Forar Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 The Warden was $30, right? Bwah? Nope. $18 on the Wyrd store, $15 at my local shop. A better question is what's in the Lone Marshal box for $35? Interesting.... Might just be the price of a particularly large figure. The Pale Rider is also $35 on the Online Store, $28 locally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mako Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Hard to make good price comparisons using Meeplemart, isn't it... they're just too discounty! *grin* I looked at the prices and thought 'ooh, those must be fairly big and complex. Will be good to see the renders.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forar Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Hard to make good price comparisons using Meeplemart, isn't it... they're just too discounty! *grin*' Yeah, though their prices aren't far off The War Store or one of several other online shops. MM just has the advantage of essentially being an online shop that I can peruse in person. Err, during their often strange and occasionally inconvenient hours of operation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fritz the cat Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Yeah, though their prices aren't far off The War Store or one of several other online shops. MM just has the advantage of essentially being an online shop that I can peruse in person. Err, during their often strange and occasionally inconvenient hours of operation. not to mention that they have competative online pricing without the ridiculous international fees canadians usually have to pay from US retailers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cornelious1424 Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Nice!! Dougie Booms in January, I can wait (I guess). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_was_like_you Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 not to mention that they have competative online pricing without the ridiculous international fees canadians usually have to pay from US retailers You will be assimilated. Your land and your universal healthcare will be added to our own. Resistance is futile. Then you won't have to have the Canadian price stigma on every single book cover any longer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Setoth Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 You will be assimilated. Your land and your universal healthcare will be added to our own. Resistance is futile. Then you won't have to have the Canadian price stigma on every single book cover any longer. Or any of that pesky "national sovereignty." That was so 20th century. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_was_like_you Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Or any of that pesky "national sovereignty." That was so 20th century. What, if the US annexes Canada and Mexico, we start producing an extra 5 troops per turn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierowmaniac Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 You keep pointing at the metal figures and their prices - we haven't bothered changing their prices because it's stock that is there and was put in quite some time back. We could easily go back and update the prices to reflect where they 'should' be at the moment, instead, we continue to sell them till we're done. Not quite true. Last Christmas (ish) 'Lady Justice box set went out of stock.......And came back into stock a month or so later at the same price *drink* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 I'll have them put the box and renders up with the release schedule by early next week so that everyone can see what they are getting. When are you going to start listening to my advice and boxing everything with no pictures or labels and pricing it randomly? The nice thing about chaos is that it's fair. Hasn't anyone else watched batman while reading wikipedia pages about economics? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Defendant Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Honestly, you keep going on as if you know our business and state your background as a reason for XYZ. You don't. I could call you out on another dozen things you haven't a clue or privy to, but unless you're in the office with these decisions, you don't know why or what. You're opinion of course is your own, that being said, this is three threads now where you feel the need to voice it, over and over. Wow. Just....wow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nagash13 Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 justin at the next meeting do the disapearing pencil trick! accountants love that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cats Laughing Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Everytime you say that a gremlin dies. Gremlin birthing rates and the forum restrictions on posts per minute make that a moot point... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeleteAccount Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Though I don't have a problem with the starter boxes cost, I do feel that big boy single models are scaling too much in cost. I don't know how the logistics work out of course, but I do know that an Izamu scale like model with similar cost would probably leave me more satisfied than a different 50 mm model that happens to be bigger and goes from 18 to 35$ like for example the Rail golem, yes, I did end up buying it, but it being bigger didn't really add that much to me. Maybe I'm just a cheapskate (hint: I am a cheapskate) and I know plastics allow to do a LOT more, I mean, somebody mentioned before how you could get for cheaper "perfectly good mature and young" which I consider look like balls at this stage of the game and will be utterly humiliated by the new models, but what I'm getting at is that everything doesn't need to be massive to be compelling. Lazarus seems like an amazing kit and a very good price point and the same with Izamu (unless those were supposed to be more expensive because logistics). