Even a broken clock is right twice a day, you'd think they'd manage to make sense on accident occasionally I like how the purple sun has halfed in points, Always wondered why that thing was a 100 points with how unreliable it was. So far there hasn't been much interesting news for the GHB though, just mercenaries and point rebalancing, both of which aren't exactly news (merceneries being announced a while ago, and rebalancing being expected)
That isn't always necessarily true because deals can actually devalue the perception of your product.
True you have to be carefull with it and not overdo it. But the only type of product for which deals are inherently problematic are high end status symbols as it goes directly against what their brand is supposed to represent. And wargaming isn't exactly a high end status symbol. So it shouldn't be too difficult. Considering that it's already heavily a collecting-based product a customer loyalty program would probably work well. Taps into the same kind of mindset, and it's relativly easy to prevent it from devalueing your product as it doesn't require massive prize-drops for the deals to work. Just allow customers to collect something nice and flavourfull, I don't know say seals of the emporer, possibly with certain boxes giving multiple (buy a guilleman, get an extra seal), and you get a 10,- discount on your next purchase if you have 10 of em and you got something that should probably work quite well. Mostly it just surprises me GW doesn't seem to do it at all. The only thing they do is the battleforce boxes (SC boxes aren't really deals as they're essentially mandatory to draw in new blood as without them there's literally no "start here" option and getting started would mean immeadiatly having to buy 4-5 boxes + paints instead of just 1 box + paints)
I know we'll find out for certain, soon, but I assume this means that warriors are 90 for 10, guard are 80 for 5 and skinks are 70 for 10? I'm surprised that the Stegadon got a reduction, but pleased the Troglodon did. I wonder if the Skink Starseer got reduced too?
I think they should definitely have more bundle deals, but this type of price structuring isn't only problematic for status symbol items. As soon as you price a product for lower than you want to sell it (sale, loyalty membership, whatever) you've created the assumption that your product should be purchased for that price, or is only worth that price. For a luxury good like GW, that can be a dangerous precedent to set. You don't want people to think "well, if I wait to purchase this then maybe..." or "why pay X when i paid Y during last year's black friday sale?" Pricing structures are actually pretty interesting and there's a surprising amount of data that goes into it.
Hence my suggestion to pick something like a loyalty scheme, which can be kept consistent throughout the year thus avoiding the temptation to wait for the next good deal, or something like fixed sets like the battleforces where you buy half an army worth of stuff & the combinations are different each time thus making it pointless to wait for whatever you want to to be in the deal as it's supremely unlikely it'l ever be exactly what you want for the prize you'd want (plus the boxes allow you to get rid of some of the unpopular stuff clogging up shelvespace by combining something popular with it and selling it as a set). Both those schemes should (largely) avoid issues like that assuming you don't overdo it. A blanket pricedrop during a sale period like the usual holiday sales would indeed probably have fairly noticeable effects on the sales during the rest of the year as then you indeed get a lot of customers who'l just wait till the sales period comes along. A great example of that is with games on steam. The discounts are so stupidly high, and so frequent, that a lot of customers now refuse to buy stuff on release as they know it'l be half prize within a couple months anyway. I'm curious how much of this is due to different cultures and the fact that GW is serving an international public though. Would be interesting to know if that factors into it (or if perhaps in the UK this sorta stuff is just deemed incredibly harmfull to the product). Seeing as those schemes would probably affect the percieved value differently in different countries depending on what's "normal" there.
These changes alone is still not enough to bring saurus warriors or guards to a worthwhile state, although with skinks at 70 saurus knights at 90 is not looking like a bad deal anymore, although overall will be a slight nerf in a competitive list, as nobody are using saurus there anyway, so will just have to deal with more expensive battleline. If you like Stegadons it might break even there, and nobody likes Trogs anyway, even at 140 it is unfortunately still terrible.
So is every body just overlooking the fact that the army versus army box sets that come out (looncurse, realm of chaos, rats vs FEC, Khorne vs SCE, etc) ARE THE VERY BUNDLE DEALS YOU ARE SAYING THEY DONT MAKE!!!! Just because they haven't done one for our army (YET) doesn't mean they don't make them.... and they are even doing exactly what you have said they should do... not making it an annual thing, varying it so as to not drive the market to waiting to purchase when the sales come along....
Personally, i'd love some kind of loyalty program! Even if it was a free paint or something. I imagine they probably don't do things like that tho because they've determined it would impact the bottom line negatively. I'd love to see their data on it.
