |
|
|
Eediot Jedi posted:Having excess, unsellable stock is like poison. Having zero stock left over and lots of unsatisfied demand is money they missed out on, pissing off some customers enough that some leave entirely or seek out alternatives to reduce their reliance on gw. Except; 1. People keep buying GW poo poo despite repeated, consistent "fuckups" with supply. 2. These products them become hyper-in-demand luxury goods and sometimes it makes it into mainstream media how unfindable some of these products are. 3. Shareholders couldn't give less than a squirt of piss about : (a) the health of the hobby (b) potential long term issues coming up with angry customers leaving the hobby/leaving GW (c) whether or not this is a dick-rear end thing to do Picture yourself as a GW investor. They went from a company with a clueless CEO that didn't even know why his company had ever succeeded to a company that grows explosively and turns a massive profit, the highest in the miniature world by a massive margin, where 90% of the poo poo they release each year (that isn't a restock) is in the same level of demand as tickle-me-elmo or the Wii, or whatever at its height. You're told that "our entire supply sold out instantly" and you get many thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars worth of dividends from the company every whenever they pay out. And all you hear is that it's the best selling game of its kind, that it literally cannot keep poo poo on shelves due to how popular it is, and the money keeps flowing. Do you give a gently caress if its "good for the hobby"? Dominion did not sell out and that looks bad, its actually good for the hobby that its not FOMO nonsense and everyone can get a box and the rules and two half-standard-sized armies to play the game with but it didn't instantly sell out, which looks "bad" to a person whose cold, dead eyes only like to see the numbers in their bank account go up, so a handful of "oopsie instasoldout" releases will ease shareholder fears in august. Maybe they'll whip out another Space Hulk(with brand new, exclusive primaris terminators) so that can also disappear into the aether the second it goes on preorder. It's not poggers, but the idea that games workshop is incompetent or stupid is a bit of a trap.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 09:55
|
|
|
At least they confirmed that they're selling the Kommando and Krieg sprues seperately late so your not poo poo out of luck if you don't win the online store lottery.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 11:41
|
|
|
Vagabong posted:At least they confirmed that they're selling the Kommando and Krieg sprues seperately late so your not poo poo out of luck if you don't win the online store lottery. unless you wanted to play kill team i guess
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 11:41
|
|
|
It's kinda crazy when you think about it that GW used to have bits parts in a warehouse AND employees who specialized in fulfilling those orders so that people could custom build models.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 11:47
|
|
|
Ropes4u posted:Scalpers are the worst form of human Scalp scalpers imho
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 12:22
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:unless you wanted to play kill team i guess just buy the private edition a few weeks later. you get two kommandos and two kriegs AND get this, it's only gonna be 40 bucks, so you can try out if you like it or not without spending a huge amount of money! *dice, rangefinders and rules beyond basic attacks and movement not included 
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 12:48
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:unless you wanted to play kill team i guess I suppose that if GW continues to sell all the new boxes as limited releases I will have move to a new game. Maybe one of the local stores will have a box they do have a stack of the Dominion boxes.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 13:02
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:unless you wanted to play kill team i guess From the amount of people looking to buy the box just for the sculpts, I think it'll be easy enough to pick up the rulebook(s) secondhand. Which, still sucks if GW is hoping for KT to actually pick up again in play, and not just as a vehicle for 40K warbands.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 13:12
|
|
|
NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:It's kinda crazy when you think about it that GW used to have bits parts in a warehouse AND employees who specialized in fulfilling those orders so that people could custom build models. Trolls.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 14:34
|
|
|
Z the IVth posted:Trolls. rude I miss Trollz they were genuinely lovely people
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 14:37
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:unless you wanted to play kill team i guess Yeah, this is my issue. I’m interested in this new Kill Team, and I want those minis and terrain as well. So either I get this box preordered or I buy every component separately and for that, I’ll have to wait longer and most likely pay more.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 15:04