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausplosions Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 Honestly, you keep going on as if you know our business and state your background as a reason for XYZ. You don't. I could call you out on another dozen things you haven't a clue or privy to, but unless you're in the office with these decisions, you don't know why or what. You're opinion of course is your own, that being said, this is three threads now where you feel the need to voice it, over and over. You've been heard. Didn't make a difference in the plastic or the pricing, or going back to metal. The Mature Neph alone is MUCH bigger than the metal one ever was. Same with the Young Nephs that are in that package. You keep pointing at the metal figures and their prices - we haven't bothered changing their prices because it's stock that is there and was put in quite some time back. We could easily go back and update the prices to reflect where they 'should' be at the moment, instead, we continue to sell them till we're done. While I understand your love for metal - you're beating a dead horse over it. We're not going back. The prices aren't changing. If you feel that it's a bad deal and you're not getting your monies worth, then I would very much suggest looking into another game. Fahatsu - that is three figures and quite a bit of work sculpting and mold wise. It's also a Rare 1 figure. It gets sold once to a potential customer - not multiple times as say perhaps Bells or even Death Marshals. Pricing does come into affect for that - it has to. Best. Post. Ever. Also. My Nephelim prediction confirmed! Yay! ---------- Post added at 07:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:55 AM ---------- Wow. Just....wow. I know right?! Love it! Some people just need told. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M_Ruckuss Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 (edited) While I understand your love for metal - you're beating a dead horse over it. We're not going back. The prices aren't changing. If you feel that it's a bad deal and you're not getting your monies worth, then I would very much suggest looking into another game. I think maybe I will- I'll go back to Peacespanner 30,000 where $80 buys me a whole squad of bolter wielding nuns (when they were $35 a few weeks back...?):Paralyzed_Puppet: [i hope the sarcasm got through here!] The prices seem reasonable to me, i wouldn't even call them a price change-they are new models coming out in a new market! Wyrd are a company, hence profits will need to be made. However, they do, unlike other companies, look after their customers and ask for feedback etc. The fact they have not had a major price rise but kept prices the same illustrates this clearly. $40 for one model may seem like quite a high price...butthink about the cost of a comparable mainstream walker model, or a Jack. I dont see the problem- my only worry is the inevitable hole in my wallet due to great models! Edited October 31, 2013 by McDoogle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rancor709 Posted October 31, 2013 Report Share Posted October 31, 2013 2 Youngs and a Mature, Yup I'll play your game you rogue and like it. I see much greater value in that pack than say 3 young for 35 and a Mature for 25. I'm excited to see Marcus goodies single and in the pack. Although my need for a Myranda that actually looks good means I'll be buying the beast box. Here's the deal kids its a business and the Wyrd boys do a good job of it and the Wyrd girls 2 don't want to discriminate. But for the scale/ utility of the models the fact the riders are staying 35 with the Lone Rider being plastic is a win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RagingRodian Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 (edited) Honestly, you keep going on as if you know our business and state your background as a reason for XYZ. You don't. I could call you out on another dozen things you haven't a clue or privy to, but unless you're in the office with these decisions, you don't know why or what. You're opinion of course is your own, that being said, this is three threads now where you feel the need to voice it, over and over. You've been heard. Didn't make a difference in the plastic or the pricing, or going back to metal. The Mature Neph alone is MUCH bigger than the metal one ever was. Same with the Young Nephs that are in that package. You keep pointing at the metal figures and their prices - we haven't bothered changing their prices because it's stock that is there and was put in quite some time back. We could easily go back and update the prices to reflect where they 'should' be at the moment, instead, we continue to sell them till we're done. While I understand your love for metal - you're beating a dead horse over it. We're not going back. The prices aren't changing. If you feel that it's a bad deal and you're not getting your monies worth, then I would very much suggest looking into another game. Fahatsu - that is three figures and quite a bit of work sculpting and mold wise. It's also a Rare 1 figure. It gets sold once to a potential customer - not multiple times as say perhaps Bells or even Death Marshals. Pricing does come into affect for that - it has