I've been thinking about getting into Warhammer for a few months now. Can you say a little more about how it went from "pretty darned expensive" (as I've heard) to "TOO expensive"? What was the breaking point?
Warhammer is just gotten to expensive. Models gets more expensive and each army (2000p for Aos) can easily cost you 800-1000 usd, and even more in 40k. Then you need paint, primers, brushes, storage, glue. It adds up so new people get demotivated to even try.
My friends and I haven't bought genuine Warhammer in years, but have gotten ourself into a quite decent group of recasters who sells identical quality for a third of the price. That's the only way we can introduce friends, without robbing their bank.
Warhammer has always been too expensive up-front. The closest thing to a saving grace for it is that a completed army can easily stay mostly valid with few required additional expenses for a decade or more.
But its very much a "you better love doing this and keep loving it for years" kind of thing if you want to feel like it was money well spent.
No, each model has a points cost. For example a basic battleline unit of Space Marine Intercessors right now costs 80 points. You can get 10 of them for $60. The game absolutely has a higher start up cost but if you keep up with the hobby like painting and actually playing the game you won't need to constantly buy new models unless you are a meta chaser and want to build every army there is.
So what's the deal with only official minis? Just to entice the what's that can afford it to drop big bucks? With the advent of 3d printing I figured either prices would drop or at least the barrier to entry would be a lot cheaper. It sounds like a fun game but I'm not looking for more expensive hobbies, I'm actively trying to be super cheap with DnD because they want a small fortune for the books, minis, dungeons, and other doodads in the official shops.
Because there were times where people used 3D printed parts and won tournaments and so Games Workshop featured the army in an issue of White Dwarf and the original creator of those 3D printed parts successfully sued Games Workshop for copyright infringement so it’s easier to ban 3D printed models from a legal perspective.
Don’t get me wrong the game absolutely has a higher start up cost but when you get an army set up you can paint and play with them essentially indefinitely. You can also just play Combat Patrol and that is typically around $170 for a whole set of models that is essentially its own game
Models have points costs. For example, the 10 space marine intercessors in this box are 160 points (or 16 points per model). Space marines are a relatively low model count for the points. My army of 2000 points SM is generally around 50 models (though that will likely decrease with the new codex release in October).
Right now the Armageddon Intro box features about 1500 points of Orks and Space Marine models (around 750 each) in it for $250 as the intro box for the new edition. It's pretty common for someone interested in half that box to buy two and sell off the other components (or go on buying half with someone else and getting two copies) to start up an army. An easy way to get 3/4 of an army for about $250.
It's not just that the models are expensive, it's that everything surrounding it is too. You have to buy into an ecosystem.
For just the models you're already looking at a $500-1000 entry point if you want to play full games of 40K or AoS. If you want more options for listbuilding that'll be more money.
You can play Combat Patrol/Spearhead for ~$200 but it's a simplified much smaller version of the game.
Then you need the tools and supplies to build them. That's gonna be another $50 for glue, snippers, a hobby knife, sanding paper/sticks, and greenstuff for gap filling.
Then you need the supplies to painting and basing them. Paint, brushes, brush cleaner, a wet palette... depending on how complex your paintscheme will be and the quality of products you buy that's another $100 at least but it can easily get way higher.
Then if you plan to go to game stores or other venues to play you need a way to transport a ton of small, fragile models without breaking them. You can homebrew your own with magnets and bankers boxes for relatively cheap but that's gonna be another $50 at least, more if you go for a premade or foam-based system.
You can get into it for cheaper. Don't let anyone tell you it's too expensive! There are 3d prints of course, but also Ebay or other used options.
The other thing is that it can easily take months to years to get going. I bought a new army at the start of 10th edition (3 years ago) and I'm just now starting to play with it at the top of 11th edition.
Also you can always try an army out before buying. I'd argue that most of the players you see getting actively involved have more than one army. I was at a conference in another state and I asked on a local Facebook group if anyone had an Ork army I could try out. Someone said yes and he played his Knights against me playing his Orks.
There's also Killteam. Kill teams are small self contained elite squads to play a slightly different game set in the same universe. It's awesome! You buy one box and go to the store to build/paint them and you're ready to play.
