28mm Miniature Tabletop Wargaming Thread

Jalynfane_sl said:

I see the ridiculous amount of GW merch at my friend's FLGS that just looks like it rots on the shelf and can't be more happy that I got out 15+ years ago. I helped him unbox his GW order the other day and there these Citadel crafting tools that GW sent. I was reading figures off the invoice and he thought I was reading it wrong when I said the COST was $13.50 for an xacto knife, MSRP $26. He was very upset but said he could not do anything about it because GW requires that game stores carry a certain amount of product and you can't just cherry pick special order things, you have to buy "blocks/modules" of merchandise from them that has the stuff you want in it.

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Currently this is not true.

You can order and cherry pick anything you want. But like Erronius said there are two catalogues you go through; Sales and Trade. I tend to get those two mixed up.

The first one usually is at a 45% discount and is the mass bulk stuff, primarily plastics and plastic box sets. This includes army boxes, starter boxes, the main books and codices, tools and accessories. Paints have varied sometimes between 35 and 45%, but usually 45%. Your sales rep encourages and works with you to push the First choice since this is where you and them make the most money. I paid my bills all on this pretty much.

Your sales rep gives you the first "Prize Award" tier free upon your first store opening order (typically $12-15k worth of merchandise). This prize award is anything you want, a whole army (2000-3000 pts worth of stuff equivalent fantasy or 40k). Every quarter depending on how much you order from the first option, you build up prize award "credit".

If you're a huge bulk purchaser from this tier and are at a very high weekly volume (5K or more per week since your sales rep checks on you weekly) you may qualify for the Distributor tier and this option goes from 45% to 47%. I never got there, supposedly our local Hobbytown was but I think they were just BSing me. The only guys I know that could get everything at 47% off was ACDD here in Fresno (the 2nd largest gaming distributor in the US). ACDD wouldn't even sell me GW stuff since they knew I had an account.

The second one is everything else except 35% off. All of the metals (now Master series resins), Special edition stuff, Specialist Games, Limited Release Items, Forge World (yes Forge World), Large Cases, White Dwarf and anything else that's not part of the bulk line. You do not gain prize award credit when using this option, you do not gain Pre-Release store credit, GW Sales Reputation, or any other incentive. You pretty much get the exact same 1-800 number any other joe gets from the website. Only thing different is the sales rep on that one looks you up based on your account number and gives you free shipping (same rules as anyone else) and 35% off depending. By the way, I've actually had them recast shit for us back in the day but we had to pay full price.

You can order Forge World for your customers just fine. It's the same cost as above (35% off), but it's usually shit. Things are broken and my buddy who used to work at the battlebunker in LA, claims FW stuff ordered by authorized resellers is usually stuff at Battle Bunkers that didn't move (since BBs for a long time and probably still are the only main GW Store in the US that carries random FW stuff). I used to tell my customers to just go online and order it like anyone else.

Anyhow, back to the First option; a lot of store owners don't understand how this works. The credit you build is really for prize awards which on average worked out to about $250-500 per quarter (cost) worth of free shit. I used to pool the credit and would tell my rep to hold on to it. I'd then just lie and tell him I needed this and that for some up coming event and would use the credit to restock. I still gave out good prizes though (our first place winners used to take home about 50-$100 (retail) worth of merchandize on our bi-monthly tournaments. Also my GW Rep never said no to any request such as a free Army Case, or Paint Set as long as I explained what our even was about and kept him updated with pictures.

Erronius_sl said:

I've never been able to follow those requirements because they seem to change them fairly frequently. Years ago the store my friends had ran into the same deal - you had to carry a minimum amount, per month, in order to qualify for whatever discount was available, so they always had stuff that they couldn't move. I think that there was a window within which to return stuff but just from what I saw it was a PITA.

A couple of years ago an owner at a store I occasionally stop by (our store closed years ago) was telling me how he could only order certain items off of a list (I'm assuming with a discount to the store) while everything else was direct order only (or something). This came out when I was looking for a CSM vindicator and he didn't have any - he didn't really want to order one but he didn't want to lose a sale either, but first he tried to sell me a SM vindicator that was on the shelf instead, which I didn't want.