|
|
|
Lol if you think Joe Blow buying at retail then flipping parts on eBay is the problem. At best, after fees and shipping, he's only going to maybe clear $100 on a $200 GW big boxed game, and that assumes everything in the box is extremely high demand. The big issue is the "retailer" getting 100 copies and splitting them up for parts and clearing $200+ per set instead of selling them to their customers. Also, GW doesn't care about either case - they're going to get their money either way. However, what I think they are doing now is limiting retailers on the first wave to stock their own online shop and capitalize on FOMO and substantially increase their profits. If you look at it from a retail perspective, assume they sell to a retailer for roughly double their cost (it's likely they make much more, but for simplicity's sake, we'll go with that.) So on a $200 MSRP box, they make $50. If they limit retailers and keep the bulk of the product and sell at MSRP online through their gateway, they make $150 per box. Those numbers are going to look great to investors. I think when they didn't have enough Belakor models for their own online shop, someone had an epiphany and realized they couldn't let that happen again.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 19:25
|
|
|
The individual guy is much more visible to most people, and it's way easier to reason that "I'd have a copy of Cursed City if loving Todd hadn't bought three to flip." Especially when you and Todd buy from the same LGS. And in some sense, yeah - Todd did buy what "should" have been your copy. Scalping also got to be a more visible problem during the latest pokemon card shortage, when a retail worker at Walmart or Target could double their week's take-home by buying a booster box at the end of shift. And that's not someone I can easily fault. My area has about 5 flea markets and countless resellers. My ex would tell me about her Toys R Us experience, where people would return boxes of unsold short-packed chase figures and dolls. As long as the receipts were in order and within the window, they had to take them. So there was no risk. They'd cruise the area, buying every 1-per-box variant sunglasses The Rock or Greedo. Put them in a booth or eBay store at double, and then return any unsold inventory 5 months and 29 days later. It takes a tremendous amount of time, but a lot of them were retired or on disability and supplementing their limited incomes and filling their days. You'd make more money at a straight job, but people don't value their time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 20:45
|
|
|
moths posted:Scalping also got to be a more visible problem during the latest pokemon card shortage, when a retail worker at Walmart or Target could double their week's take-home by buying a booster box at the end of shift. And that's not someone I can easily fault. Hah... hahaha... yeah, it's not the retail workers that were buying up all the stock. My wife works in retail, and she's seen people who come into the store when they open, and then just sit in the card game aisle until the distributor arrived to unpack the newest stock before grabbing it all. Hell, according to her, the vendor said that they've had people essentially just stalk them all day, following them from store to store. I'm sure there were some retail workers that were able to buy pokemon cards, but I imagine that's more due to a fluke of luck than anything on their own part.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 20:57
|
|
|
COVID difficulties and the general economic peril has made stuff that wouldn't normally have huge effect, like scalping, much more noticeable than usual
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 21:08
|
|
|
Randalor posted:Hah... hahaha... yeah, it's not the retail workers that were buying up all the stock. Oh that's scummy as hell. I was, perhaps naively, hoping that some good was coming out of it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 21:11
|
|
|
Also Brexit. Haulage in the UK is utterly utterly hosed. We're already having problems getting food onto store shelves so god knows what's going on with less vital supply chains.
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 21:12
|
|
|
Randalor posted:Hah... hahaha... yeah, it's not the retail workers that were buying up all the stock. My wife works in retail, and she's seen people who come into the store when they open, and then just sit in the card game aisle until the distributor arrived to unpack the newest stock before grabbing it all. Hell, according to her, the vendor said that they've had people essentially just stalk them all day, following them from store to store. I'm sure there were some retail workers that were able to buy pokemon cards, but I imagine that's more due to a fluke of luck than anything on their own part. theres videos of grown rear end men sprinting into the store at opening line, beelining it to the cards and shoveling whole (bricks? boosters?) into shopping bags
|
|
#
?