Depends, if saurus get lower summoning costs as well at least they'd become great summoning fodder (plus the added flexibility allows for clever plays and can be used to avoid some of the issues like guard's weakness to mortal wounds). Trogs are fairly decent, they're just overshadowed in nearly every situation by something else. At a 140 points it's quite cost effecient as well (also again, are these point reductions going to be reflected in summoning?). But it still lacks something that makes it truly shine. It needs something more interesting than an unbind & a bonus to charge when hitting something with it's spit. Right now it's basicly just an oldblood on carnosaur but worse (seriously, the only thing it does that the carnosaur doesn't have a similar (better) ability for is the unbind). It needs something special. Make it a wizard, give it a command ability. Give it something to make it stand out. Those are more promotional material for a new release than they are actual bundle deals. They're far too rare, only being released in tandem with a big release (and being discontinued quickly), often have weird contents (e.g. the soul wars one has multiple units with the wrong amount of models) and often lack equipment options (e.g. the soul wars box has 5 glaivewraith stalks which comes in units of 4, but it has no musician model for em which is the thing that'd make em actually good). Also with how they're set up to be promotional material getting multiples is fairly pointless as not only do you get weird amounts and lacking options, but they also tend to focus the new shiny toys so you'l end up with multiple copies of niche units of which you only really want to field 1 or 2 in an army ever. And since you lack build options you can't even easily convert them into an alternative. They'd be great for this if they'd solve those issues though. They're by far the most cost-efficient things GW ever releases. To be honest what I'd think would be briljant would be a scheme were every so often they just give you a specific free model/unit (of their choosing) at specific spending limits (let's say every 500,-). It feels rewarding & it'd probably tempt some people into starting a new army cuz hey, they got a general for it now might as well get him some troops to command, make sure to rotate it through factions so you don't end up building an army for free & it'd probably draw in more customers.
I'd love some kind of bite bonus, it could be something like: 'every seraphon unit within 6" get +1 to hit with their bite attacks'. That way it is not itself more powerful, but buffs a lot of our other units.
What if you could create something like a custom SC box or package that would be good for starting an army? For example, I've been thinking about starting a Tzeentch army after I'm done with my Seraphon. I really like the Tzaangors,(after all, birds ARE the closest thing Chaos has to dinosaurs) but to build an army of them, I would have to spend at least (checking prices) $110 on a Shaman, Skyfires/Enlightened, and standard Tzaangors (plus $115 for a Lord of Change). But with this system, if you get a certain number of battleline and heroes, It will give you a discount based on the total of the individual price (or some other method). This way, if any units from the SC box become worse because of rules and/or points changes, you can still start collecting based on what you want with a combo of units filling the same role in a SC box. What do you think? Would there be any financial downsides or any other reasons they shouldn't do this?
the issue isn't financial in the way you are thinking.... its in the cost. they would have to alter their molds and refabricate new ones to accommodate the piecemeal purchase method. that's WHY the SC comes with 12 warriors... 4 to a sprue 3 sprues. assopposed to the full box which is 20 (4x5) so yeah... theres a huge financial burden there, its just not one that would be reflected or very visable to the purchaser
What I meant was that the price and the number of models would be modified AS IF they were in a SC box. Sorry if I wasn't clear.
Hmmmm just read through the changes, and while of course points decreases are welcome I fear that even with the reduced point costs the Saurus won't be worth it.
As an all Skink Thunderquake player am I about to get fucked? I feel like my entire army is about to be nerfed. Feels terrible. I feel like when they say Skinks they mean Skinks, Razors, Rippers and EoTGs.... lol the whole army.
And those are weird as well. However our SC has 2 massive advantages over most of those boxed armies; There's loads of alternative loadouts/builds and easy kitbash options in it & most of the units in there you want quite a lot of models of. Which makes it possible to buy a bunch of boxes till you're back at a normal amount (e.g. 2 SC's give you 15 Knights and a scar vet with only minor kitbashing which is a normal number again) without wasting anything. Admittadly the weird amounts of stuff is by far the smallest issue with em provided you get at least a full unit. On a sidenote, whatever happenend to those boxes that were supposed to represent the armies of big cities that had SCE + free people and such nonsense as well as the game they tied into (firestorm?). Those would've been a great way of making bundle boxes but they seemed to just have dissappeared without a trace.