This same store, I don't even think that they order much/any GW stock anymore. They've moved on to Flames of War and PP games mostly, and I only think there is one larger store in our metro area that even has GW games on a regular basis.

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Some pics of my store, mostly the terrain tables since those are the only pics I've got still lying around.

You do have to maintain the bestsellers shit though. Which mostly sucks here since there's almost no Fantasy at all here and we have to carry a bunch of that stuff.

Erronius_sl said:

If anyone I knew in the area played Dystopian Wars I think I already would have started collecting that. I haven't really seen anything within WarmaHordes that tickles my fancy.

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Awesome idea, cool models, shitty game. The units don't work well together and are extremely dependent on what terrain is on the board. The rules system is typical Spartan games so it's worse then GW. Unfortunately the best thing about the game is how cool the models look. Spartan really fucked up when they alienated the open source rules project that was going on to help tweak their games in to playable. Instead of telling those guys to fuck off, they should have hired them.

Firestorm Armada was made by the same company and had rules just as shitty. It's honestly too bad because ship and spaceship games are a serious void in this market of cheap GW knock offs.

I am personally waiting out until Relic Knights hits. The card mechanic is fresh and different then Malifaux. The models look boss. CMON is no longer involved so I would expect life to get at least 100% more honest if not also 100% more on time. The Dashboard mechanic is cool. The move twice per activation is awesome. All around it's the freshest game to come out since Malifaux hit like 6 years ago or whenever that was.

Tea_sl said:

Holy lol at non compulsory force organization in 7th.

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The plus side to that would be allowing starting players who haven't bought all the models to play, although really you could always bend the rules to let them do that anyway, this would just make the option "official."

The obvious downside is the people who are going to powergame more than happens already, but if you play someone you don't know who wants to use unbound lists you'll just have to expect it. I don't see mixes of unbound and organised force lists working, so even if the rules allow it I suspect many people won't play that way; it will be unbound vs unbound or organised vs organised.

My understanding is that there will be a bonus of some sort if your army is bound. The balancing act is making the bonus enough that you'd seriously consider keeping your forces bound but not make the bonuses so large that being unbound is basically a nonoption. Think we all know how good they are at balancing things.

Sterling_sl said:

My understanding is that there will be a bonus of some sort if your army is bound. The balancing act is making the bonus enough that you'd seriously consider keeping your forces bound but not make the bonuses so large that being unbound is basically a nonoption. Think we all know how good they are at balancing things.

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Yeah, and come to think of it one option could be better than the other for a particular faction, which could lead to some heated arguments about who can bring what. If they wanted flexibility they could play around with how the points system works, and take the opportunity to rebalance what's out there.

Sterling_sl said:

My understanding is that there will be a bonus of some sort if your army is bound. The balancing act is making the bonus enough that you'd seriously consider keeping your forces bound but not make the bonuses so large that being unbound is basically a nonoption. Think we all know how good they are at balancing things.

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Some info from GW:

NEW! Warhammer 40,000: New army organisation options - YouTube

Rumors are the game is being sold to Hasbro so maybe Hasbro has said they will only buy it if the game isn't getting dropped by half the fan base?

Dont have a link handy, but also some kind of Warhammer 40k chess pc game. (Battlechess?)

Some pictures of some very nice and new 30k models in the linked thread:

Horus Heresy Weekender



Some other selections as links to keep it short:

20140517_151703_zpsf8c8o2ne.jpg Photo by drlove42 | Photobucket

20140517_134159_zps074gxcll.jpg Photo by drlove42 | Photobucket

20140517_113906_zpsgtckyski.jpg Photo by drlove42 | Photobucket

20140518_111258_zpsa5tk1qg9.jpg Photo by drlove42 | Photobucket

Erronius_sl said:

Allies matrix leaked, looks like a few changes that some people are grousing about. People who played "Traitor Guard" with CSM will be disappointed, also people are talking about Tau as well (Fuck Tau, I say)

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I think it takes away some combinations of IC + MC that were probably unintended when they wrote 6th. If the rumours are true that ICs can't join MCs at all in 7th then there will be much wailing amongst "those guys".