Jul 18, 2021 23:02
|
|
|
NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:It's kinda crazy when you think about it that GW used to have bits parts in a warehouse AND employees who specialized in fulfilling those orders so that people could custom build models. Eh, it makes sense in some ways. You'd have a situation where multiple different metal figures have the same sort of pose so different weapons match them - Empire figures could wield a spear/halberd, crossbow or sword and shield that way. Allow people to pick and mix the way they wanted rather than serve up the figures arbitrarily made a happier, and presumably spendfrift-ier, customer. But the range grew, weirder figures got added and people just brought pieces of certain figures - the sword from the Black Templar's Emperor's Champion was a favourite but the rest of the model was less so. I'd have thought that folks would have liked the shield from the Champion of Slaneesh, less so the rest of the figure. My thoughts about the situation at the time was that GW should use it as market research and provide the neat bits that people wanted as packs, but, eh. I was sad to see that go, even if it makes sense now a days that nearly every possible unit is just one plastic sprue.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 04:20
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:unless you wanted to play kill team i guess Ttheir comment about it being limited could mean limited time thing, rather than limited quantities. As in, they'll rotate the contents of the Kill Team box, much as they did for the last version. Although the way their supply system is going these days, I suppose it means about the same thing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 16:22
|
|
|
LashLightning posted:My thoughts about the situation at the time was that GW should use it as market research and provide the neat bits that people wanted as packs, but, eh. I was sad to see that go, even if it makes sense now a days that nearly every possible unit is just one plastic sprue. It doesn't work that well in practice due to the manufacturing practicalities of metal spincasting. If you only manufacture swords then either you run the mold for the body + sword at the same time and bin the body (melt it down) or you make a new mould just for the sword. If you do the former you increase the wear on the mould besides being horribly inefficient (the moulds eventually heat up after a few spins and have to cool down again before they're used). If you do the latter you will eventually run into storage issues since each spincasting mould is the size and weight of a stack of 4 dinner plates.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 17:00
|
|
|
Z the IVth posted:If you do the latter you will eventually run into storage issues since each spincasting mould is the size and weight of a stack of 4 dinner plates. Theoretically you'd put more than just the sword on the new mould, like that shield I mentioned and whatever else they're finding that people wanted for conversions from their current range. Or, heck, you'd put lots of the same sword on the mould. All I know is that people really liked that sword and gave money to GW for it and GW didn't react in a way to encapsulate on people wanting that sword. Anyway, nearly everything is plastic now and there's a dozen websites that buy the boxes and split up the sprues/bits now so it's all moot if you can be bothered to keep an eye on a bunch of them for when they restock.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 18:19
|
|
|
Having done spincasting, the way they would likely do it is put all the swords (or all swords/shields, depending on layout) into one mold. And they would put all the body sections into one mold. And they put all the whatevers into one mold. And so on. In other words, in most cases, each component of the model gets its own mold. From a production standpoint, it makes your life a whole lot easier - when you're short on swords, you just spin up that mold and you don't have to worry about leftover torsos, or legs, or whatever. From an inventory standpoint however, it must have been an absolute nightmare. Some models had half a dozen parts, so you got half a dozen bins and half a dozen product codes for one model. Add to that that spin casting is labor intensive, dirty, hot, and casting machines take up a decent amount of space. I love the bits they used to have, but I can definitely see why they ended metals.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 19:01
|
|
|
TheDiceMustRoll posted:
I cannot imagine that the concept of lost sales is alien to MBAs. Selling out instantly is better than not being able to move product, but if you're doing it consistently and severely it means you're leaving money on the table.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 19:04
|
|
|
Voyager I posted:I cannot imagine that the concept of lost sales is alien to MBAs. I have to imagine they are also dealing with supply constraints like every other business out there right now.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 19:09
|
|
|
berzerkmonkey posted:Having done spincasting, the way they would likely do it is put all the swords (or all swords/shields, depending on layout) into one mold. And they would put all the body sections into one mold. And they put all the whatevers into one mold. And so on. In other words, in most cases, each component of the model gets its own mold. That's an interesting way of doing it, maybe for more mass production or duplicating parts compatible for multiple bodies? When I contracted out my spincasting both outfits that did them preferred to consolidate all the parts for each miniature onto single molds. Certainly I've seen enough minis where the sword/arms/gun are literally part of the same sprue to suggest that this isn't unusual.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 20:07
|
|
|
