Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I can understand being fussy about scale. But the zombie consumer gamer makes me cry. Had another kid in asking for help assembling his brand new Warhammer 40k models that he bought at another store today. I can't even carry them because that store has an exclusive contract with Games Workshop.

And I smile and help them out because I want them to come into my store and be comfortable in my store but damnit! Sixty bucks for a ten man, two drone, one pillbox thingie squad.

I'm despairing of the competitors ever competing though. Warlord is damn good, they should be, they're the guys who created Warhammer and made it huge. Beyond the Gates of Antares looks fantastic, but it's pretty rigid and non-inclusive. I don't think you can just bring your own figures. And while Bolt Action is one of my favorite games that's because I'm not a big World War II guy and reducing it to a minimal level of complexity permits me to focus on other things. I have tons of Warlord and Bolt Action on my shelves and it doesn't move. This makes me fearful of ordering their new zombie game and BtGoA.

Prodos is pretty cool but Mutant Chronicles is a three time loser already and frankly they've made some scary mistakes. Even so, if I learned anything from the Alien Dungeon / All's Quiet on the Martian Front fiasco it's that the on-line fans will buy up my remaining stock in a frenzy if Prodos is sucked under by the Alien vs Predator kickstarter fiasco.

Mantic is very hit and miss. Kings of War is fast and fun and has a surprising amount of depth for such a small ruleset. But I miss the simulationist aspects of Warhammer, in particular I miss charge responses. But I also miss the sense of detail and individual casualty removal. I suspect one day Mantic will surpass Games Workshop solely on the strength of ideas they swiped when GW abandoned them, but a week later they'll vanish due to their first and last failed kickstarter. Mantic's running on a kickstarter a quarter and I fear it can't end well.

Privateer Press is more anal retentive and gamist than GW and their fans hate three dimensional terrain. Honestly the only thing that appeals to me in their entire line is the press gang set with the tramp and the sack of recruits, that's a fun diorama piece there.

Agreed - that's a pretty good summary of the state of the industry at this point in time. I just keep looking on, shaking my head, and going back down into the basement.

Okay - I'm baffled. Why do PP fans hate 3-D terrain? I'm honestly curious.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Jackass! Even if it were done by local gamers the amount of work involved takes time, not to mention supplies. I would have said no problem, but either pay me by the hour for my painting or I'm sending you an invoice for a cut of all sales generated from my miniatures. Wow.

Yep. Stopped running games there for quite a while, and they are now asking me to come back - it seems I'm good for over $1,500 to $2,000 in miniatures sales when I run a game...

Really? Inconceivable! Customer Disservice 101.at its best. Unfortunately this happens a lot. My buddy used to own a model shop and he couldn't figure why sales were so erratic. When he and the missus were there business was good, but when only the staff were there not so good. It turned out that his employee was spending most of his just time sitting on his ass behind the counter, and primarily getting into arguments with the customers and bad mouthing the owner.

Same here. Went into the game store that's five minutes away from my house; the guys behind the counter were on their laptops, playing an online game, and it was literally twenty minutes before one of them spoke to me - the other customers, in the back game area, didn't get any attention at all, from what I could tell. Haven't been back since, either.

This is the GW brainwashing that has spilt over into other games. Let me guess were they playing Bolt Action? All they are doing is ruining it for themselves. The sad thing is that the detail on the Airfix, and Tamiya kits are probably a 1000 times better than the official ones. I still build the old Tamiya and Italeri armour from the 70's. They go together like a charm, are painless to put together, provide an amazing platform for super detailing should you so desire, and when done right can often even fool the so-called "experts" and "rivet counters". Like the time I entered an Italeri model kit from 1974 into a local model show and won gold. All it took was about an hour of minor corrections, a hatch here, some screens there... Nobody would believe that it was the "crumby old Italeri" until I took the turret off and showed them the company logo inside the hull. A lot of red faces and grumbles from these self important so and so's. That was the last show I ever entered.

Yeah, I think so. I agree about the kits, too. Had the same thing happen to me, and I don't go to those shows anymore either.

Some people's kids It's funny how things have changed in this and other hobbies.