to. As to the first point, my comments in this thread are based on simple math and data taken from your site. I didn't mention background, and it really doesn't matter what I am privy to or what you can "call me out on". Your company said it was switching to plastic because it was cheaper than metal, in regards to other threads where this was mentioned this was very specifically the answer- thus my making reference to it. I used basic reasoning to find a logical inconsistency. Note that in this thread I did not say you had to go back to making metal. That has been covered in other threads. I am discussing a different issue: why, if you have declared plastics to be cheaper than metals, are you charging metal prices for plastics. I may not have verbalized it well, but it is a fair question that even plastic lovers can ask. Stating that not looking at your own metals because you haven't raised the prices isn't a valid answer. Like it or not, excellent quality metal miniatures, such as your own, currently being made by established companies in any real quantities, run about $6-$11 a figure. I could pull up examples from Reaper, Warlord, Hasslefree, the Perrys, and so on but honestly, it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Even GW still sells many of their metal miniatures through mail order at that price. Even without quoting your own prices back to you it is still fair to say that, at $6-$11 a head for your plastics, you are charging metal prices for your plastics. The comparison gets worse with the new Marshall. You can easily find plenty of excellent quality metal horsemen at that price. I would instead point out that GW, the paragon of overcharging, sells an excellent human mounted Empire general kit, including a battle standard bearer and extra conversion parts, for $29.75- less than the price tag of the new Marshall. Of course, I realize that we haven't seen the new models but we can look at the pattern established by your past plastic releases. Now admittedly, there are other factors that go into pricing. Maybe even some of those dozen things that I am not privy to make it so you really do have to charge this much for plastic- but if that is so you are proving me right, "plastics are cheaper to make" is a nonsense answer. Or, plastics really are cheaper and you aren't passing the savings along to us. You can do that, this is capitalism after all, but don't be surprised if people ask questions about it. So, why are we being charged metal prices for plastics? Edited November 1, 2013 by RagingRodian 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mythicFOX Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 I am discussing a different issue: why, if you have declared plastics to be cheaper than metals, are you charging metal prices for plastics. I may not have verbalized it well, but it is a fair question that even plastic lovers can ask. Has Wyrd ever actually 'declared plastics to be cheaper than metals'? IIRC when Wyrd went plastic they said they were doing so to avoid increasing the prices they charged any further than they had to for the book three metal releases. I'm not aware they've ever said plastics would be cheaper for us to buy than metals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edonil Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 The only company I've ever seen flat out say that a material would be cheaper than metal would be Games Workshop, when they switched to Finecast. And then jacked the prices up. Wyrd has hardly been dishonest in how they discuss their prices. And frankly, if Wyrd hasn't been raising prices in response to the rising price of metal, then they are going with a lower profit margin out of choice for older things, and absorbing the cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brence Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 Guys, we are talking about a hobby... The prices of bread and butter didn't just go up! I might not be able to buy whatever I want in one go due to a limited budget but I dont mind either. Does the price hamper me from playing? Nope, I might just put that Long Rider off for christmas or whatsoever if I find other minions to be cheaper and also needed. Every minis company sees this thread pop up now and again and I get the point that if something you like gets more expensive you wont be cheering for it. However I still fully think Malifaux is compared a cheap game. Why? Entry cost! Lets face it, buyin the 40k starter gives you a nice sneak peak as to what the game could aspire to after sinking another load of money into it. With a Malifaux starter you will have all that you need for the full experience. Expanding with say 40 to 60 dollars. Thats an entire army right there. Even though I dont think they could compare, as any of these titles is unique in its own right. I can actually applaud Eric for posting himself as many a company simply wouldnt care even responding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nathan Caroland Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 Stating that not looking at your own metals because you haven't raised the prices isn't a valid answer. Like it or not, excellent quality metal miniatures, such as your own, currently being made by established companies in any real quantities, run about $6-$11 a figure. I could pull up examples from Reaper, Warlord, Hasslefree, the Perrys, and so on but honestly, it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Even GW still sells many of their metal miniatures through mail order at that price. Even without quoting your own prices back to you it is still fair to say that, at $6-$11 a head for your plastics, you