Z the IVth posted:That's an interesting way of doing it, maybe for more mass production or duplicating parts compatible for multiple bodies? It's going to heavily depend on the number of parts, the interchangeability of those parts, layout of the pieces, retail, and the mold maker's preference. The benefit of keeping everything on a single mold is you have one mold taking up space, rather than one for each individual component. However, that means you're putting that mold through more spins and you're going to wear it out quicker. Also, if you're selling individual bits, it's a real pain to run out of the bolter arm - you have to spin up the entire model mold (and due to spacing, maybe you only have six models on there) and remove that one part, then throw the rest of the spin into the smelter again, because you don't need more bodies and shields sitting on your shelves, tying up space and casting metal. With separate molds, if you need the bolter arm, you pull that mold, cast 36 bolter arms at once, and after a few spins, you're restocked. But if the caster is being outsourced (like your models were) they're going to likely value the mold storage space over how many times they are going to have to spin the mold, so it benefits them to put everything on a single mold.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 20:21
|
|
|
Crackbone posted:I have to imagine they are also dealing with supply constraints like every other business out there right now. Oh, sure, I'm not suggesting that it the only reason for these shortages is pure incompetence or some kind of shortsightedness on GW's part - just that selling out this badly isn't necessarily a victory, even if we're assuming all they care about is the benjamins.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 20:35
|
|
|
Supply limits affecting initial sales isn't huge, the issue was that they decided to stop production on the army box so it would be a Limited Edition thing. Had they continued production so people could pick it up as more became available over a few months, it wouldn't be anywhere near as big a deal to anyone.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 20:47
|
|
|
Z the IVth posted:That's an interesting way of doing it, maybe for more mass production or duplicating parts compatible for multiple bodies? Balance is pretty important as well. Having a mould being cast get out of balance is... not pretty. It is a lot easier to make sure all the chambers are evenly spaced and filled if they are the same part.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 20:51
|
|
|
chin up everything sucks posted:Supply limits affecting initial sales isn't huge, the issue was that they decided to stop production on the army box so it would be a Limited Edition thing. Had they continued production so people could pick it up as more became available over a few months, it wouldn't be anywhere near as big a deal to anyone. However production capacity isn't infinite, so continuing production on it means less production time for other boxes.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 21:25
|
|
|
Hey they GWSG. I was thinking that the original Games Workshop specialist games thread could probably use a new general, especially since it's woefully out of date, having not been updated since 2017, most of the images are dead, and all of the information is pretty useless. Most of the games mentioned can't be bought except in the secondary market, there's zero mention of Adeptus Titanicus except for the original boxed game, etc. I think we could use a refresher, I would be more than willing to make a new one. If there's some concern that it would cause some upset among the users on TG, I could simply type one up for ya'll, with citations, links to images, etc, and someone else could make it bcause a ridiculous amount of poo poo has happened since 2017. Again, I don't need credit, or the 'prestige'(lmao) of having made a general thread, I just like to see things with nice, updated information. I was thinking of having a main page and having whoever does it do their best to keep it "living" (up to date), having a distinction between "supported"(actively getting new products) "unsupported"(no new products, but lots of players) and "dead"(never discussed, nobody seems interested in playing, has no community, etc) games. On top of that, I thought it might be nice to have a second post where people can submit 1-3 paragraph testimonials if they wanted that explained why you should play (game) and why it owns (or doesn't). Then just a general updated list as things run in and out of the GW product treadmill. This is in no way a criticism of the original OP, keeping stuff up to date can be tough. Nothing wrong with a good refresher.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2021 23:09
|
|
|
That all sounds good to me!
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 02:47
|
|
|
Virtual Russian posted:That all sounds good to me! Yeah, so I was thinking that we could define "unsupported" as "specialist games with no releases for 18 months and no announcements for further releases", which I think is pretty fair.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 03:05
|
|
|
TheDiceMustRoll posted:This is in no way a criticism of the original OP, keeping stuff up to date can be tough. Nothing wrong with a good refresher. also the op hasn't posted on SA in three years here's a blood bowl summary to copy-paste if you want, lightly updated from a previous post: Blood Bowl Buy-In: $140 USD as a board game, <$10 as a video game Assembly: Push-Fit Playtime: 60-90m with experienced players Complexity: Medium Blood Bowl is GW's long-lived fantasy sport game. (It's parodying the NFL, but it's so different from that game that knowing anything about American football rules is mostly a hindrance.) Unlike most of GW's wargames, Blood Bowl is a board game, play with about a dozen-ish pawns on a grid-square board, so it is relatively easy to assemble teams for it once you have the game board and accoutrements. As board games go, it's about middling complexity, and takes an hour to an hour and a half to play a match. However, it's designed in a way that you'll most likely never get any better at it unless you learn from other players. It's also not a chill game, due to how long it takes, how random it can be, and how it encourages a personal investment in your dudes. Without getting too far into specifics, every turn you can take an action with each of your eleven dudes, but if any of them fails an action, your turn ends immediately. So every turn is a game of press-your-luck, where you try to prioritize the important or safe moves first, while leaving the risky or superfluous plays to the end of your turn. This is what makes Blood Bowl fun! But the high stakes give it a thoughtful pace. Even with experienced players, every turn takes at least a couple minutes on average, in a game with 32 turns total. And when you fail that first 98% chance to succeed and lose your entire turn and lose the game because your opponent got two turns in a row, it sucks so, so bad. Every time you end your turn early due to carelessness or bad planning or bad luck, you have plenty of time to brood over it as your opponent takes their full turn. And the game is super duper random. There's no such thing as a safe play other than moving from one uncontested space to another. Even a game where you totally dominate will involve lots of rolling 98% and 89% and 83% and 67% rolls, so most of the rolls you fail will be ones you felt like you should have succeeded. Most players do not improve without advice because it's hard to ever feel like it was your fault, because you should have succeeded all of those rolls. And sometimes those rolls are for very stupid things: an average human with the "pick up the ball" skill has an 11% chance to fail to pick up a stationary ball laying on the ground, and there's nothing you can do to improve those chances or prevent that failure from ending your turn. Blood Bowl is also randomly violent. Every time a player gets knocked down or falls down, they have a chance to hurt themselves. The low end is just losing another turn before standing up, the high end is death. It takes a lot of time to build up a player, often a dozen or more matches that take an hour plus each, so losing a developed player permanently to a crippling injury or a death absolutely sucks. A sufficiently bad run of luck for a team can send you even further back than square one. You can reduce the chances, but never eliminate them. The brutality is part of the appeal of the game, but because many of the teams specialize in stalling the game and grinding the opponent's players into the hospital, and some of the violence is "cheating", like fouls a character can be red-carded for, it can feel incredibly bad to lose (or win!) these matches. It's a real friendship wrecker if people take it personally. If all of this didn't dissuade you, the best way to learn BB these days is playing it online. FumBBL is a Java-based Blood Bowl simulator and has one of the biggest communities. There's also Blood Bowl 2, a faithful (same rules, 1:1) licensed adaptation of a previous edition of the game, on PC and consoles. (I suggest checking Cheapshark or Isthereanydeal for sales, and definitely buy the Legendary Edition that includes all of the DLC. You can definitely get the Legendary Edition for <$10USD if you catch it on sale.) Blood Bowl 3 is coming out later in 2021 and uses the 2020 boardgame rules, but all of the previews of it have been super negative. For playing it as an actual board game, the starter runs $140 USD and includes everything you need to play, including the rules, the board and various accessories, and two full teams worth of miniatures. (The starter teams are nicely balanced with each other, but middling-weak as Blood Bowl teams go.) There are 20 teams in the core rulebook, covering most of the Warhammer Fantasy races plus a few oddballs like the Hammer horror Necromantic team, or the useless and stupid Snotling team. There are also a half-dozen "Teams of Legend" that have rules online, but aren't otherwise supported by GW any more. A team runs about $40 USD from GW, but it's pretty easy to just convert any fantasy miniatures to Blood Bowl if you want just by cutting off their weapons. Blood Bowl was also out of print for almost a decade, so there are lots of third-party sellers making their own "fantasy football" teams. (Greebo has some of the nicest, although they aren't much cheaper than GW.) GW also released Death Zone, a book full of add-on rules for Blood Bowl, but it's not essential. There's also Blitz Bowl, a smaller and faster game based on Blood Bowl that uses a different board and about half as many miniatures, but I've never played it. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Nov 25, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 03:31
|
|
|
I don't know enough to go over it myself but it would probably be worthwhile to talk about the Blood Bowl starter set as well in fact pretty much any specialist game with a starter set should have at least a basic overview of it if possible
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 03:39
|
|
|
Cease to Hope posted:also the op hasn't posted on SA in three years Very thorough, very cool! I'm thinking we could add a short list of stats like Buy-In(Cost to get up and running, assumes you're buying the starter set), Assembly (Push-Fit or Glue Required), Playtime (Short(under 45 minutes average) medium(over an hour average) long (over 90 minutes guaranteed) and Complexity. I'll do one up for Warhammer Underworlds! quote:Warhammer: Underworlds
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 04:38
|
|
|
Hello, I am receiving the Titanicus core box today (if UPS isn't LYING) and it's my first go with it and wondering if anyone has any quick advice on assembly for the titans. Leave gluing the armor plates after paint I believe I've heard. Not very big on magnets, so that's not necessary and I'll commit to loadout but yeah any advice would be helpful I've been out of the hobby for years. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 13:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 00:49 |
|
|
Twigand Berries posted:Hello, I am receiving the Titanicus core box today (if UPS isn't LYING) and it's my first go with it and wondering if anyone has any quick advice on assembly for the titans. Leave gluing the armor plates after paint I believe I've heard. Not very big on magnets, so that's not necessary and I'll commit to loadout but yeah any advice would be helpful I've been out of the hobby for years. Thanks! Some of the titan weapons have spaces for magnets, so you might want to reconsider your stance - it will give you more options when playing. I understand the Warhound can be a little bit of a pain in the rear end, however. Paint the armor panels separately, as you have heard stated. Unless they've updated the instructions, you're told to assemble one of the titans legs backwards. Someone else can expand on this, but I wanted to throw it out there before you jumped right in.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 13:20
|
|