Hi. This is my first post on BOLS, so apologies if this is not of interest, ... but I wanted to pose a question to the community on here about my current dilemma, which is this :-
I have been playing Warhammer on and off, since I was 14, and I am now 37. I have amassed armies for all races (apart from Tomb Kings).
For the last few years I have felt increasing excluded from the hobby due to my unwillingness to pay the ever increasing prices. Since I have such a large figure collection, this is not an issue for me regarding models. If I really like something new, I buy it (from a discount store). But this is relatively rare (maybe one purchase per month on average).
The problem is the army books. I was quite happy paying £10 for army books. Even £12. £15 was about my limit. I stopped buying them when they breached the £20 mark. Some time on now, I find myself with out of date books for Orcs & Goblins, Empire, Vampire Counts, Ogre Kingdoms, Warriors of Chaos, Daemons of Chaos and soon High Elves.
I mostly play at home with my own family, so using out of date books has not been a major problem.
Not only do I have an issue with the price of the new books, but also the quality. I have barely read a positive review of any of the new books. 80-90% of the content is identical, and although some issues get resolved with a new book, other new issues are introduced.
A further problem with some of the books is that they do not interpret at all into the latest version of the rules (eg. Dwarfs, Wood Elves and Bretonnians).
To bring my army book set up to date would cost in the region of £140, even from a discount store. And this would do nothing to bring Wood Elves, Dwarfs or Bretonnians up to date anyway.
So what do I do ? The way I see it I either :-
A) Give up Warhammer altogether (which I don't want to do, as I enjoy the game).
B) Stick with the main Warhammer rulebook but actually make up my own army rules / lists 'in house'.
C) Just suck it up, pay £140 to GW for the 'current' army book versions and forget playing dwarfs / wood elves / brets until 2014+).
I guess I am interested in hearing if there are many other people in a similar boat, and what you did ? Have many people abandoned the over priced and dreadfully overdue (and often weak) GW army book offerings ?