Quote Originally Posted by wittdooley View Post
First, really appreciate the thoughtful response. This is the kind of dialogue that is important to have on these forums, IMO.
Thanks, I don't think the crazy rhetoric does anyone any favours.


I have to think the public vs. private nature of these companies makes a difference. I don't know for certain, but it's possible that, due to their size (significantly smaller) there is flexibility with their pricing.
Yes, while it certainly would be harder for GW to change their pricing, being a (comparatively) huge multi-national, the exchange rate they're working on (assuming a direct exchange, not taking into account tarrifs etc) is quite literally from last century.
Aside from a spike in October 2008 at the height of the GFC, the Pound has been declining against the dollar at a steady rate since 2007. This has meant an average rate of around $2.30 to the pound, which is about what we're paying now. But it hasn't been above that since December 08, I think two and a half years is enough time to do at least some adjustment.

I'm not even advocating parity here - a 20% drop in prices would take a lot of pressure off and restore some sense of fairness to it.


I actually had heavy participation in a thread about this very subject. The problem lies in the difference in the size of the game; its a trickier proposition to build a "play out of the box" starter for 40k than it is for Privateer's games. The GW starter boxes would also have a much greater impact on other GW product sales than it does for Privateer.
It is comparing apples and oranges a bit (or rockmellons and watermellons perhaps) and there are a lot more factors than are relevant to the discussion here. But from a purely financial standpoint, if someone with little to no miniature/gaming experience wants to start a game and the options are $50 or $150 one is immediately more attractive. As was discussed in Skragger's thread on the subject, balancing them with the current bigger game oriented ruleset is much harder too.

I will admit bias in this as I started mini painting when my brother and I were each given a set of Rafm AD&D minis ([URL="http://www.frothersunite.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13803&sid=3752c696e5506d752af21599 3e9bd659"]best pic I could find[/URL]) and one of the nine-pot citadel paint sets. The boxes came with stats and background for each of the minis, some maps and part of the adventure (so you needed to buy all the boxes to get the whole thing!). Now, at the time I was around seven, so it was somewhat incomprehensible, but I could understand the groups, their story and the quest and being weird managed to figure out roughly how AD&D worked without loking at the rulebook...
I could also paint seven dudes and be proud of finishing them in a reasonable time (still got them too!).

With that in mind, when I look at the WM starter box I see something very similar - a starter into the hobby, not just the game - while Black Reach is more a starter into 40k than miniature painting, collecting and gaming (there's next to no background in the box!). It just seems so much to lay on a new player at once to me, but again, it's possibly just personal preference.
Now, I haven't seen inside the PP kits, and they probably don't have much in the way of background, but if the minis are cool enough when has that ever stopped anyone (I had around seventy or so Zoids before I knew of any official story)?



This is intersting to me: do you suppose as many international customers would order from Wayland/Maelstrom/etc if they didn't offer free shipping?
I doubt it, but it is hard to say. The one thing about local indie suppliers is they almost invariably have terrible webstores - hard to navigate, hard to tell what is and isn't in stock (and when it will be again) and odd selections of what you want. With that in mind the lazy (or nightworkers like me who can't really get to stores much) may still shop overseas to get what they want at once rather than piecemeal.
Maybe it's just been my bad luck, but the indie wargaming stores (as opposed to nerd stores that sell wargames) have all been rather dire places to deal with.