jdrakeh said:
Agreed, though, they
do finally seem to have moved past dumping a game line or two every year. That said, moves to disallow certain minis and rules in tourneys is a great example of crap support -- these disallowances are made specifically to push new (not necessarily bettter) product while, in turn, they make 90% of older stuff
worthless.
Now, if organizad play wasn't the cornerstone of GW commerce, this wouldn't be a big issue. But organized play
is the cornerstone of GW commerce, and people get sick of investing hundreds of dollars in an army one year only to find that the way it functions in play may change completely by the following year (if it hasn't be cut altogether).
Or at least I did
This is so exaggarated and extreme. Games die out and lose support from companies all the time. So why when GW does it, it becomes so henious as to attack them for it. They at least attempt to bring good games back (Talsiman and Space Hulk, pretty soon Mighty Empires and rumored Man o' War). They continue to support "dead" games (like Mordhiem, Epic, Necromunda) through specialist products and online support. OOP miniatures are available through archive services. No game company does that, when a game is dead they kill it fully.
As for them making miniatures or rules changes that disallow the minis, this is hardly true. This happened basically once during the change over from 2nd edition 40k to 3rd edition 40k and with 5th edition fantasy to 6th edition. But it was needed as the games became to character heavy and were rebalanced to focus on unit based combat as they were originally intended.
Occasionally there are specific write ups or units that loose or gain some effectiveness, but GW has gotten better and better about not doing this to their customers and miniatures can always be used even if they are older ones. You are never forced to replace your miniatures. But if a new unit comes out, and you like the figures, what is the harm in buying some new figures to pretty your army up. I personally enjoy doing this myself, just like I like having the new edition of D&D or a new version of legend of zelda. People don't seem to have problems throwing 300.00-600.00 down for a video game system and then 50.00 per game. How is 300.00 - 500.00 for a warhammer army and the rules any different? The warhammer product doesn't out date as quickly either, and then when it does it is a core rule book and an army book you replace.
It's like people enjoy picking on the big, bad game company when they appear greedy to them. But if you dropped the prices and they took in less money, then you would have worse looking figures, less pretty books and they would look like Reaper's Warlord or countless other games that have died on the vine over the years.
One other thing...Regardless of what people say, Privateer Press has the exact same prices as Warhammer and even has people working there from GW. Yet, everyone thinks they are cheaper because the game's scale is smaller. You play smaller skirmishes in Warmachine, so you need less, hence you pay less. Pretty simple. But their stuff is pretty, like GWs.
While we are at it...Rackham too, they are not cheap..but they are pretty. See what all of the leading miniature companies have in common, their pricing and their quality. Pretty miniatures means spending money for your army. Playing games with hundreds of figures means paying money for quantity. Quantity and quality together means spending some amount of money, and for both of these, the prices are reasonable.
