Grak and Crumbleberry

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Olaf the Stout
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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by Olaf the Stout »

mikeyc222 wrote:
Olaf the Stout wrote:I can't buy the Gutter Runners separately...
just playing devil's advocate here, but you can't buy them separately? not even on eBay?
i get the spirit of what you are saying, but in practice, you can buy any number of single minis that you want if you put even the slightest bit of effort in.
I'm sure that you could get single minis on eBay (I honestly haven't looked). I know that GW was cracking down on "bitz" sellers a while ago, but it's likely there are still quite a few of them around.

The problem is then how do you determine the price for such an item for comparative purposes? On eBay the price could vary considerably, even among BIN sellers.

Plus, once you get to that point, fair comparisons start to fall away as you're talking about second hand goods.

For example, someone could then claim that 3rd party companies are cheaper because they backed a Kickstarter for a team and got their team cheaper than normal and with Kickstarter exclusive minis. Similarly, the tournaments I attend often have group orders with certain 3rd party companies where you can get a team up to 30% off RRP. At other times online stores have sales where you can get a discount or free shipping.

What if someone bought a team or extra positionals second hand from a fellow coach in their league. Is that any different to buying from eBay? What if I bought my GW team from an independent stockist and got it cheaper than GW RRP?

You have to draw the line somewhere for comparison's sake, so I think comparing products and prices available directly from GW and 3rd party companies/stores is a fair way to do that. Just purely my opinion though.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by garion »

mikeyc222 wrote:
Olaf the Stout wrote:I can't buy the Gutter Runners separately...
just playing devil's advocate here, but you can't buy them separately? not even on eBay?
i get the spirit of what you are saying, but in practice, you can buy any number of single minis that you want if you put even the slightest bit of effort in.

I'm sure I saw an expansion pack getting releases soon in one of these threads. In which it contained 2 more gutter runners and a couple of other things. Hopefully this isnt a release only available for warhammer fest.

Same goes for white dwarf and blackgobo. I really hope these can be bought via GW web site after.


While I am on the subject I would also like a way of buying the snow pitch. These limited releases are not cool...

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by Milo »

garion wrote:
mikeyc222 wrote:
Olaf the Stout wrote:I can't buy the Gutter Runners separately...
just playing devil's advocate here, but you can't buy them separately? not even on eBay?
i get the spirit of what you are saying, but in practice, you can buy any number of single minis that you want if you put even the slightest bit of effort in.

I'm sure I saw an expansion pack getting releases soon in one of these threads. In which it contained 2 more gutter runners and a couple of other things. Hopefully this isnt a release only available for warhammer fest.

Same goes for white dwarf and blackgobo. I really hope these can be bought via GW web site after.


While I am on the subject I would also like a way of buying the snow pitch. These limited releases are not cool...
The Skaven Expansion Pack and WD/BG will be available for sale after the Warhammer Fest. The Fest is just their debut.

As for the limited releases, many of them are not due to GW's desire to keep items "limited" (though I admit they do that sometimes, such as G&C), but due to production limits. Purely as an example, sometimes companies contact vendors to have items made, and say "We'd like 10k." Then they hear back something like, "Well, we've got lots of jobs already in the process. We could give you 5k in six months time, or 2k in 90 days time." (Again, this is just an example, not anything that I have specific secret knowledge of.) That leaves a company with a choice between selling a smaller quantity now, or a larger quantity later. The reality is that dice manufacturers and printers are frequently supporting lots of other businesses as big or bigger than GW, or under contracted timelines, and so GW can't just muscle in and get what they want, when they want.

Or sometimes they receive the items, but in quality check, find that a portion of them are a slightly incorrect color. These things happen. I think it's safe to say that GW gets nothing from dice/pitches/etc selling at high prices on the secondary market, and would rather sell more of the items themselves if they could. I don't know any specifics, but I do know GW is working to get some of the limited dice and pitches back into stock, and they should be for sale again soon. Not sure if the Winter pitch will come back for sale before the next Winter, though -- it could be a seasonal sort of product.

And then there's also a possibility that a company will just underestimate demand. BB2016 is selling exceptionally well, better than expectations. Can you cut them some slack if they just didn't realize that their initial releases (like the Winter pitches, Skaven dice, etc.) would sell as quickly as they did? (Keep in mind that all of those products were probably ordered from the manufacturers PRIOR to BB2016 going for sale, due to the aforementioned production timelines.)

But if the product will sell (and all of the sold out merchandise tells a very clear story in that respect), why would GW NOT want to sell it? They are a business, and there's money to be made. Don't assume that every limited release is part of some grand conspiracy.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by garion »

I don't assume any sort of conspiracy, i just think its a shame. I've got pretty much everything released by GW for bloodbowl I may be missing 1 or 2 white dwarfs only. And I would just like an opportunity to buy some of the limited ed stuff. I would like the two cards that I am missing (early bird and full beard) to complete the deck I would like to have the snow pitch. I would like all the winter bowl stuff. I'm sure there are plenty of others that missed some of this stuff for one reason or another and I'm sure some people have missed out on things like the skaven and dwarf pitch, ltd dice, Fling and gobo ref too.

Its just a little annoying really. Hopefully it will all be re-released or some of these items specifically the cards can be included with white dwarfs of something.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by Milo »

Manuel wrote:Darkson, I think what Milo said includes you:

You are not their main market target (nor am I).

I think we can expect "hype inducing" releases, with surprising new "fun" rules that compel you to buy the last teams, or positional.
Well, I guess I can't stop you from thinking that, at the moment. Next weekend, when DZ2 is in people's hands, maybe you can review it and tell me what new "hype inducing" new rules will compel you to buy new teams. I would hope that you find them "fun" -- why else would you play a game?

And just so you're not putting words in my mouth: I never said long-term coaches weren't a "main market target". I simply said you weren't the ONLY market, and decisions weren't being made EXCLUSIVELY to cater to you. If you think the current BB2016 release is just a cash grab from new coaches, I'd respectfully say you haven't been paying very close attention. The fact that there are only tiny deviances from the CRP is to large extent based on the knowledge that BB, rules wise, is already a very good product and that there are already a large number of coaches who are happy with it.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by straume »

Milo wrote:The fact that there are only tiny deviances from the CRP is to large extent based on the knowledge that BB, rules wise, is already a very good product and that there are already a large number of coaches who are happy with it.
And to be fair this is really the main point.

The major concern pre BB2016 and the fear of new and gamebreaking rules can, hopefully, be put to rest.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by Milo »

faust_33 wrote:@Slothman: I'm sensing a lot of frustration in your post and probably a lot of that comes from the disbanding of your league. I'm not in your shoes, but I think I would try salvaging some of it by finding the like minded players in your group. If there are those who are just fine with CRP rules and that's what you are most comfortable with, then I would just go with that. Definitely easier to run CRP in a league at this point.

It sounds like eventually the new rules will get hammered into shape and probably be available in one blob. But being new stuff, that usually takes awhile. Though anyone can play the 'wait and see' game while running CRP.

At the very least, I hope you stick around TFF. Maybe just take a week break from the forum and see how you feel?
I heartily second this, Slothman. Your recent posts about helping to teach Blood Bowl to new players show that you have a passion for and knowledge of the game that would still be very welcome here. And I'd be happy to answer any questions I can about the new game, the changes, and the ethical consumption of the CRP for your leaguemates if it would help your league.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by Milo »

Olaf the Stout wrote:
Milo wrote:
straume wrote:Sure, but a box with 4 Gutter runners instead of 2 for say 50 USD would be even better :-)
Fair enough. A box with everything I need for a buck would be even still better! But any company that tried to sell that would go quickly out of business.
Milo, I think you're misrepresenting his argument. He's not saying GW's offering of 2 boxes to make a full team for $70 USD is crap. He's just saying that offering a full team of positionals for $50 USD would be preferable.

$50 for a 14 man team is not a financially unviable price for GW, like the $1 offer you proposed. It is something GW could have considered.
Obviously, the $1 everything-you-need example was hyperbolic. But really, no matter what they offered, someone could (and would) ask for more. Let's look at the sprues you get, so we can answer this request specifically. On each sprue, you get 1x Storm Vermin/Blitzers, 1x Gutter Runner, 1x Thrower and 3x Lineman. A box comes with two sprues, so you get doubles of all of those positionals and a total of six linemen, for a total of 12 players. Note than you need 11 to have a team, minimum, so two sprues fills that requirement in the most efficient way possible. If they had put two Gutter Runners on the sprue, then a box would have had all of the positionals but only four linemen. Still a viable starting team. But what if you wanted to buy more linemen? You'd have to buy a whole new box just to get FOUR more! And the other eight minis would have been mostly useless -- sure, you could use the Blitzers and Throwers on an Underworld team, but then you'd have to buy a third box just to get the Linemen you need -- and at that point you'd have EIGHT useless Gutter Runners.

Designing the sprues to be asymmetrical would have been a possiblity: you could do two Blitzers and four Gutter Runners on one sprue, and one or two Throwers on the second sprue with linemen to total six. But that's expensive -- not only do you need to make two different and distinct plastic molds, but you'd also have more effort in packaging boxes, and undoubtedly customer service issues stemming from the possibility of a team box containing two of either Sprue A or Sprue B, which eats into profit a little more. Not to mention, you're still left with the issue of either only having 4 Linemen or only one Thrower, and the only solution is buying another box team.

So it's hard to see the current team box as less optimal. One box gets you a viable (if not ideal) starting roster. Two boxes fills out your roster AND gives you all the Skaven minis you need for an Underworld team. (If you don't want it, you should be able to find a buyer pretty easily, and yes, the fact that Skaven and Goblins would complete an Underworld team was intentional on the design team's part.) One box and the new Skaven booster from Forgeworld gets you a full roster with unique figures for almost all positionals; I'm not sure what the total price will be, but I think it will be competitive with teams from Comixininos that have more unique figures. Many of the GW teams have also included some separate pieces (heads, et. al) so that you can customize the positions further, and -- as plastic figures -- they are probably the easiest option for customizing.

Aside from wishlisting, how would you produce a more optimally designed team?
Olaf the Stout wrote:Also your Comixininos example isn't really a like for like example.
Granted -- the teams available at Comixininos are boutique teams, designed by and for veteran coaches and enthusiasts. GW has the ability to reach a much larger customer base.
Olaf the Stout wrote:I can't buy the Gutter Runners separately, so to get all the positionals on the team (outside of the Rat Ogre) it costs me $70 USD. If I want to add a GW Rat Ogre to the team then it will cost me nearly $30 USD (including shipping) to get the Forgeworld Rat Ogre. So a full GW Skaven team is just under $100 USD. I get 25 minis for that price, but that just means I have a heap of extras I don't need, yet still only have only 7 unique sculpts on my team.

Comixininos currently has 3 different Skaven teams available. They are all cast in metal and have between 9-13 unique positionals on each team. The full team with 16 players will cost between $100-110 USD, which is still price comparable to GW.
Is it, though? I mean, yes, if you total up the entire team, it's comparable. I agree with you there. And I (and many others) have a preference for metal figures, so some would even say the 3rd Party (or 3P from here on out) teams are a better deal overall.

But if you're a brand new coach just getting into a new game, would you rather pay $35USD at your local FLGS to get started playing the game and see if you like it, or would you rather pay $80-100 plus S/H and wait a week or two for your team to be delivered?
Olaf the Stout wrote:However, it is rare in Blood Bowl to actually have a team of 16 players. So, if I just wanted a team of 14 with max positionals it would cost me about $80 plus shipping for a Uscarl Skaven team. Of that team of 14, there would be 13 unique sculpts.

Personally, if I had the choice between a team with 7 sculpts or a team with 13 sculpts (assuming similar sculpting quality), the team with 13 sculpts would be my choice every single time.

I am aware that GW is bringing out extra Skaven sculpts via Forgeworld and I am super happy and very excited to see that they are doing that. I'll definitely be buying them as I really value having unique sculpts on the field. I just wish they'd been available when the Skaven team was released.
I prefer unique sculpts myself. But historically, looking at the 3rd Edition teams, there were a lot of duplicates or only very minor differences. That's part of why I say the 3P teams are "boutique" teams. For more than a decade, there were ONLY GW 3rd Edition teams available (or 2nd Edition via eBay). Then came Impact and the start of the 3P minis, but even Impact has a lot of duplicated figures. I've got some of Phil's Phigs Black Widows, and there's only about five or six poses for the whole team. Only in the last decade, really, have Comixininos and Willy Miniatures and Kickstarter and Indiegogo broken the scene wide open so there is now a ton of variety available. So we're spoiled. But realistically, this idea of having 16 different figures for your team is a very new idea. (2nd Edition was close, but it also only had about a half-dozen teams represented. Even my 2nd Ed Skaven use duplicate figures for the Gutter Runners.)

I think it would have been great if the Skaven expansion pack was ready when the Skaven team dropped too. But would it have been better for the game if the Skaven team box had been delayed until now, leaving the new coaches with ONLY Orcs and Humans for the first three months? I think if you look at the question from that standpoint, it's obvious that GW needed to ship at least one additional team when BB2016 dropped. Should they have waited for the whole release until 2017 when they could have had the Dwarves and Skaven on sale at launch day? Maybe... but as I've said before, the strong sales of BB2016 is allowing the team to grow and hire more sculptors to accelerate timelines down the road, so it's not a cut-and-dried decision.