are charging metal prices for your plastics. Reaper and Warlord - got a ton of them, love them. Also you don't see a ton of new stuff coming from them any longer other than Bones which is mostly re-release in a new form. Back in the day Reaper was the place to go if you wanted a fantasy miniature. Also, they had the advantage of volume. EVERY store no matter what immediately brought in whatever was brand new at the time, usually a couple of each. There was no other competition to speak of really. Right out the door they were sending out high multiple thousands. That adds up nicely. Of course a lot of my Reaper miniatures are looking one direction and their sword the other - flat molds. YMMV. Hasslefree. Kev and Sally - two of the nicest and hardest working people in this industry, won't hear me say a bad thing one about them. You also don't see the product in large run distribution and the most of the sales as I recall back in the day (it's been a couple of years since I've bothered to keep up on it) were direct sales, don't have much in the way of distribution sales (mainly just to larger online retailers who don't get a full chop on distribution pricing) and on top of that, last I remember and from the umpteen or so in my collection, all of them come in clear baggies and no packaging. That sort of thing does cost and not having it, saves a LOT. Perrys, honestly, other than knowing that they do some GW and I believe cater mainly to the historical crowd, I don't know much about them. I'll leave that one with you. GW, hell yeah they are going to sell direct to you at that price for mail order. Comes right out of a bin, doesn't have to go through the usual channels, and no one else gets a cut of price. To get your product into distribution it takes quite a bit of money, resources and work in general. Advertising, trade shows, etc. That adds up quite a bit once you hit every distributors trade show, which you have to pay the privilege for being there, supply door prizes and goodies for the on-rush of retailers and sample products in general. Then take into account travel, food and hotel for two or more individuals across the country for an average of about 15 of these shows. Then toss in a larger one like GAMA, where you bring four to six people to Vegas to show your product and inform everyone at THAT trade show. Then there is the cost of distribution. In order to get access to that network of retailers and the sales folks behind it, and to push your product and get it out there, and get someone to take a chance that your product is what they want to peddle, all comes at a significant discount of sales to them, to which they then take their bite and pass it along to retailers, who hopefully will get their bite with sales direct to customers. Oh, and you best be able to provide a product in a timely manner, which means you need to have X amount of it on hand at any given time, which means a warehouse, racking, packaging, machines and people all to do it and to have a good turn around rate on processing orders. Overhead there isn't cheap in the least, and whether you make sales or not, you still have to have that product in hand (which needs to be created and paid for in advance) and you need to sign that contract for the warehouse that states that short of bankruptcy, you WILL be paying for that space for a minimum of three to five years. Development and lead times - there are times where you don't see your investment return to you for six to nine months due to having to pay up front for its creation, manufacture, shipping and eventual release. Make certain you can roll with putting upwards to $200k into something up front, waiting for it to eventually get to you, and then hope that it does well enough on the market to not only recoup your costs, but make a profit so that you can move on to that next large project or change on the horizon. Dealing with growth and expansion has killed more companies than not. It might seem as if because you are selling more product it means that everyone is driving a sports car and we blow our noses with the dead presidents just to show off. Hardly ... what it means is you work your ass off that much harder, there is that much more to loose, you have not only yourself to take care of but your employees and their families and gawd forbid if something like a $12,000 shrink wrap machine blows up just before Gencon and it's just about as much to fix it as it is to just outright purchase another one, which wasn't in the plans, or the timeline anyhow. The comparison gets worse with the new Marshall. You can easily find plenty of excellent quality metal horsemen at that price. I would instead point out that GW, the paragon of overcharging, sells an excellent human mounted Empire general kit, including a battle standard bearer and extra conversion parts, for $29.75- less than the price tag of the new Marshall. That one? Yeah, well, again YMMV. Perfectly decent figure though, just not my thing and not what we'll be putting out. So, why are we being charged metal prices for plastics? You're not. If you were, you would be paying about $90 for the metal Avatar Hoffman, which I decided to not put on the market and was the main reason why it took so long to get the plastic version out, which I might add is much larger and IMO, better detailed than the metal version was. You would also be paying quite a bit more for any other figures that we would have released. As it stands, we could go back through our metal catalog and completely update all the prices - to which there would be squawk heard in the heavens over how we're doing XYZ. Metals are being phased out - sooner than later - and the plastics