Reaction Tuesday - GW Price Increase Reactions

Something that is still making waves after a couple weeks has been GW's latest price increases. I made a blog about it last year when it happened, and didn't really expect to write about it again, and yet people are still making the same 'deer in the headlight' type posts/sayings again this year.

GW has this thing called an annual price increase, which people really shouldn't be shocked by, prices go up on nearly everything every year. The difference is though that the consumer of GW products actually does hold all the cards in this area, and yet they refuse to actually play with those cards they are dealt. you see the exact same posts as you did last year about how people were going to stop playing GW games because of the prices, and yet six months down the line you find those same people happily handing their credit cards over to GW at some new release.

If you dare ask them why they play WFB or 40K, they almost always have some terrible excuse that apparently helps them sleep at night. 'Oh the background is what keeps me', 'No one else at my club at play anything else',  'I don't like the rules of Warmahordes'. All these excuses are complete rubbish in the best of cases and on multiple levels.

First and foremost, while WarmaHordes might certainly be one of the more popular competitive products, that doesn't mean you have to play it. Mantic's Kings of War and Warpath rulesets are much closer to WFB and 40K respectively then WarmaHordes is. To top it off, the Kings of War and Warpath rulesets are FREE, no excuse why you and your club aren't willing to give it a shot. That is also assuming you aren't willing to start up a new game in a new scale. Heavy Gear Blitz, Drop Zone Commander, Dust Tactics, and many other games are simply amazing foot based armies in varying scales.

The background excuse was one I always did hate to hear as well. Where in the background does it say Teclis is going to be in 500 different battles throughout the day? Where in the background does it  talk about dice rolls not going well? Simply put, nowhere. The background is something that is completely separate from the tabletop game. if you play a game of Warpath, the background for 40K just doesn't change. You can easily keep up on the background of the game without having to buy multiple $33 dollar codexs/army books.

The last point was slightly hit on already about no one else using the system at the club. With free rules for Infinity, Kings of War, Warpath, Full Thrust, and multiple other games out there, there is no reason not to give something else a try. Most of those other system even allow easy conversion to use of your current miniatures to work with their systems. Even if you don't want to use one of those systems, most other game systems rulebooks are a half to a third the price of the GW rulebooks (and most tend to actually give you the full force rules as well).

In the end, if you don't want to give up GW games, simply say it. We live in a great time for tabletop wargames, with almost every type of game having multiple rulesets to use within our grasp. If you choose not to take advantage of that, then simply sit back and suck up the annual price increases and stop acting like their blindsided you again.