Sigh. I'll be on the workbench, if you need me...

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Warlord and Italeri have a deal and some Bolt Action stuff like stone walls and sandbags are just repackaged and repriced Italeri 1/72 stuff. But I'll put in an argument for Bolt Action's kits, they're plain but they're gaming kits with very few pieces those lovely Airfix tanks require the assembly of individual bogeys and I'm afraid that's more effort than I want to put into a wargaming unit. Plain kits are also easier to dress up with stowage.

Even so, I often feel the gaming industry has some ridiculous pricing expectations. I can understand why a hand injected resin Warzone tank is a hundred bucks, but if they went to injection moulded plastic I'd be wondering why it didn't drop to 25. If they weren't making enough of them to sustain that price and profit why did they move to plastic in the first place?

It's a problem I see across the industry. The expectation that people will pay whatever you ask for that full color rulebook. The cost of entry for D&D these days is absurd. They wonder why people aren't getting into roleplaying games and assume it's because video games siphon off the customer base. But video games only really affect the more affluent end of the customer base.

I've had a few schemes in mind over the years but with the store soaking up all my time and money they've fallen by the wayside.

Agreed. The basic issue with the economics is that the game hobby is simply not large enough to give the game industry economy of scale. Trying to do injection molding is a good example of this; Lou Zocchi made money with his injection molding plant, but it was of the most basic kind. Anything more then what Lou did makes for much higher tooling costs, and that means higher retail costs unless one can sell a whole lot of units. Or one simply charges more money, in order to pay for the tooling and run time on the machines. There's a reason why the 1930's cast metal technology has survived this long...

Ditto in RPG's; high production values = more costs, so the prices go up. Anybody seen the news about the "City State of the Invincible Overlord" project?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Agreed - that's a pretty good summary of the state of the industry at this point in time. I just keep looking on, shaking my head, and going back down into the basement.

Okay - I'm baffled. Why do PP fans hate 3-D terrain? I'm honestly curious.

So, Warmachine's official motto is "Play like you've got a pair!" What they mean by that is that measurement to the last sixteenth of an inch is fair game. There's none of the give and take and "You're a grown man playing with toy soldiers so don't be a dick!" which has been GW's motto for a long time. Heck I think they even subscribe to that now.

But in Warmachine three dimensional terrain introduces questions about line of sight because "true line of sight" isn't precise enough and "toe on" terrain hijinks so you absolutely have to be able to put a tiny bit of a miniature onto a terrain piece to indicate it has cover.

I should probably start carrying Warmachine. The other three stores fight over it almost as hard as Magic so there's not much point financially beyond the hope of sales of other related products and pop. I like Victorian science fiction just fine but Steam Punk goes too far for my tastes and I'm not overly fond of their miniatures or their game.

The problem with the hobby is that nobody can make a living at it. If you get into that place where you're making a few bucks and growing you eventually hit the point where you either need to expand or give up because you can't keep up with it anymore and training someone to do what you're doing is even harder and more time consuming so all companies which are doing things right eventually have to face the reality of needing to make more money. That's when they hit the realities of the wider market and distribution systems and they really have to grow.

The reality is that the entire market model is regressive. Growing means dumbing down to reach a broader customer base. Growing means critical market distinctions. Growing means endlessly churning out more of the same because anything new has to start at square one and looks like a failure out of the gate.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Warlord and Italeri have a deal and some Bolt Action stuff like stone walls and sandbags are just repackaged and repriced Italeri 1/72 stuff. But I'll put in an argument for Bolt Action's kits, they're plain but they're gaming kits with very few pieces those lovely Airfix tanks require the assembly of individual bogeys and I'm afraid that's more effort than I want to put into a wargaming unit. Plain kits are also easier to dress up with stowage.

Even so, I often feel the gaming industry has some ridiculous pricing expectations. I can understand why a hand injected resin Warzone tank is a hundred bucks, but if they went to injection moulded plastic I'd be wondering why it didn't drop to 25. If they weren't making enough of them to sustain that price and profit why did they move to plastic in the first place?

It's a problem I see across the industry. The expectation that people will pay whatever you ask for that full color rulebook. The cost of entry for D&D these days is absurd. They wonder why people aren't getting into roleplaying games and assume it's because video games siphon off the customer base. But video games only really affect the more affluent end of the customer base.

I've had a few schemes in mind over the years but with the store soaking up all my time and money they've fallen by the wayside.

Well, gaming is a luxury good, and the rule of thumb for luxury goods is "raise prices until your total revenue curve levels off." (Oh, that Chirine and I could have done so...) That, plus the 80/20 principle in sales ... 80 % of your sales come from 20% of your customers... will tend to continue to drive prices up until your high end customers start to drop off.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

That's where I'm at now. The Sarku troops are coming along just fine. Went with a brown overall as a base/prime coat. Just finished the robes that they have under their armour used black and Terra cotta. I think I'll keep the armour dark brown with copper trim. Not sure what colour to do the shield's. Any suggestions?

Shemek

Sounding really good! Some of the units have red shields, Sarku only knows why, otherwise browns with black and copper trims would be my suggestion.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

So, Warmachine's official motto is "Play like you've got a pair!" What they mean by that is that measurement to the last sixteenth of an inch is fair game. There's none of the give and take and "You're a grown man playing with toy soldiers so don't be a dick!" which has been GW's motto for a long time. Heck I think they even subscribe to that now.

But in Warmachine three dimensional terrain introduces questions about line of sight because "true line of sight" isn't precise enough and "toe on" terrain hijinks so you absolutely have to be able to put a tiny bit of a miniature onto a terrain piece to indicate it has cover.

I should probably start carrying Warmachine. The other three stores fight over it almost as hard as Magic so there's not much point financially beyond the hope of sales of other related products and pop. I like Victorian science fiction just fine but Steam Punk goes too far for my tastes and I'm not overly fond of their miniatures or their game.

The problem with the hobby is that nobody can make a living at it. If you get into that place where you're making a few bucks and growing you eventually hit the point where you either need to expand or give up because you can't keep up with it anymore and training someone to do what you're doing is even harder and more time consuming so all companies which are doing things right eventually have to face the reality of needing to make more money. That's when they hit the realities of the wider market and distribution systems and they really have to grow.

The reality is that the entire market model is regressive. Growing means dumbing down to reach a broader customer base. Growing means critical market distinctions. Growing means endlessly churning out more of the same because anything new has to start at square one and looks like a failure out of the gate.

Yeah, I'd agree with you on the economics. All too true.

About that terrain...

Glurk. I think my brain just stopped working... Lemme hit the restart...

I read your reply, and I can vouch for what you're saying. I see a lot of this kind of gaming locally, and I simply walk away. A 1/16th measurement is simply silly, at least in the games we used to play, and we used to resolve LOS issues by just leaning over or squatting down and looking at the table. These days, simply because it's more fun, I use lovely reverse periscopes to see what my little lead troopers can see, and cheap laser pointers to see what they can hit.

I simply can't imagine that style of play. No sale for that company, here...

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Well, gaming is a luxury good, and the rule of thumb for luxury goods is "raise prices until your total revenue curve levels off." (Oh, that Chirine and I could have done so...) That, plus the 80/20 principle in sales ... 80 % of your sales come from 20% of your customers... will tend to continue to drive prices up until your high end customers start to drop off.

Well, Dave and Phil wanted low prices, so we gave them to them...

It's the hard core competitive tournament mind set. Some people are primarily concerned with whether they win or not and they want to know that if they lost it was fair.

Fair enough, I suppose. Really, I got to watch two of the worst players around massively improve because they went to Games Workshop tournaments and saw their scores dive on grounds of painting and sportsmanship You never saw such repentant sinners.

Say what you will about GW, in the late nineties to mid noughties they really pushed the hobby aspect and the playing for fun aspect and sixth edition Warhammer was heavily focused on troops and maneuver not sticking the most absurd magic item combos on characters. It held over into mid seventh edition when most of the old guys like Priestly and Chambers moved on, then it was all just spam, spam, spamity, spam.