will be taking their place shortly after. Some things just aren't worth bothering over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeleteAccount Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 Note that in this thread I did not say you had to go back to making metal. That has been covered in other threads. I am discussing a different issue: why, if you have declared plastics to be cheaper than metals, are you charging metal prices for plastics. I may not have verbalized it well, but it is a fair question that even plastic lovers can ask. I'm pretty sure the shift to plastic wasn't so much "cheaper" as "stable" cost. Also, this is something that annoys me to an incredible degree. Why o why is plastic considered crap when compared to metal? There are a LOT of different types of plastic, heroclix plastic is not the same as lego plastic which is not the same as industrial plastics. Lets stop acting that because something has weight and the other doesn't it inherently MUST have less value. ---------- Post added at 03:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:30 AM ---------- Insightful post One question Nathan, I don't know if I'm overstepping my bounds here, but what is relatively speaking, accounting for all the costs you just mentioned, the fraction occupied just by material + mold (as I understand it it's 2 very different animals costwise between a metal mold and a plastic mold). I thought that the moral of your post was going to be that the material in the grand scheme of things was a pretty little percentage of the whole equation and that plastic is preferable, outside of making amazing 3d rendered models, because it's prices weren't fluctuating constantly, but your Hoffman comment took me for a complete loop since I did not expect metal doubling the price. Or is it because of weight too which I could imagine would become a real factor in distribution costs between plastics and metals? Also, that plastic horse, if it's the one being discussed, is pretty crappy. Like the grand majority of reaper's stuff. Yes, there are cheaper stuff, but ones you can see in plain sight why they are cheaper... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brence Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 Agreed, modern techniques make casting in plastics an equal if not a superior material to metal. Let alone for the fact of pose ability and alternate parts. As to the weight. I would grow in value every year! *grins* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nathan Caroland Posted November 1, 2013 Report Share Posted November 1, 2013 One question Nathan, I don't know if I'm overstepping my bounds here, but what is relatively speaking, accounting for all the costs you just mentioned, the fraction occupied just by material + mold (as I understand it it's 2 very different animals costwise between a metal mold and a plastic mold). I thought that the moral of your post was going to be that the material in the grand scheme of things was a pretty little percentage of the whole equation and that plastic is preferable, outside of making amazing 3d rendered models, because it's prices weren't fluctuating constantly, but your Hoffman comment took me for a complete loop since I did not expect metal doubling the price. Or is it because of weight too which I could imagine would become a real factor in distribution costs between plastics and metals? Tooling costs for plastic are pretty much a constant and thus stable cost. 3D sculpting, the same - obviously if it is a larger or more detailed piece or if multiple options are put out for it, it's going to cost more. Plastic itself, also a constant price more or less. You pay X and the prices don't fluctuate like the cost of metal does. It's also lighter, stacks easier, and as long as you don't have any issues such as too much release agent in the tooling, you get an exact replica of the tooling every time without tearing, shifting or miscasts and that in and of itself saves a LOT of time, money and plain ol' aggravation. When it comes to shipping, it's a huge savings. A thousand plastic sprues vs. a thousand metal miniatures, big difference in the cost of shipping, both to receive and to send right back out. When spin casting metal, the molds get used up pretty quickly and you find there are shift and tears as well as extra metal that hangs on due to the venting of the mold. We used to take the time to cut and clean those up because the presentation inside the clamshell would be better. That takes time, which equates to money, and all the extraneous metal adds up. We filled up eight of those orange home depot buckets and each one weighed somewhere around eighty pounds. That was over the course of a year. Now with that in mind, that was extra metal that we ended up paying shipping on, as well as cleaning. Adds up significantly. Oh, and you have to pay for the creation of new molds ... often. Now you take a larger piece like the Avatar Hoffman, there are lots of pieces, thus several molds. All of which need to be spun to get the amount you asked for. Larger pieces take longer to spin because they need to cool down before being released from the mold. Just like anything, time is money, and the longer it takes for the caster to spin up this piece, the more it costs. Take in to account all the pieces, time to cast, weight and shipping and then add in your costs to the overall to get your price so that you can make a profit after distribution takes it's cut and you find quickly that, in the case of metal Avatar Hoffman, it was just too damn expensive to manufacture and put out through distribution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts