Lorini
4441
Yeah, the $100 price seems high. And like you said, with TI being under $100, it seems really high. Thing is, I nearly pulled the trigger on TI when it was on Amazon and it and the two expansions were less than $100, but there’s little chance I’ll ever get to play TI. More of a chance to play Eclipse I think.
Vesper
4442
Eclipse cost me $90 at my FLGS (10% discount) and I think it’s worth every penny. The ships aren’t awesome, but they’re OK. You get a LOT of cardboard, though, and it’s all very high quality. Also, I have no qualms paying a premium for such a well designed game.
That’s funny because Tasty Minstrel saved money on Eminent Domain by using the ship mold the Eclipse people paid for. I thought it was silly the Eclipse people let them do that because it would lead to posts like yours, but I guess they’re just that nice.
Eclipse is a boutique game that shouldn’t be. The price is so high because it was published by a small outfit with limited up-front capital lacking the connections of a Games Workshop or FFG that ordered a relatively limited print run. I’ll shell out extra because I know how the math works on that, but it still makes me wish GW or FFG had picked it up and given it the components it deserves.
That said, the cardboard is of very high quality, and I like the cloth bags they included for the random draws.
dtolman
4444
If you pay 90$ for it, think of it this way - its only 10c per component (yes, their are 900 components in the box - almost all high quality - even the plastic ships from the reused Galactic Emperor molds)
Ah, I was wrong. They’re getting a lot of mileage out of those molds…
The $70 I paid at funagain was pretty much the limit of what I was willing to pay for Eclipse. I like the rules quite a bit, but the MSRP definitely feels like gouging relative to what other boardgames charge.
When Games Workshop product like Dreadfleet provide more bang for the buck something definitely seems fishy. ;-)
Why? Games Workshop has worked with sculptors, artists, and manufacturers for decades and developed their IP to the hilt. They can get a lot more for their money than some small potatoes publisher can.
Lorini
4448
Funagain still has copies of Eclipse but you need to choose Ding and Dent.
Why? I simply think their miniatures are overpriced, and their games are largely marketed to move miniatures. I think they’re amazing artists, but when I think “bang for buck” I don’t think GW. ;-)
My estimation of them has changed somewhat since I discovered cardstock miniatures, as you can more easily get a nice game without miniatures, but their main stuff is still expensive. Dreadfleet again for example – $115! I mean, there’s a fair amount in that box, but not that much!
Compare for example to Rune Wars, which has more bits, costs less, and isn’t looking to sucker you into buying additional miniatures.
Reldan
4450
And yet you never feel like they’ve passed one penny of these savings they’ve worked for decades to establish.
Making Games Workshop seem like a bargain in the board game world is like making Apple seem like a bargain for laptops.
IainC
4451
In tha fantasy miniatures space at least GW are competitive with other manufacturers on price. Only companies like Mantic are offering significantly cheaper product for that segment. Privateer Press, Avatars of War, Malifaux etc are all roughly the same cost per figure or more expensive than equivalent GW product.
Historical wargaming is a whole 'nother thing of course but Flames of War aside, there’s not a lot of overlap between the core GW demographic and the kind of person who’s likely to be buying boxes of plastic Romans.
I guess I’m confused because you originally said Dreadfleet gives you more bang for the buck than Eclipse does, and now you’re saying Dreadfleet is overpriced.
GW’s last two board game releases, Dreadfleet and Space Hulk, were bargains relative to what they normally charge for minis. Especially when you consider how many unique, highly-detailed sculpts were included in those boxes and how expensive that stuff is to produce. Runewars comes with a load of plastic but the sculpts aren’t anywhere near the same league as those in Dreadfleet and Space Hulk.
Space Hulk was a bargain even at the MSRP, especially considering they did a limited print run. They didn’t make much money selling that one. Dreadfleet is less of a bargain for full price, but I’m seeing it discounted heavily these days and the sculpts are pretty amazing.
You can’t directly compare something like Runewars and Dreadfleet because the former goes for quantity while the latter focuses on quality. I see value in both approaches, and don’t think GW is price gouging on its board games.
For the record, I should have said “gouging relative to what people that ordered it before it arrived paid for it”. The price was anchored around 70$ for me which meant that was my guideline for what constituted a reasonable range, and I was just throwing that out there because I’d done a quick scan of vendors I usually count on to have things that are out of stock only to find holy shit prices. I’ve fallen for it before and it feels shitty afterwards.
For the record, I should have said “gouging relative to the original retail prices people were paying”. And both of my GW boardgames were bargains and will continue to be bargains in perpetuity, even after they’ve had 4x the price invested in third party painting. “What other boardgames charge” is not much of a useful metric to me; you can have all of the stuff you want in that box but it’s the intangibles that tie it together and make it feel like a good value.
By which I mean it’s absurd to pretend that value can be nerdgotiated into objective variables (ie my priorities) that outweigh other variables (ie your priorities) and therefore prove something a ripoff, absent obvious production value problems.
Exactly! Luckily I’m paying $70 for Eclipse, rather than the full price, let alone the price gouging that LK mentions. And really, I feel like $70 aught to be the MSRP for Eclipse judging from what I’ve heard of the box contents so far. If I didn’t like the rules so much I’d have passed on it.
GW’s last two board game releases, Dreadfleet and Space Hulk, were bargains relative to what they normally charge for minis. Especially when you consider how many unique, highly-detailed sculpts were included in those boxes and how expensive that stuff is to produce. Runewars comes with a load of plastic but the sculpts aren’t anywhere near the same league as those in Dreadfleet and Space Hulk.
Aye, I will grant you all of that. Nonetheless when I see the price on GW miniatures I balk (well, usually ;-) ). It has been this way for a long time, although I still remember when they actually included cardstock miniatures in Orc’s Drift.
To be honest, I’m somewhat surprised that Dread Fleet saw the light of day. The earlier Man O’ War (sublime!) eventually died because you just can’t sell as many miniatures for it as you can for Warhammer Fantasy and 40k. I expect Dread Fleet to meet a similar fate.
Judging from the declining price, I think you’re onto something.
I think GW screwed up the distribution for DF, in that they couldn’t make up their minds about whether to include normal boardgame distributors so they got in late and then undercut all of the pre-orderers significantly in price. It went from “exciting one-time opportunity” to sitting on shelves everywhere with what felt like fire sale prices after the initial anchoring at 120$.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the self-contained (SH, Dreadfleet) GW boardgames built around an entirely different model than their standard never-ending miniatures Warhammer lines? It certainly feels that way to me, as I would never buy into a collectible version of either of these two games that are so important to me (just like I wouldn’t buy Blood Bowl stuff even if it was in general production).
IainC
4458
This is correct. It’s also important to note that the strategy for second tier games such as Necromunda, Man-o-war etc is different to the primary product (WFB and WH40k). Man-o-war was always designed to have an approximately 4 year lifecycle - 2 years in retail with an expansion 6-9 months in then 2 years as mail-order only and finally off to Specialist Games for the community to determine its fate. All the secondary product was designed with that cycle in mind - Gorkamorka, Necromunda, BFG and so forth. The fact that you didn’t need big armies to play was a feature designed in from the outset not a bug.
Now it seems that GW is going for completely self contained games as second-tier product. You don’t need to buy extra ships for Dreadfleet or additional Terminators for Space Hulk, everything is in the box just like with a regular boardgame.
Yes, that’s why I found Jasper’s surprise confusing. The other thing I would add is that I think naval warfare is just a harder sell than many other things, especially once you factor in rulers and their reputation for complexity with respect to grid or hex games.
JM1
4460
My issue with the price for Dreadfleet was purely that it was a lot of money to pay sight unseen. We knew little about the game and the limited release meant there probably wouldn’t be time for the really in-depth reviews before it became too hard to find at a reasonable price. GW have a pretty mixed track record when it comes to rulesets.
Obviously this wasn’t an issue with Space Hulk as we knew exactly what to expect.