Consider the GW box sets to be for the mass market audience -- new and returning coaches who want to get started but have a minimal investment up front. (Impact fills this niche with their Trollcast teams too, many of which also duplicate positions.) Forgeworld is producing boutique kits for coaches who want to take the next step, such as the Skaven expansion pack, the Bright Crusaders and Orcland Raiders kits. GW is also notably not interfering with the existing 3P market, so the full metal teams will still be available for coaches who really want them -- and the new coaches GW brings into the game will increase, hopefully, the number of coaches looking for those Kickstarters and boutique teams eventually.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by mikeyc222 »

Olaf the Stout wrote:The problem is then how do you determine the price for such an item for comparative purposes? On eBay the price could vary considerably, even among BIN sellers.
FYI, the new plastic minis are available all over eBay individually for just a few bucks a piece. Usually less than $5. I just think the situation isn't nearly as dire as people seem to want to make it out to be. There has been an awful lot of doom and gloom on this forums since BB2016. I find it a little sad, honestly.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by MacHurto »

Milo, I get you point for skaven/orc/human sprues. Not optimal, but viable teams. But why were the goblins not given any weapon? Just in order to not produce two different sprues? Don't really get why the weapons have to be FW unless they think the goblin box will be mainly bought for orc/underworld teams and the demand for goblin teams is not large enough.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by Milo »

MacHurto wrote:Milo, I get you point for skaven/orc/human sprues. Not optimal, but viable teams. But why were the goblins not given any weapon? Just in order to not produce two different sprues? Don't really get why the weapons have to be FW unless they think the goblin box will be mainly bought for orc/underworld teams and the demand for goblin teams is not large enough.
Well, certainly the market for Goblins is bigger than just what you have for the Goblin team itself -- Chaos Renegades, Orcs and Underworld all use them too. Again, I'm not privy to any specifics, but if I had to guess, it's just too expensive to produce a plastic mold for the weapons themselves. I wish they could all be plastic because I'm not a big fan of resin, personally, but I understand that if the ROI is there, they'll do plastic (as they have for the Ogre and Troll figures) and resin is the alternative option.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by MacHurto »

Why would a plastic mold of a sprue with 4 goblins and 2 weapons be more expensive than 6xgoblins? 8 goblins in the box would be enough even for an underworld team. Given they don't (likely) produce only with one mold, two different sprues (as the 4 weapons are different) should not be much more expensive. Maybe it is, I don't know.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by JT-Y »

MacHurto wrote:Why would a plastic mold of a sprue with 4 goblins and 2 weapons be more expensive than 6xgoblins? 8 goblins in the box would be enough even for an underworld team. Given they don't (likely) produce only with one mold, two different sprues (as the 4 weapons are different) should not be much more expensive. Maybe it is, I don't know.
Goblins are split over two small sprues. The limit is really on the size of sprue available and that is dictated by the injection moulding machines themselves, it's a thing that can't be changed, and there isn't much free space on any of them these days.
Adding extra stuff means adding an extra sprue of going up a size. That's not actually a cost issue, but it is a time and resources issue. Making these tools is a long process with lots of test runs made and changed, or even scrapped. And that has to be factored into not just BB but everything else they are making, some of which will be for way in the future, some will be a matter of urgency as deadlines approach.
So yeah, they would like to make everything in plastic, but sometimes they just have to take something out and find another way.

I find this stuff interesting, but others might not, so I'll stop there with what is, hopefully, quite a simple explanation of the logistics.

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by Milo »

MacHurto wrote:Why would a plastic mold of a sprue with 4 goblins and 2 weapons be more expensive than 6xgoblins? 8 goblins in the box would be enough even for an underworld team. Given they don't (likely) produce only with one mold, two different sprues (as the 4 weapons are different) should not be much more expensive. Maybe it is, I don't know.
Plastic molds are much harder to prepare than resin ones. It's a completely different process, and typically requires many more iterations to get right. Two different sprues don't cost more to produce, but would take twice as long/as much money to design. That means you need to have twice as many sculptors working on them. (There's also the packing and customer service issues I mentioned earlier that exist when you are packing one each of two different sprues instead of two of the same sprue.)

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Re: Grak and Crumbleberry

Post by MacHurto »

Thanks both. Didn't know the goblin sprues were smaller.

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