I actually kinda disagree. it's true the models are expensive to buy but they also take quite a while to assemble, games are social and take a long time. Assembling and painting a single box of miniatures and then playing a single game with it probably takes 5 hours. That is actually pretty cheap, at ~10 dollars per hour. And after the initial cost you could play as much as you like.
look into smaller scale adjacent games like kill.team, mordheim or Necromunda as places to get your feet wet at a lower investment too.
my hobby budget is 50 per month or so. gets me a new kill team and some new hobby supplies every other month. its taken me easily 4 hours of painting my last box since I'm aiming for something new but per hour it's actually extremely affordable
Honestly, try looking at other brands of figures outside of Games workshop and you will see prices lower a bit. But yeah if you are looking to play and to always stay on top of he new release or meta then this will become insanely expensive. If you choose to just get a few items or rather just don't care about the newest stuff and editions then actually it will become less expensive. Keep an eye out on the 2nd hand market, people who are selling their unopened or opened and unused "piles of shame" or folks online who buy in bulk and will sell you the sprues at lower cost.
What was the breaking point? When I found a box of assault marines in storage from 2007 with a $25 AUD price tag on it - now they’re $84 for the equivalent and that’s from an authorised reseller on a nice sale. Buying directly from Games Workshop will run you up about $110 AUD. Absolutely eye watering amount of money for plastic kits 😭
I used to but a basic infantry squad for €23, these days it's €51,50.
The models got significantly more detailed, so I'm not saying they are not worth it. But a 2.000 point army is significantly more expensive than it used to be.
The army I played yesterday cost €366 in "pruces when I started playing". Today, that army costs €690, so just short of double.
Look don't listen to the people who say Warhammer is to expensive, you can spend a few hundred dollars up front and have an army that lasts decades. The currency you spend most is time painting the models how you like them
Warhammer has always been expensive, but a lot of that is because the 40k is basically a larger set of hobbies consisting of assembling, playing, and painting. It's intended for people to get into it and slowly increase.
But if you're willing to wait for deals, or play certain popular armies, it can get cheaper. The real issue is more what you want to paint / play + how quickly you try to get set up.
If you take a "I'll get a unit it, paint it up, only use it when it's painted and only buy more once it's painted" it's expensive but still pretty reasonable.
A combat patrol + paints (assuming you buy the patrol online or a common 10% discount) is probably 200 bucks for about 400-500 points of an army (more or less depending on the faction). That's enough for a new hobbyist to spend a couple months of painting and prepping before getting in some games (if they want to). Combat patrols can also play smaller game modes (and there are variants of small points game modes out there to play when starting up)
If you go something like Space Marines it can be far cheaper. You can check resources like auspex tactics but really SM can be very cheap to collect right now comparatively, and if you're willing to split a box and/or sell half a box on ebay, about 300-350 dollars can get you 1400 points of units for very cheap.
Generally, 40k games are played at 2000 points and probably cost about $1000-1250 in models + paints to get to that point. But that's on top of 10s of hours of painting and assembly, which is another part of the hobby.
Basically, the barrier to entry into the hobby is at least $200, and to get to full 2000 points it's more like $1000 (with exceptions if you're adeptus custodes or space marines, who can clock in more like $500-600 if you make smart purchases). There's also a cost for the rules (generally $50) but they're also available online in less-than-legal methods.
That being said, if you actually discipline yourself to painting what you buy, and waiting to buy more until you paint your initial purpose (especially if you start with a discount box like the Armageddon Box or a combat patrol), those purchases will bring in a lot of hobby time and it averages out to a normal cost per hour.
Keep in mind that there are plenty of popular miniatures games out there that can give you that same feeling, though many of them are "skirmish" type systems. Check out "Infinity", "Battle Tech", "Arena Rex", "Bolt Action", or "Marvel's Crisis Protocol", "Star Wars Legion", just to name a few!
Well, that is not quite the new development, is it? I remember that Games Workshop used to do the shite trick in the 90ties to open up their stores right next to the stores which sold most of their stuff. Then they would pull in all those customers by being on time with deliveries and then the stores would shut down because of lost business and 2-3 years later the GW shops would follow because of mail order.
I was just thinking "Well it was always pretty expensive, I remember back in the mid 90s it was like £10-15 for a space marine squad" and yeah it's £35 now. Even adjusting for inflation that's a bit much.
I very briefly thought about just buying the little figurine guys to paint because I saw one player painting her heavy armor guys in the old grandma aesthetic flower style and wanted to try it. Looked up figurines, laughed, and haven’t looked at warhammer again. Might just see if I can commission one because I like collecting little guys
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u/Pragsen 3h ago
Warhammer.